Rise of Mankind v2.0 discussion

[RobO]

well, a couple things, if a mod, say 2.1 - 2.2 (the only things that changed were things in python) had different names, you wouldnt be able to continue the game with the new mod because Civ treats the mods with different names like completely different mods. He names them this way also for updating and time convenience, but also states somewhere else in a different post that you may rename it, but must change a line in Cvmodname.py in order to make it work properly.

Well, in v2.2 CvModName.py says that it is v2.1 based on 3.13. Zappara, it seems that you forgot to update this one

Is there supposed to be a match between the name of the folder containing RoM within the Mods folder and modName = "Rise of Mankind" in CvModName.py? I habitually change the folder name, update the ini file and that's it. It seems to work fine.

 

[zappara]

@RobO

Heh, and just when I was saying about how easy it's to forget to edit those python files in various spots Doesn't really matter in that file since the mod name and version number there are in 2 different strings and mod's version number isn't used in any other python file.

 

[JosEPh_II]

So how do you change the CvModName.py ?

I can't open it. Don't know how.

Now in the RoM Configuration Settings I did change this line:

; Name of Mod
Name = Rise of Mankind 2.2

Does this fubar the mod? Or make no difference?

JosEPh

 

[zappara]

@JosEPh_II

python files can be edited in notepad. Why are you trying to edit CvModName.py file? Changing version number there won't make any difference as it won't make any difference changing it in rom ini file - it's just the text that is shown in BtS main menu top right corner.

 

[zappara]

Version 2.3 progress: 5 new events added so far. Now that I'm starting to learn how to make them, it gets easier - even added some new python blocks for event checks and they worked at first try! Just testing every possible event option is time consuming but let's see if I can reach my goal and add 100 new events.

 

[Bezhukov]

Pls adjust barbarian timing for game speed, or at least remove the pillage ability from barb galleys. On marathon, its annoying, but (barely) manageable, if you beeline Seafaring at the expense of other priorities, and make enough warrior/archers to suicide the spears. On snail, you might as well not bother building work boats early.

Some priorities:

(1) Find someone who can help us on the CTD's (I finished Gigantic maps on Rise 1.x, I can no longer finish anything larger than Small now).

(2) A Global Warming fix for 3.17. In RoM, Deserts are exponentially (literally) worse than vanilla.

(3) Strange AI resource behavior (Salt redded out at friendly, Dye/Incense giveaway)

(4) Barb/event timing adjustment for game speeds

Not a priority, but for other than river/forest tiles and faster move speed, railroads are pretty much useless.

 

[Maatissi]

Perhaps this next patch with new events and such should also concentrate on fixing some previous details still having a few minor errors.

For example, the MiG planes are incorrectly spelled "Mig"... Some menus could also use abbrevations, such as the Civics-menu where few civics like Universal suffrage and Organized religion won't fit in properly. I personally have also a habit of editing some city names to match their original form rather than English (for example many classical and German names etc.), but apparently this issue is a matter of personal desires - and of course quite easy to edit by anyone on their own...

Other annoying graphical/interface features are the placement of some fishing boats (sometimes completely aground with only masts sticking up from the soil) and the "logic" how roads and railroads are placed... But apparently changing these would require some profound editing, and since they only look stupid without affecting gameplay, it would not be worthwhile to start tampering with them anyway...

Oh yeah, and how about finally renaming that American UU marine as "USMC" or something like that.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

@zappar

If you have a complete list of wonder movies which need to be added to RoM I could keep my eye out for them and add them in as patches if you like. The ones I have done are those I am likely to see before Civ crashes, I probably should stop playing on gigantic worlds I suppose

 

[JosEPh_II]

One thing zappara I'd like for you to consider is reducing the number of Civics that have No State religion. It leans to the No State more than State and is unbalanced in that respect IMHO.

Also Gov Funded HC is too strong in generating red faces if you don't have it. Makes having anything else very difficult. A reduction of a redface or 2 maybe?

Just my 2 cents. This is still by far The Best Mod for BtS IMHO.

JosEPh

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

One thing zappara I'd like for you to consider is reducing the number of Civics that have No State religion. It leans to the No State more than State and is unbalanced in that respect IMHO.
...

JosEPh

I have to agree with this. After all many modern republics actually have a state religion.

 

[RobO]

One thing zappara I'd like for you to consider is reducing the number of Civics that have No State religion. It leans to the No State more than State and is unbalanced in that respect IMHO.

