Kardashev 3 Mod (or, yet another space mod) development thread

[Jorsalfare]

The AI will not build or use land transports, sadly. But couldn't the Missile Collier take the role of nuclear subs for deep space missions?

Just to clearify regarding land transports: In my mod AI both builds them and use them - well most often use them as regular units (unloaded), but every now and then it actually uses them to transport land units (moving around with units loaded). You have to modify the unitflags using one of the custom made editors to achieve this. It was discussed more thoroughly in this thread.

 

[Bluemofia]

Just to clearify regarding land transports: In my mod AI both builds them and use them - well most often use them as regular units (unloaded), but every now and then it actually uses them to transport land units (moving around with units loaded). You have to modify the unitflags using one of the custom made editors to achieve this. It was discussed more thoroughly in this thread.

Jorsalfare, to clarify, in your setup, the AI was using them to transport regular units if you give them the helicopter's "Air Transport" flag, and offense/defense flag that every other unit uses, correct? It also seems like the AI only builds transports flagged with "Naval Transport" in coastal cities, but they never move them out even if the offense/defense flags are checked, making the "Air Transport" flagged units the only viable ones.

I am considering flagging a missile with the "Bombard" flag combined with the transport being flagged with the "Naval Carrier" flag, to see how this interacts. If this behaves similarly to the "Naval Transport" flag, then the AI may not necessarily move around the map with them, because it will think the "Naval Carrier" flagged ship is supposed to go on water. Even if this succeeds, there is the possibility that the AI has a very specific understanding of the "Artillery Bombard" and "Bomber Bombing" actions, and treat units flagged as "Bombard" as actual bombers, and fail to use them because of the lack of "Bombing" action. Again, needs actual testing to see if it works.

All in all, if the AI doesn't end up understanding how to use these, I will probably scrap the concept, and just give missiles (very low) movement and chalk it up to civilian style freighters or something.

 

[Bluemofia]

Small update:

Added in the luxury graphics. They don't have anything super special to them, just that they are default Civ 3 resources, or slightly touched up ones:

Thomson Iron, Resort World, Eridani Silk, Bioite, Coffee, Blue Spice, Opal Oak, Ambrosia Fruit

Thomson Iron, also known as Widmanstätten Iron, is a type of iron/nickel alloy that can only be formed in asteroids, by cooling them down over a period of millions of years. These are primarily valued for their scarcity, as advanced manufacturing and mining allows for very few things to be truly scarce.
Resort Worlds are planets which have very tourist friendly locations, such as a very large area for tropical beaches, or for skiing resorts.
Eridani Silk represents various insect or animal or plant analogues found on various alien planets that make threads or things that can be turned into threads that have some particular quality that is very desired. Eridani Silk was the name I chose for the generic term for them.
Bioite is a mineral laid down by organic creatures, such as massive bacteria colonies or coral reefs, and happens to look pretty.
Coffee is coffee. Everyone likes coffee, especially in space. Alcohol would have been included, but I figure it is one of those things that people will find a way to brew their own with whatever they may find, so I can hardly justify it as a luxury.
Blue Spice is sort of the Pepper/Cinnamon of the future. Requires very specific ecologies that are very difficult to duplicate, so they can only be grown in certain locations.
Opal Oak represents various tree-analogues that look pretty, and can used as decorative wood, and is farmed for its qualities, like Mahogany or Cherry wood is today. Opal Oak was the name I chose for the generic term.
Ambrosia Fruit represents various bulk food-stuffs that are highly sought after for its culinary properties. People will eat anything, so I don't doubt someone will find/engineer some alien lifeform to be used as a delicacy. Ambrosia Fruit was the name I chose for the generic term.


I also adjusted the goody hut, so rather than the planet and space station, I made it into an anomaly signature, or a point of interest. This allows me to be more creative in the flavor text when you pop the goody hut.

Oh, and here's a random screenshot of the early game:

 

[Quinzy]

Hey Blue, regarding city sizes, how about size 1= orbital space station, size 2= Dyson Ring, and size 3= Dyson Swarm?

 

[Bluemofia]

Hey Blue, regarding city sizes, how about size 1= orbital space station, size 2= Dyson Ring, and size 3= Dyson Swarm?

I considered something similar to that, but the main problem is that it would require me to do something with rivers and lakes, as a city settling near a river or a lake can grow to size 2 without any special buildings. The rivers I can explain away as hyperspace currents/trade routes or something, but lakes have a bigger problem. I can't think of a good way to justify empty space allowing cities to grow to size 2 without a special building, and compounding that, you will explicitly be forbidden from building whatever building allows size 2.

