Space Colonization modmod

[Faustmouse]

Sorry to say that but I have to stop playing here. I run into more and more overflow issues, and adjusting values in the XML only makes it worse.
But once your next patch is online I'll start a new game on a slightly faster game mode so that overflow shouldn't be an issue and I can see your changes better.

 

[pepper2000]

Ah ok! It confused me a bit; also why can't I build the Oort Cloud Base in my inner Cloud cities?

The proximate reason is that Oort Cloud Base only has a Galactic map type. I'll change that.

Ah ok it makes sense that way. But if you don't know that, it seems strange and in a way bugged, as if those weren't allowed to be colonized until Interstellar Colonization. Maybe a building called "In Flight" could indicate that? It would be replaced / going obsolete at Interstellar Colonization.

That could work. Or something that makes it more clear what is going on.

Titan sounds interesting. I also thought about the World Project. Also I got one "Green Mars" plot now, even before I built the wonder.

Yes, you don't need the wonder to terraform the terrain. That's intended. I had considered that at some point, the Terraforming wonder will convert all Mars terrains to Green Mars, a bit like how the Eden Project works.

Oh and I should note that Techs take 5 or more turns now (Teleportation Tech), even with my massive building cheating of giving Lunar Bases 250k Research each. So there is definetly waaaay to few research now in the TH and Galactic era, or the techs increase to fast in cost. Or both. What makes the problem worse I think is that there are only 2-3 techs per column, thus your x-grid and therefore the cost increase a lot faster than in the earlier eras. But building times are ok now, with around 9 turns per building in most circumstances.

Part of this might be the overflow problem again. I've noticed in some of my own testing that sometimes research falls very far below what it should be in the late game.

It seems like volcaones on IO can go dormant and change terrain to Earth type - there was forest growing on one of tiles!
Looks like there needs to be space volcanoes.

That would make space terrains more interesting.

I have suggestion for natural resources:
All minerals should be extracted by Core Mine building from Marble or Stone to Titanum and Uranium.

A lot of those can be obtained from the Modern Earthworks, which doesn't go obsolete either. I don't know if there is a need to consolidate those.

All plants should be produced by farmscraper

As for animals... maybe Farm Megacomplex could produce them.

I'm not sure there really is a need to produce all those animal resources late in the game. As it is now, I think you can get all the manufactured food bonuses from various high tech buildings.

Is there building that removes all pests? It should be somewhere at nanotech or transhuman era - at some points its easy to keep pests under control.

Hydromancer was working on that; I'm not sure how far that effort went.

 

[pepper2000]

Sorry to say that but I have to stop playing here. I run into more and more overflow issues, and adjusting values in the XML only makes it worse.
But once your next patch is online I'll start a new game on a slightly faster game mode so that overflow shouldn't be an issue and I can see your changes better.

That's really frustrating; sorry it happened. Probably next weekend is when I will make my next update, but no promises right now.

 

[raxo2222]

A lot of those can be obtained from the Modern Earthworks, which doesn't go obsolete either. I don't know if there is a need to consolidate those..

Well map minerals/ores aren't produced by these buildings.

 

[Faustmouse]

That's really frustrating; sorry it happened. Probably next weekend is when I will make my next update, but no promises right now.

Don't worry, it's really not your fault! I had great fun and I could provide you some feedback for how far I've got. And yeah, part of it was the overflow problem indeed.
Also don't rush with your update, I just realized that I'm on vacation anyways starting from next weekend to sometime in September

 

[pepper2000]

Don't worry, it's really not your fault! I had great fun and I could provide you some feedback for how far I've got. And yeah, part of it was the overflow problem indeed.
Also don't rush with your update, I just realized that I'm on vacation anyways starting from next weekend to sometime in September

I know, but it's still disappointing to hear. I was looking forward to hearing your ideas about the last two eras, because that's where I think the most restructuring is still needed.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I know, but it's still disappointing to hear. I was looking forward to hearing your ideas about the last two eras, because that's where I think the most restructuring is still needed.

It's valuable feedback to know that without fixing overflows, we aren't likely to get any feedback on those eras. I've really gotta correct that!

To do so is not a trivial thing... I've gotta basically add another integer to track digits in larger values over the million mark, doubling the amount of actual digits we have for commerce tracking. A galactically huge expansion of capacity.

Once costing is done, this is a huge priority given what you guys are trying to accomplish here.

 

[pepper2000]

A galactically huge expansion of capacity.

I would greatly appreciate that. I also find that even on "Small" maps and slower speeds, overflow problems crop up. I would appreciate it so much that I would overlook this pun.

 

[Faustmouse]

I will give you feedback once I can get there

So, would it be possible to round science, once you reach a certain value? Like, if you reach 100.000, you can round it to thousends, IE 103.345 science would be 103k, 109.679 would be 110k etc. And once you reach 100.000k you can round again to 100m; then you'd only need two bit more, that store nothing, k or m.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I will give you feedback once I can get there

So, would it be possible to round science, once you reach a certain value? Like, if you reach 100.000, you can round it to thousends, IE 103.345 science would be 103k, 109.679 would be 110k etc. And once you reach 100.000k you can round again to 100m; then you'd only need two bit more, that store nothing, k or m.

No, not really. Not that I can see. Because there's still a compiling from that more basic granular value of original 1. If you rounded like this, you'd have to do so all the way to the root, thus most sources of a commerce would round down to 0 and that would obviously create a LOT of issues.

 

[Toffer90]

If every million gold equals one diamond then you will be able to have something like 210 million diamonds and 1 million gold before you get an overflow. That is a huge increase from 210 million gold limit to (210 million multiplied with 1 million) gold limit. This is along the line of what TB is planning. I chose to call the new counter for a diamond as it will be easy to make an icon for it, it could just as well be a gold bar, or a treasure chest. We could do something like copper coins - silver coin - gold coin system where every 1000 of one of them equals one of the next, more precious, metal. Though, having three counters seems a bit excessive to me.

