SLower Tech + other balances mod.

[Dearmad]

In the next version, starting locations are tweaked a bit so at higher levels you won't face such an uneven start. Prince+ Also roads through jungle will be possible with Iron working (so not gunpowder).

But honestly, the challenge jungle presents in a single player game is something I find fair to face. There are other places to settle, and ways to deal with it. And the occasional AI that gets caught in them appear to do pretty well in my games, but there are always 5+ other ai's around the world not in a jungle. I *like* the way it forces some inequity into the game, so I have to strategically think about how to deal with the situaiton.

In a multi-player game- if you're playing maps that aren't balanced to begin with, I'm sorry but it's not my concern to balance jungles. My premise is jungles are fierce, dangerous places that defied attempts to civilize them at all until well past the 1700's. It took machinery and medicine to do it.

Bottom line:
if you want it out, don't install the untibuild.xml file and the tech.xml file. Then you can clear jungle from the classical ages on and have no more jungles in the world by 1100 ad.

 

[Akaz1976]

Re: Cavalry upgrading into Tank vs. Gunship

How about letting Cavarly upgrade to tank (like you have done) then allowing tank to be upgraded into either Modern Tank or Gunship (like you have an option to upgrade rifleman into infantry or SAM trooper).

One thing tho, gunship is pretty underpowered (24?) vs. Modern Tank so how about upping the 'vs armour' bonus. That way gunship becomes a niche tank counter unit like SAM Trooper.

How ever i am not sure how AI would use this. Most human players would probably do majority upgrade to mod tank with a minority units upgraded to gunship. Would be a major problem if AI upgraded simply based on what unit (/tech) is available first rather than what appropriate!

Akaz

 

[Sobsob]

Having played on a random map and ending up with quite a bit of jungle around me I have to agree that clearing jungle comes too late in the tech tree.

Maybe rather than clearing jungle you get a bonus for living there maybe hardy troops?

 

[Scytale]

To all:
If you want JUST the time changes. Install only the gamespeed.xml file. What could be simpler?

So I must keep only the gamespeedinfo.xml file in Assets\XML\GameInfo and delete everything else?

 

[Shadowlord]

Maybe rather than clearing jungle you get a bonus for living there maybe hardy troops?

Oooo, yes, Jungle Fremen....

 

[DJAnyReason]

I played with this mod over the last few days, and it was a lot more fun, though there were a few things I would (and will) tweak about it. Just figured I'd list 'em, as feedback or whatnot:

Taking a look at the gamespeed file and it looks like you set inflation too high. While the turn length actually shortens, you've increased inflation rate. Couple that with late cottages, and it makes for a very tight situation the whole way through.

Also, I think you might want to tweak the speed of the game a bit. I found myself lagging behind where I usually am on tech by year, and I think that your speed isn't quite balanced to your tech slowdown.

I also think that, from a gameplay perspective, changing where tech trading starts might be playing with fire a bit. When I mess with stuff, I generally operate under the assumption that the game was playtested to run a good length on a standard size map, normal speed, noble difficulty. If you push back when tech trading starts, you slow down overall tech development speed, and it could throw the balance out of whack. I haven't played through this several times over to playtest that theory, but I think it might be a problem.

Just my $0.02. All in all, a real good mod.

 

[Drakken]

Has anyone else had the problem of only getting maps from goody huts? I have had 5 straight huts give me maps...

 

[haard]

I love the mod, but have two gripes:

1) Cavalry upgrade - tanks and cavalry did appear in WW2 (as well as mounted infantry). In many countries cavalry reigiments were changed into Air Cav, which seems to be a good match for the gunshipof cIV

2) Civilizations did form in SA jungle regions. I propose that civs that start in jungle areas does not get the health penalty from jungles, thus making the disadvantage smaller (although the tiles are still largely unusable until biology). This would also give the advantage that their cities would not be very likely targets for occupation.

 

[Dearmad]

So I must keep only the gamespeedinfo.xml file in Assets\XML\GameInfo and delete everything else?

Yes. This should do it.

On the next version:
I'll be waiting to adjust the mod and some changes that have been made once the patch is out. I don't want to have to double my efforts if the patch changes things too much.

The jungle:
The jungle complaint goes both ways. I'm just not too keen to make jungles easy places to settle. I dislike in civ how terrain really doesn't do anything negative for much time in the game at all- "don't like the jungle? cut it down! (circa 1000bc!)" This just isn't fun for me. That maybe one AI per game gets crippled (at most in any game I've played and I've played a mod like this since civ3) or that I need to race toward seafaring techs to settle colonies or go to war early to claim better land, has always been a part of the fun challenge for me.

On Cav upgrades. I've yet to ehar a convincing *game* arguement as to why cav -> gunships works well. The AI is crippled by this upgrade.

