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

[dsquared]

yeah thanks im also using civ4wiki which is great

 

[JBG]

Sorry about this, guys. My week of (relative) freedom is up, so I might not have quite so much time. That said, Woodelf, I can begin tweaking buildings today if you like. I'm out for the next few hours, but this evening I can get cracking on buildings.

BTW, before you start fiddling with civ flavours, I actually spent some time altering those! Don't touch them for now!
On a side note, has anyone else noticed that the 'diplomatic' trait isn't appearing in-game? Susan B. Edwards, for example, in the civilopedia only has the philosophical trait. If anyone could figure that one out it'd be welcome.

When I get back this afternoon I'll get tweaking with buildings, terrain improvements - whatever. Tell me what to tweak (within reason ) and I'll do it.

Glad you like the barbarians. I knew they worked from the moment Dsquared posted a screenie with a colony with a barbarian name in it! Movementist or something like that. Thought I'd give the cities the name of radical militant groups (I tried to keep it reasonably PC)...

I'll post again later with some tweaked buildings.

 

[fe3333au]

Air Recycling and CO² Recycling, isn't that two times the same?
And the same for Automation and Robotics?

Call one an air scrubber ... which would possibly be an earlier technology due to the carbon dioxide being mechanically filtered and/or chemically 'removed' from the habitat ... the Recycling Technology implies a more 'orgainic' approach to the problem, one that leaves none or little waste product or requires no cleaning or replacing of parts.

The idea of having a separtate thread to answer the programming questions in a good idea ... it makes it easier to follow the discussions with regards to the actual mod development and creation as opposed to the mechanics and instigation.

Therefore I am now assuming that this is a more creative and ideas thread (please correct me if it is not)

I was following a similar thread in the Civ3 threads ... and thought about a UU for one of the factions ... I see the European Agency having a more continental feel ... therefore would one of their UU (I assume you can have several) ... be a military unit that is expensive but very 'powerful' an elite trooper, Luna Legionaire (or get the french/german/italian word for Moon) ... I am using the French Foreign Legion as idea source.

How about a Japanese sounding corporation as well ... much of the cyberpunk and other scifi genres have the Nipponese corporations merging and becoming an uber/mego Corp.

Finally I believe that slavery is an option in cIV ... do you see one Corporation or maybe even an Agency ... send 'prisoners' upto the moon to work? ... (think early Australian and US colonies of Britain) ... perhaps the UU unit would have an enslavement ability?

A possible early happiness technology would be Earth Link or Terra Link whereby the colonists are allotted time to communicate and/or cyber-interact with family and friends left back home.

 

[Belizan]

Hey all. My brother is in town still through tomorrow, so I won't be getting much done other then the odd post until then.

 

[woodelf]

Sorry about this, guys. My week of (relative) freedom is up, so I might not have quite so much time. That said, Woodelf, I can begin tweaking buildings today if you like. I'm out for the next few hours, but this evening I can get cracking on buildings.

BTW, before you start fiddling with civ flavours, I actually spent some time altering those! Don't touch them for now!
On a side note, has anyone else noticed that the 'diplomatic' trait isn't appearing in-game? Susan B. Edwards, for example, in the civilopedia only has the philosophical trait. If anyone could figure that one out it'd be welcome.

When I get back this afternoon I'll get tweaking with buildings, terrain improvements - whatever. Tell me what to tweak (within reason ) and I'll do it.

Glad you like the barbarians. I knew they worked from the moment Dsquared posted a screenie with a colony with a barbarian name in it! Movementist or something like that. Thought I'd give the cities the name of radical militant groups (I tried to keep it reasonably PC)...

I'll post again later with some tweaked buildings.

Now that I actually look at the building infos I see that I tried real hard to put our building into a slot occupied by a similar Vanilla building. The values aren't that bad! Woooo!

Maybe you shouldn't waste your time there JBG and can get the civs the way you like them? I'll look at the Diplo trait and see what's going on if I can.

 

[woodelf]

@JBG - Did you look at the flags that still too dark yet?

 

[GeoModder]

I was following a similar thread in the Civ3 threads ... and thought about a UU for one of the factions ... I see the European Agency having a more continental feel ... therefore would one of their UU (I assume you can have several) ... be a military unit that is expensive but very 'powerful' an elite trooper, Luna Legionaire (or get the french/german/italian word for Moon) ... I am using the French Foreign Legion as idea source.

The French Legion on the moon?

Finally I believe that slavery is an option in cIV ... do you see one Corporation or maybe even an Agency ... send 'prisoners' upto the moon to work? ... (think early Australian and US colonies of Britain) ... perhaps the UU unit would have an enslavement ability?

Prisoners? Perhaps by a company. OTOH, most prisoners (due to their low education) aren't worth the cost of shipping them to the moon.
Beside, if a French Legionaire unit is put on the moon, these will already represent "shady" people.

 

[woodelf]

I added a Helium3 Exchange building that's available immediately and expires at the end of the first era. It give 2 gold. I'd like to set it up to only be available in cities with He3 within the city radius, but can't remember how to do that.

I'm looking at the traits now since they seem to be a bit of a mess and make no sense.

 

[woodelf]

I think I've got the traits all worked out. Now we just need balance. I'll run through the bible and see what they should look like.

@JBG - Any desire to do the civilopedia entry for the Leaders since you created them? I thought maybe you'd have a feel for their history, ect, ect.

