Orions Mod Collection

[Jennvare]

Hey Orion,

Just curious on what your progress is. I'm hoping you've been able to find this bug and not have to start all over again.

Either way, I hope you don't give up on it. Hope ya pull all this together soon and to your satisfaction.

Good Luck!

 

[OrionVeteran]

Hey Orion,

Just curious on what your progress is. I'm hoping you've been able to find this bug and not have to start all over again.

Either way, I hope you don't give up on it. Hope ya pull all this together soon and to your satisfaction.

Good Luck!

I have much to report. Over the holidays I was able to run the mod on an extremely powerful core i7 laptop, with 8 cores and 16 GB of RAM. The historian and I found numerous bugs. It was a laundry list. We also made a lot of enhancements and tweaks. The computer was so powerful, it found bugs in some of my older mods that I had long thought were bullet proof! It was a very humbling experience.

Fixes were made to the following mods: Mine Warfare, Terraforming, Combined Forces, Wonder Events, Agriculture, Great Person mod, the Diplomat, Immigration, Siege Tower Mod, The Water Well, Water Animals, The Volcano Mod, Tech by Conquest, Pirate events, Trait Events, and Standard Functions.

Because of remaining python issues, Tech by Conquest will be migrated over to the SDK. Additionally, there were several SDK changes that had to be made to resolve a few minor issues. Lastly, countless XML changes were made to improve game play and fix some obvious problems. There were just too many XML changes to list.

One cool enhancement was made to the Agriculture mod. You will be able to plant Apples, Bananas, Lemmons, Olives, Oranges and a Vineyard, which is in addition to what we have now: Corn Wheat and Rice. I'm also going to allow breeding of farm animals: Pigs, Sheep and cattle. These changes will definitely change the dynamic of the game, as will many other changes that will go unmentioned for now.

With most of the fixes in place, we wanted to push the game and the mod to it's limits. So, we ran task manager to monitor RAM usage while playing a game on a huge map. The game required over 4.2 GB of RAM just to run the mod in the late game. Wow! Based upon that fact alone, I recommend a Windows 7 Pro PC 64 bit system, with a minimum of 6GB RAM, utilizing an X86 load for Civ 4. That means I need to buy a new PC, as it is near obsolete having an old dual core, with only 4 GB of RAM. Yet my work on the mod will continue. I have two big issues to resolve. First, the migration of Tech by conquest to the SDK. Second, track down and fix what appears to be an intermittent bug. Little did I know that bug fixing would still be going on after nearly 3 months.

Bottom line is: OGI has come far since before the holidays and I am going to take my time and fix the remaining issues so that I am confident it will be ready for release.

 

[stolenrays]

Hey Orion. Take a look at my commerce by conquest mod. It is buggy, but includes tech by conquest via the dll. In addition, I have halfway finished a wonder alert sdk mod for capturing/losing. Maybe the code may be useful to you.

 

[OrionVeteran]

Hey Orion. Take a look at my commerce by conquest mod. It is buggy, but includes tech by conquest via the dll. In addition, I have halfway finished a wonder alert sdk mod for capturing/losing. Maybe the code may be useful to you.

Will do thanks.

 

[Roamty]

in CyGlobalContextInterface4.CPP a small fix type error


.def("getNumCorporationInfos", &CyGlobalContext::getNumCorporationInfos, "() - Total Religion Infos XML\\GameInfo\\CIV4CorporationInfos.xml")


.def("getNumCorporationInfos", &CyGlobalContext::getNumCorporationInfos, "() - Total Corporation Infos XML\\GameInfo\\CIV4CorporationInfos.xml")



Fixes were made to the following mods: Mine Warfare, Terraforming, Combined Forces, Wonder Events, Agriculture, Great Person mod, the Diplomat, Immigration, Siege Tower Mod, The Water Well, Water Animals, The Volcano Mod, Tech by Conquest, Pirate events, Trait Events, and Standard Functions.


