Rocks 2 Rockets

Rocks 2 Rockets, a Caveman 2 Cosmos mod-mod by God-Emperor.

This is a trimmed down version of Caveman 2 Cosmos, aimed primarily at those who have difficulty running the full version.

Current version: 0.4, which is v0 plus the 0.4 patch. (In-game, via the hover help you get from moving the cursor over your flag, it reports "Rocks2Rockets v0.4" and a couple of lines below that "Rocks2Rockets build 4" if it is patched to version 0.4 correctly.)

Download Link: R2R in the CFC Downloads Database (Actual download is via the R2R page at ModDB.)
Patch Download: R2R Patch in the CFC Downloads Database (This is small enough to be here on CFC, where it is already available via this link. It is also available on ModDB.)

I have run a test game on a system with 2GB of memory running 32-bit Windows XP without the 3GB switch and have gotten up into the Industrial era without difficulty. On a small map with the default 4 AI civilizations, marathon speed, no revolutions or civs spawning from barbarian cities, I had only 1 crash. That crash was at the end of the marathon first session on turn 595, playing straight through from the beginning of the game without exiting. That test game is now up to turn 1191 and still playable. I have also tested map sized up to Large on this system and a Large map is playable up over turn 100 (can't say if it will go very much farther than that, but it probably will).

On a system with such low memory, you may not want to go over the Standard map size. Small might be the biggest size which can be used without issues past the Medieval era, although I am not sure of that. This is without activating the viewport feature. With the viewport active you may be able to play a size larger.​

The following post will explain what is in R2R, what has been removed, and what has been changed. Here is a very, very, brief summary:

• The content of the mod started as C2C's version 24 content. It has been trimmed.
• The DLL is the C2C version 26 DLL with later bug fixes and AI improvements applied. It therefore has the viewports feature (I have not really tested that though). I think the only post version 26 XML tag I have put in is the auto-build tag for buildings (it is not actually used for anything at the moment, but it should work - as far as I can recall, no tag from after v24 is used as the content is based on the v24 versions of everything).
  Update: As of patch 0.4 the DLL has bug fixes and optimizations up through revision 5148 plus the bugfix in 5208 (the intervening DLL revisions are not yet in), which is slightly past the revision number for C2C version 29.

 

Here is some comparison with C2C version 24. The differences with later versions are even larger. The lists are not complete, but should give the general idea.

Things removed:

• The entire Galactic era. All of it. Gone. Poof. Anything that used to go obsolete in this era does not go obsolete anymore. All units, buildings, promotions, and so on which required techs of this era are gone (well, maybe a few with multiple prereqs just had the prereq removed).
• A lot of the Transhuman era techs. Almost all of the ones that did nothing are gone. A few that did something are gone too. I think the number removed is close to half.
• A few techs from earlier than the Transhuman era. Anything related to them has been moved to other techs. Here is a possibly incomplete list for the pre-Transhuman era techs that were removed:
  • Prehistoric: Chopping, Piercing, and Scraping techs (essentially merged into the Soft-Hammer Percussion tech), Bark Working
  • Ancient: Board Games, Oratory
  • Classical: Paved Roads
  • Medieval: Stained Glass
  • Renaissance: Critical Thought, Dueling
  • Industrial: Long-Range Forecasting, Cosmology
  • Modern: Media Psychology, Supersonic Flight, Global Governance (it was disabled anyway)
• Some buildings. A semi-random selection of buildings added after C2C v22 were removed, and a few that were from v22 or earlier.
  • This includes some of the various groups of buildings like the large number of buildings you can build if you have mushrooms plus some other resource in the city vicinity. This specific category of mushroom related buildings was cut by more than half, as 12 out of 20 were removed. Likewise, half of the 16 flower buildings, 11 out of 33 fruit buildings, 8 out of 23 vegetable buildings, and 25 out of 50 housing buildings were removed.
• Some terrain types: Polar Coast, Polar Ocean, Tropical Coast, Tropical Ocean, Barren, Permafrost, and both Slimy Coast and Slimy Ocean (only used by some "advanced nukes" optional effects). All of the non-terrestrial terrains are gone.
• Some feature types: two of each of the 3 types of rock forms (leaving two for each type: dark, regular, and polar), Storms, the 3 lunar crater types, Cactus and Cave (neither was appearing on maps), the Rainwater Basin (only used by being placed by 1 wonder anyway), and both Biogas and Plaguegas (only used by some "advanced nukes" optional effects).
• A few bonuses (AKA resources): the non-terrestrial resources of CO2 Ice, Helium 3, Mars Rocks, Quantonium Crystal, and also Dolphins and Thermal Vent; some non-map resources too: Seasonings, Nanobots, Personal Replicators, Smart Medicine, Bicycles, Bread, Candy, Cheese, Copper Wires, Fiber Optics, Fiberglass, Firearms, Fossiles, Icecream, Parts, Perfume, Toys, Water Bottle, Tools, Biopunk Culture (removed all of biopunk as there were no units or buildings for it other than the one that granted the culture bonus), Cyberpunk Culture (there wasn't even anything that gave it, let alone anything that required it).
• Some improvements: Crashed Probe, all of the terraforming improvements, Arcology City Ruins, Depleted Mine, the Industrial Complex (its predecessor, the Factory, has been given a tech yield change at the tech where the IC used to become available to partially make up the difference and also added one to the Factory which the IC was getting but the Factory wasn't), the Geothermal Borehole, Sanitize Water, Sea Fort, Sea Air Defense, and the plant and animal transplanting improvements.
• Some cultures: 13 which didn't give any unit or building.
• The promotions relating to removed terrain types.
• Some of the Advanced Nukes option related units: Poison Nova and Poison Nuke.
• The Scientific victory type.
• The Disease property (it was not in use back in C2C v24).
• A few animals, including the matching subdued versions of them and the "tales" versions of the sea ones, and any Myth type buildings specific to them: Gull, Pigeon, Rhea, Beluga, Crab, Mackerel, Minki Whale.
• Various modular components that were not being loaded anyway.
• Three unused unitcombat types (diplomat, nomad, and worker).

