Massive Community Mod Project

[anansethespider]

Hi everyone, my name is Ananse. I am working on a project to dramatically expand the base content of Civ VI without altering the fundamental character of the game. Meaning I'm not trying to make a fantasy mod, or one specific to a particular era of history like Anno Domini...for this mod project, the goal is a finished product that still feels like Civ VI, but with a lot more technologies, buildings, and units to choose from.

That's a really basic summary. If people have questions I'd be happy to go into more detail on design philosophy concerning any of the elements. But before I go any farther let me tell you what I'm working on already...

1. More Expansive Tech Tree - I've put in about 2x as many technologies as existed in the base game, making every era from ancient to information much more fleshed out. Information era, for instance, went from 9 technologies before (one of which was Future Tech) up to 21 techs now. I am still in the process of populating all the new techs with units, buildings, etc. but you can see the scaffolding of the mod in place!

2. Better Balanced Unit Combat - There are a number of situations arising in Vanilla Civ where the choice between units requires very little strategy - you simply spam the best unit available to you at the moment, as many Archers or Knights or Musketmen as you can possibly churn out. I am hoping to address this in two main ways:

A. Checks and Balances - Vanilla gives us the beginnings of a checks and balances system for units, but doesn't solidify it enough. Spearmen are good against cavalry, in theory, but too weak in practice. Melee units have a bonus to anti-cavalry that they hardly ever need because, for the most part, anti-cavalry is too weak. There is a lot of potential here for designing units to be strong or weak against other classes of units. For instance, I am eager to add "defender" units that are stronger on home territory, "shield" units that are less vulnerable to ranged attacks, ranged units with low range and high attack, or high range and low attack. Each of these would make the dynamic between existing units more exciting and challenging.

B. Niches and Unit Diversity - more specialized units that fill roles in different ways. An example is the Soldier, an ancient era melee unit with 35 strength (same as swordsman), no requirements for iron, but much higher initial cost and unit maintenance. Or the Herbalist, an ancient era support unit capable of healing. In Vanilla, if you were building a naval unit in the Ancient or Classical era then it was either a Galley (melee) or a Quadrireme (ranged). In this mod you'll have the additional options of the Bireme, Deceres, and Liburna, each of which fills a particular combat role.

OK, so if you made it this far it means you might be interested. The real point of this post is that I'm looking for other like-minded individuals who are interested in putting in some coding or artistic work toward a mod of this nature. In just the ancient and classical eras alone I've added close to 20 new buildings, units, and wonders, and believe me there's room for more! And of course there's tons of work to be done with leaders, civs, unique units, art assets, and a million other cool effects that I and many others would like to see in the game. Point is, it's too much for one person to do alone! Which is why my main goal at this point is creating a team of people from within the modding community who want to work together to put out something great.

So I invite you, please download the mod in its current form and explore the changes. If you think you'd like to be a part of it, please let me know!'

http://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/jz-tech-tree.25431/

 

[anansethespider]

If you're the sort of person that has any idea how to work the UI features of Civ VI, the icons, the artdefs, anything like that, then I especially need your help. I understand that artdefs are realllllly difficult right now, but there are some halfway measures that would dramatically improve QOL within the mod, such as making the ship units look like ships (even if they're just copies of existing ships) or changing the icons to be something a bit more visible. If this sounds like you, please contact me!

 

[LefondesinPL]

Looks promising, looking forward to it.

 

[sresk]

So this is exactly the type of overambitious project that I would love to see come to fruition as the skeleton of the game is fantastic but it needs a lot of extra meat on it. I'd love to help although to be honest my coding is limited and my UI/Art is non existent. If you just looking for content, text game balance etc. I'll be more than happy to contribute. And I'm sure there are 9 of me for every 1 of the guys that can meaningfully contribute but hey

Questions for you?

Are you planning on re-balancing tech/production speed, and tile yields or is this purely focused on adding more "stuff"?
When you add in new units/buildings have you been able to get the AI to use the new toys?
Are you adding in new UU/UB for the different civs or is this more about adding to the tech tree?
Are you intending on adding new mechanics ie, manpower limits, new types of great people etc.
Are you adding the same love to the civics tree?

