Gedemon's Civilization, development thread

[CalebR_300]

Liking the new visualization system, makes it easier to see who is going where at a glance, although not the number. Maybe a number accompanying the arrow, bigger arrow for more movement or something? Additionally, a red arrow to indicate emigration and green for immigration might improve at-a-glance readability. But that's my two cents, it's looking good as is.

Now, to follow up on some things:

The production boost to medieval housing (when upgrading) seems to result in very high material costs per turn. Even developed cities with a workshop had difficultly meeting the per turn material cost, resulting in city production costs suddenly skyrocketing.

The above issue actually seems to be made up of several problems, that pertain to ALL upgraded buildings as far as I can tell:

• The material cost per turn is really high due to the production boost, but also costs the same total material to build. I'm thinking that being an upgrade, the total material cost should probably go down (discounted by the previous structure/s) rather than provide a production speed boost.
• There also seems to be a bug with upgraded buildings that the expected material cost per turn is lower than the actual cost per turn. As per below, the city says it will use 80 material/turn, but in fact uses 180. This is not an isolated incident, it's been happening to all cities post medieval era. Been having to manually calculate material costs to avoid going broke from city production costs.
  
  
  
  
• And on a semi-related note, the bonus production on upgraded city squares (classic->medieval, etc) cause issues for new cities, as this inherently increases per turn material cost on new cities, making them expensive to establish. The production bonus is actually detrimental rather than beneficial.

Oh, and another thing:

It's intended for the health effect, the city can't directly "work" them, but it does collect resources on them. But the effect is scaled with distance IIRC.

Does this mean a city can obtain resources on all materials within it's borders (even outside it's workable range)? I can't say I've noticed this effect... they only seem to obtain materials on explicitly assigned tiles. Or am I misunderstanding?

 

[Gedemon]

So if I'm understanding this correctly, the arrows inside a hex pointing towards the center of that hex are indicating migration into that hex, while the arrows pointing away from the center of the hex indicate migration out of the hex. Also, in the second picture, what are the numbers indicating? I'm guessing 7 migrated into the hex from the direction indicated, and the new total population of the hex is 1981 after accounting for whoever migrated out as indicated by the second arrow?

That text is a place holder, i'll add more info in it, 7 was number of migrant last turn, total is the total of migrants since the beginning of the game.

Liking the new visualization system, makes it easier to see who is going where at a glance, although not the number. Maybe a number accompanying the arrow, bigger arrow for more movement or something? Additionally, a red arrow to indicate emigration and green for immigration might improve at-a-glance readability. But that's my two cents, it's looking good as is.

Yep, was working on arrow sizes too, and switched to a neutral color

Spoiler :

Now, to follow up on some things:

The above issue actually seems to be made up of several problems, that pertain to ALL upgraded buildings as far as I can tell:

• The material cost per turn is really high due to the production boost, but also costs the same total material to build. I'm thinking that being an upgrade, the total material cost should probably go down (discounted by the previous structure/s) rather than provide a production speed boost.
• There also seems to be a bug with upgraded buildings that the expected material cost per turn is lower than the actual cost per turn. As per below, the city says it will use 80 material/turn, but in fact uses 180. This is not an isolated incident, it's been happening to all cities post medieval era. Been having to manually calculate material costs to avoid going broke from city production costs.
  View attachment 555238
  
• And on a semi-related note, the bonus production on upgraded city squares (classic->medieval, etc) cause issues for new cities, as this inherently increases per turn material cost on new cities, making them expensive to establish. The production bonus is actually detrimental rather than beneficial.

Thanks, I'll have a look at the city consumption per turn display.

Good idea about the discount on material instead of production, but harder to implement code-side.

Oh, and another thing:

Does this mean a city can obtain resources on all materials within it's borders (even outside it's workable range)? I can't say I've noticed this effect... they only seem to obtain materials on explicitly assigned tiles. Or am I misunderstanding?

Yes it can, if the plot outside the working range is improved for that resource. Another thing I must add somewhere in the UI...

 

[Gedemon]

An AI with a navy, it can happen, with enough wood.

