playtest feedback

[arkham4269]

Re: Forts. Given that there had been a military crisis pre-scourge, it's not unreasonable that there might be a few still left around. Perhaps the ability to build forts could be lost, but there could be a couple of unmanned forts sprinkled into the map creation script.

That would depend on where this is being played. I always felt that this mod is better played on a 'small' map in that regardless of the scale, the map represents a small portion of the world since the scale of the mod doesn't transition well if distances get too large. So even if you are playing a huge map, the actual playing area might only be something like the size of Texas perhaps.

You are totally right, though, if one was playing in a Europe map, the place would be littered with forts and they'd be the ideal place to go. Perhaps there might be a "European" scenario where the map would have forts already on the map.

That being said, one could steal the code from Fall From Heaven where forts automatically upgrade over time to show that the garrison isn't just sitting on their hands but also improving their fort over time.

Going back to the map size, again this brings up the issues with gas since if you were to play a Pacific Northwest map (Say Vancouver B.C. down to about the CA border over to Idaho), you'd get a lot terrain, lots of potential things like volcanic events, and even the odd military installation...but no oil in the ground so it would be a race to get bio-diesel or grow enough corn for ethanol.

 

[davidlallen]

Regarding forts, most of the ruined objects in the game really represent forts. Depots and airbases in particular. Silos, maybe. Munitions resources could represent a really big gun supermarket (half smiley). It is true that there are no "solitary" forts in the mapscript today, and also you never get defensive bonuses from the ruined objects specifically. All ruins get +25% defense but nothing "more" from a fort. Putting in solitary forts is a reasonable idea. Maybe there is a monster hidden inside though

Regarding scale, it's an imaginary world. But, it is important to be one continent, with no convenient travel in from off-continent. I usually play 5 or 7 player games, and it's easy to imagine this as "all of Australia". For an 11 player game, it's a little harder to imagine this is only one of several continents on a reasonable size world. I don't worry about it too much.

 

[MrFred]

Regarding player built forts that spread safety, how about settlers not being available from the start? I would have expected people to want to stick together at the begining.
That would give culture-forts a use as a player could use them to lay claim to an area and resources, then lateron they could build a city there.
Settlers should be available quite early though.

might be changing too much though

 

[Refar]

Hmmm... Settlers not available from the beginning has some appeal.
However players with bad terrain in the capital would be seriously screwed here.

 

[demon59]

We have a "jeep crossbow" unit art already done, but I removed it because the "jeep rifle" came up so soon. Maybe removing it was the wrong solution.

First let me say that I really enjoy this mod! Thanks for all the time invested by everyone involved.

I personally never bother building jeep units. As noted elsewhere, they should have been long obsolete by the apocolypse, they provide too little protection to rate the strength levels they have, and fuel free utes promote up quickly enough to provide a cheaper, more useful, unit.
I would suggest replacing the entire jeep line with somewhat enhanced utes (without the fuel-free promotion). Return the survivor biker. If you asked, I imagine you would find it was not popular because it was a ridiculously gimped unit. (Seriously now, horse mounted lancers twice as powerful as survivor bikers? ) Initial bikers should be crossbow armed, with a strength of at least 8-10. Perhaps munitions would allow a Light Machine Gun biker, with a strength of 10-12. Bikes would fit much better with the "scavaging fuel" class than even small trucks would, and enclosed cab trucks would be much more believable in the strength range now occupied by the jeep units.

Once again, great mod! Keep up the good work.

BTW, Google "Ural Motorcycles" to find some good side-hack images and videos, commercial and military.

 

[davidlallen]

Thanks for the feedback. There is certainly a challenge to have a variety of unit graphics as well as a variety of unit roles. I have tried to make sure that no two units have the same role.

I would suggest replacing the entire jeep line with somewhat enhanced utes (without the fuel-free promotion).