If its not to much to ask can you make a small mod with the Water Animals fixes you made in sdk because I love having water animals in my mod. Thankyou for your hard work. The best and Happy Newyear

 

[OrionVeteran]

in CyGlobalContextInterface4.CPP a small fix type error


.def("getNumCorporationInfos", &CyGlobalContext::getNumCorporationInfos, "() - Total Religion Infos XML\\GameInfo\\CIV4CorporationInfos.xml")


.def("getNumCorporationInfos", &CyGlobalContext::getNumCorporationInfos, "() - Total Corporation Infos XML\\GameInfo\\CIV4CorporationInfos.xml")



Fixes were made to the following mods: Mine Warfare, Terraforming, Combined Forces, Wonder Events, Agriculture, Great Person mod, the Diplomat, Immigration, Siege Tower Mod, The Water Well, Water Animals, The Volcano Mod, Tech by Conquest, Pirate events, Trait Events, and Standard Functions.


If its not to much to ask can you make a small mod with the Water Animals fixes you made in sdk because I love having water animals in my mod. Thankyou for your hard work. The best and Happy Newyear

For water animals it really wasn't a fix, but rather I disabled/removed the python test function: def onMouseEvent(self, argsList): in the WaterAnimalsEvents.py file. Thanks for the update.

 

[Jennvare]

One cool enhancement was made to the Agriculture mod. You will be able to plant Apples, Bananas, Lemmons, Olives, Oranges and a Vineyard, which is in addition to what we have now: Corn Wheat and Rice. I'm also going to allow breeding of farm animals: Pigs, Sheep and cattle. These changes will definitely change the dynamic of the game, as will many other changes that will go unmentioned for now.

I remember a long time ago in this thread, I had asked about these resources replacing others that you could not see until a certain tech. There are some resources (titanium, I think) that you have to be fairly advanced to be able to see them on the map. I had remarked if planting/breeding new resources would overwrite those that naturally exist in the game.

I know this maybe a poor example, but I'm not too up to date on late age techs and resources.
An example would be planting a wheat crop before you are able to see the "Iron" resources before you research Iron working. If I planted this wheat crop in a square where Iron would appear, would the Iron be overwritten and disappear for good?

Nothing about the tile would indicate a special resource is there prior to discovering the pre-requisite tech. So there is now way for to know if Iron is on that tile before "Iron Working".

I realize this maybe re-hashing an old issue, but if you are adding more buildable resources, it maybe worth considering again. I would hate to have to hold back on using some of these buildable resources for fear of eliminating a resource that can change the course of the game. It would be especially important for the AI's as well.

Perhaps a land icon showing something unusual, but not yet identifiable. Or, perhaps you could have it that if a late game resource is on a tile that someone plants a resource on, the resource overwrites the planted resource. Per the example, if I planted the wheat source on a tile that would have iron it, the iron resource would appear and overwrite the wheat resource once I got Iron Working. This way, I could use these features and not lose out on a resource I could not see at all prior to the tech pre-req.

Just some thoughts to consider (assuming of course that it is even possible)!

Keep up the good work!

It's also hard to know for sure since it's been months since I last played OGI and could never get to the late game due to the processing overload at the time.

 

[OrionVeteran]

I remember a long time ago in this thread, I had asked about these resources replacing others that you could not see until a certain tech. There are some resources (titanium, I think) that you have to be fairly advanced to be able to see them on the map. I had remarked if planting/breeding new resources would overwrite those that naturally exist in the game.

I know this maybe a poor example, but I'm not too up to date on late age techs and resources.
An example would be planting a wheat crop before you are able to see the "Iron" resources before you research Iron working. If I planted this wheat crop in a square where Iron would appear, would the Iron be overwritten and disappear for good?

Nothing about the tile would indicate a special resource is there prior to discovering the pre-requisite tech. So there is now way for to know if Iron is on that tile before "Iron Working".

I realize this maybe re-hashing an old issue, but if you are adding more buildable resources, it maybe worth considering again. I would hate to have to hold back on using some of these buildable resources for fear of eliminating a resource that can change the course of the game. It would be especially important for the AI's as well.

Perhaps a land icon showing something unusual, but not yet identifiable. Or, perhaps you could have it that if a late game resource is on a tile that someone plants a resource on, the resource overwrites the planted resource. Per the example, if I planted the wheat source on a tile that would have iron it, the iron resource would appear and overwrite the wheat resource once I got Iron Working. This way, I could use these features and not lose out on a resource I could not see at all prior to the tech pre-req.

Just some thoughts to consider (assuming of course that it is even possible)!

Keep up the good work!

It's also hard to know for sure since it's been months since I last played OGI and could never get to the late game due to the processing overload at the time.

