MOO2Civ

[Agent327]

Ah, I see...my bad. I've never played Emperor level. Being a casual player, it's mostly Warlord/Noble for me. At that level barbs appear around turn 40 and they're certainly not Battleships! Which is why I suggested turning the Aggressive Barbs option on. Perhaps you should turn that off then - although you seem to cope and it's more along the lines of what early Antarans might do to colonies in MOO2.

About the diplo waiting time: I've never experienced it (nor has it been reported yet), but it seems kind of odd, as MOO2Civ has static LHs, not animated ones. Lowering graphics settings seems quite irrelevant here and I currently have no clue as to what could be causing a 20 s delay...

 

[salaminizer]

JEELEN: Final Frontier has some trait effects "hardcoded" in Python, you might want to check that (actually you just need to remove any code referencing FF Traits, such as Paradise).

(Supposing it's still there - because I had the same issues with my mod)

 

[Agent327]

Yeah, I gathered I had to do some Python editing. BTW, which mod are you referring to?

 

[Agent327]

MOO2Civ (Patch4d) FULL INSTALL is now at 3,200 downloads.

 

[Agent327]

Started another game (Humans, Custom Game, Noble level) and this time barb Invasion Ship and Destroyer were present around turn 20,* about the same time I discovered the 1st +1 move advance, allowing PDFs to move off-world. So, it seems the AI is definitely on a learning curve: around turn 40 I noticed the 1st PDF on a newly founded rival colony.

*I'm not sure exactly how this relates to Battleship IIIs appearing around turn 20 on Emperor level. This might be caused by a combination of the Raging Barbarians option, the higher difficulty level and Patch4d affecting several unit stats, resulting in gameplay changes. Please post any further gameplay feedback on this!

 

[Vorpal+5]

Something different now ... It seems many diplomacy modifiers are de activated in your mod. For example refusing to give a tech or go to war to help someone don't give -1. Requesting a city don't give a penalty.

About the civs which are iddle, I have a theory: it happens to civ who don't have the PDF technology at start. I also believe that PDF tech should always be given at start by the way, it is mostly penalizing the AI, believe me. The Marines barracks should also not be a requirement, just a xp bonus would be enough imho.

 

[Agent327]

Something different now ... It seems many diplomacy modifiers are de activated in your mod. For example refusing to give a tech or go to war to help someone don't give -1. Requesting a city don't give a penalty.

That's news to me... partly because it's originally NCCSavage's mod (pre-patch MOO2Civ). But definitely something to look into. Thx. (For the short term: enabling Aggressive AI is recommended on the DL Page,* and I always play that way myself.)

About the civs which are iddle, I have a theory: it happens to civ who don't have the PDF technology at start. I also believe that PDF tech should always be given at start by the way, it is mostly penalizing the AI, believe me. The Marines barracks should also not be a requirement, just a xp bonus would be enough imho.

Actually, no civ has PDF tech at start. You just start with one preplaced PDF, but you can't build more until the proper tech is researched and you can build Marine Barracks. (In MOO2 Marine Barracks automatically build Marines on a colonized planet.) This is MOO2 canon, so I'm not really inclined to change it without further argument (or a better idea).

Also, in MOO2, depending on yes or no Pre-Warp or Advanced start, you get either no ships or 1 Colony Ship plus 2 Scouts on start. So the current start position is a bit of a compromise: you can build Probes, but no Scouts or Colony Ships yet. (Something that might be used in a scenario setup...)

*Which reminds me: perhaps I should include a recommended difficulty level, like Monarch?

 

[Vorpal+5]

I don't like when I'm at the head right from the start, this is not motivating me, that's why I play emperor. But here is a suggestion: Kael FFH introduced a great starting options: every 50 turns, the difficulty of the game crank one notch, so I would gladly start at monarch with this option. This would also fix the barbarian Omega Battleships problem.

 

[Agent327]

Not sure how that would fix Omega Battleships appearing around turn 20, but if I understand correctly in Kael's version the difficulty level goes up every 50 turns? Sounds interesting, although I don't know if the average player will appreciate that. My reasoning being that the average player should be able to play MOO2Civ and have fun. More experienced players need a higher difficulty, obviously. My main concern is if the recent patch lowered the overall difficulty level too much, unbalancing gameplay. (You hinted at this.) So I'd really appreciate if more players provided feedback on this.

(My personal impression is that the overall difficulty has been lowered somewhat, which is fine with me, as I got kind of bored playtesting on Warlord level.)

 

[Minor Annoyance]

There's also a "Flexible Difficulty" option in FfH where the difficulty will increase if your in the lead and decrease when you're losing.
There are other recent additions to FfH I thought would be good for MoO2civ, but some of them would require too much signification change to the way some things work to make them useful.

 

[Agent327]

Wow! That sounds like fun. Could you give give me a pointer as to where to find these modifications? (I like FfH a lot, but don't have much time to play it.)

 

[Minor Annoyance]

This post has some code that refers to the flexible difficulty:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7337603&postcount=627
I don't know how much more to it there is so you might want to ask there.

 

[Agent327]

OK, thx - will check it out.

 

[GarretSidzaka]

i hope you had fun today

 

[Agent327]

I did. (Though fun is hard work, I gather...)

 

[Agent327]

Updated post #1.

 

[coreybowman]

does this work with blue marble installed?

 

[Agent327]

I think it would. No Final Frontier mod uses maps that involve Blue Marble, so I don't really see how they would conflict. (There are no Eartlike maps used.) A highly original question, though.

It might not run with Vista or unofficial patches other than Bhruic's, but since I don't have these installed I cannot test it.

 

[Agent327]

Just uploaded: MOO2Civ (Patch4e) FULL INSTALL

Change in Patch4e:

- added Assimilation mod Game Options

you can now choose increasing difficulty level, flexible difficulty level, Barbarian World option, etc.

Download here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=9532

Thanks to Vorpal+5 and Minor Annoyance for their suggestions and ofcourse to Kael, who's also been most helpful with the implementation of the game options.

 

[Agent327]

While Patch4e will allow players to greatly refine their difficulty settings (which should also fix some gameplay issues mentioned earlier) I'm not really sure what to do about the fact that some civs tend to lag to the point that they're not really exploring or expanding. It's almost as if the AI decides: "OK these guys'll be the really stupid ones." I've noticed since day one that there's always 2-3 civs, whose score hardly seems to increase, whereas research alone should raise this. I've grown so accustomed to this, that I've turned to selling them the tech which allows them to build Hydroponic Farms, after which their their score usually starts to keep up with the rest. (I'm not really much of an aggressive player.)

Anyway, with the next patch I hope to address some Leader Trait issues and other stuff left unattended. (Like getting rid of the Human Ascendancy option...) Also, the Barbarian World option now available may be a good starting point for a scenario including an Antaran faction.

More news later.