Spoiler :

 

[Gedemon]

bad news:

Interview with Anton Strenger:
https://www.pcgamesn.com/civilization-vi/civ-6-new-season-pass-details

At this time we don’t have plans to release the DLL source code.

So not before next year then, if ever.

I'm afraid this is the end of this project for civ6.

 

[CalebR_300]

Liking the update to the migration visualizer, it's shaping up well.

Yes it can, if the plot outside the working range is improved for that resource.

Well, I'll be darned. Time to send my builders further afield.

As for the source code... oof. Although by my understanding the dll wasn't ever going to be released, at least not in full.

I'm afraid this is the end of this project for civ6.

As in, you're stopping completely? Or simply unable to complete the project in its complete scope?
I still think there's more you can achieve, even with the limitations.

 

[Gedemon]

Stopping for civ6. I won't work anymore on a platform that is not fully open to modding.

I wish they had said it clearly sooner.

Looking for a replacement.

 

[CalebR_300]

Completely understand. Maybe Humankind might be that next game?
Anyways, I have appreciated and enjoyed your work, and what you have accomplished.
Au revoir, and fingers crossed a better alternative comes available.

 

[Gedemon]

So no need to keep it for myself only, last update with what I was working on, should be playable:

- add culture groups from CultureGroups.xml on the initial map, depending of their start/end date (only Middle East groups are in the file)
- remove duplicate (proto-, old-, neo-) and modern groups from the CultureGroups.xml file
- add "Medieval Armor" equipment class to try to fix incoherence in the Swordsman upgrade (downgrading to "Light Swordsman" when fully armored but using snot enough "Knight Armor" yet to upgrade to "Longswordsman")
- add icon to the mod modifiers dynamic string system
- add arrows for Migration visualization (no UI action, use FireTuner in "GCO_ContextFunctions" context, use "Rebuild()" to show the migration arrows and "ReleaseAllPlotIconInstances()" to remove them). It's still a bit buggy, you may have to save/reload to remove all of them.
- balance: lower Scholars formation from Tablets, Scrolls, Books
- balance: but Scholars can create Tablets, Scrolls, Books of the Techs they are researching (based on the "copy" modifier of ScribeHouse, Library, University
- balance: cities will always try to set a (free) transfer route with the Capital
- feature : spy will now send a few Tablets/Scrolls/Books of a Technology they've stolen to their Capital
- add Seeling Cat list of Government names

 

[Civinator]

Gedemon, may I humbly suggest to reconsider your decision with some days of distance.

In my eyes the decisive factor for modding is, that the modder still has fun with the game he tries to mod. If this is the case and it is possible to improve the fun for the modder himself by some modifications with tools that are available, why not do it ?

On the other side in my eyes it is no good idea, to mod a game only for the wishes of third persons, when the game is no fun for the modder himself. In that case it is something like doing 'unloved' work for third persons. Modding can always only be done with the tools that are present and not with tools that will come (or not) in the future.

So in my eyes the decisive question you should ask yourself with some days of distance is: 'Do I have still fun with the game I´m modding' - and if the answer is yes, I would continue with modding that game.

Best regards
Civinator

 

[Gedemon]

Thank you for the support.

But that's exactly the point here, I don't like civ6 as a game, I do see a lot of potential in modding it, and I do have fun modding it, but not playing it.

I need to be able to change a few core elements for that, which are diplomacy and combat mechanisms (including changing 1UPT to nUPT where "n" is dynamically limited), and both are inaccessible to modding at this point (diplomacy was more open in civ5, we had methods to influence it using Lua, and other methods were exposed to directly control AI units and change combats)

I understand now that I shouldn't have started this project without a positive confirmation for the source code release, but I honestly never had thought 3 years ago that they would limit civ6 gameplay modding so much.

 

[rty]

It is really shame if you stop developing this mod. It is the only reason I'm still interested in playing at Civ6.
Unfortunately the latest version is now unplayable. The moment you meet another major civ all the city and other menu items just disappear and game cannot be played.
I have Civ version 1.0.1.501 (504666) and latest files from Github.

