Getting Started

[Ahriman]

I do want to ensure the Granary and Watermill have distinct roles. If the cost, bonus, and tech are close, then Watermills could be removed, and Granaries buffed near rivers. While Granaries with extra value near both particular resources or rivers would be reasonable and interesting, I avoid major changes like removing/adding a building when there's other alternatives.

Watermills previously gave -1 to +1 and 2-5 (depending on the Engineer), and now are a fixed 13, which I feel is relatively similar.

I agree; a large production bonus for watermills is much more interesting than boosting the food bonus; the strategic value of the watermill should be in providing production in river-areas that are often production-lite.

 

[Vladesch]

I tried a couple of times and each time the map had barely any stone. My production was very poor and I was way behind. I just gave up on both games and went back to vanilla.

Is this normal?

 

[EsoEs]

I tried a couple of times and each time the map had barely any stone. My production was very poor and I was way behind. I just gave up on both games and went back to vanilla.

Is this normal?

You don't need stone for "a good start". There are many different kinds of starts, you don't always need a high production resource by your cap to be successful. Go watch my Let's Play Vanilla Enhanced Mod if you want to see such a start.

http://youtube.com/civ5esoes

 

[Txurce]

I tried a couple of times and each time the map had barely any stone. My production was very poor and I was way behind. I just gave up on both games and went back to vanilla.

Is this normal?

In both vanilla and VEM, stone is usually a balancing feature meant to buff a production-light region. If you don't have it, you should have hills or plains to make up for it. But just as you can sometimes wind up with a production-heavy start (and a light food supply), the opposite occurs on occasion. That's probably what happened to you.

 

[Thalassicus]

@Vladesch
VEM is more complex than vanilla so I recommend dropping down one handicap level until you get a feel for how things are set up.

As others mentioned, stone is added to low-production areas like open tundra and grasslands. If you have little stone, there's lots of hills, plains, or forests. If you have low production overall you probably have high gold. Gold is similar to production since both are used to build things. Coastal areas tend to have high gold.

 

[Vladesch]

It didn't feel like I had any compensating features at all. Both my positions were total crap and that's why I gave up on them both pretty early. I wish I still had my savegames so I could post some screenshots.

I'll try dropping a level and see I suppose, but seriously, if my land is like the last 2 games I won't be bothering playing it out.

Not sure what was wrong with the stone abundance in vanilla.

 

[EsoEs]

Start a game and post a screenshot, we'll walk you through it. Go look at the GoTM pre-discussions, we have 4 pages of forum for a single starting location screenshot

 

[Seek]

Not sure what was wrong with the stone abundance in vanilla.

Aside from increasing stone abundance on smaller islands, there's no change to any bonus resources in VEM. I'd say you simply had some bad luck with low production starts - it happens sometimes, unfortunately.

The biggest change in terms of resources is with strategic resources, which are much more balanced in VEM. You can check the Terrain page on the website for all details regarding terrain: http://civmodding.wordpress.com/feedback/terrain-improvements/.

 

[wobuffet]

GP tile improvements don't access strategic resources, other than Manufactories? I'd be okay with manufactories boosting up strategics somehow (+ or something), but to penalize players who place an early Academy/Landmark in an unfortunate spot seems silly.

Also, quick question: I see that forts cost 3 /turn to maintain now. Are each fort tied to a particular civ now (like Citadels are, I believe)? AFAIK, in vanilla, if an enemy overtakes a fort, they still receive the defensive (terrain) bonus from it.

 

[Thalassicus]

GP tile improvements all act the same. Forts act the same as vanilla, except the 2 dps and 3 maintenance.

 

[wobuffet]

GP tile improvements all act the same. Forts act the same as vanilla, except the 2 dps and 3 maintenance.

Thanks for the clarification; I guess http://civmodding.wordpress.com/feedback/terrain-improvements/ is out of date then. Are forts tied to the civ who built it, or will a fort deal damage to units of the civ who built it too, if another civ is currently occupying it?

 

[Seek]

Thanks for the clarification; I guess http://civmodding.wordpress.com/feedback/terrain-improvements/ is out of date then. Are forts tied to the civ who built it, or will a fort deal damage to units of the civ who built it too, if another civ is currently occupying it?