Things changed:

• The R2R DLL only supports 35 civilizations on the map, down from the 50 of C2C.
  • There are 49 playable civilizations currently being loaded. There are another 18 that are not loaded.
• The mapscripts that come with C2C which specifically mentioned the deleted terrain types have been updated to "R2R" versions.
  • The R2R_PerfectMongoose_v310 mapscript has had additional tweaks which should slightly improve it, especially for small maps.
  • The scenarios, such as the various Giant Earth Map scenarios, do not work. Some specify more than 35 civs. Also, some use terrain types, features, and/or resources that have been removed.
  • Note: most of the map types have not actually been tested.
• Spaceship components have had their prereq techs set to be various Transhuman era techs.
• Tundra has been renamed Taiga. Technically this isn't really a better name for it in some of the places it appears. C'est la vie.
• The tech screen has the second "other player" screen removed (only present if you have the cheat code in the ini file). It has also had a bug removed from the code the sometimes caused crashes and also caused "strange behavior" where techs would sometimes remain highlighted and numbered as if you were still researching them after you had already done so.
• The main screen's plot list code (the stuff that shows rows/columns of unit icons across the bottom of the main map view, and on up if there are a lot, for all units on the current plot) has been modified to set each type up (regular, BUG, or PLE style) on demand instead of always initializing all 3 types. This stops the creating and then hiding of many hundreds of graphical elements that are almost never used, except when you switch types.
• The layout of the connections on the tech tree have been improved via shifting tech positions and swapping which tech is the Or prereq tech. This mostly only extends up into the Classical techs, so far.
  • Only one tech had its actual requirements changed for layout purposes, and only slightly.
  • There are, of course, other requirement changes due to techs being removed.
• Adjusted some of the resource placement rates, primarily with smaller maps sizes in mind.
• Many of the modular civilizations which were active in C2C are deactivated in the modular loading control files but still included (so each can be loaded just by changing a "0" to a "1" in the control file):
  • Not loaded: Ainu, Apache, Congo, Dinnehih, Goths, Israel, Italy, Jivaro, Malagasy, Maori, Mexico, Philippines, Polynesia, Tibet, Upaajut, Uzbek, Xiongnu, Yangshao
  • Still loaded: Aborigines, Brazil, Canada, Cherokee, Huns, Lower Sioux, Phoenicia, Tupi
• Several bugs in the XML have been fixed, including things like pointing at non-existent sound files.
• New sound file for the Tribalism tech.
• The shift from Minor civ to regular civ happens on researching the Trade tech instead of Writing.
  • Have "embassy trading" and "open borders trading" on Trade.
  • Tech trading is still on Writing.
• Many buildings have had small changes. Some examples:
  • Some Law buildings have had the commerce modifier for espionage reduced, and a couple have had their war weariness modifiers reduced.
  • Law School now requires the Literature tech.
  • Law Firm now requires the Jurisprudence tech.
• The Tribal Guardian upgrades to a Town Watchman.
• Some things, including a couple of the civics, have been changed to give smaller percentage bonuses.
  • Examples:
    • Banks reduced from +30% to +25% gold
    • Bakery reduced from +3% to +2% gold for Apple, Banana, and Lemons (but gain +1% from Coconut)
    • Forum reduced from +25% to +20% gold
    • Patent Office reduced from +15% to +10% research, other bonuses the same
    • Treasury national wonder reduced from +10% to +5% gold bonus in all cities, although it still gives the additional +10% for the city where it is built
• The Power related buildings give much smaller production bonuses (about the square root of what they give in C2C).
• The Herbal Cures promotion has been reduced to 5% healing of units on the same plot, and none on adjacent plots.
• Culture thresholds for culture levels after the first two have been adjusted upwards. The amount is increasingly larger for the higher levels (from around 18% higher for the 3rd and 4th levels to over 70% higher for Legendary).
• New main menu screen.