 

[Gedemon]

Development update:

I've stopped modding for civ6, yes, but I've not stopped this project, ATM I'm testing Old World and its modding framework.

It's too early to say if that game would be a good base for this project, and I'm going to miss some of the Civilization modding tools (especially SQL for the large DB required by the mod's mechanism), but it already has opened a large part of it's source code for modding.

As it's in EA, I do not plan to try to adapt it's core mechanism to my vision soon, but I will try to add some features of this project to it.

Because adding some new code in the game's classes (Units, Cities, ...) will be easier to maintain after each weekly patch than overriding the existing game's code (which is changing a lot).

So when I'll feel confortable enough with C# (it's my first time coding in that langage, and I'm not a programmer by profession...) and the rest of the modding framework of Old World, I think I'll have a go at stockpiling the resources in cities, move them over a trade network between cities and implement the supply lines and healing mechanism of this mod's units into Old World.

If I manage to do that, I'll start thinking of the other features and may start a thread for the project in the Old World section, to discuss how to merge/adapt the mod's and the game's concepts.

 

[rty]

Interesting... I bought the Old World and played it about 5 times after which it was clear that there it is not much new "aspects" to explore.
It seems very limited (as it was about month ago), I wonder how much better you can make it, as the way it is at the moment is just not appealing and not as good as even vanilla Civ6.
Good luck with the development. I will definitely try the mod once released.

 

[rty]

Been playing the latest mod and there are some issues at the late stage [Civ6 ver: 1.0.0.341 (443561)].
Game becomes unplayable after you try complete research on Advanced Ballistic, Advanced Flight, Plastics I suspect these techs move you to new era and it is causing errors (pic: errors_2) list is much longer on the screen and keeps repeating after clearing etc.
Logs are:

CityBannerManager: 'Error'
C:\Users\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization VI\Mods\Civ6-GCO-master\Civ6-GCO-master\Scripts\GCO_ModUtils.lua:362: in function 'Divide'
C:\Users\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization VI\Mods\Civ6-GCO-master\Civ6-GCO-master\Scripts\GCO_CityScript.lua:4510: in function 'GetEmploymentSize'
C:\Users\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization VI\Mods\Civ6-GCO-master\Civ6-GCO-master\Scripts\GCO_CityScript.lua:4619: in function 'GetUrbanActivityFactor'
(tail call): ?
C:\Users\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization VI\Mods\Civ6-GCO-master\Civ6-GCO-master\Scripts\GCO_CityScript.lua:4631: in function 'GetOutputPerYield'
C:\Users\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization VI\Mods\Civ6-GCO-master\Civ6-GCO-master\UI\ToolTipHelper.lua:341: in function '(anonymous)'
CityBannerManager: ERROR : Divide called with a nil operand: 3736724 nil

Also game cannot be played on anything larger than small map size, it simply stops working around 300-350 rounds for mid size map and around 250 rounds for large map. Not sure what causes these.
It is shame that you have stopped developing this mod, I really enjoy playing it and was really looking forward improvements.

I guess I have to just wait for Humankind to be released and really hope it is as good as it seems to be...

 

[barzing]

So now the mod is totally unuseable ?

 

[Gedemon]

You should be able to play up to the fourth era if you use the latest version of the game that is compatible with the mod (1.0.0.341)

You may be able to get that version using this tool as mentioned by @robal1991 in another thread (I've not tested it)
https://github.com/SteamRE/DepotDownloader

I don't know if there are tutorials available for that tool, but it replace the steam console used in those:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1086279994
https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/611h5e/guide_how_to_download_older_versions_of_a_game_on/

 

[kashar]

Hi Gedemon,
Is it compatible with autoplay? https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=873028667&searchtext=autoplay
Or is it the right autoplay version? Last time (2 years ago) it was autoplay 3.
Thanks in advance

 

[Gedemon]

it should IIRC.

 

[kashar]

it should IIRC.

Sorry, IIRC is what?

 

[Gedemon]

"If I remember correctly"

Not something I used regularly with this mod.