Also a couple of thoughts for you:

It looks like right now you've made each era much wider, but no longer, have you considered have the tree only 2-3 nodes wide but 4-5 nodes long? Right now one of the major flaws with the game is how quickly you can advance through the eras. Making the Eras wider doesn't help this, making them longer does.

For fleshing out the tech tree have you considered each tech only adding 1 or at most 2 new benefits. That way you could double the nodes but reuse a lot of the existing benefits that are already in the game without having to make new content.

Is there a way to add one time benefits to the first person that discovers a node?

Can you pretty please put in a repeatable end game civic similar to future tech.. it's really annoying to have to re-research globalization for no benefit once you hit the end of the civics tree

 

[anansethespider]

So this is exactly the type of overambitious project that I would love to see come to fruition as the skeleton of the game is fantastic but it needs a lot of extra meat on it. I'd love to help although to be honest my coding is limited and my UI/Art is non existent. If you just looking for content, text game balance etc. I'll be more than happy to contribute. And I'm sure there are 9 of me for every 1 of the guys that can meaningfully contribute but hey

Questions for you?

Are you planning on re-balancing tech/production speed, and tile yields or is this purely focused on adding more "stuff"?
When you add in new units/buildings have you been able to get the AI to use the new toys?
Are you adding in new UU/UB for the different civs or is this more about adding to the tech tree?
Are you intending on adding new mechanics ie, manpower limits, new types of great people etc.
Are you adding the same love to the civics tree?

Also a couple of thoughts for you:

It looks like right now you've made each era much wider, but no longer, have you considered have the tree only 2-3 nodes wide but 4-5 nodes long? Right now one of the major flaws with the game is how quickly you can advance through the eras. Making the Eras wider doesn't help this, making them longer does.

For fleshing out the tech tree have you considered each tech only adding 1 or at most 2 new benefits. That way you could double the nodes but reuse a lot of the existing benefits that are already in the game without having to make new content.

Is there a way to add one time benefits to the first person that discovers a node?

Can you pretty please put in a repeatable end game civic similar to future tech.. it's really annoying to have to re-research globalization for no benefit once you hit the end of the civics tree

I don't have much time for a response now but lemme quickly:

I would love exactly that kind of help, design, text, history, quotes, etc. Those ARE meaningful contributions and I need them just as much/more than coding.

1. I would consider all of those things. Like you say, Im overambitious. I started with a tech tree, which led to units and buildings first. More will follow.

2. I don't know about buildings because I haven't checked/ dont know how, but the ai builds the new units just fine.

3. See #1

4. I'm not a great coder myself. So far I've just been slowly broadening my knowledge of the game code and copying things that are already there. I think designing completely new mechanics is probably beyond me, but we'll see. Other than that see #1.

5. Yes. See #1

6. I would consider making eras wider. But I would not consider making them shorter. I like the eight tech format. And it is functionally wider because I've increased the number of techs that require multiple prereqs. If you count the number of pre-req techs for any given tech, it ranges from 2x vanilla for some of the earlier ones, to 4x vanilla for some of the end level techs.

Lets talk more later!

 

[sresk]

So... talking about overly ambitious projects then...

this is the checklist of things that I've started to edit for myself... And I'm working on changing things over to be more % based rather than +x based, and I've got some ideas on how to do comabt units like what you where describing.


Diplomacy changes - The actions the player take don't seem to have an effect on diplomacy so need to change the following:
Needed Easier to make friends
Done Less Upfront Warmonger for war but more warmonger for war weariness
Needed More Impact to relationship from actions like gifts and declare friends
Needed AI more willing to accepts gifts and embassies
Testing more war weariness to discourage long wars and to simulate bad boy penalty for other civs to not like you
Done More War weariness and it doesn't decay as long as you are at war - need to test this

Pace Changes - I feel that techs come too fast and production is too low so the following changes are needed
DONE Increase costs to science by era (may need balance)
DONE Match the increase For civics
DONE Reduce production costs (may need balance)
Done less culture and science per pop
Done Barbs Are stronger in the early game and fall off in later eras
NEEDED bonus and adjacency for bonus resources they feel strong early game and weak late game
NEEDED future tech for civics - there is no benefit to maxing out the civics tree and its easy to do

NEEDED At the founding of a new settlement give a 1 time boost to production that scales with era (look at tree chopping to make this work?)

