RevolutionDCM for BTS

[Chronis]

keep a civs culture have logic in real world, but not in a civilization game.

If you play with revolutions turned on then keeping a civ's culture from magically vanishing when their last city is destroyed would make for a much more strategically interesting game.

Capturing and holding cities becomes significantly more challenging as you can not rely on the fact that those cultural problems will go away once you wipe out the last of the enemy military. Great artest and culture buildings also become more important as you would need to drown out an enemy's culture even after winning the military battle.

I am very interested in moding my personal version to make this change but having only done XML changes it is beyond my ability. If anyone knows how this change could be made I would be greatly appreciate some pointers on what I need to learn to do it.

 

[glider1]

Chronis I do see your point when the Revolutions mod is enabled. I think you will need more than XML to achieve these changes. How are you on Python, C++? Most definitively the way Civ5 is right now, background development on BTS is a very good idea and not wasted. I'm glad that you are enjoying the Revolutions mod. I could not play BTS without it.
Cheers

 

[Chronis]

Just getting my feet wet with regards to CIV IV modding. I have this grandious plan for a CIV IV mod and am currently teaching myself the basics focusing on XML stuff right now but plan to move on to Python somewhat soon. Having spent some time modding baldurs gate II before I am surprised at how easy CIV IV is to mod at least at the XML level.

So how hard would this change be to implement? Am I looking at a massive time commitment or would it be a simple change say once I learn basic Python.

 

[glider1]

Eh Chronis
Modding always takes considerable time. The tendancy for all of us is to think that it's easier than it actually is. The next mistake is that we think it won't take long, but usually you have to double if not triple the time estimation. These mistakes are common even at the professional level where normally managers make these types of mistakes (usually deliberately).

The good news is that Civ4 still has plenty of life left in it, in terms of good quality improvements because Civ5's fundamentals are still so unfinished and modders cannot really work on it while the DLL code remains locked away inside Firaxis. There are still modders around that can help but you must be patient. Very patient. A modders first skill is definitively patience! I tend to suggest that grandious plans are usually very difficult to make happen for various reasons. Focus on getting the modding idea right in your head. To have it focused and targeted. For example, if I were to come back to this project, my first target would be the range bombard AI. There is a lot of work to make it better, but entirely achievable and the nature of the change is targeted and focused. Jdog5000 the creator of Revolutions had a grandious plan, but started by implementing something necessary, achievable, focused which does not implement the plan, but lays down the groundwork for the later stages. Even he got the plan wrong because he should have implemented the code in C++, but he worked his way around it and made Revolutions excellent anyway. Modding can be very much flying by the seat of your pants as well. If you focus on Civ4, you will learn XML, Python and C++. If you mod for Civ5, you will gain extra skills which are very relevant these days especially database manipulation.

One other thing to keep in mind is that you must enjoy what you are doing, because at the end of the day, your time does not get compensated for unless you are able to find the personal rewards. It is rewarding to share your efforts with others, just remember that material compensation does not exist to any degree that compensates the time spent. You do gain experience that can be useful even in a future career, as at least two of the famous modders of Civ4 have transitioned into full blown computer science career paths

Cheers

 

[AbsintheRed]

For example, if I were to come back to this project, my first target would be the range bombard AI. There is a lot of work to make it better, but entirely achievable and the nature of the change is targeted and focused.

Sounds great
Please make that "if I were to" into "when I"

 

[Mouthwash]

Uh, there some option screen I found. It had sliders for the terrain like tundra or plains, and I don't remember how I got to it or how to get back. Little help?

Edit: I clicked resources in custom game. Problem solved!

 

[Bloodstone]

Quick question, tried searching it and the search engine on here is just brutal, but I digress. Minor cosmetic issue, current RevDCM game, and I'm having an issue with Great General's being created with the name being just "Great General". I noticed the change around the 1200 AD area, I had several before that that all had names, as did the AI, but since that date they are all showing up with the generic name. Is it just that there no more names on the list? First time I've play RevDCM by itself, it's great, Thanks!

 

[thecaesar]

I have a problem.

I can't see any notifications. All it says is that some settings folder or something cannot be located. However, I can see all of the notifications if I go into the little helper that shows them along with quests, etc.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Is it possible to still download older versions of this mod? 2.90 doesn't work with my PerfectWorld map scripts which is all I really want to play with, and I also can't load in an old RevDCM saved game which was from June 2010 (would that be version 2.83?)

