Rallying call for all interested: Colonisation of the Moon mod!

[The Great Apple]

Reading through your civics I thought; "He's going to have a hard time with the xml on those".

You could probably mod most of it with python, though I'm not sure how well the AI would use them though - you'd have to tinker a bit with the "AI weight" entry, and even then it might not understand when to use them.

I think we're also getting to the stage where "oh no, I'll need the SDK to do this" is becoming far less of an issue. It'll probably be out in a few weeks... though how much people will be able to do without some pretty major programming skills I don't know.

EDIT: Modiki is here, Civ4Wiki is here. Both have a very incomplete database of the xml values, and were due to be merged about 2 months ago. If you find out anything new it's nice to add it in.

 

[woodelf]

Thanks TGA.

Right now when I load up my copied mod I get some XML errors about civic choices that the Leaders wanted and no longer exist. Other than that it seems to be working. Once we tie it all together we'll be golden. That may be a while though.

I'll jot down what can't be done (yet) and we'll balance the civics later.

 

[woodelf]

After a little looking through the XML options your government civics will work if we make the Civ4 religion model become government. I don't know well that would work, but it would solve some +/- unhappiness without government choices.

 

[Falkonite]

What about Great people?
Armstrong (should actually be Buzz Aldrin), Laika, etc.

 

[JBG]

EDIT: WARNING: long post here!
I've thought long and hard about great people. Ideally, I'd like to add the number of great people varieties currently available, to:

Great Artist (as normal)
Great Engineer (as normal)
Great Merchant (as normal - possibly can be changed)
Great Scientist (as normal)
PLUS:
Great General (created randomly when an experienced unit enters combat)
Great AI (sort-of great prophet, but more powerful (and rarer)
Great Statesman (? tentative - only add if possible to add new great people)

So that means we need to add one type of great person or at least replace the Great Merchant (which will be hard and difficult). At the moment, we can replace Great Prophet with Great AI.

Great people will include, therefore:
Artists, Engineers, Merchants, Generals and Scientists should all be relatively obvious.

Great Generals are spawned from experienced units winning battles. They ought to do some of the following ideas:
*give a complete promotion line (say, all garrison promotions, or all city raider promotions) to a unit,
*give one promotion to each unit in a stack,
*lead a unit to certain victory
*upgrade all instances of a certain unit for free
*fortify a colony granting a massive defensive bonus plus an experience bonus for units garrisoned in the city
*set up a military academy that incurs a smaller defensive bonus and a massive experience bonus for any unit built in the city
*combine with another great person to give a golden age.

Great AIs are supposed to be very rare crosses between engineers and scientists. Their spawning ought to be limited by some kind of criterion - religion/civic/technology or something. They appear rarely and convey great bonuses. The following are ideas:
*do the complete remit of both great scientists AND great engineers
*enter a city's networks as a super specialist, providing massive commerce and science benefits
*enter a city's networks as a permanent resident, helping protect against spies and viruses, incurring a defensive bonus, reducing corruption/maintenance and increasing the science of the city
*research a powerful technology
*Enter another civ's networks as a secret agent for only a few turns, granting access to that civ's LOS and cities
*Combine with another great person to give a golden age

Great Statesmen are supposed to be influential politicians. They can enact any one civic the player chooses, ensure success in a trade/negotiation with another civ (think Margaret Thatcher and the EU rebate here), etcetera, etcetera.

Although I'm prepared to limit the modifications significantly if too little of this is possible. Thinking about it, it shouldn't be too difficult to change Great Prophets to Great Generals, given that both are able to build buildings.

We'll see.

As for names, well - this is a collective project, isn't it? I can't come up with all of them.

 

[The Great Apple]

Have you ever read "The moon is a harsh mistress" by Robert Heinlein? A few potential ideas there. It's also a really good book!

For starters - how about a "catapult" wonder sending mineral resources back to the earth. Provides income and stuff.

EDIT: And if you have a great AI - you've got to have Mike as one!

 

[JBG]

Mike? Who's mike?

Is the idea workable though? Is it possible to add more categories of great people? AND WILL THE AI USE THEM?

 

[GarretSidzaka]

Hey JBG!
found your thread. wow you got some amazing stuff on the way for Luna! Alot of the ideas above would transfer great to a mars campaign too! i would like to dl your moon mod ASAP.
i was a little unhappy with the options for regolith-style terrain tiles for civ4: you pretty much have to use desert, tundra (which is too fertile), or ice (which is too wet). they dont have a terrain of just "rock"

btw i just finished my second read of k.s. robinson's mars series bout a month ago

here is link to mars map (in construction): http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=155056

 

[The Great Apple]

Mike? Who's mike?

Is the idea workable though? Is it possible to add more categories of great people? AND WILL THE AI USE THEM?