 

[Noriad2]

If gold overflows that is a sign that there is too much money being produced. If you worry about having too much, it means that money has completely lost its strategic value for the game. Adding more and more gold / turn AND giving a bigger and bigger multiplier gives an exponential amount of money income.
Like I said in another thread, I think Banks (+30% money, and an additional +10% with banknote civic for a total of +40% money) are very overpowered. If you reduce the +30% to +10%, and do the same for a few other buildings, the growth in money will be strongly curtailed.

There are many ways for players to get money. The AI is usually swimming in money, too, and could be taught not to build certain buildings if money is tight, just in case.

 

[tmv]

If gold overflows that is a sign that there is too much money being produced.

It's a sign but not proof. It could also just mean fluctuation, especially if you consider that we need one currency measurement from a prehistoric tribe to an interstellar empire (at least). That's easily more than 32 bits of difference.

 

[Toffer90]

If gold overflows that is a sign that there is too much money being produced. If you worry about having too much, it means that money has completely lost its strategic value for the game. Adding more and more gold / turn AND giving a bigger and bigger multiplier gives an exponential amount of money income.
Like I said in another thread...

I strongly agree, but it wouldn't hurt to raise the roof nontheless.

 

[Noriad2]

It's a sign but not proof. It could also just mean fluctuation, especially if you consider that we need one currency measurement from a prehistoric tribe to an interstellar empire (at least). That's easily more than 32 bits of difference.

No not necessarily. You confuse nominal value with purchasing power. If you can buy more and better stuff with the same 100 dollar, the worth of your money has gone up even though in numbers the amount of money stays the same. Cavemen cannot buy spaceship parts as these are not invented yet, so there is no reason why a stone age coin should have the same value as a future coin. A stone age military unit and a modern military unit cost the same in upkeep, but the last is much more powerful.

Giving player massive gold income bonuses then try to take the money away again through stuff like inflation and high prices of things is creating both the problem and a (failed) attempt to solve it. Don't create the problem with massive exponentionally growing income in the first place, and you have an easier time solving the problem.

 

[Thunderbrd]

No not necessarily. You confuse nominal value with purchasing power. If you can buy more and better stuff with the same 100 dollar, the worth of your money has gone up even though in numbers the amount of money stays the same. Cavemen cannot buy spaceship parts as these are not invented yet, so there is no reason why a stone age coin should have the same value as a future coin. A stone age military unit and a modern military unit cost the same in upkeep, but the last is much more powerful.

Giving player massive gold income bonuses then try to take the money away again through stuff like inflation and high prices of things is creating both the problem and a (failed) attempt to solve it. Don't create the problem with massive exponentionally growing income in the first place, and you have an easier time solving the problem.

The nature of the game is expansion. While you have a point, an improvement to a market must be better than the market to justify the improvement. Therefore, you MUST plan for some inflation of values. It's even built in to things like the upgrade system. There is an exponential inflation in nearly everything in the civ IV game engine as a whole and cannot be denied. You can curtail it with thinking like you're suggesting, and I agree that this kind of approach is important to evaluate - thus the building projects I'm doing is in large part to help with this angle on things. But when you go galactic and you have multiple planets/cities/ etc... you must ALSO prepare for taking the approach Toffer explained in a way better than I could.

 

[Noriad2]

The nature of the game is expansion. While you have a point, an improvement to a market must be better than the market to justify the improvement. Therefore, you MUST plan for some inflation of values. It's even built in to things like the upgrade system. There is an exponential inflation in nearly everything in the civ IV game engine as a whole and cannot be denied. You can curtail it with thinking like you're suggesting, and I agree that this kind of approach is important to evaluate - thus the building projects I'm doing is in large part to help with this angle on things. But when you go galactic and you have multiple planets/cities/ etc... you must ALSO prepare for taking the approach Toffer explained in a way better than I could.

Money income = (base money income) * (money multiplier)

Which means that if you increase both (base gold income) and (money multiplier) linearly, then the resulting income grows exponentially.
But there are more factors. The number of cities grows too. And the above formula is the money income per city and should be multiplied by the number of cities. But then there are de facto exponential factors within these factors. For example, the earlier bonus buildings give only a few % bonus, while the Bank for example already gives 30% bonus (40% with banknote civic). So the (money multiplier) grows exponentially too, even before being multiplied with other exponentially growing factors.
What I'm saying is that it may be best to tone down a bit with stacking the bonuses as all these bonuses multiply with each other and you may end up with a growth curve to the fourth or even fifth power instead of just to the 2nd or 3rd power.

As hammers, money and tech are to a certain extent interchangeable, growth curves of these should be roughly similar.

 

[tmv]

Money income = (base money income) * (money multiplier)

Which means that if you increase both (base gold income) and (money multiplier) linearly, then the resulting income grows exponentially.

Come again?

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We certainly shouldn't have a system where a replacement building only increases pollution without any new benefits (like we had in past versions), that would really shatter the fourth wall.

 

[Faustmouse]

What I found was that eventhough Space buildings are freaking expensive to rush, I very well had the money. And I think the biggest contributors for that are all those "+1% with Bonus" buildings. They really need a flat bonus, rather than a percentage.

 

[tmv]

What I found was that eventhough Space buildings are freaking expensive to rush, I very well had the money. And I think the biggest contributors for that are all those "+1% with Bonus" buildings. They really need a flat bonus, rather than a percentage.

Agreed. Buildings with percentage modifiers should usually be NW at least.