[Mod] Mylon Mod - New Culture Model, Terraforming, and more!

[jollyroger3]

Really great mod, Mylon - I didn't play it yet, but I've seen the tech tree, and will play it in half an hour

I've got 2 proposals for you after looking at the tech tree, I'd be gratfull if you consider them

1. In Exaviers composite mod there are 2 units I really LOVE because of their presence in the history:

- A "Tactical ICBM" (which IMHO should be named "Tactical Nuke") - available at the same time as ICBM, but costs 250 shields comparing to 1000 shields cost of ICBM - the main nucrear threat of cold war

- A "Nuclear submarine" - a naval unit used to carry some "Tactical Nukes" to the borders of enemy's land

2. In Sevos fusion Mod are more UN Resolutions, which may give much more alternative modern world "shapes" - these added resolutions allow to force every single civic for all civs in the world - i.e. not only free religion for all, but theocracy for all, paganism for all, organized religion for all etc., not only free speech for all, but i.e. nationhood for all etc. etc.

IMO that would be really great to see these 2 features in your excellent mod, and that would make your mod the best mod for me

 

[V. Soma]

Well, I tried to have cultural victory with this nice mod
but for me the 150k limit/city was too much for normal speed...

Would not 120k be more OK?

If 150k is OK, how to do it?

 

[Mylon]

As far as I know, nukes cannot be of different scales. That is, you can't have a "tiny" nuke or a "huge" nuke. Plus, nukes have unlimited range. If submarines could carry nukes, it would be for flavor only. Well, mostly.

For cultural victory, understand that population == culture. Building tons of farms and assigning the maximum number of bureaucrats and building the Internet Backbone national wonder, plus the many cathedrals, will all go a long way towards mass producing culture and getting a cultural victory.

Besides that, it's not balanced anyway. Perhaps something I didn't forth too clearly is that this mod is a public beta (as suggested by the pre 1.0 version number). I'll eventually have a stable, shiny, polished release with all of the new features balanced.

Finally, for the UN, I need to install Alpha Centauri and play that a bit for inspiration before I start tweaking the UN (and civics). For the UN to be how I want it, I'll have to add atrocities first, which involves editing the AI to recognize these atrocities, which will probably require the SDK. There's only one generic relationship change function available in the API, and it breaks the current mold of making it obvious to the player the cause of the relationship change.

 

[DMN]

Maybe its just me, but version 0.31 doesn't seem to work properly.

I can install it and it runs, but the culture is weird. At first my capital doesn't get any culture although it says 7 culture (or something like that) per turn. When it becomes a holy city, the culture per turn goes up, but the total culture remains at 0/50 no matter how long I wait.
If I build a monolith then, the culture flips to -1/0 and the city radius disappears.

When I built a second city one time, its culture was growing quickly. It didn't have any buildings or religion, but its borders expanded after a couple of turns and the total culture increased every turn.

Do you have any idea what I could have done wrong?

 

[Exavier]

Hey Mylon I do have 2 nukes in my mod. And one is more powerful then the other.

Tactical ICBM (named that cause i couldn't limit the range)
-250 Hammers
-Single Square Blast (only hits your taget)
-Can be loaded onto Nuclear Subs (Purly for the Multiplayer value in hiding nukes)
-Designed to be built en mass to overcome SDI

ICBM
-Blast radius increased to 2 (so if a city is hit it hits every worked square too)
-1000 Hammers
-Immobile

My mod is based off Multiplayer functionality so i have a few things in there that help with this

BTW I am still trying to figure out how to just extract your culture stuff to use in my mod

 

[jollyroger3]

I've played your mod Mylon and it's really great one, but needs to be better balanced IMO. What difficulty level you recommend ? I played in warlord and in normal difficulty and it was too easy in both...

I think that if you and Exavier could unite your efforts and ideas all civ4 players would be given the best and greatest mod ever
Could you, Great Guys consider cooperation ?

 

[Domlin]

mylon, great mod! keep up the good work.

 

[V. Soma]

I also would be a support fan of modders cooperating...

...especially later on, when SDK will be in their hands

 

[dh_epic]

To be honest, I think that an overhaul of the culture model would need to include a complete overhaul of the bonuses that come from culture. I might turn off the bonuses completely in the meantime, just to simplify testing:

- All cities are settled with three rings of culture around them.
- All cities are settled with a 50% culture defensive bonus

And when we understand what culture does and how it moves... then we set new thresholds and bonuses. As it stands now, culture is being overhauled too much to tie specific bonuses to it (yet).

 

[borsaid]

I'd like to thank Mylon for a fantastic MOD. I can only imagine what he and the other geniuses are going to turn this game into when the MDK becomes available. . .The fanatics out there (myself included) probably have no idea what's about to come their way.

A couple quick thoughts for possible ideas. Please bear in mind that I have no idea on the whole "coding" aspect of MOD creation and am an amateur at best for civ4'ing.

Nukes I've read where it seems as if you can't easily have a tactical nuke, because there is no way to limit it's range. My question for this is, can you create a unit similar to a bomber that has a nuclear result and blast radius that will also destroy itself once used??