The role of the jeep line *is* enhanced ute which uses fuel. Is your comment about the unit graphics? The ute has strength 10, the jeep has strength 14, the humvee has strength 20. Previously the ute had strength 8. I agree we need to find a way to increase the differentiation between ute and jeep. Here are some possibilities.

I could put the ute back to strength 8. I could increase the strength of the jeep to 16, and maybe increase the humvee to 22. I could remove the garage. This last is not obvious, but the reason the ute out-performs the jeep is due to the weapon mount promotion +50%, which requires level 2. With both barracks and garage, vehicles are level 2 from the start. If I remove the garage, you will have to risk the ute to get it up to level 2 in combat.

I'm not sure which is the best solution, or maybe you have some other solution. What do you think?

Return the survivor biker. If you asked, I imagine you would find it was not popular because it was a ridiculously gimped unit. Initial bikers should be crossbow armed, with a strength of at least 8-10.

The initial ute is crossbow-armed, with a strength of 10 (was 8). I do not want two units with the same role. The main role for the punk biker is a raider. I hope you have experienced the pain of losing workers or gas trucks to punk bikers, until you learn to defend *everything* against raids. I was not able to find a unique role for the player biker; so I removed it. If I increase the strength it overlaps with the ute. Adding a higher strength biker, say with machine gun, again mostly overlaps the ute.

Is there a different role that the biker could play? I have a few ideas for civ-specific unique units which would be available to leaders with a biker background. For example, a "Hell's Angel" unit which starts with the off-road promotion. Or one that has the City Raider promo line available.

 

[davidlallen]

Regarding "lack of safety" for outlying villages and farms, countjackula has recently suggested that maybe animals should be allowed to pillage these improvements, only. [...] I could add an "override", maybe, which says if the animal is next to a pillageable improvement, it pillages, otherwise let the regular AI move it.

I have done that locally for 0.9, and it seems to add a lot. Mutant animals (not horses or wolves) are slightly magnetized to head towards villages, farms and pastures, and pillage them once they arrive. This makes it a lot more worrisome when an animal appears on the border. Since I made the change a little while back that animals could not capture cities, sometimes I would ignore an animal on my border as long as there were no workers around. Now I have to make sure to keep enough units back to patrol and hit them. Good suggestion!

 

[Refar]

^^ Sounds like a good change.

-----

I have been thinking a lot about the problematic of units filling the same role in the same/narrow timeframe - most notable Crossbow Survivor and Guardian, but also Jeep / UTE

Basicly why would survivors use XBows in the first place ?
Completely forgetting how firearms operate is unlikely - a AK47 is exceptionally simple (I think a good modern sport/hunter XBow might be even more complicated to make), can be built from a pile of rubbish and clearly superior to a crossbow.
So the problem must be limited amunitions - you can easily make/recycle Crossbow Bolts in nearly unlimited numbers, while making proper firearms amunition might be difficult in sufficient amount.

To "motivate" the player using XBows, while firearms are potentially available, this limitation needs to show somehow.

One possibility would be to extend the refueling concept to supplys (maybe not as separate concept - you would refuel/resupply by the same action/truck). There are however limitations in the AI and increased Micromanagement on this path.
I do not like this idea a lot.

I have another - somewhat vague yet idea of a possible solution, that seem to be in line with the setting and implent-able.

Basicly we would split units in two categories. Let me call them "Regulars" and "Elites" for now.

Regulats would be freely available to build in any numbers the player want (given needed tech/ressource).

Elites would fill similar roles as Regulars, but they availability would be limited. A simple (XML) and AI friendly approach to the limitation would be making them national units - like missionaries - so they number would be limited. (Another, probably cooler, but also harder to implement possibility would be via qunatitative ressources - you can only have so many Firearms per owned Ammunitions Ressource.)

So for example:

A XBow survivor would be a regular, while the Guardian the matching Elite version. You could have as many XBow as you want, but only 4 Superior Guardians empirewide.

This would make XBows needed and usefull as Backbone of the defensive Army, while Guardians could be used to protect particualry important positions or hotspots.


