New Mod: "Bigger, Better Worlds"

[DB_in_Omaha]

Version 2.10 (5/12/04):
- Reduced food production slightly in most terrain types.
- Increased mountain shield production to compensate for inability to build railroads on them.
- Restored ability to mine deserts and tundra.
- Allowed irrigation of hills.
- Changed movement rate for roads back to 1/3.
- Reordered the resource list to minimize the impact of the "more than 32 resources" bug for which I finally found specific documentation.
- Linked more resources to (mostly starting) techs.
- Increased tech rate for each world size slightly, to slow down tech development.
- Decreased optimal number of cities for each world size to discourage large, sprawling empires. (My reason for undoing that change several versions ago was, as it happens, based on a mistaken assumption.)
- Generally decreased corruption levels to allow for more productive colony cities. (More precisely, corruption now scales from 75% at "Chieftain" difficulty level to 110% at "Sid" level.)
- Fixed Marketplaces so they actually provide tax income boost (as they're supposed to) rather than luxury income boost.
- Fixed typo in "Spirit of St. Louis" PediaIcons.txt wonder splash entry.
- Revised Smithy to require iron within city radius.
- Added improvement: Winery.
- Updated Gutenburg's Bible wonder to produce Missionaries.
- Updated Egalitarian Society (Libertarianism SW) to reduce corruption.
- Updated Adventurers' Guild (expansionist SW) to produce Settlers rather than Scouts.
- Updated Enshrined Relic (religious SW) to produce Prophets.
- Updated Great Harbor (seafaring SW) to increase shields and trade, but not food.
- Updated National Breadbasket (agricultural SW) to produce Workers instead of Settlers. (I didn't want it producing units a civilization might not even be able to build otherwise!)
- Added units: APC, Modern Infantry, Prophet.
- Switched Settler and Primitive (now miraculously "Advanced") Settler on the tech tree, so the one which requires fewer population points now requires the extra tech.
- Made Expansionism optional and Literature mandatory.
- Moved TOW Infantry from Spearman upgrade path to Warrior upgrade path, and changed its required tech from Advanced Synthetics to Satellites.
- Reduced Siege Tower's defense and increased its cost. (It wasn't intended to be a city defense unit, but some players have been using it as one!)
- Turned "retain culture on capture" flag off again.
- Tweaked government stats a bit. Monarchy now has low war weariness, while Oligarchy has none; Feudalism uses forced rather than paid labor to hurry production, and has no war weariness; Republics can support four units per metropolis rather than just two.

 

[Gojira54]

For the most part I love these changes - can't wait to DL and play tonight! I like 1/2 roads and the old culture retention, but I can always reset that.

EDIT: I realized after I asked here about Dinos you had answered the question in another thread....

 

[charlesstjr]

Just downloaded it, will check it out later. Wanted to say kudos to you DB_Omaha, your many days of hard work on the mod brings a lot of entertainment to all of us. I want to thank your efforts. I have always liked playing on bigger worlds like this, and I searched forum after forum and could not find anything to suffice. I was not looking for a mod that added tech or units necessarily, but one that just expanded it. Many mods go for a theme, or try to cram as much as they can in a small map, or only are there with PTW in mind. This Mod far exceeds, in my opinion, anything I have seen or tried.

Great job again....

 

[DB_in_Omaha]

The other thing that struck me about endgame is that if you're careful with wonder placement, it's not hard to create a really turbo research-producing city. My capital, with a few of the 100% increased research wonders together with a few of the +1 commerce to each square wonders was producing something around 600 tech a turn. I think it could have been even higher if I'd really tried to max it out. It was pretty crazy.

I took out a few of the "double research" wonders in the 2.00 release, but there may still be a few more than are strictly necessary. Of course, if some of the changes I just made in 2.10 (to food production, etc.) work out as anticipated, it should be harder to grab all of the wonders, anyway.

Now the difficult question... I'd started a game on another mod (which will go nameless in the interests of avoiding competition) waiting for your update. Do I quit that game? Grr... I thought it might take you a few more days. Not that I'm complaining.

You've been playing another mod? Hmm. I could have sworn I had the "Delete All Other Mods" flag set in BBW....

-- Darryl

 

[Leptomeninges]

hehe... downloading now. It may take me a day or two to get into it too far though... My wife has this strange idea that I'm supposed to pay attention to her also

EDIT:
When I try to launch the with dinos version it gives me a crash straight away saying it can't find a "Panda park" text file or something of the sort... Have I done something wrong? I just reinstalled it over the old files in Conquests/Scenarios.

EDIT:
Never mind -- didn't realize there was now a separate download for "With Dinos."

