GEM for Caveman2Cosmos

[DRJ]

Thread under construction.

For now, you can find the GEM related files and discussion here in Maps&Scenario sticky thread:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=455074

 

[DRJ]

Newest GEM by Acularius (3/22/2012)

HERE

 

[DRJ]

*reserved, too*

 

[DRJ]

*also reserved*

 

[philipschall]

One of the main problems that I've been addressing in the GEM is the basic problem of "Too much area to expand + lack of immediate rivals = Runaway 1st place". In DRJ's version, civilizations such as Inca, Mali, Russia, China, Zulu, and Australia will rocket ahead of all other civs. I don't know why, but when civs start close to each other they will often bankrupt themselves to payroll a painfully large army. In all my GEM games, Persia & Arabia never founded another city, rarely will Greece found another city.

In my own map, which I admit is nowhere near perfect, I've gotten it to Mali being the only real runaway 1st place civ, and I'll be adding a Ghana, Kanem, or Wolof Civ to keep him down (as soon as I can find another african LH).

However, I have no real way, through map manipulation, to improve the AI choices of civs that sit & stagnate. Partially I think this is due to the Empire-Based idea of power that is central to CIV 4: grow your empire big, and everything will grow with it! The problem are the models for growth: territory, population, and infrastructure. Grab land, build stuff on it. With this model, technologically advanced small civs are a rarity.

Compare this to the EU3 model from the fine folks at Paradox, where city states flourish and in some instances dominate (hansa, anyone?) because their version of growth also involves trade & diplomacy, which are mostly auxiliary in Civ 4.

Hopefully this issue will be addressed in the future.

 

[Acularius]

Depends on the settings in terms of expansion.
With the civ, the Tupi, you essentially have a rival for the Austrailians, however it isn't yet ideal because separating the land between 2 powers should lead to one dominating.
Rampant Barbarians tends to keep civilizations like the Mali from actually developing to the point where they run away with the points.
With the Huns, I'm hoping to place them as a counterbalance to the pesky Russians.
The Tupi should form an counter balance to the Incans, but only time will tell. I'm considering adding all the civilizations in though, another American civ might just tip the balance in North America so the Barbarians don't overrun them all.
I am not too eager by adding aother civilization to Europe though.

Generally though, I need to be able to have several playthroughs before I start making generalizations on the game play.
Granted, I've yet to fall into the BBB problem endemic of vanilla EU3.

 

[strategyonly]

Depends on the settings in terms of expansion.
With the civ, the Tupi, you essentially have a rival for the Austrailians, however it isn't yet ideal because separating the land between 2 powers should lead to one dominating.
Rampant Barbarians tends to keep civilizations like the Mali from actually developing to the point where they run away with the points.
With the Huns, I'm hoping to place them as a counterbalance to the pesky Russians.
The Tupi should form an counter balance to the Incans, but only time will tell. I'm considering adding all the civilizations in though, another American civ might just tip the balance in North America so the Barbarians don't overrun them all.
I am not too eager by adding aother civilization to Europe though.

Generally though, I need to be able to have several playthroughs before I start making generalizations on the game play.
Granted, I've yet to fall into the BBB problem endemic of vanilla EU3.

I am trying to get things arranged here in the Maps area, i am going to change the name of this sub-forum to Maps and Scenarios, as per Hydro's make sense request was.

Then have sticky's for different kind of maps, if i can get that done that is.

 

[rightfuture]

I really like the placement of barbarian cities to fill up GEM.
Exploration is also part of the fun.

 

[Hydromancerx]

Well in the other topic (standard Earth) I suggested having 4 civs in South America, Inca, Tupi, Mapuche and Jivaro. This should help keep the Inca from running away.

 

[rightfuture]

Thanks for creating a GEM thread for C2C
I'm excited.

 

[Koshling]

I don't know why, but when civs start close to each other they will often bankrupt themselves to payroll a painfully large army. In all my GEM games, Persia & Arabia never founded another city, rarely will Greece found another city.

Do you use 'start as minors'? Close proximity + at war will probably have this effect at a guess.

 

[philipschall]

Yeah, I'll try a game without "start as minors" and see if things change.

 

[Acularius]

I tend to prefer more aggressive games so I tend to have those options set on to default.

 

[DRJ]

Yeah, I'll try a game without "start as minors" and see if things change.

I experienced that if you start on the GEM 38 civs Map as minor civ but also on deity level the fact that AI starts with 2 cities evens out their mass building of units a bit, making them more competetive on this level.

(the last GEM deity game I hadn't enabled minor civ start and found it to easy to catch up by trading intelligently once another civ had writing - I wanted to disable me to do that until I get writing)

To prevent Mali running away as teachleader I enabled raging barbs (this helps Europe to catch up a bit as well - as they don't face the barbs at their borders that much like eastern civs)

So far, ~4900 BC, my civ has just got carpentry, is size 4 and I have - as island starting Japan - a score of 24 compared with neighbouring Koreas 32 - they are slightly ahead a tech and not one the 9 most advanced civs as a great work told me. So yes, this setting is the best challenging yet fun setting I played so far and I can only encourage you a try.

 

[Acularius]

THat's probably why I've never experienced the Runaway Mali, Raging barbs is default for me. However it usually leads to situations where Egypt falls rather quickly because it simply can't outproduce the barbarian hordes.

Edit: Noticing a bug with my maps, apparently starting locations did not copy over properly.

Well at least with the 'Pre Columbian' one

 

[Acularius]

I'm going to double post simply to make an update. I fixed up my problems where apparently all my x,y coordinates seemingly disappeard from my 'Pre Columbian map'

It uses the SVN, I also added the Pheocians in as I was going through the file.

 

[strategyonly]

got these errors and a "You are Defeated" right away when i tried Lower Sioux??


Traceback (most recent call last):

File "CvWBInterface", line 271, in applyInitialItems

File "CvWBDesc", line 1764, in applyInitialItems

File "CvWBDesc", line 1147, in applyUnits

File "CvWBDesc", line 688, in apply

RuntimeError: unidentifiable C++ exception
ERR: Python function applyInitialItems failed, module CvWBInterface

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "CvScreensInterface", line 211, in showReplay

File "CvReplayScreen", line 137, in showScreen

ZeroDivisionError: integer division or modulo by zero
ERR: Python function showReplay failed, module CvScreensInterface

 

[Jozef]

I can't load the "Newest GEM by Acularius " -
When I try to load this map, I got messege "Jozeph (player 38) is joining the game. Please wait..."

I wait. And wait. And wait. And after an hour still nothing happens.

What should I do to solve this bug?

 

[DRJ]

I can't load the "Newest GEM by Acularius " -
When I try to load this map, I got messege "Jozeph (player 38) is joining the game. Please wait..."

I wait. And wait. And wait. And after an hour still nothing happens.

What should I do to solve this bug?

The old 38 Civ GEM loads fine?

 

[Jozef]

The old 38 Civ GEM loads fine?

Yes, the DRJ revisited 1.0 map is loaded just perfect and very fast.