[MOD] Mylon Mega Mod - Enhanced Cultural Model and more!

[Mylon]

Interesting. Personally I'm not a fan of huge maps and long game-modes, but I understand that tastes vary.

By the way, if anyone would like to suggest alternate conditions for a 3 and 4 radius city, or a better cultural model that allows ancient civilizations to be cultural instead of only modern ones, I'm all ears. Just as I made the GPP points dynamic, I could also make culture points for a level dynamic. That is, perhaps older cities would have an advantage because the points required for the next level would keep decreasing.

That and I have considered the possibility of "temporary" culture and "permanent" culture.

 

[dreadknought]

I think I saw this in a warlord mod but to help the ancient civs the great people were able to add culture as an option, it was a large amount for the artist and smaller amounts for the others, thought that was pretty awesome for newer cities.

 

[Mylon]

Back from the dead!

I updated this mod to 3.17 if anyone wants to try it.

Just some notes, I've experimented with trying to make missionary units that are always buildable at the holy city that overwrite the regular priests. Right now, only Americans should be able to do this with Jewish and Christian missionaries. Hopefully I can find a better way to do this than the way these two units are done.

Also, building commerce might not work as expected. I might wanna take another look at how that was programmed. There might be other strange behavior of the game no longer supporting the ability to support more than 1 building of a type. That is, I had hidden some buildings that gave +% bonuses and used multiple of them to accomplish certain effects, but it seems the game no longer acknowledges more than what is possible to be built according to the xml.

 

[Mylon]

Okay, turns out I did miss the code to copy over my fluid great people change. I'll work on getting it merged with the unofficial patch, (possibly even RevolutionDCM) and see if I can make an installer out of it.

 

[Lachlan]

Welcome for the return of life

Your concept is interesting

 

[McThomas]

sounds grand matey

 

[Arakhor]

I've always loved cultural rulers (Willem and Pericles, woot!) so I'd love to know where you with this so far. You mentioned adding Revolutions - does it have BUG as well? This sounds like it could be really cool.

 

[keldath]

hi!

can anyone update this to 3.19?

 

[bhinso]

Sorry to bump this but is there a chance of updating this to 3.19?

 

[dudeSDCA]

/bump

Any change of getting updated to 3.19?

 

[keldath]

i wish..............................

 

[Mylon]

I wonder, is there any interest in this mod still? I bet BUG and some of the other big ones have totally eclipsed some of the changes I've made here.

That and I'm a bit curious as to what would happen if I port some of Civ5s features to Civ4.

 

[Kenpachi Zaraki]

I would be very interested in an update to this wonderful mod. If you decide to invest your time into an update of your mod, it would be great if you could implement the "Multiple Production Mod" which allows more than one building or unit to be built a turn, it would be a perfect match with your expanded city radius.

As far as porting Civ 5 concepts to Civ 4 , I am afraid I can't give a completely informed opinion since I haven't played Civ 5 but I have spent some time reading these forums so I feel I have at least a passing familiarity with the new concepts contained in it.

I would definitely advise against adding 1UPT, as it seems like even the defenders of Civ 5 acknowledge that the combat AI is not in good shape. If Civ 5 can't handle that mechanic, I would shudder at the thought of Civ 4's "stack attack" AI trying to implement 1UPT combat.

I have seen some discussion on these boards about using Social policies and Civics together. The Social policies could give each Civ long term flavor and the Civics could give short term flexibility.

 

[Mylon]

I would be very interested in an update to this wonderful mod. If you decide to invest your time into an update of your mod, it would be great if you could implement the "Multiple Production Mod" which allows more than one building or unit to be built a turn, it would be a perfect match with your expanded city radius.

As far as porting Civ 5 concepts to Civ 4 , I am afraid I can't give a completely informed opinion since I haven't played Civ 5 but I have spent some time reading these forums so I feel I have at least a passing familiarity with the new concepts contained in it.

I would definitely advise against adding 1UPT, as it seems like even the defenders of Civ 5 acknowledge that the combat AI is not in good shape. If Civ 5 can't handle that mechanic, I would shudder at the thought of Civ 4's "stack attack" AI trying to implement 1UPT combat.

