My Mod is out!

[tchristensen]

Have you considered adding metal weapons like FFH?
I don't know how hard that would be but it would make quite a difference in medieval warfare.

What do you mean by metal weapons? My mod certainly has a ton of tin, bronze, copper, iron, and aluminum based weapons, such as the Tin Swordsman, the Highlander, the Knights Templar, and so many others.

I do have a tech line of Armor and may include a tech line specifically for weapons -- each tech giving either a specialized unit of similar type (a special swordsman, axeman, pikeman, etc...) plus an additional specialized Promotion (Long Blades, Fencing Blades, Weighted Hilt, Damascus Steel, etc....).

Cheers

 

[PPQ_Purple]

To explain what I mean.

Fall From Heaven has a set of automatically acquired promotions that effect your unit when you have a certain resource. For example when you have Bronze all your units get a free Bronze Weapons promotion.

Also, each new metal resource (Bronze->Iron->in their case mithril) gives you a new promotion that replaces the old one and gives both a flat bonus to the units base strength and a bonus vs the lesser tier weapon promotions.

So a civilization that has access to Iron will be able to build the same units as one with access only to Bronze, but their units will be clearly superior thanks to the bonuses granted by the Iron Weapons.

 

[tchristensen]

Very cool idea.

 

[tchristensen]

This is a bump to my very first original declaration of my mod. Now on version 3, I keep plugging at it trying to make it faster, more interesting, more engaging, and stronger. Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Baldyr]

Since you ask I might suggest a couple of things. And I'm not being mean or anything by saying his. And I haven't so much as looked at your mod, so take any criticism at face value, please. If you don't think it applies, then don't even consider it. I believe this to be universally good advice in game design, so others reading might take it to heart even if you don't.

Firstly, any mod needs to be balanced. And since you keep adding stuff all of the time (right?) you also need to keep re-balancing everything - all of the time. But I'm under the impression that you have actual play-testers, so this should pretty much take care of itself. But still, the thing your mod might need isn't yet more features, but rather better balancing of the stuff already in it.

And secondly, this might just be a good time to kill your darlings. I'm under the impression that this is a extra-everything sort of deal, and not every addition can possibly be equally good. I'm quite confident that you weight every new addition on a golden scale, but still; Why not try to take out as much as possible for the next version (4?) and see how it looks then? Because if your mod is chock full of good stuff, then it would stand out even more if the best stuff wasn't obscured by the lesser stuff. The average greatness of the remaining features would be higher, so to speak.

So, in conclusion: Try to make the next version the best version yet. By focusing on balance rather than new features, and identifying and getting rid of what really doesn't work. There will of course be much more spectacular additions once you leave the confines of XML modding, so you won't be missing any of the stuff you take out anyway. Chances are that the cheer amount of stuff is just getting in the way. You can definitely have too much stuff. Sometimes, less is more.

Or you could just reason like Stalin did when he won WWII and say: "quantity has a quality in itself" (paraphrased). This proved to be true when it comes to tank production, but does it really apply to mod making?

 

[tchristensen]

All very good points!

I am so afraid that as the mod grows that it does become unbalanced and unwieldy to play, simply because even though I have friends helping me test it there is just too much to test evenly.

At the tail of of ExtremeMod2.X I was going to start a whole new mod because, as you said, some people may not like all the new stuff (like in 3 I introduce so much magic), but I was afraid that with two separate mods that I would dilute my energy into the mods.

I believe this will be the last addition to the mod and my next effort will be in a completely new mod. As you said, sometimes you need to kill the darlings and just put the mod to rest.

There is so much still to learn; XML and Python, modeling, balance, game design, and genre.

I am very confident that Civ IV is the platform to stay at and continue to make new mods -- I tried Civ V and it left a very bad taste in my mouth: I plainly see no reason to mod that version of the game.

Thanks for the continued help and optimism.

Cheers!

 

[Baldyr]

I'm not looking to mod CiV either - I don't even have any plans to check it out. So I guess its you and me then, to the bitter end, eh?

Anyway, you will be able to salvage a lot of stuff from Extreme to your next project! What are your plans going forward, exactly?

 

[tchristensen]

I am really unsure of the direction of my next mod will take. I have some ideas about a fantasy mod, but there seems to be a fair amount of good ones out there covering this topic.

I really enjoy ancient historical perspectives and I am sure it will be pre-industrial age sort of thing.

Right now I need to balance ExtremeMod3 and put it to bed.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Though I'll never get around to it, you might like this idea... I've been thinking that a Sci-Fi VS Fantasy mod might be cool. At a point on the tech chain it splits and civs must make a choice whether they will go down the magic route or the scientific route, but then they come together again in the end and the combination of the two is far more powerful in the long run.

This mod looks great btw... I've downloaded it and plan to have a go.

