[MOD] Colonization: 2071

Download latest patch: (v1.41B): View attachment Assets.zip ​

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Colonization: 2071​

Welcome to Colonization: 2071 , a complete scifi / space colonization remake of Civ4Col. Replacing ocean terrain with Deep Space, New World continents with faraway planets, Caravels with Starships, and native tribes with alien species, this mod aims to recreate the classic gameplay of Colonization in a scifi setting.

Similar to their compatriots of 579 years earlier, the colonists of 2071 are setting forth from a repressive and dystopian Earth in search of freedom and opportunity in strange new lands. Arriving on a variety of distant planets, the colonists encounter rare plant and mineral resources instantly in great demand by Earth's dying industry, and uncover a series of ancient ruins left by an advanced and mysterious alien race known as the Progenitors.

2071 incorporates features from the Tech Tree Modcomp by Kailric, enabling a technology tree that gradually unlocks access to various resources, units, and professions with the progress of research. The natives (alien species) are also enabled as playable civilizations that can interact with Earth. See the Game Concepts entries in Civilopedia for an introduction to the new game features in this mod.

If you want to try the gameplay of standard Colonization with a scifi setting, I'm leaving up a link to the 0.02 version which is largely a cosmetic reskin of the original game with few dramatic gameplay changes.

All of the graphical imports you'll find in-game are taken or adapted from the excellent work of other mods (mostly Final Frontier and NextWar, also Dune Wars, Planetfall, FfH2, Mars Now, Song of the Moon, Elder Scrolls and more) and contributors on civfanatics forums (especially including saibotlieh, dacubz, clanky4, LordTirian, Deliverator, cfkane, Ekmek, TheCapo, nitram15, Walter Hawkwood, GeoModder, Bernie14, hrochland, C Roland, Zerver, Refar, GarretSidaka, seZereth, and others too numerous to mention, and a wide variety of indie 2D scifi art from deviantart and across the web). The space-age soundtrack includes a variety of samples and remixes from Ektoplasm and many indie ambient/psybient artists including Solar Fields, Carbon Based Lifeforms, Vibrasphere, and Ulrich Schnauss, you can find full album and artist info in the Sounds/Soundtrack mp3 files. If you enjoy the music, please look into buying some songs in their original high quality uncompressed format to support these unique artists. This version also includes a custom mapscript thanks to expert python help from TC01 and Platyping that can generate sets of random circular "planets", as well as the awesome Tech Tree Modcomp by Kailric and Domestic Markets by AndrorctheOrc.

Download link for current mod:
Colonization 2071 version 1.41 with Tech Tree
9500+ downloads & counting!
(or download from backup mirror at Atomicgamer)
previous version 1.0 at strategyinformer - 5400 downloads
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Some screenshots and background below:​

Backstory:

Spoiler :

The year is 2071. As constant unrest seethes beneath an unchanging balance of power among the elites, the superpowers of China, NAFTA, Russia, and the European Union have reached an uneasy stalemate on a deteriorating Earth.

The world seems suspended between chaos and stagnation - until unexpectedly, a half-forgotten collaborative project between a team of international scientists detects evidence of a dormant wormhole-like anomaly lying hidden between Venus and Mercury. An exploratory craft is soon able to enter the wormhole; the spirit of cooperation quickly gives way to nationalist infighting among the project's sponsors as it becomes clear what has been revealed.

The wormhole enables access to a handful of distant worlds; each Earthlike enough for human habitation, but home to exotic plant and mineral resources that could prove a boon to Earth's dying industry. Humanity is no longer alone - the worlds are sparsely inhabited by a handful of primitive sentient alien species with bizarre language and customs but vaguely humanoid features. Further exploration discovers ruins left by an incredibly advanced ancient race known as the Progenitors, whose lost technology constructed the wormhole as a means of transport, and who some believe created each of the races on the worlds it links - perhaps even Humanity itself.

Create a thriving colony among the planets of the New Worlds. Life on the stellar frontier is difficult; you begin with access to a limited selection of Colonists and resources and must research technologies to advance.