Overview of what is still in:

• There are exactly 500 techs, 499 of which can be researched. (C2C v27 has a total of 642.)
• 14 terrain types (not including hills, peaks, and "none")
• 31 feature types
• 289 resources, including both map and manufactured
• 74 improvement types
• 49 civilizations with 81 leaders (plus 18 modular civs that are present and not loaded, but could be loaded if desired)
• 446 promotions
• 1685 building types, including wonders
• 1027 unit types, including heroes

A few of those buildings and units, and possibly a couple of promotions, may be in modules which are present but not loaded, but could be.

Future versions:

• Continue to patch the DLL with bug fixes and most speed and AI improvements.
• A few of the removed things might be put back, such as terraforming via improvements, maybe a few of the resource transplanting improvements, and possibly the 4 farming civic related buildings that were removed.
• Fix at least some of the scenarios.
• The disease property could be added back in, along with some effects.
• A few tweaks for balance purposes.
• Continue to comb out the tangles in the tech tree paths.

 

Also Reserved.

 

Also Also Reserved.

 

I think this will get some serious attention. I like what I've read so far. Will D/l once available. I know you do good work from your previous Mods.

JosEPh

 

I presume you'd at least be willing to share these as you go about this right? This project looks like a good counterpart for C2C in general I think.

 

The building costs are as in v24. I would have to say that they are somewhat too cheap, particularly once you get to the renaissance. I'm guessing that at the very least medieval buildings should have their construction costs increased by something like 10% to 15%, and renaissance and later by at least 20%. But that's just an estimate for the minimum it would take to get them from "too cheap" to "mostly very inexpensive" - a tweak in the right direction rather than a major re-balancing.

Units were also pretty cheap, although I was avoiding war (to keep the game going) and had a large tech advantage so I didn't build many. Except heroes. I have an army's worth of them (more than a dozen, I think), even after building every achievement. But I can still tell they are cheap to build in most of my cities.

In this game I have rarely run out of things to build until I hit the wonder limits in my major cities. I built most of the wonders, which does use up a fair quantity of , but still probably less than it should.

In that game if I had not won the tech race pretty early (it's only on Noble difficulty), and therefore not gotten to build so many wonders (even with limits on I have built almost all of the non-culture world wonders - I think maybe 4 or 5 were built by AIs), I would have run out of things to build more often in more cities. I can not see the situation getting any better, especially since I got Steampunk and am building the various dynamos and other production granting buildings in many of my cities. Steampunk causes this problem to intensify a bit earlier than having to wait for the various regular buildings that do similar things. Although as a slightly balancing factor, I can see that the pollution is about to become significant in some of my cities (those steampunk buildings are not eco-friendly). With the size of my tech lead, it is hard to tell how it might have worked out with a more competitive set of AIs.

Most of those food buildings that were removed are rarely built because they require 2 different resources in the city vicinity and very few cities would meet the requirements. So on average I expect it reduces the food per city across the entire game by not more than 1 due to those removals, possibly as little as 1/2 of a food point. Some might get 1 or 2 less food without them, but for most it makes no difference. Therefore it does not really slow down city growth.

By the way, there were other buildings removed that are not listed. The list is not complete. The food buildings stand out to me because there are so many of them associated with a few required vicinity resources, like having 20 mushroom related buildings (which struck me as funny at the time, and still does). A few craft buildings are also gone, including the early Stick Gatherer building. So are some of the transportation buildings, including most of the buildings that match road types: Asphalt Roads, Roads, and Trails (Paved Roads is still in since I think it represents a major transition). The buildings that produced some of the manufactured resources were also removed, like the copper wiring factory went when the copper wiring resource went (only for some, for others they just stopped making the resource but still do the other things they do like the bakery no longer produces a bread resource but still exists). And so on. I tried to spread the removals across various types and various eras, but it did end up somewhat heavy in the food buildings since there are so many of them.

