Sea Colonies

[Judge Dee]

The screenshots look interesting, and brought back fond memories of SMAC games where I'd go into inkblot mode (the orbital insertion colony pods for the land, and the sea colonies for the wet bits).

One more thing to think about: how does sea colonization fit into the domination limit?

I'd also be interested to learn what resource / productivity levels you're using for the sea / ocean tiles.

 

[Ordom]

Can you attack the cities with most units? Can you use planes, Battleships etc, etc? If so, are their any advantages to building cities underwater? Disadvantages?

Also, are you planning on making the sea floor and mountain ranges?

 

[Dubmetender]

Can you attack the cities with most units? Can you use planes, Battleships etc, etc?

Yes, you can attack with all domain units land from tunnels, air, the boats can attack and conquer the cities and antigrav units...

If so, are their any advantages to building cities underwater? Disadvantages?

more cities you have, more science and gold you have, but there is not a real advantages to build cities in sea, except for strategy...

One more thing to think about: how does sea colonization fit into the domination limit?

For the domination limit, the AI see only on land plot, not all tiles in your cultural area.

I'd also be interested to learn what resource / productivity levels you're using for the sea / ocean tiles.

We use the game configuration 1 food/ 0 prod, there is two ocean ressources, one for food (varech) and one for prod (methane), and two new improvements, the sea farm, and the sea mine...

 

[Calavente]

what happen if a land unit is on a tunnel and another (not at war) pillage it?

are the land units distroyed, blocked...etc

 

[primem0ver]

To me the real advantage is connecting cities across waters... that was always a major strategy I used in ctp2. Also taking advantage of the production bonus from rifts and volcanoes. I imagine tile upgrades from sonar tech is not avail yet (suggested earlier in this discussion). But the mod looks great! If you wanted to send some commented changes I might be able to make the additions mentioned above...though I know nothing about the graphics.

One more thing. I have noticed a major memory issue with Civ4 and my game constantly does a CTD (crash to desktop). It gets worse as the game progresses. I can no longer play my current game (and I am positive it is not a hardware issue) which became unplayable just short of 1900's. There is a large thread that discusses this issue saying that it is the result of having a large part of the engine being done in python (which has no true stack so it overloads its allotted virtual memory on huge maps). Is there an official fix for this? Otherwise I will not be able to enjoy this mod.

 

[Major]

what happen if a land unit is on a tunnel and another (not at war) pillage it?

are the land units distroyed, blocked...etc

If a land unit is in a tunnel while the tunnel is pillaged, well, the land unit will die.

Is there an official fix for this? Otherwise I will not be able to enjoy this mod.

I don't think there is a fix for that. Maybe the add on will improve the situation but I do not know. However, I hope you will be able to at least test our mod and to bring every idea you have


The mod will enter in the beta phase, but we have some stuffs to check: we successfully checked that the code for the AI works and it knows how to create sea colonies and to connect them with their land cities and to improve them.
However, I think some modifications regarding the way the AI chooses its targets (cities) for its attacks will be needed. So tests are needed.

For the effect on the domination limit, we did not really define the way it deals with that. And actually, when you own new tiles on water, they are added to your total owned plots and so they are taken into account for the domination victory. But once again, we are open to suggestions on the way it should work

 

[Padmewan]

Very exciting. I assume you are keeping the "flavor" parts of this mod separate from the "technical" parts so those of us interested in one part can lift only what we need

 

[Cube4]

I Heard the CTD has something to do with memory usage The game uses alot of memory Even after the patches. A Member even created a patch to fix the memory leak before patch 1.52, but after they made that patch they claim to have fixed the memory leak. I don't think there ever was a memory leak, it just uses alot of memory. I Remember it using 6-7 hundred megs of RAM plus about the same amount of VM. Have you tried lowering the graphic settings? How much Memory do you have, I have 2 Gigs of memory, but I couldn't tell you if it fixes the CTD, Cuz I don't play Civ 4 too much any more. I remember that when I had 1 Gig of memory It CTDed way before I got to the middle ages.

I Heard the CTD also has to do with the number of units, cities, Improvements, Etc increasing as the game progresses. This leads to more memory usage, to the point where the game just can't handle it and boom!! CTD. When I Still play I use the Terra map, and I remember That on the first turn, It Uses 422 megs of RAM and the same amount of VM. When The game first starts on the intro screen, the one that says Single player, Multiplayer, Etc it uses 125 Megs Of RAM and VM.

 

[primem0ver]

I have 1 GB memory. I realize that Civ 4 uses quite a bit of memory and that this is what causes problems. Personally though I also think there is a memory leak. Every time a close the software and restart it (even without doing anything such as taking a turn) the computer gets slower and slower. I need to check resource usage to actually confirm this, but usually this is a sign of a memory leak.

So is the latest patch as effective as the one that was made by users? I haven't gotten either one yet... but I have heard that others have had some success with the h... patch in eliminating the memory problem (his name started with an h). I think the 1.6 patch has come out since and I am wondering if it includes a fix for the memory issues as well.

 

[Cube4]

His name was harnoken I Think and His patch did work better than the official patches, it even had a frames per second display on it. I used it back before version 1.52 came out, but firaxis said to uninstall his patch and that we shouldn't use his patch if we were going to install the official patch. Version 1.52 claims to fix memory usage problems, but it doesn't reduce memory usage alot. The latest patch is 1.61 and you should download it most mod require it. Firaxis claims that there never was or is memory leak. You should search for that thread it's interesting reading, its in the technical forum.

