[MOD] Planet Roanoke, a/k/a all SMAC'ed up

[Prayer4theDying]

I wanted to start by saying that I'm loving what I'm seeing so far in this mod. My first thought when playing my first game of CIV4 was "man, why can't they finally build on SMAC with this kind of technology?" Lo and behold, I can see you guys decided to do a little more than just thinking. SMAC stands as my favorite game I ever played, and so I'm anxious to see that same sort of dynamic used today.

I haven't had time to check out your dedicated forum too much, but I did want to add my twocents on the initial moments of the game. I think Kael is on to something with many of his suggestions: to me, I just ask what made the opening moments of SMAC so much fun. Definately the exploration of the planet (and with a random environment, political status and ecology I can see this element expanding already), as well as the survivalist method of trying to find anyone helpful out there. I remember the joy of a Gaian mindworm popping up, as that usually signaled fairly good early relations, or the despair of Believers or Spartans somewhere closebye. I think this mod would have to keep and, hopefully, build on that same dynamic.

I really love the idea for building initial infrastructure for your faction out of your share of the wreckage. One aspect of it could be the pod you landed in, which would have a set amount of material with it, and other pieces could be found (and hauled back?) throughout Roanoke. It would have to be very limiting in a lot of ways, so as to force key strategic decisions early, but to also lend later flavor to the game. I could decide to build extra food stores or a more complex electrical array, a hanger for vehicular excursions or greater entertainment options. All of these choices would significantly change the nature of how my people approach their life and their subsequent lifestyles, which could make for more natural clashes between ideological foils... aka the survivalists who construct a house of worship out of the wreckage may try to levy their religious might in order to get enough food for their civilization from the hoarding agriculturalists nextdoor.

Just my initial thoughts. I'd love to see where this heads! God Bless.

Josh

 

[woodelf]

Thanks for the comments Josh. Please visit our other forums when you find time and keep the ideas and good vibes coming.

I would love to have the goody huts be converted to pod pieces and maybe we could have their resources become simple/starter/disposable buildings. Five or so starter buildings that can't be built and become obsolete at a certain tech would be a nice reason to explore and find wreckage. My only worry is how the AI would handle losing a starter food producing building when they reached the tech that makes it fall apart. But this would make the early game more exciting! Your ideas of types of beginning buildings are solid. I wonder if you'd let the player/AI select what the wreckage makes or simply tell them what can be made....

Since I can't code I don't even know if this can be done, but we can dream!

 

[Padmewan]

Welcome, Prayer4theDying! (Josh?) I hope you will consider joining the team, as we are in need of people not just to code and model stuff but also to help us think up ideas and playtest.

woodelf, shame on you for saying you have no idea how these things can be done! I can think of at least two ways we could implement limited resources just via XML alone!

1. The HQ provides 1 bonus, "wreckage," which is required to build the restricted buildings. Each of these buildings provides -1 wreckage, so you can only build one.

2. Goodies can produce a unit that can auto-build these restricted buildings (like prophets and shrines, or scientists and academies).

See? No programming needed

You know, the interesting thing about this idea is that it's a little like an RPG. You get to choose the "flavor" of your civ when you start out. These buildings should be useful, but basically either go obsolete or have their effects washed out over time. But maybe they become prereq's for other buildings down the road... then it would be even more like an RPG...

 

[Padmewan]

Here is a preview of what I've tweaked so far:

1. New irrigation system: Bonuses can be upgraded to "fresh water" (air, actually) that makes hothouses more productive.
2. Wild energy pulses escape from fibersea/lattice to wreak havoc on colonies.
3. Energy dampeners (played by the Eiffel Tower) block pulses.
4. It now takes 3 food to feed a citizen.

 

[woodelf]

Shame on me , but at least we fleshed out a decent idea. It's not too RPGish for me, you?

I think that will make exploring attractive. Now we need a good wreckage model. The SotM had a pile of wreckage we used.

 

[kevjm]

For the backstory on the first post, are you sure you don't mean the 3rd millenium common era? Second millenium was 1000 AD to 1999 AD... Unless of course you mean something different by common era.