 

[Gdek]

It also borks for me when loading the regular version... missing something about the winery in some such file... sorry should taken a screenie or something.

EDIT: Here's the error -

Missing Entry in "Conquests\Bigger, Better Worlds\text\PediaIcons.txt
ICON_BLDG_Winery

G

 

[Gojira54]

Just got Bacchalia wonder for the first time.

It hurts to have diet coke go flying through sinuses.

Don't ever make me laugh like that again DB! J/K

I am playing the new version just fine so far, love it even more now!

 

[DB_in_Omaha]

Leptomeninges and Gdek: I'm not sure what's causing the problems, but try deleting the older version of the mod and installing from scratch. I've moved certain files around, to allow the main mod and the dino version to be separate downloads, and it may be that by simply installing the new release over the older version, something that shouldn't exist is being left behind and thus messing things up. If installing clean doesn't fix things, well, we'll work from there....

Amesjustin: Technically, I *did* warn you. If you actually read the "acknowledgments" section of the "read me" file, you'll see that I credited the source of the wonder splash.

-- Darryl

 

[Leptomeninges]

One quick suggestion...

(As usual I'm running out the door to work. Hopefully I won't mess up any math this time. )

Take the pottery prerequisite away from the worker ability to irrigate.

I played the beginning of a game last night and the ability to irrigate right off the bat is huge. Without it, my city on grassland maxed out at size 2 (with the despotisim limitations, of course). I say "city" rather than "cities" because you won't be making another with these limitations. I did finally pop a settler from a goody hut. It also (of course) maxed out at two. If you're isolated enough to be unable to trade for pottery/irrigation, you're in a world of hurt.

Anyway, maybe I'll change my mind as I play more. Think of it as a first impression.

Thanks again for all your work. A great mod!

 

[Gdek]

Thanks DB... I did a complete wipe and reinstall, and it seems to work fine now. =)

G'dek

 

[Gojira54]

Take the pottery prerequisite away from the worker ability to irrigate.

I played the beginning of a game last night and the ability to irrigate right off the bat is huge. Without it, my city on grassland maxed out at size 2 (with the despotisim limitations, of course). I say "city" rather than "cities" because you won't be making another with these limitations. I did finally pop a settler from a goody hut. It also (of course) maxed out at two. If you're isolated enough to be unable to trade for pottery/irrigation, you're in a world of hurt.
[\QUOTE]

Well, I kinda like that feature. Realistically you can't expect the very first city in an infant civ to boom right off the bat. They need to start of painfully small and slow.

I usually make Pottery my top priority, then expansionaism, then mining, then Monarchy. Following that tech path helps get your cities up to speed fairly quickly.

 

[Leptomeninges]

I had a quiet morning so I snuck in a few hours of gameplay on my laptop.

More thoughts:

1. On the pottery/irrigation issue. After playing another game, I'm undecided. It definitely changes the early game dynamic. It's a very serious bottleneck and essentially divides the civs into those that start with pottery and those without it. When I start a game now I'm wondering if I'm going to random out a civ that starts with pottery, and if not, how am I going to get it? Trade? Pop it from a hut? Make it my first research? It is a serious issue of concern. On the other hand, this dynamic adds a layer of thought and strategy that is kind of fun.

2. With so many units now that cannot cross mountains/forests/swamps (which is a feature that I definitely like), I routinely make a worker and use him as a scout right off the bat. (For my gameplay style I like to make contact with as many civs as possible as early as possible). Why not add an early explorer-type unit? It would add a bit more flavor. You can give it a similar cost as a worker if you like (without the ability to improve tiles). It would make a bit more sense than using a worker to explore the early world.

3. I like the way you handled mountains. Bottlenecks are fun.

4. I like the prophets. On the other hand, now I'm concerned that using "converting" units like prophets and missionaries together with a right-of-passage agreement may be overpowered. (I know... In my first post I said that they stunk, but I've kind of figured out how to use them subsequently.) By shielding my prophet with a military unit I was able to pick off six workers from one of my neighbors in the very early game. This represented a HUGE boost to my infrastructure in the mid-Ancient Age. The key was the right-of-passage. If you didn't have the military unit shielding him, the prophet wouldn't get far into his territory. But with the right-of-passage and a military unit, you have free reign to pick off every worker that shows his face. The AI has no idea how to handle it.

Anyway -- It's a great mod. I just entered the midevil age as Egypt. Arabia and Babylon are hostile on their side of a huge mountain range, but there's only one passable spot, and it requires roads through a marsh. (Loving the terrain changes!) Unfortunately... I've the "no iron" blues. I've a settler en route in a boat to the only free iron I've discovered, but am afraid Rome will get there first. (Dang boat only moves one square a turn! Could it be any slower? Grrr...)