OGI has been completely rewritten and when I release the mod it will reach the late game and finish without error. I am meticulously weeding out the few remaining errors one by one.

As for the planting of crops and the breeding of animal resources, there is no way to store what resource was on a plot prior to placing a new one on the plot. It is a risk to plant crops or breed animals, when the possibility exists for replacing a late game resource. The questions remains: Are you willing to take that risk?

 

[Jennvare]

As for the planting of crops and the breeding of animal resources, there is no way to store what resource was on a plot prior to placing a new one on the plot. It is a risk to plant crops or breed animals, when the possibility exists for replacing a late game resource. The questions remains: Are you willing to take that risk?

How about a possible work-around then for the late era resources that are hidden. In the Overlord Mod made by Keldath, he had a great person called the "Geologist" who could build a national wonder that provided a certain resource. He also had regular non-wonder buildings that created great people points. This setup helped alot with civs that did not have a metal resource early in the game (iron) or other essential resources.

Perhaps something like this for any or all startegic resources? Allow a great person of somekind to allow you to build a national wonder that grants a resource? It helped when I was lacking "oil" at one point when it came time for modern units. It also helps the AI's when they dont have any metal deposits early on. It also requires you to have the pre-requisite tech to build the national wonder (ie .. Iron Working to see Iron --> build Iron mine as a national wonder).

As it stands with your reply, I would sparingly use the planting/breeding until I researched all the techs and all the resources are revealed.

Just trying to give ya some more ideas and hopefully find a middle ground between "planter beware" and "plant like crazy"

 

[OrionVeteran]

How about a possible work-around then for the late era resources that are hidden. In the Overlord Mod made by Keldath, he had a great person called the "Geologist" who could build a national wonder that provided a certain resource. He also had regular non-wonder buildings that created great people points. This setup helped alot with civs that did not have a metal resource early in the game (iron) or other essential resources.

Perhaps something like this for any or all startegic resources? Allow a great person of somekind to allow you to build a national wonder that grants a resource? It helped when I was lacking "oil" at one point when it came time for modern units. It also helps the AI's when they dont have any metal deposits early on. It also requires you to have the pre-requisite tech to build the national wonder (ie .. Iron Working to see Iron --> build Iron mine as a national wonder).

As it stands with your reply, I would sparingly use the planting/breeding until I researched all the techs and all the resources are revealed.

Just trying to give ya some more ideas and hopefully find a middle ground between "planter beware" and "plant like crazy"

I will relook at the issue again with the historian. My initial thought is that using a great person to provide a city with a resource you already have, would not be a wise move, because they could be used for much better purposes. It is logical to have workers perform the task of planting and breeding. More on this later.

 

[OrionVeteran]

Planting crops and breeding animals occurs on flat land plots. The only stategic/mineral resources that could be dispursed on flat land are the following: Copper, Iron, Oil, Platinum, Rubber, Titanium and Uranium. With the exception of oil, each of these resources can be found on hills and peaks. So there is some risk of loosing a strategic resource, when planting crops or breeding animals.

The ruthless historian says he would love to play a someone who sparingly plants crops or breeds animals, as he will take full advantage of the capability and grow his empire to have double or tripple the number of cities as compared to his conservative advarsary. He would likely win the game in the middle ages. He said, "Welcome to the agriculture race, where there are risks and rewards."

With the new changes in plot values, the game becomes very interesting. Hills are worth 2 hammers, mountains are worth 3 hammers. You can have a flood plain on grassland and plains in addition to desert. When combined with plains, a mountain provides 4 hammers. When combined with flood plains, grassland provides 4 food. Perfect Balance!

 

[Jennvare]

The ruthless historian says he would love to play a someone who sparingly plants crops or breeds animals, as he will take full advantage of the capability and grow his empire to have double or tripple the number of cities as compared to his conservative advarsary. He would likely win the game in the middle ages. He said, "Welcome to the agriculture race, where there are risks and rewards."

LOL! Given that I am an empire builder and mostly defensive even against the AI's, I would imagine your historian would crush me well even without the added features. I dont get to play many MP games due to poor internet connection, most MPs are small maps, and no one likes playing a long game in MP most times. So give credit to your historian. He is probably right in his judgment.