My compromise (if I can manage it) will be to do as someone suggested: upgrade to either tank OR gunship. This way you can hold off if you like, but in the meantime the AI won't be fighting your tanks with cavalry it has left over from the 1700-1800's- they'll most likely be tanks.

 

[Dragon67]

I think the worker rate can be the key. Slow down “clear jungle” speed, the same goes fore creating cottages, but both of them must be available on an earlier stage. That will brings up the same situation as it was in civ3, jungle tiles takes more turn too clear, and too clear it too earlie you needed a worker army, something the economy in civ4 don't allow.
About the cottage, enable it earlier will prevent you too kill the economy in the classical era, and when you slow down the worker rate, it also avoid the economy too boom too fast. Also the worker overall speed needs too be reduced, it’s too fast now, when more turns is added into the game.

 

[brokguitar]

I think the worker rate can be the key. Slow down “clear jungle” speed, the same goes fore creating cottages, but both of them must be available on an earlier stage. That will brings up the same situation as it was in civ3, jungle tiles takes more turn too clear, and too clear it too earlie you needed a worker army, something the economy in civ4 don't allow.
About the cottage, enable it earlier will prevent you too kill the economy in the classical era, and when you slow down the worker rate, it also avoid the economy too boom too fast. Also the worker overall speed needs too be reduced, it’s too fast now, when more turns is added into the game.

Exactly, slowing down the rate workers clear a jungle would make it sensible. A suggestion would be to slow it down to a unbelievable time then, make it faster with gunpowder then, normal with medicine. Cottages the same, make the turns it takes to hamlet double or more and so on.
Just a thought

 

[Dearmad]

This idea would kill the AI.

And honestly, I don't know how you guys are playing, but my economy is booming regardless of the slightly later cottage start. The economies during classical era are not dependent on money unless you over expanded. See the balance there? The AI handles this fine, and seems to expand about right.

Cavalry update:
I think I got it working so Cavalry can upgrade both ways now. That should satisfy a lot of human players and still allow the AI a fair hand into the indutrial era.

 

[oldStatesman]

Thanks DM, for all your work! Love your changes - stay firm on the jungle mods my man, they make for a very different game, much enjoyable!

And I also liked the Cav upgrade you did - glad you could make that a choice, though I am confused on how the AI will handle that...hope it can.

Am I right in seeing that your mod has been downloaded over 218,000 times????? Woo-Hoo!

This is amazing if correct (I hardly remeber seeing more than a few thousand for mods in the past) ...shows that the designers missed a huge segment of the gameplaying population by not including a true, lengthy game!

 

[EdCase]

Ok, didn't want to post anything until I was sure ......

Nicely done DH, I have tried the Mod a few times now...and I'm enjoying it immensely.
With regard to the jungle clearing "thing"...my two cents says leave it where you have it now. It makes for some hard choices

 

[tHebUm]

I'm having the load problems people were earlier.

Well, I read over and did junk people said to fix it for three hours now and finally decided to register and ask for help since I seem to have failed doing it myself.

I just figured I'd do one last test and whatever I accomplished over the last three and discovered that if I made a new game it works, and it has the proper loading location.

So, I can start anew with your mod but when I try and load the game I played yesterday for about five hours it wants to load the incorrect mod location and doesn't work.

So, I was really enjoying that game and I'm wondering if there's any way that I can fix it to load properly because I really don't want to start over. I tried going into the save file and editting the location in the top line, but then it just gives me a different error about being wrong version when all I do is change the location.

Help would be great, but I have a feeling that it's not going to work properly since it was saved with the improper load location the whole time I played yesterday. Oh well, eight hours wasted and lesson learned about how to have the mods work I guess if I can't fix it .

 

[Allan9]

I'm really liking the way this mod sounds, and have started one game with it, but it keeps crashing. I managed to save one and can't get it to load - I get an error message about a bad Mod location. I attached the message. Seems something wants to put a Mod directory before the rest of my path. Anyone know how to fix that? I didn't think I could screw up one sentence of install instructions... unzip to mod folder.

 

[JDexter]

Put the mod into your civ4\mods folder, NOT My Games\Mods. Damnit!

 

[Allan9]

Did that as soon as I saw the folder under prog files. Same thing.

 

[Dearmad]

It's not the shortcutted mods folder, are you sure? Civ IV manages its folders very oddly, IMO- and adds a bunch of folders that are shortcut folders to the wrong place.

 

[ytswy]

You will need to delete your cache if you have previously run the mod from the My Games folder.

The cache is located (this is different to the folder you previously installed the mod in, it's not under My Documents):
C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\cache

Delete all documents in this folder, delete the mod from the My Games folder under My Documents, and the mod should load fine.