 

[tchristensen]

Here is an idea that I have not seen yet. It would be more of a single player game, but isn't that basically how most people play anyway ---

But how about a Monster vs. Man mod: Start in the 50s era technology and have monsters from movie history: King Kong, Godzilla, Gidhra, the Thing fighting with the player.

Object of the game is to survive and eventually beat these big giant monsters -- maybe have the monsters spawn until key areas of the map have been conquered.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Sounds like it'd be fun... why could it NOT be MP though?

 

[Baldyr]

I guess my own dream mod would be a fantasy scenario also, based on an obscure Swedish role-playing game. But I don't even thing I will ever get into 3D modeling at that level - or at all - so it will probably just remain a pipe-dream.

Another fun project would be a Apocalypse mod - ending the game with a bang sometime past the 20th century. The catch would, however, be that you won't know in beforehand what kind of end-of-the-Civ-world awaits you. There are meteor strikes, alien invasions, pandemics, super-volcanos, zombie apocalypses and so on. (There could also be a enhanced global warming scenario that may take effect and cause catastrophic climate change, or the possibility of a nuclear winter caused by a enhanced fallout scenario following a global nuclear war.) Each one would have some specific strategy of survival - or merely having an edge in the post-apocalyptic world. Like having bunkers and bomb-shelters will spare you from impact/fallout, and so on. You'd be preparing for some scenario/scenarios - just having to adapt to a completely different scenario!

edit: And lest not forget about Great Cthulhu and "when the stars are right"... Cthulhu Fhtagn!

 

[The_guy]

I'm not looking to mod CiV either - I don't even have any plans to check it out. So I guess its you and me then, to the bitter end, eh?

Oh, no, I'm with you. CiV is not as moddable as cIV in my eyes, and CiV isn't even worth playing (no offence to people thinking it's the Alpha and Omega), since it has deleted a few great thing of cIV like Civics (Policies aren't true replacements) and Unit Categories, making me say: no. However, I am still a beginner, and I don't know if my first modproject is ever to be finished.

...Back to the thread:
I'm downloading the mod at this exact moment.

I've looked through the Civilopedia for a moment, and I'm pretty stunned. (in a good way)
While looking through units as Fey Lightmaster, Fey Skynight, Fighter, Fishing Boats, Flyin Carpet, I was scared by the Fighter and the Fishing Boats to be there. My god.

By the way, the Monster vs Man could do as Magic vs Man as well. That's got to be cool, I guess.

 

[The_J]

This is a bump to my very first original declaration of my mod. Now on version 3, I keep plugging at it trying to make it faster

There are 2 speed mods, one by Sephi and the other by stmartin, which...yeah, i think you can guess it, speed up the game. Both SDK, but they have precompiled 3.19 .dlls, so if you don't have your own, than you can just drop one of them in.

 

[Baldyr]

There are 2 speed mods, one by Sephi and the other by stmartin, which...yeah, i think you can guess it, speed up the game. Both SDK, but they have precompiled 3.19 .dlls, so if you don't have your own, than you can just drop one of them in.

The obvious question is of course if there is SDK source code available that incorporates both these speed enhancing mods? Because that would pretty much have to be the template for any future SDK mod, not?

 

[The_J]

I'm not aware of a merge .
I guess someone said something about some incompatibility in Sephis thread, but i might not remember that correctly.

 

[tchristensen]

Sounds like it'd be fun... why could it NOT be MP though?

Now that I think about it, you could play as teams or as a cut-throat game to see who could win first (and maybe even do some warfare between the players).

Wow, this does sound interesting.

 

[bhinso]

I've been playing this mod and I'm a bit confused in that when attacking an AI city I often find their defences at 130%, and i cannot reduce this with any form of bombardment making the cities almost impossible to capture. The AI can happily bombard my cities down! Is there some obscure tech branch/building i'm missing (there are a lot) or is this a bug?

 

[tchristensen]

I've been playing this mod and I'm a bit confused in that when attacking an AI city I often find their defences at 130%, and i cannot reduce this with any form of bombardment making the cities almost impossible to capture. The AI can happily bombard my cities down! Is there some obscure tech branch/building i'm missing (there are a lot) or is this a bug?

It has been so long since I played around with this mod that I do not have an immediate answer for you. I would think there should be a way to lower the defenses of the city -- certainly there are some techs and buildings that do add up to 130% but sappers, catapults, and rams should be able to knock the defenses down.

Can you verify that this happens more than on a single game? Make sure that its not just one game's hiccup. I will need to look into this further.

Thanks for playing the mod. As I said, it has been a very long time since I actually loaded it up and played around with it.

Cheers

 

[bhinso]

I will let you know when i get round to playing my next game on it, this might be a while as I'll carry on with my current game for now, but ill quit if it gets too ridiculous. Every time I bombard the cities I get a green message saying "Your bombardment has reduced the defenses to 130%"