Balance Changes - There are a number of balance problems that I'm not sure how to classify them such as:
Jungles and coasts are weak to the point that it's always a benefit to clear jungles and its a poor choice to settle on the coast
Roads and trade posts don't seem impactful
There is still a huge amount of empty land at the end of the game
so the following changes should address these issues
Done +1 movement all units?
Balance May need to add more movement to scouts
Done + food on water tiles
Done Fishing Boats can be built on all coasts but they don't scale the way farms do - should make coasts stong early and moderate late game
Done + ability to build improvements on water
Done + appeal and faith for rain forest
May need to add another improvement for them as well?
Done Better roads credit to 8 Eras by Lord Olleus
Done +1 gold from trading posts both internal and foreign - Feels good
Done Need less culture to expand borders
Done Reduce the scaling costs to builders and settlers - the scaling cost on settlers slows down wide I need to revert this
Needed Balance pass on civics
Needed Balance pass on Civs bonus double Calvary is too strong some other feel too weak need to go through them all and differentiate them
Partial Balance pass on policies the +100% and +50% are too strong and many of they others don't serve a purpose at all

Tall VS Wide is not balanced well right now so the following changes are designed to address this and encourage large well developed cities and have some penaltied for ICS
NEEDED + %bonus to all yields for districts
NEEDED + more adjacency bonuses
NEEDED + % costs to tech and culture for more cities (look at the builder costs) encourage tall
NEEDED + more scaling for happiness
Done More religious pressure from holy sites and large cities
Done Need 4 pop per district instead of 3

Religeous Combat
Needed Missionaries combat is way to strong and inquisitors way to weak their combat strength needs swapped


Changes that just feel right to me

NEEDED Manpower cap
NEEDED + range bonus for districts
NEEDED + adjacency from district to tiles (faith culture and gold to neighbor tiles
NEEDED + hamlets/trading posts improvements to simulate villages
NEEDED + more things to spend faith on and cheaper faith costs
NEEDED + great prophets that spawn apostles for all ages after religions are founded
Needed more production and gold per pop (+/-0.2 each)
NEEDED + more scaling +/- 10% bonus and malus to encourage tall vs wide
NEEDED + easier to make friends more positive influence from gifts more liklely to accept embassy and friends less warmonger from declare and more warmonger from war wearyness
NEEDED + slightly stronger trade routes / much stronger trading posts
Done + faster border growth - Feels good
NEEDED + more ways to gain envoys
NEEDED + trade districts + gold based on appeal
NEEDED + culture districts + tourism based on appeal
NEEDED + double legacy bonus speed
NEEDED + purchase naturalist with gold
NEEDED + National parks provide gold and culture
NEEDED + production minor civs are way strong double the bonus outputs of the other minor civs
Done Add +1 to all resource yields to make them feel better
Testing Naturalist purchased with gold and faith
testing A little more housing
testing Slow down the progression increase costs on several things - I may need to revert this as its the only mechanic in the game right now that slows down wide growth
Needed Have harbors act like military districts for defence - make them a jack of all trade a little bit like finance, a little like military and a little bit of food and production


I'm not saying integrate all of this in as well (unless you want to) but I'm posting it to ask if you have a similar design doc. I'd like to see kinda what your vision is to see where I can help. Also on the above I've added in a bunch of new prophets and they show up in game but I can't figure out how to get the game to allow more than one prophet per civ.... but more on that later.

 

[The Capo]

I want to first say i basically hope for everything you are trying to do. I tried a similar mod for Civ IV back when i was active in modding. Im looking to get back into it.

I dont want to rain on your parade, but for something like this the sad inevitability is that there WILL be improvements to the game as well as expansions/DLCs that make a lot of the work we would be doing (cuz im still down to help eventually) either obselete or at best repetitive (we will most likely have to do it over and over as the game gets patched/updated). So, having said that, it depends on where and how we start.