By the way, I agree that the pic for Bacchanalia is sweet

EDIT:
One other thing I noticed. I "popped" a settler from a hut in the middle of a mountain range. He was stuck. I couldn't road him out. I guess there's no easy way to fix this, but it was kind of a bummer to actually get a settler and then be unable to use him.

EDIT #2:
Yet one more thought... As it stands now, I will NEVER build the slave trade. Happiness is too big an issue in the game and a few extra slaves aren't appealing enough. I'm not sure I'd take it for free right now, let alone actually spending time building it. If it gives you any idea, in my current game, the AI beat me by one turn to a wonder and the only other wonder available for me to dump the production into was the slave trade. I chose to build a library or something instead. What about making it more tempting? Say a 50% production increase in the city that builds it? Just a thoguht.

 

[Lachlan]

The game is very fun ! I play in Regent

 

[DB_in_Omaha]

I routinely make a worker and use him as a scout right off the bat....

Hmm. I hadn't really noticed before, but the way things have developed, workers *have* in a sense become expensive scouts. Scouts have no advantage over workers in terms of movement; they're just cheaper. I'll have to give that some thought.

I'm concerned that using "converting" units like prophets and missionaries together with a right-of-passage agreement may be overpowered....

Another interesting point to ponder.

One other thing I noticed. I "popped" a settler from a hut in the middle of a mountain range. He was stuck.

Fortunately, the odds are against that happening very often.

As it stands now, I will NEVER build the slave trade.... What about making it more tempting? Say a 50% production increase in the city that builds it? Just a thoguht.

And, as usual, a good one.

OK, I now have more items for my next version "to do" list.

-- Darryl

 

[Leptomeninges]

Going away for the weekend (I think it's just one of my wife's plots to keep me from the game) so I'll throw out one or two final thoughts now. Sorry again about rambling so much here in your thread.

On the prophet issue. I tried to repeat my right-of-passage ploy again later in my game and wasn't nearly as successful (I think I only picked up two workers this time and had to trade a tech for the right-of-passage). Had I just fished the pond dry? With the arrival of emissaries were they smarter about keeping the workers away from my prophets? Not sure.

This applies more to my huge game, but you may want to consider toning down pollution a bit. Either reduce the base production or add another city improvement that reduces it (especially in the industrial age). Towards the end of my huge game, the vast majority of each turn just involved moving enormous stacks of workers around to clean pollution. Maybe it's realistic, but it wasn't really that fun. The inability to road mountains actually makes this problem worse as it takes more time to get your workers into position. Maybe your efforts to reduce "superproducing" cities will affect this. I'm not far enough along to say for sure.

I keep thinking that I should list the things I like that you changed in the patch rather than the things I have suggestions about, but suffice it to say that I've noticed many of the small changes you made and like them very much. It's a gread mod and I really liked the patch.

 

[Lachlan]

I have a big problem with disease ...

The first occurence was moderated ...

The second occurence is a big pain
Is bad of bad of bad

I join a save : i'm in stagnation since 50 turn ...

 

[charlesstjr]

As for the Scout issue brought up, that is an advantage of the expansionist civilizations. If you allow everyone to build scouts, then that no longer is an advantage. I, same as Leptomeninges, like to scout out the land as much as possible at the beginning, so that is why I always pick expansionist civs. I think it is more of a game balance issue. Unless you gave the expansionist civ a different scout that might move faster, or something like that.

I also noticed that you raised the techrates in this version. I have only played one game so far (and not done yet), and I think they might be a little to high. However, this is a very initial assesment that might be wrong in later games, maybe it is just the way cards fell in this one. Just though I would throw it out.

Great Mod....

 

[Lachlan]

I suggest to delete disease or to make "more less hurting" .
Je sugère d'enlever l'épidémie ou de la rendre moins blessante .

disease who kill my riflemen

edit : 4 occurences !!! One is sufficient !!!

 

[charlesstjr]

I personally like the disease and the stronger barbarians. The wrath of the game adds a twist that can hurt you. I know the disease is a pain, one game I had 50% (maybe more I do not remember) of my cities diseased, units dieing everywhere. I hated it then, but as a game feature it was cool.

BTW if you are familiar with CivEdit you can go in the scenario options and select no plague (I believe that is what the option is).

 

[Gojira54]

This mod is much better off with the disease settings set the way they are. Yes it can be annoying, but it works both ways. Sometimes it is the only way to crack a mega-civs armor.

Don't change it.