Mike is from the book. He's the AI that runs the colony, just about the only Luna AI that I've ever heard of.

As for adding great people - in my experience the AI doesn't use great people properly in the first place. There are, however, individual AI types for each of the great people, so if your great person is anything like one of the existing ones it should be able to use it.

EDIT: I just remeber another moon book I read. Can't remember the name of it unfortunetely. While the science might be flawed (I think it was written before moon landings), the premise was that the moon had "seas" of very fine dust, which you could sink into, and special "skimmers" were required to travel over it. Probably not very convertable - but a cool idea!

 

[JBG]

@Garret: Yes, I was thinking along much the same lines. Many of the units, improvements, &c, would transfer very easily to other sci-fi scenarios. A terraforming-of-mars scenario is definately doable, and will try and doable it some time after the SDK (and the expansion pack ) is out.
Haarbal is currently experimenting with reskinning the terrain. It should be pretty easy (if we do the same thing as leaderheads and replace .nif artwork with .dds) and will enable us to create a more aesthetically pleasing mod.

@Apple: Good. My concern, however, is the Great General. Will the AI use him to upgrade units or will he simply be relegated to an academy-only version (since the AI presumably knows how to tell great people to build their buildings)? That is the question.

Also, how will the game respond to more varieties of great person?

 

[The Great Apple]

@Apple: Good. My concern, however, is the Great General. Will the AI use him to upgrade units or will he simply be relegated to an academy-only version (since the AI presumably knows how to tell great people to build their buildings)? That is the question.

Also, how will the game respond to more varieties of great person?

Sorry, missed that bit the first time through. No - the AI will not know how to use these by default. You would have to edit the AI to be able to do that... which although you can do in python is probably best left to the SDK.

The game should respond fine to more tpyes of great people.

 

[JBG]

Hmm. I think it is probably best to leave the Great AI and Great General units to building unique improvements and researching technologies, at least unitl the SDK comes out.

 

[woodelf]

About Civics - How about we stick to 5 categories for now and tweak what we have? The Special civic might not work with time limits and I think we can vary the other 30 choices quite nicely. Thoughts?

 

[JBG]

Yep. Fine. Although keep the sixth column. If you look in the Moon Bible, at some point I specify Civilisation Preferences. These are major balancing factors that help differentiate the three different types of civ (agency, corporation, coalition, remember?).

Here's that page lifted from the Moon Bible into a txt file (at the end).

I'd rather like to keep these in some form if possible.

How was the civicing? What needs changing?

EDIT: by the way, what's Haarbal doing?

 

[woodelf]

Here's a screenie of the First Draft of the Civics screen: Sorry that you have to d/l it...

http://www.filegone.com/jd5r

It only has 5 columns right now. I'll have to ask AG or Kael to help me make a 6th. I'm going to work on the buttons next, trying to organize all that Firaxis, AG, and Kael have made. They're jumbled now, obviously.

If you look up at post 103 you'll see what I think we may need to do. If we make Government (or lack of) the Religion of Luna we can better do some of the civic options. Tell me what you think so far and I'll list what I haven't figured out yet...

 

[woodelf]

Those are very BIG bonuses. But they should offer different playing styles. Once we actually play we can tweak what needs tweaking.

 

[woodelf]

And JBG, can you upload any XML files that you have done so far? Or maybe you should upload a Lunar Mod file with all the appropriate folders so we can gradually add to it. I'll be sending you an Art/Interface/Buttons/ect....folder and files eventually.

 

[JBG]

I've got some a pic that might do for Sentient Rights.

Have a look.

I'll post XMLs as soon as I have some I started work on Civs and then Haarbal said he was doing them, so I moved onto Civics and you were. I think I might try terrain improvements...

How would I upload a whole new folder?

 

[woodelf]

I've got some a pic that might do for Sentient Rights.

Have a look.

I'll post XMLs as soon as I have some I started work on Civs and then Haarbal said he was doing them, so I moved onto Civics and you were. I think I might try terrain improvements...

How would I upload a whole new folder?

I think haarbal meant his civs, but I could be wrong. I didn't reread everything.

That pic looks great. Can you make it a button?

To upload a folder I would make a Folder called Lunar, put an Assets folder in that, then put Art, XML, Python, ect subfolder in that. Then you need subfolders with everything you've worked on. WinRAR it up and then we can get to the files and send you ones to fill in the blanks.

I have no idea how people do it when they're doing a community mod.

 

[JBG]

Sounds like a plan.

Sorry, it wasn't Haarbal, it was Falkonite, and I know he was doing it because he said he was using the flags I uploaded for leaderheads.

I'll process the pic into a button pronto. How big (small) does it need to be?

We *really* need to start defining other things like techs, and buildings.

Will the game respond well to added terrain improvements?