What I settled on was all cities are size 1, as size 2 and 3 cities are set at 99 population, eliminating the city size mechanic. As all cities are size 1, this allows me to give a Dyson Swarm the "wall" property (bombard combat values), so thus has its own unique graphic when you build it. If it is destroyed by bombardment, the graphic of the city will change to reflect that. As for Ringworlds, it is regulated as a Great Wonder, and it produces happy faces and culture.

As the size mechanic is a pretty integral part of Civ 3, with Unit Support being population dependent, what I experimenting with is to do away with large scale free unit support, with unit maintenance being the militaristic/economic government types, assuming I don't go with purely civ-specific governments.

 

[Quinzy]

Fair point. Could you logic harvesting the plasma from the intracluster medium to justify larger settlements on the fringes? Maybe rivers could be mineable asteroid belts, or strings of harvestable plasma? Basically an relation to your hydrogen scoop?

 

[Bluemofia]

Not really, because collecting from the dust/gas between galaxies is like mining gold from seawater. There are just much more profitable avenues around, like conveniently located gas giants or stars. And asteroids don't really connect from star to star, not to mention they would look rather strange on a map crisscrossing the map, and the commerce boost for tiles next to rivers can't be changed to a shield boost that an asteroid would better represent.

And that will still need a justification as to why areas without (as) easy access to the intergalactic medium can't grow as much as a city that does, not to mention that the 2D map is already being justified as a thin galaxy, so they should have access by going straight up.

 

[Quinzy]

Also fair. Aye its hard to justify. Your solution might be the simplest path so!

 

[Civinator]

In my experiments with Civ 2 and random starmaps I set the rivers as 'Galactic Traderoutes' (like they are in Star Wars). This explains their bonus in commerce and the better growth of their planets (=cities).

Edit: I attache a screenshot of my random spaceterrain map done around the year 2000 with Civ 2 ToT.
Rivers are the yellow Galactic Traderoutes on that map. The brownish colours were made from photographs of real starclusters.

Spoiler :

 

[Civinator]

Is there any progress in that interesting project?

 

[Bluemofia]

Hi Civinator,

Just a quick text based update, as I haven't had much time these days to properly work on this because my job has been overwhelming these days.

* All of the building graphics have been implemented with the exception of the Space Race "Genesis" victory where you demonstrate your mastery of nature by building your own universe.
* Changed river graphics to trade routes (thank you, Quinzy for the idea when we were discussing this)
- It looks a bit strange near some stars, because of how the rivers are generated. I may try to hide it by adding more variation to the trade routes.
* 8 Human civs have been implemented, with an intended playstyle to be similar to a more extreme version of Civ 3 civ differences, such as unique techs, buildings, units, etc, but without any dramatic gimmicks. Human civs are as follows:
- United Nations of Earth - UN descendant.
- New Cambridge - Former UK colony.
- Nouveau Rhineland - Former EU colony.
- Qianxing - Former Chinese colony.
- Franklin - Former American colony.
- Nobunaga - Original colony was annexed by a Charismatic Mercenary turned Emperor.
- The Templar - Religious exiles who formed their own colony to escape persecution.
- Metasoft Inc. - Corporate colony
* A few alien civs planned, but not fleshed out yet

Next on the To Do list:
* Add graphical icons for Technologies
* Playtest the 8 Human Civs so I have a general baseline of what to work with
* Add Unique Units/Buildings/Techs/Govs/etc. for the 8 Human Civs
* Design ~8 alien civilizations of various species, with the alien civs playing significantly different from each other.
- Planning out a Hive Mind alien civ, where unhappiness is functionally eliminated by a Hive Queen improvement, but does not have access to luxuries, and science/luxury slider capacity is reduced.
- Need to analyze the available design space to properly design other civs.
* Adjust units to be uniform in style
* Work on a more appropriate UI interface in terms of color
* Civpedia entries, script and labels.txt files, and diplomacy.txt files

 

[Civinator]

Bluemofia, thank you very much for your answer. Even with an overwhelming job, there was a lot of progress with that mod - and there is even more to do.
Good luck to you with that project.

 

[Civinator]

Nearly one year later, is there any further progress in that project ?

 

[Vuldacon]

Bluemofia... I agree with Civinator, You have made progress in this Meritorious Endeavor despite Life's Obligations and I hope you will continue.
There remains much to do and it all requires a great deal of time but in the end, it will be worth the effort

 

[Bluemofia]

Dang, this has been nearly one year.

I'm still working on/off on this, with more off than on unfortunately.

Work has gotten less busy though, and I've scheduled more vacations (I'm on a 2 week one right now), so hopefully I'll be able to report more of a comprehensive update soon.

 

[Bluemofia]

So, time for some disappointingly sparse amount of update for almost a year of time, with closer to maybe 2 weeks of on-off work spread throughout it.