I have seen some discussion on these boards about using Social policies and Civics together. The Social policies could give each Civ long term flavor and the Civics could give short term flexibility.

I've become rather fond of Civ5's modding style of only needing to replace relevant information. I managed to take my mod and use it seamlessly before and after the patch, for example. Granted, it's not a terribly complex mod, but it was still painless. Compare this to Civ4 where I have to merge my changes over into the patched ones, and incorporating mod components is labor intensive as well.

I agree that 1UPT won't work in civ4, but I'm all for replacing Civ4's civics with Civ5's social policies. Not even keeping the old system, just outright replacing it. Though Civ5's social policies could definitely use some tweaking to make more exclusive options and make the cost more affordable. I'm also rather fond of the fixed gold/science/culture, as now tech and research and culture (and in Civ4 espionage) are no longer at odds all of the time. I'll also be using the limited combat mechanic, so no more fights to the death.

If someone will step up to tweak the AI to make use of it, I can also put in flanking and zones of control. With catapults that no longer need to suicide, a more tight reign on economy/army size, flanking, and zones of control, stacking is made much less viable because it can be countered and it won't make optimal use of available bonuses.

 

[Kenpachi Zaraki]

I've become rather fond of Civ5's modding style of only needing to replace relevant information. I managed to take my mod and use it seamlessly before and after the patch, for example. Granted, it's not a terribly complex mod, but it was still painless. Compare this to Civ4 where I have to merge my changes over into the patched ones, and incorporating mod components is labor intensive as well.

I agree that 1UPT won't work in civ4, but I'm all for replacing Civ4's civics with Civ5's social policies. Not even keeping the old system, just outright replacing it. Though Civ5's social policies could definitely use some tweaking to make more exclusive options and make the cost more affordable. I'm also rather fond of the fixed gold/science/culture, as now tech and research and culture (and in Civ4 espionage) are no longer at odds all of the time. I'll also be using the limited combat mechanic, so no more fights to the death.

If someone will step up to tweak the AI to make use of it, I can also put in flanking and zones of control. With catapults that no longer need to suicide, a more tight reign on economy/army size, flanking, and zones of control, stacking is made much less viable because it can be countered and it won't make optimal use of available bonuses.

My modding capabilities are limited to text editing but I have read enough on these forums to know that any more serious mod work takes time and dedication, so it is great to hear that Civ 5 has made this task easier.

For social policies, I guess the decision you need to make is how the players will earn them. It seems in Civ 5 that they wanted to favor small empires of 3 to 5 cities. This decision has led some players to complain that they are forced to stay small and play with full use of social policies or expand and play without them. One of the favored strategies was to stay small in the beginning of the game, taking social policies that gave you some kind of bonus per city and then expand like mad, cutting yourself off from realistic attainment of future social policies.

Since this is your mod and not the standard game, you are safely able to take your game in any direction you choose unlike the Civ 5 developers who need to take into account all different styles of play. You can attempt to balance all styles of play or focus on a style that suits you as a player. There is plenty of room for both of these types of mods and everything in between.

The fixed gold/science/culture, does seem to make more sense than adjustable sliders. These categories would represent some type of fixed infrastructure and not something that could be changed on a whim.

I have no experience with the limited combat mechanic but I am not adverse to giving it a try, it does seem like it could be an improvement.

I like the idea of getting rid of suicide catapults, whats up with that? The only idea I could come up with is that they thought if they made the siege weapons able to attack without getting damaged then everyone would load up on them to the exclusion of the other unit categories.

What are your thoughts about ranged combat on the Civ map regarding scale? There are some people who feel it breaks the immersion factor, with archers launching arrows over cities and mountains. I guess with 1UPT it was needed so you could put units in between them and the enemy, so they wouldn't be sitting ducks. With stacking enabled the protective units could be placed on the same tile as the ranged weapons. Then they could fire into the neighboring tiles instead of over tiles.