 

[primem0ver]

You are correct Cube4. I have been reading that thread for several days. VERY interesting reading and it makes me pretty mad that Firaxis does not own up to the fact that its game was not managing dx resources very well (as far as I have read into the thread... that was the latest theory).

So they made a mistake... who cares... everybody makes mistakes. At least have the integrity to admit it!

I have read the info on the 1.61 patch and it even says that it fixes memory problems! The quote below is straight from their description of the 1.61 patch:

Significant reduction in video and system memory usage

This is the issue that Harkonnen and team found was plaguing so many players, causing CTD's, reboots, extreme lag between screens etc... . So why deny it because someone beat you to the punch? Why not thank him for his hard work and the pointers (which they probably did use!)? They (Harkonnen) did a LOT of troubleshooting to locate the problem(s). It pisses me off... especially because it would not surprise me if they used his findings to direct their own efforts. And what really makes me mad is that instead of giving him credit for his work, the DISCREDITed him if what you are saying is true.

There still seems to be a debate in the harkonnen patch thread which works better... 1.61 or harkonnen + 1.09?

I may like to try it myself to see what I think. Is the LAST version of the harkonnen patch on the first page or do I need to read the thread to find it?

If any of you don't know what this is about, many of us (including me) experienced CTD's, reboots, extreme lag time, and even game freezes starting with the industrial age, especially on large and huge maps. This thread and harkonnen's patch thread are the long effort that went into finding out the problem... which DID exist!

PS... does the SDK reflect the most recent changes?

Edit: Added quote, link and some extra comments regarding them

Edit PPS: Looks like you said that Firaxis denied a memory "leak" which I don't really believe either... but I guess that takes away my complete annoyance at their denial of memory mismanagement

 

[Cube4]

They did admit memory mismanegement, But they didn't admit a memory leak. I also think they stole his Ideas and never gave him credit The 1.52 did a lot of what harnoken's patch did except not as good, Alot of people also said the game wasn't finnished until this patch.

Back on topic, how is the sea colonies mod going, Can we get more screenshots , and is there going to be a Call To Power mod Cuz that would be cool. When I first Heard that Civ 4 was going to have a Programming language the first thing I though was now we can make A Call to Power Mod. For Those who don't know Call to Power Had a Programming Language called SLIC way Before Sid miers Civilizaton did.

 

[primem0ver]

Yeah... I am familiar with SLIC though I never used it. CTP2 was THE ULTIMATE in modding capablities before Civ4. I think that includes ANY game of any genre. But I also think that CTP could have done things a little differently. I would like to take the good things from CTP and change them to fit Civ 4 with some new stuff too, changing some of the CTP ideosyncricies.

BTW I don't think that sea units should be able to attack land units traveling through "tubes" or "mag levs" (or vise versa). The only way that sea units should be able to attack land units using the underwater system should be through destroying the tubes. That should effectively destroy all units on the given square whose tube is destroyed. This might require some SDK development because what if a submarine goes into a square occupied by an enemy tank using the tubes? Does he want to destroy the tubes or does he just want to get through them to the other side?

I do think that enemy units should be able to take over the tubes and "attack from the inside" even if they cannot take full advantage of the movement the system provides (i.e. even if the units suffer a normal movement penalty). We could even add some risk to this... what if the attack in the tube damages the tube and threatens neiboring tubes or connected cities?

Anyway... just some things to consider!

 

[GeoModder]

Starting to look good.

A suggestion: do you think it is possible to let seatunnels only directly connect between seacities and of course landplots? Not to every single seaplot?

Also, can all those sea improvements and the founding of seacities be done on ocean plots from the start, or only on coastal plots first and with some technical improvement extends to ocean plots?
How about putting a limit on the population size of seacities? The biodome looks indeed good in this environment but in the later screenshots some city buildings extend outside the dome. That looks less fitting and perhaps a pop limit will avoid that.
Also, how about a restriction that the larger facilities from landcities can't be constructed in seacities but instead they have their own set of specific facilities?

 

[Dubmetender]

to PrimemOver : you right about the tunnel attack, but it's very difficult to give a new attack type for the boats, an attack like catapult but only destroy the improvement ... i can't do that

to GeoModder : if we make a limit on the population size in sea cities, the graphic problem will stay, because it's the building structure that go out the biodome, it's not affected by the population size

I need one or two tester for the mod, if someone want to try it, and correcting the english texts... ask me by pm

 

[GeoModder]

to GeoModder : if we make a limit on the population size in sea cities, the graphic problem will stay, because it's the building structure that go out the biodome, it's not affected by the population size

Ah, forgot that! Anyway, if there would be new replacement facilities typical for seacities and you don't give them a graphic (or only a small one) the more chance the "houses" stay in the dome.

 

[Dubmetender]

One tester : GeoModder
thanks

If some one else want to try (english native language required) the mod ???

 

[Thorn]

Maybe you could limit the number of sea colonies that could be built to cut down on memory issues. Each civ can only build 5, or 10 max.
This looks like an awesome mod! Great work so far. One of my favorite things was building sea colonies in Call To Power I/II. My absolute favorite though was launching into space and building space colonies. But I guess that will never be possible in Civ IV. Maybe Civ V?

 

[GeoModder]

Well, if objects could be put next to the zoomed out part of the map (space view) or at least little "dots" circling the globe, you got you space structures.

 

[Ekmek]

Stuff i slooking great. I've been doing a lot witht he Ctp2 source code, have yet to mess around with Civ4. BUt just wondering is this part of a ctp2 mod or just people picking only the parts they miss form ctp2?