 

[Belizan]

Well, I don't seem to have gotten much feedback on my tech postings. I'm not sure anyone downloaded them and looked at them even. Which.. I... Guess... I'll interpret as "I'm a genius!". And take that as a mandate that my implementations are not only flawless, but wonderful realizations of the effects everyone wanted 8). So! Tomorrow, I will be coding up another perfect realization of a feature, namely City Architectures (what I call Mega-Improvements), followed by Artillery and possible the three traits to rule them all. After that (meaning, probably Tuesday), I will want the latest version of the mod to import my collection of beautiful and brilliant features. Since I have to add them in myself, I'll want Unit type info on the Radar Tower, Airfield, All turrets (that are to be governed by the turret rules)--I'll be adding the Architecture buildings myself... Let's see... The He3 moneybags building (that's easy enough I'll throw it in too)...

I'll also need a list of all the buildings considered--Commercial, Scientific or Military, and which should produce happiness (and how much) for their appropriate trait holder. I'll need a list of all units considered Commerical, Scientific or Military. In both cases I mean as separate lists. I.e. These units are Commercial, these are Scientific, etc. I'll also need a list of the restricted commercial, scientific and military units.

And that should do it for the moment. Oh, and the promotion you'd like me to grant for the radar coverage effect (unless you'd rather I just use my default one?).

 

[dsquared]

actually the radar tower did not give me line of sight, the airfields worked great though!

 

[Belizan]

actually the radar tower did not give me line of sight, the airfields worked great though!

You built a manned sentry tower (as they are called in that mod) and didn't get some LOS? Did you get a little fort and little man? What happened exactly? Are you sure you just didn't notice your extra LoS (because, say, you didn't build it on your cultural border? I have it set up atm to only give you 1 extra LoS (i.e. a view range of 2 from the tower). Did you notice the radar coverage effect?

 

[dsquared]

well i used the world builder and plopped one down, yes it looked like a fort but i didnt get a little man, the airfields i plopped down and fighter and bomber worked, i ran several recon missions over several turns and it works beautifully, it just notifies you that a fighter or wahtever has been selected. i can try again if youd like (doing it right now)

edit- well it works if i use the worker to build it but not the worldbuilder, i guess this is not going to be too big of an issue

edit2- we also need to be able to build airfields and towers outside our borders which doesnt appear possible at this point

 

[Belizan]

well i used the world builder and plopped one down, yes it looked like a fort but i didnt get a little man, the airfields i plopped down and fighter and bomber worked, i ran several recon missions over several turns and it works beautifully, it just notifies you that a fighter or wahtever has been selected. i can try again if youd like (doing it right now)

Please do (and it seems you have )

edit- well it works if i use the worker to build it but not the worldbuilder, i guess this is not going to be too big of an issue

You should have gotten an error when you tried to place the manned sentry tower in the WB. The WB lets you do things that are impossible in game, and therein, I do not code against it. Put another way, yes, you have to build it with a worker. If you build one in the WB, make sure you build a sentry to go with it.

edit2- we also need to be able to build airfields and towers outside our borders which doesnt appear possible at this point

I believe it can be made to be possible, which is one of the points of asking the question. The default Civ4 rules say that improvements outside a cultural zone have no owners. Therein, it made sense to have that restriction. It becomes a bit more problematic to track things without an owner, but as I said, I'm pretty sure I can do it. (My biggest reservation is the improvement XML restrictions themselves).

 

[dsquared]

can you create a cultural dot on top of the airfield? that has to be defended culturally? this may overcomplicate as i dont know if only cities can spread culture but if its possible, that would solve the no owner problem and also of enemy putting its own planes etc in your airfield but i did not get an error in WB

 

[Belizan]

can you create a cultural dot on top of the airfield? that has to be defended culturally? this may overcomplicate as i dont know if only cities can spread culture but if its possible, that would solve the no owner problem and also of enemy putting its own planes etc in your airfield but i did not get an error in WB

You must not have enabled Python debugging in your ini file.

Yes, you can give culture programmatically. I think this is not a good idea though.

Either way, the actual airbase unit is owned by the original builder (or last capturer), so other players won't be able to use it (other then to capture it and then use it).

The issue that I'm concerned about is this--
Player A has a worker in location X,Y. Player B has a worker in location X,Y. An improvement is constructed. Who built it? You can make assumptions about it being the "active player", but the engine plays a lot of games with having the AI do things simultaneously to the player. You can't go by cultural borders. You can ask what each worker is doing, but if they are both "idle". I'm not saying it's unsolvable, but until i actually go to write the code, I'm not sure it's solvable.

On a separate note, do you want people to be able to build in other folk's cultural borders?

 

[dsquared]

I would say no to cultural borders, and if they are swallowed by cultural borders they are captured or destroyed. on the dual worker issue, will the AI ever build these improvements? in a single player game you can assume its the player but if we want this to be multiplayer compatible i can see the problem, honestly i dont know what can be done

 

[GeoModder]

On a separate note, do you want people to be able to build in other folk's cultural borders?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but allied civs already can construct in each other territories, right?
It would be nice to extend that to civs which have a defensive pact with one another (if that remains in the mod).
Can being able to build in other civs cultural border be linked to their mutual stance? Say both civleaders are feeling at least pleased to one another, and then their workers can construct stuff on open plots.
The major issue I can see with this is that if a civ has researched a certain technology which allows it to built a new improvement, and construct those improvements in another civs borders which doesn't have this tech yet. So, will the civ-without-necessary-tech be able to use the new improvement or not then?

 

[GeoModder]

O yes: Would this Mech reskin be of any use, you think? It seems to have the right color in a lunar surrounding.

 

[woodelf]

O yes: Would this Mech reskin be of any use, you think? It seems to have the right color in a lunar surrounding.

Thanks for the heads-up. That would work for something on the Moon I think.