Same mechanic could be allpied to UTE / Jeeps and probably extended to other, new units later. And a limitation in numbers might be also a good think concerning AI and Gas using units - preventing the AI from Building too many jeeps.

 

[davidlallen]

I have been thinking a lot about the problematic of units filling the same role in the same/narrow timeframe - most notable Crossbow Survivor and Guardian, but also Jeep / UTE [...] To "motivate" the player using XBows, while firearms are potentially available, this limitation needs to show somehow.

There is a long thread about "quantifiable resources" where this was discussed a few months back. One difficulty with a limit like "one unit per munitions resource" is that you may have a number of units in your build queue in different cities when you run over the resource, and "some" of them need to be canceled. It can get a little complicated.

One possibility is adding a building, "Small Arms Factory" or "Ammunition Factory", which is enabled by Small Arms. This would be a prerequisite building for jeep rifle and guardian; only cities with this building could build these units. That adds one "delay" to the construction of these units, and makes it less likely that small/newly captured cities will build them.

I can easily make this change and try it out; do you think it is the right idea?

 

[Refar]

I would rather try the "national unit" thingie to indroduce a real cap.
Because the prerequisite building does not cap to the number of those units - and most of the time established older cities are on Army Duty anyway.
Also i am not sure how the AI will react here - we seen on different occasions, that it is a bit hard to direct the AI's priorities in Building stuff.

But as i said - it is only a vague idea for now, so i am not really sure what approach will be the best.

 

[Avahz Darkwood]

I say lets give the national units a try in .09. If it don't work then lets do the buildings in the next version. I wouldn't set the national unit level too low though. Maybe about 5 would be good enough to cover important cities and resources on a standard size map. I would have to say that mid game isn't giving me that "feel" of a world crawling back from the brink. On that same note I would limit tanks, nukes, and gunships for those same reasons. As the game progresses let the units built in cities loose the limits placed on them via additional techs. (easiest way to do that would to have a duplicate unit that would obsolete the limited ones. Those dublicate units would have the limit removed in their xml section)

 

[davidlallen]

The thing I don't like about the national limit is that the limit is the same, for a tiny civ just starting out and a big civ about to take over the whole huge size map. Introducing a late game tech to remove the limit doesn't seem like the right approach, since usually a unit which was popular in the midgame should be obsolete by the late game. For example, SAM infantry and antitank should effectively obsolete the guardian, and the humvee should obsolete the jeep rifle.

I have just added an Ammo Factory and started a local playtest. In the next few days I can also autoplay some to make sure the AI will build them.

The rebuilt improvements like depot, airbase do have a built-in limit as of 0.6 and later; each one will only generate about 4-6 units, then slow to half production rate until about 8-10 units, and then stop.

What else should I think about adding to give more of a feel of crawling back from the brink in the midgame?

 

[Refar]

In my "vision" the Humvee (obsoleting Jeep) and the MG (maybe obsoleting Guardian) would become the elite couterparts to other - not yet present - regular units.

Sam and Antitank, being very specialized units, should be dedicated units built in small numbers to counter Tanks/Gunships - i dont really like them replacing the guardians in tha late game. They would be elites without regular counterpart.

You are right about the National Unit limit beeing too rigid - i had thought of this as well. Maybe it is possible to make it scale somehow.

But since you already have the Ammo Factory, let try it first and look how it plays out.

The limits on Depot units seem nice as they are.

 

[mooguy]

I have to say, from reading all of this I got really excited when I was downloading .08. Once I started playing it, it was just like a regular game of Civ. No new units, tech tree, and the map didn't even look like a desert. So I deleted the folder and re-downloaded it along with the head art. So, I started the mod up and went to play now and the correct map didn't even show up. So now a few questions;

~ In the sub folders inside of the mod folder (assets, ect.) do I put said folders into the BtS folders? (<.../fury road/Public Maps> go to <...Beyond the Sword/Public Maps>)

~ If so, does the Fury Road Assets go to <...BtS/CustomAssets>?