I just updated all the pages on the website, but it looks like I forgot to check the GP tile improvements - thanks for pointing that out.

Edit: Site is updated.

 

[Thalassicus]

Seek's doing a great job updating the website documentation. There will inevitably be a few mistakes here and there, but overall it's accurate.

 

[The Amorphist]

Hey Thal and others,

Since I downloaded the most recent patch, combat animations are no longer playing, and there is no "load" option from the esc menu.

Great mod though! Thanks for all the entertainment

 

[Txurce]

Hey Thal and others,

Since I downloaded the most recent patch, combat animations are no longer playing, and there is no "load" option from the esc menu.

Great mod though! Thanks for all the entertainment

The animations were removed to speed up the game. There is a fix posted if you want them back.

 

[The Amorphist]

Is the minimized esc menu also a feature?

 

[Thalassicus]

Those are workarounds to 3 vanilla bugs in the game core only Firaxis has access to:

1. The "quick combat" pregame option breaks all mods that detect combat animations, so I implemented a workaround to provide quick combat in a bug-free way for those who want it. The mod package has a link named "Link - Quick Combat" which links to the post (click here) with details on how to enable or disable this workaround.
2. Loading from within an active game breaks all mods with lua code, so until that bug is fixed we must exit to the main menu to load games using mods.
3. On certain monitor resolutions the left side of the top bar overruns the right side, so CiVUP minimizes the menu top bar text to avoid this bug.

 

[Jorlem]

Those are workarounds to 3 vanilla bugs in the game core only Firaxis has access to:

1. The "quick combat" pregame option breaks all mods that detect combat animations, so I implemented a workaround to provide quick combat in a bug-free way for those who want it. The mod package has a link named "Link - Quick Combat" which links to the post (click here) with details on how to enable or disable this workaround.
2. Loading from within an active game breaks all mods with lua code, so until that bug is fixed we must exit to the main menu to load games using mods.
3. On certain monitor resolutions the left side of the top bar overruns the right side, so CiVUP minimizes the menu top bar text to avoid this bug.

For 1, would it be possible to tie it to the Quick Combat option, so it activates automatically if Quick Combat is enabled, and those of us that enjoy the combat animations don't need to be bothered with editing the file for every update of the mod from now on?

For 2, does the load problem include loading the same game from within? For instance, let's say I'm ordering a unit to move, and the game pulls the map out from under me to center somewhere else, making me waste that unit's move, and I had just saved, so I decide to reload the game from earlier that turn. Would that break the mods? I'm fairly certain I've done that in the past without problems, so...

 

[Thalassicus]

There's been numerous requests to improve the speed of gameplay. Quick combat and strategic view break all mods which detect combat, including this one, so they cannot be used with mods. The only way I've discovered to successfully disable combat animations without game core access is to change the name of combat classes. We cannot alter the database after a mod loads, so this must be done before the mod loads, and this is the only known approach that works with our current modding tools.

1) ^^ From the linked thread.

It's enabled by default for the reasoning a few posts down in the linked thread:

A) If we do not want animations, the worst mistake a mod-user can make (using quick combat or strategic view) breaks mods, which messes up gameplay. "Gameplay" is something which affects the outcome of the game.

A) If we want animations, the worst case scenario is no animations play, without a negative impact on gameplay.


This is why I default animations to disabled, since mistakes in scenario A can have an impact on gameplay. The worst that can happen with scenario B is we accidentally find ourselves in scenario A.

2) Loading from within an active game does not reload Lua files, so it breaks all mods with global data in their lua code. If you exit to the main menu to load a savegame, it properly reloads lua files, so I disabled the buggy ingame version. This vanilla bug was very obscure and took me half a year to narrow down, but it had been affecting this mod and others for some time.

 

[Jorlem]

From the linked thread.

2) Loading from within an active game does not reload Lua files, so it breaks all mods with lua code that includes global data. If you exit to the main menu to load a savegame, it properly reloads lua files, so I disabled the buggy ingame version.

Ah, ok. I was reading 'within the game' as referring to the game itself, and not to the menus that you use to set up the game, or the Civ program in its entirety.

For the load thing, would I be correct in guessing that it is calling the load game function from the main menu without whatever filters there are that stop you from loading modded games, and not the one that is in the mods menu that can handle mods? Or is my (quite limited) understanding of this completely borked?