Revolution Victory: Declare your independence from Earth after attaining a 50%% Rebel Sentiment in all your colonies. Before time runs out, defend your fledgling nation from the wrath of your home planet by wiping out all their ground forces. You must complete your revolution before any other Earth Colony or Alien Empire. The corrupt superpowers of Earth are slowly crumbling; the Expeditionary Force starts powerful but grows slowly with time, making Independence an achievable goal.
Hegemony Victory: Ensure the absolute hegemony of your nation over these New Worlds. Suppress the alien natives and subjugate or destroy the other colonies of Earth. Your colonies must dominate the New Worlds before any other human or alien power reaches independence.

Alien Civilizations:

Spoiler :

The alien races (natives) are now enabled as playable civilizations. They begin with several existing settlements via Advanced Start, and maintain an advantage in harvesting native resources, but are much slower than humans at creating advanced infrastructure and manufactured goods. They start with access to alien techs but are unable to research the advanced human technologies. For full rules and strategy about playing an alien species, consult Alien Civilizations under the Game Concepts section in the Civilopedia.

From across the Great Sea they came, in their ships of fiery metal. It is told that others of our race once journeyed to their star, watched them in secret from our sleek saucers. But now it is we who are watched. Lost on these forgotten planets, we have grown weak and backward, the secrets of the ancients lost to us. Sleeping among the sweet fungus, our people heed not the words of their elders as the Earthlings settle on our home, perhaps to drain it as they drained their own. What will it portend, the arrival of these thin-skinned creatures?

Place the settlements of your race. Living in a state of pastoral anarchy, your people must build a Ziggurat in each of your settlements to enable further development and trade.
Hegemony Victory: Ensure the survival and dominance of your species. Expel the Earthling invaders and subjugate or destroy other alien races. Your Empire must dominate the New Worlds before any other human or alien power reaches independence.
Revolution Victory: Declare your independence from the Progenitor overlords after attaining a 50%% Rebel Sentiment in all your settlements. Before time runs out, defend your fledgling species from the Progenitors' wrath by wiping out all their ground forces. You must complete your revolution before any other Earth Colony or Alien Empire.

Alien Economy:
Living in a state of pastoral anarchy until the arrival of the humans, the aliens must construct a Ziggurat in each settlement to enable further organized development, effectively giving human players a 50-turn head start. The Ziggurat also functions as a basic market building to represent the aliens' internal economy; enabling each settlement to automatically sell excess resources at a small fraction of the price on Earth. This ratio can be increased by constructing buildings such as the Landing Pad to enable offworld trade with independent smugglers.

Aliens and Earth:
After gathering sufficient industrial goods and building a Shipyard, the aliens may construct a variety of space vessels such as the Saucer and UFO, and can eventually discover and enter the wormhole to Earth. Due to the monopolistic practices of the Earth superpowers, aliens can only conduct covert trade with disenfranchised Third World nations, and the market prices they receive will be much more volatile than human colonies. Nevertheless, smuggling goods to the black markets of Earth can prove a vital lifeline for alien civilizations in need of currency and manufactured goods.

Aliens and Human Colonists:
On dystopian 21st-century Earth, the political situation in some Third World nations has become so intolerable that some aliens are able to lure a limited trickle of human colonists to their worlds, by building an Earthling Habitat in their cities to generate Propaganda, or having an alien Elder work on a tile with an Abduction Site. Although aliens again have a severe disadvantage in attracting emigrants compared to the human colonies, the manufacturing skills of even unspecialized human colonists make them greatly prized among the species of the New Worlds. Abducting human colonists by force is another alternative to gain access to their vital skills - when conquering a human colony, aliens will create a Human Hybrid who will also work in manufacturing facilities much more efficiently than the aliens themselves.

Aliens and Liberty:
Accustomed to unquestioning obedience to the tyranny of the long-absent Progenitors, the arrival of the Earthlings stimulated many alien elders to return to the ways of their ancient mystery traditions in search of enlightenment and power. Long dismissed as the rantings of conspiracy theorists, secret societies such as the Illuminati have covertly permeated alien and human societies for centuries, and have many secret adherents among certain select members of the Earth elite. Through deep connections to this far-reaching conspiracy, the alien elders of an Illuminati Lodge could begin to challenge the dominance of the Progenitors, and occasionally even attract highly-placed human conspirators to join with their agenda.

