How Modable is Civ 5?

[PyroMancer]

I hear a lot of talk from the devs about how mod friendly Civ5 is. But my question is just how "mod friendly" is it if we say wanna change some core mechanics? Life for example...

1) Range units return fire when attacked by other range units.

2) Culture City State gives + Culture per city instead of flat amount.

3) Multiple luxury goods give addition happiness at a diminishing rate.

4) Bring back slider bar for Gold/Science/Culture.

5) Add New Specialist types.

6) Maritime City States only gives X amount of food spread over all your cities going to the lowest food producing ones first.

And so on.

 

[Chiyochan]

I imagine most of that is doable simply because civ 4 probably could have done it.

What I'm interested in to add onto this is the possiblity of layered maps like test of time. If this is not possible now, I really want to push fraxis for this in the future expansion packs, as layered maps would do millions of things impossible current, for games like Fall from heaven especialy, but also in regular games as well, they could expand the area of the world and give certain squeezed places more room.

 

[Abremms]

civ5 is decently moddable right now, most of those things already have mods dealing with them on the mod database, things like the slider or having multiple resources give more happiness probably aren't something we can do till we get access to the DLL. right now we're fairly limited by whatever tags come with the XML i think. we can;t make new tags without the DLL as i understand it.

but then i don't really know the limits of the LUA, talented codemonkeys could be able to do some good stuff with that, sadly I do not have those skills personally.

as far as layers, i *really* hope someone finds a way to do that, it would be really fantastic. that surely seems like something we will have to wait on the DLL for though, if then.

 

[MerakSpielman]

"Layered" meaning like an underground level, or alternate planes you can travel to? Or sci-fi-ish, different planets?

I bet it can be done one the c++ is opened up for us to tinker with. But running several maps at once might kill the gamespeed.

 

[chongli]

"Layered" meaning like an underground level, or alternate planes you can travel to? Or sci-fi-ish, different planets?

I bet it can be done one the c++ is opened up for us to tinker with. But running several maps at once might kill the gamespeed.

I don't know about him but I want to see the ability to use multiple maps including alternate planes, underground levels and tactical battle maps. I'm just dying to see a Master of Magic remake in mod form on a modern game engine (as I don't believe anyone will ever do this in a standalone game).

 

[CommanderZ]

I don't know about him but I want to see the ability to use multiple maps including alternate planes, underground levels and tactical battle maps. I'm just dying to see a Master of Magic remake in mod form on a modern game engine (as I don't believe anyone will ever do this in a standalone game).

Elemental: War of Magic is now after several patches a quite nice game inspired by Master of Magic.

 

[MerakSpielman]

There are a lot of us fantasy fans floating around.

 

[chongli]

Elemental: War of Magic is now after several patches a quite nice game inspired by Master of Magic.

I've followed it for over a year now. It has very little in common with Master of Magic and none of what I'm looking for (multiple planes; randomly generated maps; huge variety of races, spells, monsters, items etc).

 

[PieceOfMind]

All of the things listed in the OP are probably possible. The issue is finding people willing and capable to do it for you.

Speaking as a fairly amateur modder, I would say it's entirely reasonable for Firaxis to say civ5 is very modder friendly. I've already made the barebones Babylon civ which wasn't very difficult (but of course it's not very professional!), and would not have been easy for me in civ4. Note I did rely on Solver's existing template.

 

[Decimatus]

As someone who always tinkers around at modding games but never gets much further than changing a tile from 1 production to 2...

I have created an entirely new tech tree and added 50+ techs so far. I am soon going to add 100+ units, buildings, and wonders.


The simple truth is that Civ 5 is the most moddable Civ ever released.

You don't have to be a programmer to Mod Civ 5, and that is great.


As far as changing deep mechanics, well when they release the Source we will be set. Of course, I don't expect a non-programmer to be able to touch any of that, but I look forward to attempting to combine people's source mods with my projects.

 

[PyroMancer]

All of the things listed in the OP are probably possible. The issue is finding people willing and capable to do it for you.

Well I do work as a programmer so I don't think there would be a problem with me being able to do it. The issue though is more one of time in that I don't have a lot to spare.

My main concern was if it is possible to do these things at all like back in Civ4 a lot of mods were confined on combat by the simple str vs str mechanic. One I figured I'd put them out there in case someone with more Civ5 (or Civ in general) mod experience knows if their possible and how to do them. And two yea it would be awesome if someone has already done them or plans to do them as well.

 

[Tssha]

Well I do work as a programmer so I don't think there would be a problem with me being able to do it. The issue though is more one of time in that I don't have a lot to spare.

My main concern was if it is possible to do these things at all like back in Civ4 a lot of mods were confined on combat by the simple str vs str mechanic. One I figured I'd put them out there in case someone with more Civ5 (or Civ in general) mod experience knows if their possible and how to do them. And two yea it would be awesome if someone has already done them or plans to do them as well.

As I recall, Kael's Fall from Heaven 2 mod had units with different attack and defence stats. City defence units, for instance, had a higher defence value than attack value, and hero units could take strength or defence promotions after Combat V (or both, if you are willing to split your focus). So, it was possible, it just didn't happen very often.

I wouldn't expect any different from Civ V modders, but at least with a more modular mod design, you'll see more modders having the option to do so.