 

[Mylon]

What are your thoughts about ranged combat on the Civ map regarding scale? There are some people who feel it breaks the immersion factor, with archers launching arrows over cities and mountains. I guess with 1UPT it was needed so you could put units in between them and the enemy, so they wouldn't be sitting ducks. With stacking enabled the protective units could be placed on the same tile as the ranged weapons. Then they could fire into the neighboring tiles instead of over tiles.

Ranged combat is... Weird. There is no firing over hills and mountains at least, despite what you may have heard, but the ability to plink a unit over and over and over again seems kinda cheesy, especially if the defending unit is also a ranged unit! If health wasn't an issue, melee units could make an infinite number of "attacks" simply by being the defender, but ranged units do not get this luxury! Likewise, an archer may fire at a melee unit at a range of 1 without reprisal.

One thing I'll definitely mod into Civ5 is counter-attacks. The only time archers can attack a ranged unit free and clear is a melee unit 2 tiles away or (if I'm remembering properly) standing on a hill firing two tiles away at another archer. This includes cities! This is especially important in naval combat. Essentially, the first person to spot the enemy wins simply because they can make their attacks and sink ships before the enemy can shoot back. But I'll also have to make cities much easier to take. Seems silly that a city without walls can defend against several units. A contemporary unit ought to have an even chance of fighting off the 'free' garrison of a city with no defenses.

 

[Kenpachi Zaraki]

Ranged combat is... Weird. There is no firing over hills and mountains at least, despite what you may have heard, but the ability to plink a unit over and over and over again seems kinda cheesy, especially if the defending unit is also a ranged unit! If health wasn't an issue, melee units could make an infinite number of "attacks" simply by being the defender, but ranged units do not get this luxury! Likewise, an archer may fire at a melee unit at a range of 1 without reprisal.

One thing I'll definitely mod into Civ5 is counter-attacks. The only time archers can attack a ranged unit free and clear is a melee unit 2 tiles away or (if I'm remembering properly) standing on a hill firing two tiles away at another archer. This includes cities! This is especially important in naval combat. Essentially, the first person to spot the enemy wins simply because they can make their attacks and sink ships before the enemy can shoot back. But I'll also have to make cities much easier to take. Seems silly that a city without walls can defend against several units. A contemporary unit ought to have an even chance of fighting off the 'free' garrison of a city with no defenses.

Yes, ranged combat does sound quite weird. At least it is good to hear that mountains and hills can't be fired over. It seems you are taking a very common sense approach to handling combat and the ideas you mentioned sound good.

Is it your intention to support both a Civ 4 and a Civ 5 mod or only a Civ 5 one ? A while back in your thread titled "[BTS] and [BTS] Larger City Radius and Open Borders Tech Trading" there was some hope expressed to have that updated for use with patch 3.19, although that was before the release of Civ 5 and I am not sure how many people still play Civ 4. I would imagine that if you are going to put your effort into continuing this mod that you would want a large number of people to enjoy it.

The reason I liked your mod was not only because it contained very interesting ideas, such as expanded cultural borders but it was also very stable. Some of the larger mods have incorporated the expanded city radius and even the Multiple Production Mod but I always seem to have performance issues if not outright crashes.

 

[Mylon]

Yes, stability is one of the things I valued. I made sure to keep my code pretty contained to individual components and I tested after each feature addition. I lost interest in Civ4 when my friends and I consistently got OOS errors trying to play Fall from Heaven or some variant. My mod just felt too... Bland I guess when compared to something of that, and trying to solve OOS errors in someone else's code is like a nightmare. The Larger City Radius mod was actually very simple. Once I figured out the code it didn't take much at all. I could start by editing that.

Civ5 has some highlights, but Civ4 seems plenty fine for the purpose of modding and the SDK for it is available, which is more than I can say for Civ5. I remember when I first did my Holistic Cultural Model in Python. It was a mess. I had programmed the game to, every turn, go around all of the cities and remove the culture they generated AND remove the culture applied to each and every plot, then reassign culture based on the new model. I think it wasn't necessary to assign culture plot by plot, but there was no easy way to 'delete' culture. When I got my hands on the SDK, the formula was already done and tweaked, so changing it over was very easy. And eliminating all of the weird workarounds made it feel so much more elegant. I'm starting to feel that bit of messiness with Lua, though half of it has to do with the very poor amount of documentation.