Other gameplay changes:
* All the low-level resource processing buildings (Biotech Lab, etc) are no longer automatically present in every colony, and will need to be constructed. The Earth Colonies start with a free processing building depending on their nationality.
* The Expeditionary Force starts the game larger, but grows much less rapidly with Liberty production, making independence through Liberty a more achievable aim.
* New terrain features representing the forests of the New Worlds now get placed by the Planets mapscript. Alien races now have unique Garden and Plantation improvements buildable on forests, which can eventually cause forests to spread. Aliens have a unique Alien Supremacy civic which gives them extra yields from these forest improvements, as well as from Alien Totem and Burial Ground goody huts (so don't let the Earthlings pillage them!)
* The Board of Directors: (replaces Founding Fathers)
With the worldwide deterioration of democracy, real power on Earth is concentrated in the hands of a small cadre of military, corporate, scientific, media, and political elites. Attracting one of these men and women to your side could prove a crucial advantage in the struggle for the New Worlds. Want to produce more Biotech from each unit of Xenospores? Then you'd better be the first Earth power to recruit the services of the Biotech Tycoon. Want to generate more Propaganda (Crosses) for each point your Tax Rate is raised? Then the Notorious Tax Evader is your man!
* New human buildings: Mass Driver (fortification that protects against damage from bombardment), Space Elevator (allows for automatic sale of goods without the hassle of transport).

Technologies and Research:

Spoiler :

The latest version incorporates features from the Tech Tree Modcomp by Kailric, enabling a technology tree that gradually unlocks access to various resources, units, and professions with the progress of research.

Research is done by selecting a Tech from the Tech Tree (light bulb icon on the top of the main screen) or by opening a menu light bulb on the bottom right of the city screen, then having colonists work in the Research Labs in your colonies. Producing each unit of Research will consume one unit each of various other goods, with the type of goods consumed depending on the specific tech being researched. See the Technologies entry under Game Concepts in the Civilopedia for full details.

Research Strategies:
Survival on the harsh frontiers of outer space is far more challenging than regular Colonization. You will start with very few resources, colonists, and profession types available, and must invest in research to unlock new possibilities. To discover the technologies needed to harvest alien resources like Soma, Xenospores, and Progenitor Tech, trade for samples of these precious materials in alien settlements, then ship them to your Research Labs for analysis. With supplies of Weapons jealously guarded by the Earth superpowers, most military units are not available early on, leaving colonies vulnerable to alien attack. In planning your technological research, balance the needs for a powerful military and a strong colonial economy.

Technology Trading and Research Pacts:
If you are friendly with another human colony or alien empire, trading technologies through the diplomacy menu can be an effective way to gain a scientific advantage. Civilizations can also enter into a Research Pact where all progress on that technology made by both participants will be pooled.

Visionary Researchers:
Performing research in your colonies can gradually attract a Visionary Researcher from Earth, a special type of Great Person with superior Research output. Constructing a Databank, or upgrading the basic Research Lab to a Research Institute or Research Complex, will also significantly boost scientific output.

New Professions and Progenitor Improvements:
The unique sites found in a Progenitor Metropolis can hold a wealth of valuable goods and treasure, but are often guarded by centuries-old security systems. With the proper technology, capturing a unique site such as a Progenitor Reactor can allow direct extraction of Fusion Cores and other advanced goods without the need for time-consuming manufacture from raw materials.

Not finding Research Labs?
There is an occasional bug in version 1.0 where Research Labs don't show up in any of your colonies from the start. On starting a new game, check your first city to see if it contains a Research Lab. If it does not, just start a new game and the bug should go away.

Read mod review at Internetwars.ru:
Russian English translation

Screenshots (v1.1)












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DLL issues
Research Labs: Note that there is an occasional bug where Research Labs will not be available in your colonies after starting a game. We havent yet been able to track down the cause; but for now as a basic workaround, if your first colony starts without a Research Lab, start a new game. If your first colony does contain a Research Lab, you should be fine for the rest of the game.
Alien Empires: When playing an Alien race, other Aliens are overly generous during trade negotiations

 

(reserved for future use)

 

Here's a post for discussion of potential future plans for the mod - there's still plenty to be done and I'd greatly welcome anyone willing to join in on development! Below are some issues in need of help:

Coding Issues
I've been wondering if it would be possible to make a dummy variable for latitude while generating each planet, ie:
latitude = 100 * Ydistancefromplanetcenter/planetradius
and have the mapscript use that when making terrain types; that would create polar ice caps and equatorial regions on every planet. Would also like to find how to make a python check for inland "fresh water lakes" and for the "sail to Europe" space terrain, since I'd like to put some special improvements over those terrain types.