I have finished setting up a skeleton of the alien civs with their different playstyles. These need to be balanced, so any numbers mentioned maybe tweaked, or ignored altogether if it turns out it is fine without the adjustments. There are 4 different alien civilizations: the Salix, the Unitarians, the Triskele, and the Nicronians. With the exception of the Unitarians, each of them will also be subdivided into at 2 or 3 factions, with slight variations of the playstyle, such as a unique building and unit that sets them apart from the other factions.

The Salix’s playstyle is that they are generally bad at research, unable to build the Tier 1 research building (Lagrange Telescopes), and their Tier 2 and Tier 3 research buildings (Hyperphysics Labs and Ansibles) are significantly more expensive. They however, have elite spies, and can get them earlier than anyone else, encouraging them to steal technology to catch up. I’m trying to work out how the Great Library equivalent can work for them, most likely having it as an early small wonder that goes obsolete mid game.

The Unitarian’s playstyle is that (in general) happiness is not a concern for them. They get a 1 shield building at the start of the game, a “Hive Queen” improvement which generates 20 content faces. However, they do not get access to any luxury resources or other happiness improvements. They also have a 70% Rate Capacity, preventing them from snowballing out of control without needing to consider unhappiness from overpopulation in the early game. I am not ruling out having them affected by war weariness, as fragmenting internal cohesion, so they do not become unstoppable in the attrition game for wars.

The Triskele’s playstyle is that they have difficulty passively generating culture/influence. Most of the normal culture/influence generating improvements will instead only generate 1 culture for them (for the purpose of being destroyed when the city is captured). They instead get most of their culture from most ships being able to enslave to Propaganda Broadcasts to sacrifice for culture. Whether it is as full powered as the one everyone else gets, or their flagships can enslave to a more effective version is to be determined. Their light units (Cruisers and Destroyers in the late game, just Destroyers in the early game) are also faster, and thus more optimized for raiding. I am also looking into giving them access to full on mercenary Battleships and Dreadnoughts with Hidden Nationality, representing proxy wars to acquire culture/influence.

The Nicronian's playstyle is that they have difficulty passively generating money, unable to build the Tier 2 money building (Trans-stellar Corporation), and Tier 1 and Tier 3 money building (Orbital Spaceport, Distribution Nodes) being significantly more expensive. Instead, their units enslave to “Scrap Metal”, similar to the Age of Discovery’s use of Treasure, which can be picked up and brought back to the capitol for money. How much money still needs to be balanced. I have not yet ruled out using remote improvements or small wonders to generate variations of Treasure on their own (rather than “Scrap Metal”, Luxury or Civilian Goods) to tithe them over between large scale wars, or to make these remote improvements available to other civs (such as in Age of Discovery), and have generating Scrap Metal in battle as an option for only the Nicronians. I also don’t believe you can vary how much gold Flag captures generate based on the type of Flag, so there’s less design space to work with.

Some things I’ve tested out as a record of things that don’t work or needed to be changed:
* Flag units overwrite the behavior of capturing units with population cost, so I had to rework the original idea for Slavery in Space and capturing Workers and converting them into money, rather than free labor.
* The AI is a cheater, and they will actively sacrifice captured worker flagged units even if they do not have the sacrifice flag checked. The original plan was for workers to be rather expensive, so to make improvements more valuable. But the culture reward is determined by cost, translating to an unacceptably large culture boost. I tried fiddling around with it for a while, and even considered just giving that ability to the AI, but it is just too much. Instead, the construction ships will cost about as much as normal workers, but with terrain improvements taking even longer to build, and workers sharing in the same very limited free support pool as military units instead.

List of things to do:
* Rework the tech tree to make it more linear and less web-like to accommodate the 5 different species playstyles
* Flesh out individual individual alien faction playstyles
* Finish up Human faction playstyles (2 left for unique buildings; 6 for unique units)
* Playtest the 8 Human Civs so I have a general baseline of what to work with
* Add graphical icons for Technologies
* Adjust units to be uniform in style
* Work on a more appropriate UI interface in terms of color
* Civpedia entries, script and labels.txt files, and diplomacy.txt files

 

[Vuldacon]

Bluemofia... Good continuance, although from your post, there remains a large amount of work to be finished.
Glad you are working on the MOD
... I hope you do not feel rushed or as if you need to catch up. MODs as usual require time to work, creative thinking, play testing and experimenting... and then there is the miles long text files with links
Good Luck in this New Year.

 

[Civinator]

Bluemofia, again thank you very much for your answer and good luck in finishing that project.

 

[Bluemofia]

Quick update:

I didn't get as much done as I'd like, because I spent maybe a month of my (very limited) free time job hunting, and I have gotten another job, due to start on March 25th. While this would hopefully cut down on the obscene amount of overtime I've been doing in the long run, it did mean that the past 2 months I got virtually nothing done.