What the hell is a common era anyways?
>.>
<.<

Can't wait 'til this mod is finished! And sorry for picking at such a small thing, or if it's been mentioned before!

 

[Padmewan]

Funny that no one caught that earlier! Yes it should be 3rd millenium of the Common Era, the de-Christianized replacement for Anno Domini

I am hoping to pound out a whole bunch of work this weekend on this mod. As you can see from other threads I'm actively researching background tools to enable some of the main ideas of this mod, including enhanced diplomacy and economy.

My most immediate task is to hack the unit AI for "animals" so that they are completely stupid, because we are repurpusing "animals" to be wild energy bursts. More intelligent native life arise when Barbarians would normally appear in vanilla.

Would love contributions here on on the separate threads for how diplomacy and economy can be enhanced. I hope to increase the importance of those two mechanisms (and thereby lower the relative importance of combat).

 

[woodelf]

Improvement/building for us to borrow:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=172467

Very nice looking.

 

[Steel Meister]

Im really looking forward to this mod since I loved SMAC and I think that this could propably turn into a great mod. I just wanted to post some Ideas/suggestions.

1. One thing that would encourage exploring could propably be alien ruins/artifacts or pieces from the mothership providing you with energy, technology, supplies, uppgrading the unit etc. just like in SMAC. Or perhaps artifacts giving you a bonus to all of your units like an extra promotion or better unit strenght when you build an improvement on it called xenofact research center or something. Off course the bonus dissapears if the improvement gets destroyed. These "bonus" artifacts could make wars interesting as two factions try to capture the other ones artifact. But they should still be rare so that it dosent makes the gamplay imbalanced.

2. To be able to contact earth you should have to first research some kind of communication tech enabling you to build some kind of "interstellar communication thingie". Upon completion you open up the "Terra/Earth empire" Diplomacy window enabling you to set upp your relations with that faction and perhaps later giving you some kind of benefits. The communication would propably be slow so could like press the "earth Faction" diplomacy button and get a message saying contacting Earth and first some turns later the diplomacy window pops up. I dont know if this is even doable since I dont know much about coding.

 

[woodelf]

Im really looking forward to this mod since I loved SMAC and I think that this could propably turn into a great mod. I just wanted to post some Ideas/suggestions.

1. One thing that would encourage exploring could propably be alien ruins/artifacts or pieces from the mothership providing you with energy, technology, supplies, uppgrading the unit etc. just like in SMAC. Or perhaps artifacts giving you a bonus to all of your units like an extra promotion or better unit strenght when you build an improvement on it called xenofact research center or something. Off course the bonus dissapears if the improvement gets destroyed. These "bonus" artifacts could make wars interesting as two factions try to capture the other ones artifact. But they should still be rare so that it dosent makes the gamplay imbalanced.

2. To be able to contact earth you should have to first research some kind of communication tech enabling you to build some kind of "interstellar communication thingie". Upon completion you open up the "Terra/Earth empire" Diplomacy window enabling you to set upp your relations with that faction and perhaps later giving you some kind of benefits. The communication would propably be slow so could like press the "earth Faction" diplomacy button and get a message saying contacting Earth and first some turns later the diplomacy window pops up. I dont know if this is even doable since I dont know much about coding.

Welcome to the CFC Steel Meister and thanks for the suggestions. If you follow my sig to our other forums you'll see that we're discussing something similar to #1 there. We're still trying to figure out #2 so any ideas are welcome.

 

[Tholish]

I downloaded Roanoke 1474. Question about installation. The post says I have to extract the textures and install. However, there are all these other zips in the Roanoke folder. The first you see is named XML. There are other ones in the python subfolder and so forth. Do I need to extract these?

 

[woodelf]

As far as I know everything that should extract does on it's own Tholish. The main file, plus the 2 others is all I've ever d/l'd and extracted.