When your mod is finished and I have had a chance to play a game through with all your features, I will try the "plant like crazy" strategy once and my "sparingly" strategy and see how the games evolve. I normally save a game at turn 1 and save my progess as a different save. This way, I can try both strategies from the same starting point. Not really conclusive since the AI isnt the same all the time, but fair enough for me!

Hopefully you get this out soon so I can give more feed back about this issue and anything else I find. Keep up the good work!

 

[OrionVeteran]

LOL! Given that I am an empire builder and mostly defensive even against the AI's, I would imagine your historian would crush me well even without the added features. I dont get to play many MP games due to poor internet connection, most MPs are small maps, and no one likes playing a long game in MP most times. So give credit to your historian. He is probably right in his judgment.

When your mod is finished and I have had a chance to play a game through with all your features, I will try the "plant like crazy" strategy once and my "sparingly" strategy and see how the games evolve. I normally save a game at turn 1 and save my progess as a different save. This way, I can try both strategies from the same starting point. Not really conclusive since the AI isnt the same all the time, but fair enough for me!

Hopefully you get this out soon so I can give more feed back about this issue and anything else I find. Keep up the good work!

I have migrated the "Tech By Conquest" mod to the SDK and eliminated the python issue. That's one more bug squashed.

 

[stolenrays]

Cool, can't wait.

 

[Jennvare]

Giving this a bump in hopes of another update!
Hope the work is still progressing nicely!

 

[OrionVeteran]

Giving this a bump in hopes of another update!
Hope the work is still progressing nicely!

I discovered and fixed a rare Mine Warfare bug. A small SDK check has eliminated that problem and it has never returned. All stuck in loop errors are gone. Ran into a couple of BUG 4.4 errors and after searching the forums for fixes, those bugs have been resolved.

I discovered and eliminated a major problem with Route Bombing. For some reason the SDK for "Route bombing" just failed to work right and I had no choice but to remove it. This allowed a standard map game that always had a CTD at a specific turn to proceed and finish. I then played a game with a huge map and it has reached the end game super techs, but still had a few glitches along the way. Restarting from the last save allowed the game to continue each time. I suspect the huge memory demand on my old PC trying to account for all those units on a huge map, is the likely cause for the remaining issues. Remember, I didn't run into these memory issues on a standard map size.

There have been a few additions and changes:

The Great Castle: World Wonder

The Circus Maximus: World Wonder

The Blacksmith's Workshop: World Wonder

The Apiary: National Wonder

The Salt Water Crocodile (Water Animal) has a chance that it will attack a unit on a land plot! It doesn't happen too often, but it's a surprise when it attacks.

I had to create a couple of wonder movies.

The expansion of the agriculture mod is working very nicely. Likewise, the breeding of farm animals. There have been a few XML tweeks made.

I had to fix the Mysteries (National Wonders). You can now produce one mystery per age and each age will provide you with one trait to select from those traits you don't have. That's 7 traits + the 2 traits you started the game with, for a total of 9 traits. Imagine 9 traits! No other game mod comes close to this concept and it works perfectly now.

I will continue to test out a few more games before release. As it stands right now, OGI 3.0 is quickly approaching my performance and reliability expectations for release. Finally!

 

[OrionVeteran]

Good news. I have found a good graphic for a swarm of hornets! It works and the effects and sounds are very good. The animals, insects and storms in OGI 3.0 are rich in variety. I have one more graphic to find for the Apiary and the mod should be complete and ready for release.

 

[OrionVeteran]

Orion’s Grand Inquisition Mod version 3.0

Announcing the definitive mod for Civilization 4 Beyond the Sword (BTS 3.19): Orion’s Grand Inquisition Mod version 3.0. OGI 3.0 is the result of another year of difficult programming in SDK, Python and XML. See the first page for the download link and get it today.

 

[Jennvare]

Morning, Orion,

I am about 350 turns into my first game of this. Here is what I noticed so far.

Unhappiness Icon on city square - In civ4, if you had an unhappy citizen, you would see a red face appear on the city square on the main map. This was your alert for unhappy citizens. In your mod, the "Great General" icon shows up. Not sure if this was intentional.

Unhealthiness Icon on city square - The same as above, you would get a green face for unhealthiness. Instead, you get the red face.