The AI for R2R is "post-v26" (although the test game mentioned wasn't, it was essentially v26 in that respect, but started out as v24). It has had many of the post-v26 AI adjustments made, although I have not caught up to v27 yet and almost certainly won't before I actually do the first release.

As with the AI, it has a lot of the bug fixes from after v26 but those are also not quite up to v27 yet. I'm pretty sure that particular fix is not in yet.

Currently the R2R DLL is roughly equivalent in bugfixes and AI adjustments (and optimizations) to the C2C DLL as of revision 4009 which is several revisions short of v27. I may get a few more revisions in before the first release, but not all of them.

It's likely to be mostly just what I listed, so I'm going to be working on it "some". Especially until it catches up to the C2C DLL and gets any other bugs and balance issues fixed. I do not plan on changing the content of Rocks 2 Rockets much, so in that sense it will not have a lot of development going on. Since it is intended to be able to run on lower end systems then the full C2C, adding much more content would be contrary to that goal. So mostly DLL patching and some balancing of existing content, and then deciding what, if anything, should be added or changed.

 

At this time it is going the other way. I am doing bug fixes already done in C2C...

Should I fix any bugs C2C hasn't, or come up with an optimization, then C2C is welcome to them.

 

We have gone full circle RoM was based on R&R - Rise and Rule in Civ III. . Looking forward to the download.

Is there any thing I can do with my mods that will help you with R&R? Is notification in C2C enough? For example with the religions I recently made a number of small fixes including giving them all a founding cut scene.

 

See i informed all the regular modders almost a month ago (in a PM), that a project was in the mix, but God-Emporer and myself decided not to say anything till he had a good handle on what was in and what was out and the main 1st post also, he is hoping for a grand release in February but again "time restraints" it might not be out till March, am i correct here GE? Thats why i was saying to everyONE not to get to distressed.
Thats why its more than ever important to have a FANTASTIC Great Base Mod (C2C) so these like this one will be even better to those with lower end PC's. (Which i know people will gobble right up, so let me say from the C2C Team, Welcome to the modmod section of C2C. . . SO

 

Seems I forgot the time it takes for ModDB to authorize a profile for the Mod. This might take a 2 or 3 more days to become visible to the general public. Argh.

OK, I have not actually uploaded the mod to them yet. Once I saw it would take time to authorize the profile I decided to recompress it since the first time it turned into a bigger .7z file than C2C is even though its a bit smaller (that['s what I get for using the default compression setting). After adding over 18MB of missing Afforess sounds, some of which are probably duplicates of sounds now in other folders (have not yet had the time to go through them all and find out), I think it is more than 13MB smaller. So my second attempt was smaller by about 59.5MB, but still bigger than C2Cv27's 7z file by about 23.5MB. Time to use some of those optional switches...

---

Update: The Mod's page itself at ModDB has been authorized. Now the file you can download is itself waiting for authorization.

I never did get the thing compressed smaller than C2C v27 - those sound files I added, including a new one for Tribalism that I made, must be harder to compress than the stuff that was trimmed from the mod. Therefore the Rocks2Rockets-v2.7z file is about 23.5MB bigger than C2Cv27. Which is unfortunate. And weird as it is a bit smaller once it is unpacked, as I mentioned above.

 

I'm assuming this is going to cause the same problems that v27 did, with the mirrors not working and requiring you to register with ModDB. Am I correct?* I'm interested to see this, but not interested enough to register with a website.

*hearsay evidence only, as I use the SVN myself

EDIT---well, I was able to d/l it without registering by using the Gamefront mirror, but I had to jump through a few hoops to do so (IE wouldn't d/l the entire file, for example). Gamefront is ridiculously slow, however.

 

Ah, that's why my compressed files are always larger than yours. I'd rather do it all at once though, as I'm lazy...

 

It is now available.

Technically it has been available for something like 11 hours over at ModDB. I refrained from checking since they say it is likely to be a day or two when you do the upload.

 

Given my struggle with getting C2C to co-operate a day or two ago, and that my system spec is pretty much what you used for your first test game, I think it might be advisable for me to try R2R rather than the main game; this modmod pretty much has my name on it.

I'll get back to you on how it goes...

 

Thought I'd update this, now that v0 is released. I did manage to get a few more revisions incorporated into the DLL.

The R2R v0 DLL has had the bugfixes and most optimizations and AI adjustments up to and including C2C's revision 4023. I think I may have put in all of the AI adjustments (I'd have to review my notes to be sure) and I only remember one optimization I have not put in (involving how promotions are stored for units).

This is one revision for the DLL before the fix for viewports that involved the early BUG initialization change, so that is not in.