[MOD] FexFX--Bigger-&-Longer(v1.52.0) -=New and Improved=-

Great mod. Excellent work. I'm not totally sold on the lower camera angle, though. Is there any way to tweak just the angle (i.e., to move it back to original)?

Thanks!

 

Heh, To be honest I am not 100% sold on it yet myself!

If you want to reset the camera angles just replace the file "Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Mods\FexFX--Bigger-and-Longer\Assets\XML\Misc\CIV4DetailManager.xml" with the original "CIV4DetailManager.xml" file.

That should take you back to base camera controls without any loss of anything else as the camera is all that is changed in that file.

 

Okay, so it wasn't me...
but the most advanced civ in the game I am playing just completed the Apollo program in 1957...
A few years early for historical accuracy perhaps...but its a long way from the reports I heard of people getting a space race victory in 1400AD in vanilla 1.52!

I am now more convinced than ever that the balance is right here!

However, I am losing rather hard right now...4th in tech!
Ugh!

 

Yup, seems to be pretty well balanced so far, haven't finished this game yet but i'm not too far ahead on history. Started a large continent game with the rest on random, turned out to be lots of water, and two useable continents, but somehow, 9 out of 10 civs are on the same continent, and i'm right in the middle of that continent with no less than six direct neighbours Didnt even have acces to the ocean untill i killed the japanese in the early middle ages.
Pretty tough game, but very cool, no idea who will win yet, top 4 is real close 2nd or 3rd in tech, 4th in army (increasing it rapidly atm), 1st in landmass/income. Eventhough i played a peacefull role, i've had two big wars and one minor
Starting to catch up to those damn indians now, the wars put me back quite a bit.

But all in all a brilliant game that most definately would not have been as cool without this mod

 

Yah Mansa Musa in the lead is WAY in the lead...like 1000pts above everyone else! I dont know what kind of super start up he got but its madness!

That alone is making me rethink the late game balancing since until about the industrial age, his lead was only a few hundred points...

 

Yay! I've hit over 200 Downloads...

However I am having a few doubts about late game balance.

I need to hear some feedback from people who have completed the game on various difficulty levels, speeds, and map sizes using this mod.

How did the late game go for you?
How did the tech rate feel?

I have no doubt that things are good up through the renaissance...its after the renaissance and maybe even the last half of the renaissance onward that concerns me...
Of course there is always the possibility that I am not as good as I thought...hehehe...

Just so you know I am nearly through with a 8 player--Noble--FX-Marathon--FX-Mammoth game and it took until the late 1970s for me to hit the modern era...which feels a bit too late to me.

 

This is not a simple process!

The combining of Mods is a sticky operation because many mods will use the same files, each modified in its own way! The only way to cimbine multiple mods is to manually edit them togethr using notepad (or your program of preference)

 

I am thoroughly enjoying this mod so far. I am playing a 10 player--Noble--FX-Marathon--FX-Mammoth game. So far I have made it to around 1200AD. I am researching things like Banking and Nationalism. Best units at this point are Macemen and Knights. Seems to be very well balanced at this point from what I can tell. I still have tons of time left in the game, and I'm getting ready to launch my first full scale war against Catherine using elephants, knights, and catapults.

I'll keep you posted as the game goes on. The AI (especially Catherine) seems to be keeping up ok. 2 of the civ's are very close to me in score, and I haven't met 4 civ's yet so I don't know how they are doing.

Two things I noticed. The barbarians are outrageous still. I had to build ALOT of defenders to stay alive. This is mostly I think because the map is so big, there's so much dark space that they spawn frequently. My research suffered big time (I dropped to 10% at one point), but I stopped growing and have recovered to 90% research now (time to start growing again I guess).

Secondly, I noticed my workers have nothing to do. I have improved every stick of land to the max (until I get railroad) and they're just sitting there doing nothing for the most part. Nothing you can do about this, it's just because the game is so long now that they have tons of time to complete everything. Too bad there aren't more terraforming options in the game.

So, I'll keep you posted but so far this mod is incredible. It finally gives me the length of time I feel I need to wage proper wars and enjoy the game properly.

Thanks again!

 

Thanks for the update!
Yah things were great for me up to that point too! Myu area of concern is later...about 1700 I started to feel a disparity with the AI...Mansa Musa was 500pts ahead of everyone else at that point and I was #2...

 

Thanks will try it out, I was searching for a extend of gameplay without losing some basic elements of the game.

 

I'd say that the reason your workers are sitting around is that iBuildPercent is too low. iImprovementPercent determines how long cottages etc take to grow based on normal 100% speed and iBuildPercent is for workers improvement build speed. I guess if the game is to take twice as long then both of these should be around twice as big as well. Whatever the case, I've downloaded this mod, am about to try it, but have changed iBuildPercent to the iImprovementPercent value.