 

[Kenpachi Zaraki]

I can see how Fall From Heaven could make you question your own modding efforts. It would be like performing a juggling routine in a talent show, only to have the next contestant be a cute girl in a bikini, juggling flaming torches and running chainsaws, while blindfolded, using her feet instead of her hands. I don't know if that's even possible but you must admit it would be impressive to see.

In all fairness to you , the Fall From Heaven Mod appears to have had at least a hundred people working on it full time, including a whole team just for artwork. In addition to this, every single person on this forum, myself excluded, seems to have been given some credit for playing a part in it's creation. Fall From Heaven is so huge that even the lead designers of Civ 4 and Civ 5 are credited for helping. One can only assume that Civ was created for the express purpose of making this mod possible. I am also fairly certain that if we used numerology on the date of Kael's birth, it would be revealed that he was the one destined to fulfill this purpose.

The most shocking thing I discovered while visiting the Fall From Heaven II thread is the fact that an Enya song appears throughout gameplay. Yes, you heard me correctly, I did say an Enya song. There is almost no doubt that Enya is one of the classiest musical entertainers in the business.

There is however one act in the music world that is even classier. Even now I imagine you asking me, who could possibly be a classier act than Enya? You might want to sit down when I tell you this, although I imagine you are since who uses their computer while standing. The answer is Clannad, they are without a doubt the classiest act in the business.

The great thing about Clannad is that not only is Enya's sister in the band but Enya herself was in the band before her solo career.

Armed with this knowledge, the way to outclass Fall From Heaven is clear. Name yourself the lead designer of a new mod project, then get everyone on this forum to help you in some capacity, especially the artistic people. Next get John Shafer to help, in addition to the help of whoever is going to make Civ 6, this might take some subterfuge to discover but should totally be worth it. Just to make sure you should also give Sid Meier something to do, no matter how trivial, his name in the credits is sure fire gold.

If for whatever reason Sid gives you some bull about being too busy,like he is working on a sequel to Alpha Centauri, Pirates, or Railroads, then go to Plan B. This plan is simplicity in its finest. Get the most interesting man in the world, The Dos Equis guy to help. At the very least he could hook you up with some beer, or whatever it is he drinks when not drinking Dos Equis.

Then put a Clannad song in your game.My recommendation would be "Robin (The Hooded man)", the class song from the equally classy series Robin Hood that ran from 1984-1986, Clannad did the whole soundtrack for the series but the title song is the best of the bunch. Make sure that this song plays as your game is loading.

Robin...Robin....The Hooded Man

I got shivers up and down my spine just thinking about how cool that would be.

Robin...Robin...The Hooded Man

There might be more words in that song, but then again there might not.

The last thing for you to do is get a cool loading screen. After using the classiest song from the classiest series ever made, why not use the image of that series classiest actor. That being none other than Michael Praed, a guy who is so classy that when he left and was replaced with Jason Connery, people were like, we want Michael Praed back.

For those of you not in the know Jason Connery is the son of Sean Connery. Yes that Sean Connery, the guy who is best known for his role as Juan Sánchez Villa-Lobos Ramírez from Highlander II. That is not the number eleven that is roman numerals for the number two, just like civ II and how classy is that.

So when people are calling for this guy over Jason Connery you know he is the real deal. You might be asking why you never hear about Michael Praed if he is so classy. The answer to this can be summed up in a single tragic word "Nightflyers". It was billed as being more exciting than Aliens but something went horribly wrong. To this day I am still in shock, I mean look at the cast that film had. How could it fail?

So put Michael Praed in your opening credits.

Robin...Robin...The Hooded Man

Mylon, keep your head held high. I enjoyed your mod and I know many others did as well, and if you update it I will play that as well.

Also I just now noticed that not only were people asking for the update to 3.19 in the thread I referenced in my previous post, but they were also requesting the same in this very thread, how did I miss that?

Robin...Robin...The Hooded Man

 

[keldath]

hey mylon is around? how nice!