Agricultural trait - I started playing my game a Cyrus of Persia. When I was about to complete the Ancient Mysteries wonder, I looked through all the traits to see what I could get. I saw agricultural and it said +1 food for any tile that produces 1 food. I thought this might be a typo. Usually its +1 per 3 or +1 per 4 food. Since I had alot of Flood plains, I chose it anyway. It seems it really does add +1 food per tile that produces 1 food. Not sure if this was intentional or not.

Financial Trait - The same scenario as listed above for Agriculture.

Concerning these two traits and it's effect on my game: Since all Civs have the chance to take this traits, it is not so bad. However, in my game, I have built the first 4 era mysteries. None of my AI adversaries are even close to competitive in this game. I'm building Riflemen right now while most of my competition is building longbowmen and macemen (or similar units). I may have just gotten extremely lucky. I'll know when I play more games.

OGI Smartmap - Is this the only map script this mod will work on? I noticed in the download section, you say "When you start a new game, use this map script". Is this a one time thing or is this the only script we can use?

Game settings - In my game described above - Im playing Warlord Diffculty, Raging Barbarians, No Tech Brokering, Large Map, Epic Speed, OGI Mapscript, starting with 10 AI civs. Based on my first game, I will bump up the diffculty accordingly and see how it goes. What settings do you recommend for competitive gameplay against the AI's?

Will provide more feed back as I finish this game and start the next.

 

[OrionVeteran]

Morning, Orion,

I am about 350 turns into my first game of this. Here is what I noticed so far.

First, Let me thank you for testing out the mod so quickly after release.

Unhappiness Icon on city square - In civ4, if you had an unhappy citizen, you would see a red face appear on the city square on the main map. This was your alert for unhappy citizens. In your mod, the "Great General" icon shows up. Not sure if this was intentional.

I never noticed that graphics issue. It is obviously something out of place in the GameFont.tga and GameFont_75.tga files. I'll have to work on this one.

Unhealthiness Icon on city square - The same as above, you would get a green face for unhealthiness. Instead, you get the red face.

Same thing. Its got to be an issue with the *.tga files. If I can fix them, it will solve both issues.

Agricultural trait - I started playing my game a Cyrus of Persia. When I was about to complete the Ancient Mysteries wonder, I looked through all the traits to see what I could get. I saw agricultural and it said +1 food for any tile that produces 1 food. I thought this might be a typo. Usually its +1 per 3 or +1 per 4 food. Since I had alot of Flood plains, I chose it anyway. It seems it really does add +1 food per tile that produces 1 food. Not sure if this was intentional or not.

+1 food for any tile that produces 1 food was intentional. Our goal was to make the Agricultural trait an attractive choice.

Financial Trait - The same scenario as listed above for Agriculture.

Same answer.

Concerning these two traits and it's effect on my game: Since all Civs have the chance to take this traits, it is not so bad. However, in my game, I have built the first 4 era mysteries. None of my AI adversaries are even close to competitive in this game. I'm building Riflemen right now while most of my competition is building longbowmen and macemen (or similar units). I may have just gotten extremely lucky. I'll know when I play more games.

You have wisely built up your empire and are obviously ready for greater challenges. Therefore, bump up the difficulty setting to play "Noble". In Noble, the AI produces everything at the same rate, as human players. Its an even game.

OGI Smartmap - Is this the only map script this mod will work on? I noticed in the download section, you say "When you start a new game, use this map script". Is this a one time thing or is this the only script we can use?

Yes. You must use OGI Smartmap because of the script changes for the distribution of the Marsh terrain and the distribution of the swamp and scrub features. Without, the script, the game may crash when it builds the map.

Game settings - In my game described above - Im playing Warlord Diffculty, Raging Barbarians, No Tech Brokering, Large Map, Epic Speed, OGI Mapscript, starting with 10 AI civs. Based on my first game, I will bump up the diffculty accordingly and see how it goes. What settings do you recommend for competitive gameplay against the AI's?

The Warlord setting definitely has very weak AI players. Again, you have wisely built up your empire and are obviously ready for greater challenges. Therefore, bump up the difficulty setting to play "Noble". In Noble, the AI produces everything at the same rate, as human players. Its an even game. Secondly, turn on Tech Brokering. This allows the AI to trade techs amongst themselves and they should advance up the tech ladder much quicker.

Will provide more feed back as I finish this game and start the next.

Looking forward to it. Anything you find that is unusual or doesn't work right, let me know.