 

[glider1]

The only question I can concretely answer is that I can supply older versions. Here is one for you Manfred attached 2.83.

TheCaesar I think you are missing the RevolutionDCM setting folder in your documents/beyond the sword/ folder but I am not sure. You might have to uninstall/reinstall only RevolutionDCM mod itself (no other requirement to reinstall anything).

Sorry for not being able to answer the others. I'm rusty on Civ4 after more than a year away.

Cheers

 

[Tholal]

Trying to merge this mod is proving to be an extremely painful process.

I have a debug DLL running with no errors, and the game loads and initializes without any errors also (pythonerr.log is empty), but it freezes once it gets to the main game screen. No error messages, it just hangs. Sometimes it shows me the DawnofMan intro screen to my civ, but not always. The last in-game message I get is the Autosaving notification for turn 0.

Any suggestions on where I should be looking to figure out this problem?

 

[glider1]

Eh Tholal
If it just hangs during load, I think it usually means a missing resource like something in the XML missing or wrong. What I used to do is rollback to a known working version and then roll-forward until it becomes obvious. You can set up the debugger to take you through the load process to see where in the startup the lock up is occurring. From memory you have to attach the DLL to the debugger and start the game from inside visual studio. For me personally it was easier to rollback and roll-forward.
Cheers

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Quick question, tried searching it and the search engine on here is just brutal, but I digress. Minor cosmetic issue, current RevDCM game, and I'm having an issue with Great General's being created with the name being just "Great General". I noticed the change around the 1200 AD area, I had several before that that all had names, as did the AI, but since that date they are all showing up with the generic name. Is it just that there no more names on the list? First time I've play RevDCM by itself, it's great, Thanks!

Yes, it means that all the names have been used.

 

[Tholal]

You can set up the debugger to take you through the load process to see where in the startup the lock up is occurring.

I'll give this a shot. Thanks!

 

[Manfred Belheim]

The only question I can concretely answer is that I can supply older versions. Here is one for you Manfred attached 2.83.

Thanks Glider. I'll give this a try tomorrow (about to head to bed now) so I'll let you know if it works. I'm not sure where the problem lies, it might not have anything to do with the version, but it's all I can think of that's changed since I last played it so it's worth a shot.

 

[Graceheart the Leopard]

Disregard.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I've tried 2.83 but am having the same problem as with 2.90. From the file creation date it seems 2.83 was released in December 2010, but the save game I am trying to load was from 7th June 2010, so must have been an earlier version. I can't see the dates of the earlier versions in the change log, so do you know what would have been the current version at the beginning of June 2010? I probably downloaded, installed and started playing on the same day so it will probably be the current version then that I need.

Still not sure if that's what the problem is but I'd like to try it at least.

 

[glider1]

Here's an interesting version of RevolutionDCM which was the last version used by Phungus in the LoR (Legends of Revolutions) mod. If Phungus used it, it must have been good (RevDCM 2.82). The other version is RevDCM I've attached is 2.722 which should cover the time period for you.

I think in the latest version of RevDCM that is out at the moment, there are a couple of important issues to fix:

1. Reports that autoplay from revolutions forced leadership change is not working
2. Reports that autoplay stops on a revolutions and has to be restarted manually

Not sure when those bugs from autoplay crept in. The good thing about the latest version of RevDCM are the extra automations. I'm in the middle of playing a lot of Europa Universalis III to try and get some ideas for a future version of Revolutions either in Civ4 or 5. EUIII is an amazing game.

Cheers

 

[DerekMessina]

thanks for the tip. It's a really great help especially for modders. Is there any download link available for this?

 

[Tholal]

I have a debug DLL running with no errors, and the game loads and initializes without any errors also (pythonerr.log is empty), but it freezes once it gets to the main game screen. No error messages, it just hangs. Sometimes it shows me the DawnofMan intro screen to my civ, but not always. The last in-game message I get is the Autosaving notification for turn 0.

OK, I've managed to get the Franken-merge to spit out a python error, but I can't figure out what the problem is. It says that AttitudeUtil failed to initialize.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "BugInit", line 93, in callInits
  File "BugUtil", line 608, in __call__
  File "BugUtil", line 605, in call
  File "AttitudeUtil", line 98, in init
  File "AttitudeUtil", line 202, in initModifiers
RuntimeError: Access violation - no RTTI data!