Gameplay Issues
I've been thinking of making the Alien races more powerful/aggressive, somehow improving their AI to act more like the human colonies, occasionally abducting earthling Colonists, and placing Crop Circles over colonial improvements. Not sure how to accomplish this though.

 

Backstory:

The Earth Colonies:
(thanks to Heraclitus for much of this background text):

Tradable Resources:

Alien Civilizations:

Technologies and Research:

 

Although you can play this mod using the standard New World and Carribean mapscripts that come with Civ4Col, the resulting continental landmasses won't look very planet-like..

This scenario was made in Worldbuilder with around ten planets of differing size (NAFTA versus Russia) and should still work. However TC01 has now made a Planets mapscript included in version 0.02 which enables interplanetary random games

<edit: not compatible with updated versions 1.0 and beyond>

 

Awesome!

Just a few weeks ago I thought about attempting something like this, probably using Final Frontier's backstory as the base (since in the Final Frontier mod Earth practices really strict mercantilism with all it's colonies). I never did any work on it though.

As a start with mapscripts, you could use the Donut script from Civ IV and adapt it to generate different terrain types other than grassland. It only creates one "Donut"/planet though, but at least it's circular.

 

Your mod has already more background story than my own ....

And you should think of adding India as a civ. Their space program is not much behind the chinese one.

Simple buttons you can easily do yourself, they are not complicated .

Do they work, when you try to add them as normal building in the game?

Can you not just use the Final Frontier terrain?

I thought, that the orc units from FfH2 or Warhammer would work good as basic aliens.

 

Some graphical-related things I noticed:

Progenitor Ruins don't overlap well. I changed their fScale to 0.45 in the art files to make it less glaring, but that makes them much smaller than they were.

The Nebula is missing it's button (it appears as a pink square). It points to a path in the art files that doesn't exist.


I looked at the Donut script. I was able to make it create four seperate "donuts"- I intended to do five, in a pattern roughly like this

Code:

O     O
   O
O     O

but the donut/planet in the top left corner isn't being created and I don't know why. Anyway, it's optimized for the larger-sized maps.

 

Wow thanks a lot TC01 - having any kind of spherical planets mapscript would be awesome! Once the basic planet shapes are there, it should probably eventually be possible to have each planet "donut" get a unique mix of terrains/features/resources depending upon climate type (Volcanic, Barren, Marsh, etc).

Yeah the current single-tile Ruins graphic is far from ideal. I really want to adapt something like the Caretakers cityset from Planetfall, but having a hard time figuring out how to do that since the cityset is one big nif file with multiple nodes floating in space for each building.

I've made progress though on better Space Terrain (edit: though Low Orbit looks better, still having problems with Deep Space ), also fixed the Nebula button, replaced Tobacco leaf with Uranium drum in GameFonts, & making some various other textual and graphics updates. So hopefully should have an updated version before too long - TC01 please post your donut planet mapscript if you have it & I'd love to include that in the next version.

 

Here you go then. I renamed it "Planets".

All four planets are roughly the same size and appear in roughly the same position each time.

I tried to push ice and tundra up a little bit so that the planets have some snow and tundra on them.

As I mentioned, it works best on larger mapsizes.

 

Great mod! After I finish with the Scandinavian LHs I would be happy to make a few Alien LHs for you. (Along with a few alien units for different cultures). I was thinking of a terrian feature like a Pulsar that you might be able to put in Deep Space.

 

Have started putting together an updated version now, replaced old Ruins tile with Planetfall monlolith graphics among other things. I think that Planets mapscript is making a big difference in how fun it is to play.