~ Oh, and where exactly do I put the leader head folder? I know it goes into Fury Road but does it go any further?

 

[Refar]

As with any mod, you need to load it, in order to play it.

I suppose it could work from custom assets (but you will need to change the folder structure to fit).

Usually Mods are placed in the Mod folder. Then you need to activate it from the Civilization4.ini (Mod=...) or from the game menu - Advanced->mod

 

[Jabie]

The rebuilt improvements like depot, airbase do have a built-in limit as of 0.6 and later; each one will only generate about 4-6 units, then slow to half production rate until about 8-10 units, and then stop.

You could use the Fibbonacci series as a determinant on how fast things grow. If you give each depot a value of 1, then keep a running sum of how many depots a player has.

Each time this passes the next number in the Fibbonacci series, generate a unit, reset the count and target to the next value in the Fibbonacci Series. Thus your first few tanks come on line pretty fast, but as you use up resources it gets harder and harder to get the parts.

(Point of Reference: Fibbonaaci Series. x(n) = X(n-1) + X(n-2) or, in simple terms, add the last two numbers together to get the next number in the sequence. E.g. 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89,....)

Example: An player has three depots, hence generates 3 points towards Armour each turn. If their last target number was 13, their next target is 21 or 7 turns away.

 

[mooguy]

As with any mod, you need to load it

Yes, I know but when I do load it, fury road map doesn't show up as an option hence the reason I asked if I should move the sub folders.

 

[Refar]

Hmmm... It should look like:

\MODS
   \Fury Road
      \Assets
         The usual assets clutter...
         The Leaderheads FPK, if you use it.
      \Public Maps
         Map Script
      Fury Roard.ini

To me just unpaking the released archive in the Mods folder gives exactly what is needed. But maybe your extractor works somehow different creating too many or skipping some subfolders.

 

[mooguy]

Hmmm... It should look like:

\MODS
   \Fury Road
      \Assets
         The usual assets clutter...
         The Leaderheads FPK, if you use it.
      \Public Maps
         Map Script
      Fury Roard.ini

To me just unpaking the released archive in the Mods folder gives exactly what is needed. But maybe your extractor works somehow different creating too many or skipping some subfolders.

Well, I'm desperate so I'll put exactly how it looks

\MODS
             \fury-road-v08
                \Fury Road 
                 fury-road-v08 (config settings)
                 fury-road-v08.ini.bak
                   \Fury Road
 Fury Road (config settings)
                    Fury Road.ini.bak
                    Fury Road (HTML doc) 
                     \Assets
                    \Art
                     \Python (ect)
                       \Public Maps
                      Fury Road map
                      Fury_Road.py

Ok, I think I did that right...I'm using the latest BtS (3.17 I think?) and vista. Maybe the vista extraction system is screwed up. Idk.

 

[Avahz Darkwood]

The thing I don't like about the national limit is that the limit is the same, for a tiny civ just starting out and a big civ about to take over the whole huge size map. Introducing a late game tech to remove the limit doesn't seem like the right approach, since usually a unit which was popular in the midgame should be obsolete by the late game. For example, SAM infantry and antitank should effectively obsolete the guardian, and the humvee should obsolete the jeep rifle.

I have just added an Ammo Factory and started a local playtest. In the next few days I can also autoplay some to make sure the AI will build them.

The rebuilt improvements like depot, airbase do have a built-in limit as of 0.6 and later; each one will only generate about 4-6 units, then slow to half production rate until about 8-10 units, and then stop.

What else should I think about adding to give more of a feel of crawling back from the brink in the midgame?

Thats understandible... Didnt know that there were already limits on the depos that's good

About the mid game hummm.... I know part of it is atmosphere it needs a good music score to set the mood. But I am sure this is planed as the mod goes further. Let me play it a few more times (times limited to pretty much the weekend...) and I can give better suggestions.