Also Gov Funded HC is too strong in generating red faces if you don't have it. Makes having anything else very difficult. A reduction of a redface or 2 maybe?

Just my 2 cents. This is still by far The Best Mod for BtS IMHO.

JosEPh

I'd like to add my vote to these suggestions.

One other thing that is bugging me is Slavery. It's pretty useless as it is now, In fact, the use of slaves was common practice for quite a while, and commonly accepted. The civilopedia text for Slavery is heavily biased with our current moral standard.

I think slavery should be made much more useful up till around - say - AD1000, at the very least till AD100 or so. It should then be more and more difficult to sustain. I don't know exactly how this can be done. Perhaps the slave market (or just slavery) can start adding unhappiness with certain newer civics, or perhaps unhappiness from slavery can be introduced through techs.

 

[zappara]

Why government civics are showing "no state religion" is because of Theocracy. If one or more civic choices in category has "state religion = 1" boolean settings, then the rest with 0 setting will appear in civilopedia as "no state religion" while nothing for them has really changed - if all in one category has 0 on that setting no civilopedia is shown for this setting. Since it's 0 for almost all civic choices, it could be shown for all those as "no state religion" and it wouldn't change anything.

 

[JosEPh_II]

I don't use Theocracy but Majority Rule instead. But many of the other Civics Groups, not Gov't, have No State religion as part of their *list* of attributes.

So what I see is a narrow choice of Civics (all categories) to Keep a State religion.

If one or more civic choices in category has "state religion = 1" boolean settings, then the rest with 0 setting will appear in civilopedia as "no state religion" while nothing for them has really changed - if all in one category has 0 on that setting no civilopedia is shown for this setting. Since it's 0 for almost all civic choices, it could be shown for all those as "no state religion" and it wouldn't change anything.

So are you saying that even though it Says "No State Religion" under a Civic (outside of Gov't Civic choices) then there is actually a State religion allowed? I think I'm now more confused.

If I get the opportunity I'll list what I'm talking about.

JosEPh

 

[Kalimakhus]

You can notice it in the scoreboard that you will still have the icon of your state religion when running Majority Rule though the pedia lists "no state religion" for it. You can check the Religion Adviser page as well as the effects of the state religion and the buildings and wonders that depend on it. You will find that all such effects are active unless you choose Free Religion in the Religion category.

 

[JosEPh_II]

That I understand.

But when you open up Civics every category seems to have more No State vs State. Maybe it's a preception thing. As I said when I get the chance i'll elaborate better.

Not on my computer at the moment so I can't look at the game to give more detail.

JosEPh

 

[Kalimakhus]

After playing a good number of games with the latest RoM 2.2 I think I can now point out some points that I find annoying.
1 - In about 10 games I was able to build glass smiths only in one game after colonizing the new world on a standard terra map. In my current game I actually conquered Sumeria and gained control of the only stone resource I can see on the map (late in industrial era now). I also conquered a minor civ on a remote island only to get access to a salt resource.
Bottom line the requirement of both stone and salt for glassware makes it quite rare to have it. Both stone and salt are rare resources. Observatories are quite important as they become available in the time you lose the scientific output of monasteries. I know that in RoM we have museums but they don't cover the lose of monasteries especially that most cities usually have more than one monastery. (Also it is unfair for the french as they would rarely build their UB)

2 - Health civic category has two options that both cause unhappiness for civs that don't adopt them. Besides being contradictory it is unrealistic. We don't see people going on strikes all over the world demanding one health policy or another. With the health option that negates unhealthiness from buildings it is really frustrating as one would naturally choose this civic to allow cities to be productive. Cities grow in RoM beyond 20 pops easily by the modern era so health and happiness become more difficult to manage. Solving one problem only to make the other to sever to solve is frustrating.

3 - Not really annoying but I feel it is not making enough sense to have theocracy as gov. civic. Historically despotic, monarchical, oligarchic, and republican states practiced theocracy. Unless you think of theocracy as the direct rule of clerks. In such case it would make sense though it would represent a very rare occurrence in history.

 

[JosEPh_II]

After looking thru the Civic categories I realize that the Gov't series and Religious Series are what have given me the impression/perception that there is not enough Civic choices for State religion. And that it is coupled with those that do allow State religions but have a penalty to research, sometimes a very Large penalty(-25% is huge). Almost all do. And I feel that that is somewhat unfair to religions after monasteries are made obsolete. It does limit my choices for my play style. (I know adapt or die old man. )

I used to play Hereditary for sometime before switching to Majority rule. But now I rarely use it as i feel it has too many negatives attached. This could be a perception problem but it does seem to make despotism more viable longer till I get to majority rule.