TC01, by following your tutorial I tried to modify the FeatureGenerator in your script to have a chance to place some of the new forest Terrain Features I'm including, such as FEATURE_CYCAD_FOREST and FEATURE_FUNGAL_FOREST etc. However my attempts caused the Planets mapscript to not appear in the Start New Game menu, and when loaded through Custom Game caused it to freeze during map generation If you have the time, would u be willing to look over what I did and see if you can find out where I might have gone wrong? (Basically copied the standard FeatureGenerator from the Colonization MapGenerator.py and tried to add new feature chances per your tutorial.)

Thanks charle88, it would be great to have some more alien leaders and especially units! I've added a few from the civfanatics forum for the next version, non-human scifi leaders/units seem to be pretty rare though. I wonder if I could adapt your Emperor Palpatine LH as an alien, with some minor modifications he could fit pretty well.

BTW does anyone have any recommendations re the best site to put the next upload, and where else I should post this to give broader visibility for ppl looking for Civ4Col mods? It seems like a lot of people are having trouble downloading it from filefront.com.

 

WePlayCiv has no file size limit, unlike CFC, so I host WestwardHo there.

The immediate issue I see with your mapscript is that class PlanetFeatureGenerator needs to subclass the real feature generator, so functions that aren't overwritten work as normal. You have this:

Code:

class PlanetFeatureGenerator:

But it needs to have a "(CvMapGeneratorUtil.FeatureGenerator)" added, like this:

Code:

class PlanetFeatureGenerator(CvMapGeneratorUtil.FeatureGenerator):

(because of this, you don't need to have absolutely every function from the feature generator, like def addFeatures or def getLatitudeAtPlot, unless you're changing what they normally do).

 

Keep on good work!
This is a mod what I thought of for a long time.

Add more graphical elements to make it seen like in space.

Change resource and product types to match the future background.
For instance, we go to outer space to look for Uranium, Valuable Metals, Iron, and Solar plant locations. Or even alienate creatures and liquids.

Food and life supports should be transferred from the earth, until some accomodation buildings are built.

 

Now updated to version 0.02 (new link in first post) - enjoy it and let me know any comments!

This is a new install rather than a patch; it includes a variety of updates to graphics, leaderheads, audio, and text, also packaged with TC01's Planets mapscript for much improved interplanetary random games.

Some remaining issues needing work:
City graphics: could use help with LSystem issues importing a futuristic cityset and getting Arcology dome from NextWar over the cities to replace Fort/Fortress.
Planets mapscript: still keeps crashing when I try to modify it for more Terrain Features

edit: *Finally* solved Deep Space graphics issue today - shiny new Space tiles comin up in next version

 

I've gathered enough time to work on an Alien soldier (For an Advanced Alien Civ). Here is a pic of him. (just click on it to so the full size) He will use Marine animations. I've based it off of of seZereth's Kurio Recon Line Ranger unit. (Hopefully you don't mind, seZereth)

 

Hey thanks charle88, that looks great so far!

Here's a unit for a Flying Saucer which I tried to adapt from the Cloudbase in Planetfall - still looks partly transparent though, I'm not sure how to get it to be fully opaque and maybe hover further above the terrain.

What I'd eventually like for this mod is to make the Aliens more powerful and versatile than the basic Col natives, so that you could even choose to play as one of the Alien civs. Though starting out weak and only able to harvest basic goods, they could become able to abduct skilled Colonists from nearby human bases and gradually build their own economy to resist the Earth invasion.

 

I finally got the Planets mapscript to include several of the new terrain features (Fungal Forest, Cycad Forest, etc) - I did it by copying the standard MapGenerator functions directly into the script, so now any of these can be directly modified if needed.

TC01, do you think it would be possible during planet generation to make a dummy variable for latitude based on Y axis distance from the center of the current planet? Like:

planetlatitude = abs(y - iCenterY) / iRadius

If you could store that value for each plot, and redefine the function getLatitudeAtPlot to retrieve that value, then it would automatically make polar and equatorial zones for each planet being generated!

 

It might be, but not without a lot of work.

Because planets are generated in the plot generator, not the terrain generator, the center of a planet and the radius of a planet would need to be passed to some kind of global array, especially since I made the radius and center coordinates not constant- they shift slightly. This array would need to be accessed by the terrain generator, and that would need to be rewritten to make it work.

I would elaborate more on how to rewrite the terrain generator but I have no clue how it would be done.