Cruise MissilesWhere did these buggers go?? Same as above. . .can they be created like a bomber or fighter with a missile graphic? Can they cause damage and be destroyed on the same action? Can it be made so that subs can carry these? Maybe I'm asking too much here, but is it possible to make these guys smart? As in controlling which units out of stack they hit or controlling specific buildings in a city or just simply opting to have it attack a city's defense (fortifications) bonus.

Siege Weapons I think that it's a little strange that some siege weapons (such as artillery. . .by the way, what happened to the howitzers!?) can only strike the neighboring square. Same as the rest of the items discussed above, can siege weapons be made to strike a radius and can they be made to target specific units/buildings/defense bonuses? Obviously a cattapult wouldnt be able to target or have any kind of radius, but maybe a more modern artillery unit would be able to strike units two squares away from inside a defending city. It just seems silly to me that artillery and the likes attack just the same as a soldier. . . in real life they're usually way behind the front lines lobbing shells at the enemy, not pushing their way through the trenches with the infantry

Well, those are my two cents for now. . .Let me know what you guys think and if Mylon or some other cool cats out there would know how to incorporate this stuff into another release.

 

[Exavier]

@borsaid - Nukes. I made a bomber that had a nuclear payload but due to the way i had to code it the bomber died when it whent off and the SDI could shoot it down
Right now most ties to Air Missions lead to hardcoded data so i can't modify that to make a "Nuclear Strike" mission for a bomber.

Cruiser Missles. I wish i knew where they went i loved them. No way to mod atm as they used the Civ3 bombard style that doesn't exist in Civ4 atm.

Siege Weapons. See Cruise Missles. No ability to make a range bombard as of yet. As for the Howitzer they did include the model for it but never wrote it into the game. Lost Units Mod as well as my own mod (I borrowed mine from lost units) put the model to use and made the howitzer again

 

[borsaid]

@borsaid - Nukes. I made a bomber that had a nuclear payload but due to the way i had to code it the bomber died when it whent off and the SDI could shoot it down
Right now most ties to Air Missions lead to hardcoded data so i can't modify that to make a "Nuclear Strike" mission for a bomber.

Well, I think that's what I was talking about. If the nuclear payload is delivered, the bomber is destroyed, and other things like the SDI can shoot it down. . . then you have yourself a tactical nuke, no? Just don't call it a bomber, call it a tactical nuke and change the graphic. I am green here, so if I'm talking crazy talk, please say so!

If that's the case, then can't you do that to other things too? Like, do the same thing without the nuclear payload. . .change the name and the graphic and you have yourself a cruise missile.

Great mod you have going too, by the way. After your post I started to read about it and I'm definitely gonna play with it. Do you think these "hard coded" items will be able to be tinkered with eventually in future releases or MDK arrival??

 

[Exavier]

well the scripts (hardcoded) that make the nuclear explosions, damagem diplomatic penalties are all tied to a Mission Trigger that is the same one tied to the red button on the ICBMs... so my plane also launched and dropped like an ICBM lol

In My mod the Tactical ICBM can hit anywhere (as i can't change it) but it only hits a single square instead of the target plus every square around it.

Oh trust me when the SDK comes out alot iwll be changed... I personally plan to get Cruise Missles, Costal Bombardmant (like Civ3) for Naval units, tweak the AI, oh and add the 12 new unit models i have waiting for conversion

Thats assumming i can as I dono what will be in the SDK when they decide to release it.

 

[Mylon]

I only just now realized that I messed up when merging my mod with patch 152. I update a version different from the one I've been playing.

Anyway, I've decided to renname the mod to "Advanced Ruleset" so it'll be a bit less... Ego-serving. Besides, it's also more descriptive.

 

[Exavier]

but ego serving is a good thing

 

[Mylon]

Don't I know it. I'm not too certain of the change. For now 0.33 will remain "Mylon Mod". I've just been feeling unmotivated towards Civ modding as of late... Hopefully that will change soon.

 

[Exavier]

Well get motivated at least untill you have a stable culture system i can steal...err borrow. please

 

[Mylon]

Mod updated to 0.33. This version adds some troubleshooting messages to pinpoint negative culture if it occurs and includes the Marathon game speed as it should have in the previous version.

When playing marathon game speed I highly recommend turning off all forms of victory except domination/conquest.

 

[Exavier]

woohoo

But you had to do that while i was stuck at work didn't you

 

[Merum]

I don't quite like the power system either. The power buildings aren't exclusive, just as an example. If I have a hydro plant, why would I need a coal or nuclear plant? Plus, nothing depends on power. That doesn't make too much sense, really. One would think there'd be broadcast towers or something else that requires power.

The old game Tropico used a power system that graded certain buildings with a power rating, and power plants generated a given amount of MW. When you exceeded the available power, brownouts would occur, and factories would shut down, or lose the benefits of electricity.

Power plants generating a given amount of electricity, whether on a city scale or a national scale, brownouts if you don't generate enough power.

Also, I'm puzzled that no improvements require power.

THAT would be special. An excellent addition to an already great mod, if doable.