What is the point to the fog of war encroaching already uncovered tiles, except to make planning your city locations a pain in the patooty? Can the folder for it safely be deleted?
I'm pretty sure the folder can just be deleted! I can understand the concern, and expect at least a few others will share your pref here. Let me know in this thread if deleting it results in any unexpected behaviour... I'll tweak as needed so that this part can be easily removed by those who dislike.
For what it's worth, we like it on this end for:
- how it mimicks human societies' tendency to forget, at least prior to various techs
- the added value to trading for maps & discovering cities
- the possiblity of getting lost during early naval exploration
- the catch-up it allows for recon units built post-ancient era
- the small human vs AI balance shift it provides (i speculate a little here, but it seems GFoW is more limiting to the way humans think than the way civ AI thinks)
the effect added to GW and GFW wonders by the original author is particularly well done I think, though it is only sometimes encountered. Some of my local players here had the same reaction at first, but grew to love it; I'd encourage you to try a few more times before making up your mind, especially as I tweak the effect on future revs. There are also options available from the original author in GFOW_FogScript.lua.. you could block fog on resource tiles, for example.
I admire your modesty ("Most of the work here isn't truly mine"), both with this and the tree growing mod you posted.
I tip my hat to these guys, and the community in general here. I suppose I've added a few lines of simple .lua, and a moderately lengthy .sql, not to mention the time spent iterating, debugging, and testing -- this time required accumulates substantially to a lay-developer -- but if you look at the content of GFoW, hex conquer, & friendly waters, these are many times more substantial, and I could never take these on from scratch. I think these were mostly overlooked by the community at large when posted by their respective OP's & are worth better exposure imo. I've only made substantial changes to friendly waters; the others can be implemented individually by finding their original threads elsewhere, in case anyone's interested in just one or two components.
I just played a day's worth of VP Civ 5 with both, and boy, was it fun. For a while. First off: that encroaching fog of war seems annoying at first, but once you get used to the fact that your old habits don't work and you have to adjust your strategy, I loved it. You have to stay close to your core, methodically build your empire from the inside out, especially if you play Raging Barbarians, because those guys spawn of course everywhere if you can't see the terrain.
Well said, I really enjoy the local focus it emphasizes as well... I never have the trapped pathfinder issue anymore, 'cuz he's just too useful to keep near home.
you have some sort of overflow issue with Great Generals. I played VP with Raging Barbarians and the GG Points option for combat with Barbarians that VP has (barbarian combat earns you Great Generals points), on the Tectonic Map mod with lots of mountains and encroaching fog of war. So the AI Civs and my Civ constantly battled barbarians. Problem is, as you advance into the Renaissance era, the arithmetic for earning GG is off: on Epic speed, by turn 100 or so you earn a great general every turn, then it's two GG every turn, etc. Not even tied to barbarians, GGs get triggered by any simple engagement with another Civ. As human player, you can cope because you just delete the GGs (which is an exploit, because each time you expense a GG your unit base increases by 2, so you can build humongous armies that way). Alas, the AI can't cope, so you suddenly run into those stacks of 60 or so GGs it has accumulated in each of their cities, and by turn 900 AD, if you can see those cities, the animation of those GG masses moving around, one by one, slows the game speed to a crawl. I really enjoyed that game I had going for a full day - one of the best I can remember - but now, at 1000 AD, I had to call it quits. Quite sad.
This is probably a bug you won't notice when you just spot check from saves. But if you actually run it for 200+ turns, the issue will come up. I hope you can find a fix. This mod is truly great.
Great feedback! Sorry that the game didn't work out; I've lost a few good ones too as I've experimented building this mod. I'm guessing the problem lies with how it combines with the GG points option somehow, as MB+ doesn't make any changes to GG things directly, and I havent encountered it yet in other games w/ raging. I'll run my next game w/ GG points and see if I can find the problem. Any chance you could share a save? and also list any other mods you had going? For now, please test w/o GG points to avoid losing save games. I don't anticipate there are any other game-breakers.
I'm gonna ramp down my work on this soon, but I have a few plans/ideas left to explore yet. Feel free to theorize & comment:
1. integrate GFoW effect to various aspects of VP (planned)
- lower base refog rate slightly
- add policy & wonder bonuses that reduce this effect (I'd like to allow this effect to be turned off almost completely by player through a series of choices in-game)
- fix minimap refog (maybe not possible, unfortunately.. right now minimap does not refog until save is reloaded)
2. update icon artwork (planned)
- make ancient era naval units distinct
- add unique coastal fortress icon
- mod minefield icon
3. revise ancient naval "trade" missions (speculative)
- currently use portugal exotic cargo x 1 (vs x 3 for nau)
- gold return maybe too high for early era (increase unit cost?)
- one-time missions feel too simple.. smaller repeatable mission? (nice to have, but dev timesink to essentially reinvent the wheel)
4. ancient/classic era naval exploration unit (speculative)
- multi-human games sometimes leave one player stranded on island etc. While not necessarily an unviable start, it is not fun in MP, especially in games that span longer periods. naval focused civs can be very restricted in some starts as well. some access to ocean travel may help? see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_rafts for historical basis
- weak attack/combat. recon xp? 2 moves, dbl movement in coastal, can enter ocean but loses all movement. Each turn started in ocean will RNG "drift" the unit 1 tile.
- replacement for previous workboat explorer role (which is rightly being killed off in main VP.. i may even further restrict it if I implement this unit)
5. ocean wind/currents/storms? (highly speculative)
- early naval warfare history speaks often of the role of weather in determining the outcomes of significant conflicts.. not represented in civ
- wind/currents could affect movement cost in x direction for turn, or could move units 1 tile on low prob?
- storms as immobile, 2-5 turn duration barb units at sea, w/ aoe dmg?
- i'd prefer not to apply flat dmg per turn penalties
still curious about how naval combat movement penalties are working "in the wild". I like 'em enough to say they're here to stay, but might see some further tweaks before I'm done. Thanks for taking the time to post!