And I use majority rule for the benefit of being able to pay for a building/unit/wonder. The No State is a drawback but it's liveable moreso that Hereditary.

I never use serfdom to use citizens to pay for a *build*. I do use serfdom though for the worker bonus even if I have majority rule. Till I can build the Hagia Sophia. But if I'm to slow to get it built I'll hang in with serfdom much longer even thru the renaisance era.

Getting sidetracked now. I would seriously like to see No State religion removed from at least one more Gov't Civic, maybe representative or majority rule.

And as a final thought, I agree with Kalimakhus about the Gov Funded Hlth care and the other one. One with the *penalty* is quite enough. Now I will say that it does make the later game more intense when you are fighting a major war and trying to keep the Citizens from geting all "Red in the Face". But seeing that most of my play is Warlord and occassionally Noble level I'd be crushed very soon if i played a higher level.

Again just some observations and suggestions. And I give them because RoM is how I play BtS now. Straight BtS now seems too tame when compared to RoM.

JosEPh

 

[0100010]

Some of you still are not getting what "No state religion" listing in the civic means. It isn't a drawback or a benefit, it is nothing at all, it is benign, an oddity of the game engine that means nothing.

A civic (such theocracy) either grants you the ability to suppress the spread of non-state religions in your cities or it does not. All the other options in the same civic category as theocracy work as normal, is that any religion has the potential to spread to your cities.

Whether or not you have a state religion is not even chosen on the civic screen, you do that on the religion screen.

"No state religion" would be better described as "Any religion may spread to your cities" Where as the other (theocracy, etc) should read "Only the state religion may spread to your cities."

If it remains confusing for people perhaps change the TXT_KEYs for them if that is at all possible.

@Kalimakus

I agree with your general assessment above. Only have a couple comments to add to #1.

I never understood why salt is a requirement to glassware to begin with (or stone for that matter, but some requirement does help put a balance on it) The occurrence frequency might be upped a tiny bit. Also, a salt works building could be added, restricted to coastal cities, which provides a salt resource (sea salt).

 

[gruffydd]

After playing a good number of games with the latest RoM 2.2 I think I can now point out some points that I find annoying.
1 - In about 10 games I was able to build glass smiths only in one game after colonizing the new world on a standard terra map.

I'm in total agreement with this, it being one of my two primary gripes about gameplay. Seems to me that stone and marble in the vanilla game are sort of tweener resources; they are great for building a handful of wonders speedily, otherwise a waste of time. In RoM, however, marble is still relatively useless (haven't counted, but it's actually used in what, maybe 10 buildings?), but stone has now become very useful because of the glass-making line, paved roads, etc., while the new salt is worthy of being considered a strategic resource. Far, far too many buildings and bonuses rely on salt now for it to be so rare.

(Also, historically speaking, valuable does not equal rare! Salt, though very important to the development of civilization, is not exactly rare: it is available in every area of every continent on our planet. And this isn't a new discovery... the oldest documented mines on every continent are for guess what... salt! Every major and minor civilization (from those considered most to least advanced) throughout recorded history has had access to salt.)

Ok, gameplay gripe #2: I suppose this might have to to with the dreaded balance and era question, but I find it slightly irritating that I have to hunt (i.e., restart the game ~10 times) to find a good starting location. Not prime, mind you, but just decent enough that I can actually survive on noble or prince through Industrial. You get zerged by barbarians and any aggressive AIs within stone-throwing distance, animals on steroids pick off your scouts and even warriors on walkabout, you get all sorts of weird foreign religions popping up in your pretty new colonies, and then you realize by about 500AD that there is no copper, salt, stone, iron, or horses (or elephants if I play Siam) within 2,500 miles, usually with an ocean or two and the bloody Aztec (they always hate me, no matter who I play) in the way.

Just saying.

Other than that, its brilliant! But seriously, some sort of AI refining needs to occur in conjunction with balancing of resource allocation in some way (especially since there are so many reasons for AIs to not trade you any necessary resources).

 

[gruffydd]

it is available in every area of every continent on our planet. And this isn't a new discovery... the oldest documented mines on every continent are for guess what... salt!

.. ok, overstatement for obvious reasons. Give the penguins another 100 years and maybe we can include Antarctica as well.