 

[Tholish]

Well, I extracted them and put them where they belonged anyway. Some playtest results:
1. When Cyneid spreads to a city you get an offer to change your religion to %F3RelIcon. Is this on purpose?
2. Terraforming does not automatically destroy the terran hothouse as promised, it just leaves a hothouse on soil, with a yield as the though the terraforming had never occured, but if you build a solar plant there the hothouse goes away and the soil takes full effect. This isn't all bad: I like the game effect of having a greater need for workers all of a sudden, needing more of them because all this is suddenly tantalizingly possible if I can only get rid of this obsolete junk.
3. Xenolife should start with that woodsman upgrade like scouts can get, that increases combat in forest and jungle and at level 2 increases movement. They are the natives, they should PREFER lattice, and for humans it should be a dangerous place from which the xenolife comes.

 

[Padmewan]

Latest version uploading as I type...

Tholish: You may have gotten a screwed up version from somewhere along the way. Hopefully the newest version will be correct. (This time I included everything, including terrains and sounds... ppl will have to deal with d/l time )

Re: Specifics
1. This may be because I was screwing around with font files in the version you played. Don't think I saw that in this version.
2. Right -- that's the way it used to work. I changed it so that the AI can keep up with the player. There are some changes that need to happen related to terraforming, including destroying features like "Terran Air" when the required improvement is destroyed with it. (Or maybe this calls for some SDK work).
3. Xenolife starts with Woodsman III (Latticewalking), which gives them bonus moves and +?% in Lattice. I'm thinking of changing the "animals" to being just energy surges, like the new Pulses, so that in story terms they aren't really "alive" (they will work the same tho). The stronger one could be Lattice-only, so they can't leave and make Latticewalking really dangerous...

 

[Padmewan]

The newest version (0.148) is now ready for download.

This is a major update, 2 weeks in the making, and changes gameplay pretty significantly. The early game now involves 3 major mechanisms:

• Finding and salvaging ship wreckage (still incomplete)
• Defending against increasinly powerful wild energy pulses
• Finding and exploiting "food" bonuses to "irrigate" the land

There is also at least one major showstopper bug that crops up around Era II -- seems to be related to corrupt or missing help text attached to one of the later improvements or bonuses. Any help tracking this down appreciated!

I found that with the Pulses, it's quite possible to be taken down in the first 50 turns. The Pulses come every 10 turns, one more each time (1 at 10, 2 at 20, etc) and are quite effective against normal troops. You will need Pulse Dampeners to defend against them. (Currently played by a boat until we get better graphics). The good thing about them is that they are stupid and dissipate on every action (pillage, winning attack). However, you could find yourself facing a stack of 8 or 10 of them remorselessly sweeping across your territory.

The Pulses stop when (a) you reach Era II, or (b) the "Barbs" have a city (either by conquering one through the Pulses, or by settling one).

Enjoy!

 

[woodelf]

Nice work. Hopefully I'll find time to run through a game later on.

 

[Bastian-Bux]

Getting a CTD in 148 when my first Mutasom unit gets ready.

Edit: ok, checked it another time: it seems it hasn't to do with the Mutasom, but either my last 2 autosaves are horribly buggy, or my cache is full of buggy rubbish. To tired to recheck this now, will do so tomorrow morning and send you info on it ^^.

 

[woodelf]

Buggy rubbish is never good.

 

[Bastian-Bux]

OK, it DOEs have something to do with the retroviral factory and the mutasom.

I tested it a bit more: as soon as the retroviral factory is finished AND produces its first mutasom unit -> CTD. By delaying the finish of the factory and mutasom I could delay the CTD, so it definitely is connected to those building and unit.

I've attached the last non-buggy save I've had. Just let it go on, and you'll have a CTD in 353 AD.

Btw, why isn't there a monastery building for Cyneids?

 

[woodelf]

OK, it DOEs have something to do with the retroviral factory and the mutasom.

I tested it a bit more: as soon as the retroviral factory is finished AND produces its first mutasom unit -> CTD. By delaying the finish of the factory and mutasom I could delay the CTD, so it definitely is connected to those building and unit.

I've attached the last non-buggy save I've had. Just let it go on, and you'll have a CTD in 353 AD.

Btw, why isn't there a monastery building for Cyneids?

That's exactly what we need to know for CTDs. Thanks a ton.

Any buildings that aren't in, but should be simply are on the to-do list I imagine.