 

Ok, thanks. I kind of have it figured out.

 

I actually tried it that way first...
What I found was that the way I eneded up doing it was a bit better, because although the workers are done a bit sooner, it does allow you to get on with the business of producing units and going to war...
It just means the "tile improvement" phase stops for a bit mid game and you have more time to concentrate on war!

Also I liked that I was able to build less workers relative to the normal balance.
Perhaps this is why his workers were sitting around doing nothing...maybe he built too many?
Personally I dont like having to build a million workers, plus the new economy introduced by 1.52 make too many workers a crippling burden!

But to each their own.

The percentage for Build is 208% in my mod, the Improvement is at 260%. (for the FX-Marathon speed)
Perhaps build should have been set to the consturction percent which is 234%?

Meh.

 

That's the exact purpose of this mod!



Enjoy!!!

 

Mmmm, good point about the builders. I've knocked mine back down again to the construct value. I've just started anyway so I'll see how it works. Otherwise seems good so far, nice work. Trouble with these gamespeed mods is that you never know if it's balanced until 2 days later...

 

Well I can promise you that it feels balanced through the 1800s!
After the 1800s its a little questionable...
I may have slowed down the late game a bit more than I should have
although I now have at least one report that someone got flight in the 1600s!!

 

I played FX-Marathon(1200) on a standard size map with 18 AI's (little crowded but very varied), tech trading off. It was a brilliant experience - for the first time since i bought CivIV I can actually play the whole game, complete with diplomacy, aggression wars and all. Pre-FexFX the only viable option was to go defensive and tech-rush to tanks, jets and battleships.

Thank you - you have breathed new life back into the whole game!

(FYI: In my game was born around the year 200 - very close to actual year indeed )

 

Thanks for the praise!

So the endgame didn't feel stunted to you?
Hmmm...normal sized map...I think my modifiers on the FX-Mammoth map may be the problem...
I notice not many people are commenting on the mammoth map, and that the downloads of the FX-Mammoth compatible maps are at about 1/4 the number of downloads of the main mod...So I think FX-Mammoth is not the main draw here...Interesting...

...and Christ in 200AD...that's a nice measurement...you mean of course that christianity was founded...which would not be his birth but slightly after his death which was around 34AD...so its even closer than you think!

 

Ok, just completed my first game with this version of the mod, here's a little log i made of some of the developments

Noble, Huge map, FX_Grand, 11 civs, continents, high sealevels (which put 10 of us on one continent... Very cramped)
I played a peacefull role till pretty far in the game when i basically got forced to start wars to get the territory to keep up with the indians, mongols and americans as they slowly started to get ahead of me, either in techs or army size.

535 AD Machinery
935 Gunpowder
1268 Economics
1516 Railroad
1643 Flight
1788 UN
1872 Diplomatic victory Played on to see how the rest of the tech worked out. (got the nr 3 and 4 empire to back my vote)
1888 Completed all techs
1898 Launched space ship (if diplo had failed i would have won with this, india had two parts left to build)
Was close to domination as well with 40.88% of world population in my empire (44% needed)
Had several massive wars, and almost 3.2 million soldiers at the end of the game, and still was only 3rd in army size (largest had 3.6 million soldiers)

So i completed it quite a bit before it was due, but all in all this mod is GREAT!
I totally love it Might be a bit off in time line, but hell, what does that matter if the game has gotten so much better from it This has been my most thrilling Civ4 game so far It was damn close till very late in the game and i trailed in techs pretty far into the modern age! Only caught up at the very end (b-lined for spaceship techs to get them on time, thats why i launched space ship only 10 years after getting my final tech)

 

Thanks for the detailed feedback.
It would seem that my balancing act while improving things a great deal did not balance things across all maps and difficulties...
tho looking closer I fear that may not be possible...

To be honest I think they made an error in giving each map its own tech modifier...Becuase the smaller the map the faster the tech...the larger the map the slower the tech...
and this seems to aply inequally between the AI and Player...
I found it nearly impossible to remain competitive against the AI on an FX-Mammoth map because the tech penalty on the map was higher, but the AI did not seem to be as affected by it as I was...

PErhaps I should try flattening the map size penalties a bit so that the differences are not so steep based on map size...

It might also be that Firaxis made the assumption that small map = Short game...So anyone playing on a Huge map would likely be playing an epic game, and anyone playing on a Duel map would be playing a Quick game right?
Which at the extremes for this may seem reasonable there are an inequal number of maps and speeds...and as a result some combos feel weird. An FX-Marathon game on a small map for example would find techs moving faster than expected and probably end in the year 1200AD with a space victory if the Players (AI and Human ) did not kill each other on such a map...

I think this needs further consideration. If I flatten out the research differences from map type to map type...