However, after fiddling around, I was able to come up with the following:
1. I found out that setting Maximum Size for a Level 1 city (town) to 0, will allow all cities to start off as a Level 2 city (City), and grow as normal, even without an Aqueduct, River, or Lake. This will allow the Draft mechanic that I was almost ready to junk because you cannot draft without a Level 2 city, and I was originally going to go full Level 1 cities only.

The only downside is that I don't get to utilize a Dyson Swarm graphic for cities on the overworld for when they start building Dyson Swarms, and thus force it to be the first improvement destroyed via bombardment. This is a price I am willing to pay to retain the draft mechanic. Drafted ships are "Converted Freighters", which are basically the equivalent of Cargo Ships with Rocket Batteries strapped onto them, where they can put up a decent punch, but do not have the armor, structural integrity, or redundancies a purpose built military ship does. While it is not quite fair to call them eggshells with sledgehammers, they do have lower defense compared to purpose built defense satellites, and cost more in terms of shields. They however, are able to go on the offense (though highly inefficient) unlike defense satellites, and can re-join cities when danger is over.

2. Slowly working on the alien civilizations, and drafting them out. However, many buildings are heavily interdependent. Ex: many buildings require Orbital Spaceports, so I can't just create another, more expensive version and have a full shadow tech tree to accommodate the new buildings. I am probably scrapping the x2 cost for the stuff they do not specialize in, and instead further deny them some of the location specific improvements (Black Hole/Neutron Star Research Labs, Shipping Consortium, Tourist Resorts, etc.)

3. I have fleshed out the unique buildings for each human civ, still need to work on the unique units.

They are as follows:

UN: Can build happiness GW "Human Homeworld", 1 shield cost, 2 happy faces in city, 1 in all cities, 2 free techs. Owner of Human Homeworld can build SW "Sovereignty: Earth", a 100 shield SW which gives 4 influence. Both are Tourist wonders
Templar: Can build "Autocephalous Church" which are basically semi-autonomous churches that give 2 happiness, +1 culture, and reduces war-weariness, and "Edict: Volgograd Doctorine", +50% defense, available at start of the game, 0 maint, 1 culture, replaces other edicts, 10 shields, does NOT require Sector Administration Complex
Metasoft: Can build "Cartel: X" where X is a luxury resource. +2 cash (neg maint), +50% tax improvement, req. luxury in city
New Cambridge: Can build "Integrated Trade Network" GW +1 commerce in all tiles, 50% tax boost, req Wormhole Nexus, River, "Galactic Shipping Conglomerates", SW +1 commerce in all tiles, 50% tax boost, req. Integrated Trade Network, and "Policy: Stella Nullius" (aggressively claims unclaimed stars), +2 influence, 1 maint
Nouveau Rhineland: Can build "Deep Space Colonies", +1 shield, +1 energy, +1 food in water tiles, +1 influence, 5 maint, and "MInD" citizen (Macroscopic Intelligent Device), +7 research, +1 Shield, -2 cash
Nobunaga: Can build "Realpolitik: Good Neighbor" (+1 culture/influence, 1 maint), "Realpolitik: Annexation Plebicites" (+1 culture/influence 0 maint, req. Good Neighbor), and "Realpolitik: Gradual Integration" (+1 influence, reduces corruption, 1 maint, req. Annexation Plebicites), and can build Edict: Mercenary Contracts (2 maint, 1 culture, allow Veteran Ground units, available from the start as an early military space station)
Qianxing: Can build "The Dark Star Facility" - SW that generates +100% science, requires Black Hole in radius, and 3 Hyperphysics labs, and "Policy: Integrated Automation" SW that reduces War Weariness, requires Mantle Complex, available sometime after True AI. Basically, military ships are a lot more automated, and thus suffer far less casualties in wars.
Franklin: Can build "Policy: Trade Federation" which increases cash by 50%, and reduces corruption, requires river, 3 maint, and "Zwicky National Archives" 100 shield GW available from start, requires capital, goes obsolete with Quantum Gravity, +100% science boost, tourist attraction.

List of things to do:
* Flesh out individual alien faction playstyles
* Finish up Human faction unique units (6)
* Playtest the 8 Human Civs so I have a general baseline of what to work with
* Add graphical icons for Technologies
* Adjust units to be uniform in style
* Work on a more appropriate UI interface in terms of color
* Civpedia entries, script and labels.txt files, and diplomacy.txt files

 

[Vuldacon]

Bluemofia... From your post, you have managed to sort out more exactly what you want to accomplish and that is the key to completing a meritorious endeavor.
Oh, and Good Luck with your new job.