The Song of the Moon

[Nerfboy]

PLayed and not having any problems.

Although i would like to see more things revolve around the resources. I think there is alot of potential for this though, great work.

I know this is still a work in progress...is there going to be new unit art? Music? the lot? I know you must be able to go in many differernt directions. But a really nice touch.

 

[woodelf]

PLayed and not having any problems.

Although i would like to see more things revolve around the resources. I think there is alot of potential for this though, great work.

I know this is still a work in progress...is there going to be new unit art? Music? the lot? I know you must be able to go in many differernt directions. But a really nice touch.

The things revolving around resources is definitely a priority. Feel free to list anything that could go together. I added gems and crystals to Laser Infantry at the last minute and we need more of this synergy.

Music is something I'm sure JBG will look into. Matthewv and dsquared have done wonders with the art so far, but right now we're limited by what we can make and how many units we can skin. We do plan on massive art changes.

Thanks for the comments.

 

[Fragment]

Hi,

your mod rocks! I just spent the evening with it! It's turn 300, and if you want to know how the AI does, just take a look at the save attached.

I did turn off barbs, the idea of barbs on the moon was just too weird.

Noble was way too easy, for a first try especially. IMHO the AI does not build enough city improvements. More, did I accidentially turn off tech trading or is there no "alphabet" tech? I sorely missed it.

A few comments on realism:

1) The silicion resource. The silicion resource is ridiculous. A large part of the surface of the moon (as other rocky planets in our system) is composed of silicion. Silicion is abundant on the moon. It's as ridiculous as the stone resource in stock cIV. Please don't do that

2) Solar power. A moon day is 28 days long, meaning it's dark 14 days at a time. Thus, solar power is an energy source which is not constantly available. There are 2 solutions to that: The first is, go nuclear, the second is, put huge solar panels at the lagrange-points or in orbit and beam power down from there. Both are feasible with current technology, provided you have enough lifting power. I think a ground based solar panel should be working only every other turn, to reflect that. There's no way ground based solar panels could deliver the amount of energy needed for a serious moon habitat (more than an aluminum can).

3) The basic elements. There are elements which are quite rare on the moon, compared to the earth: hydrogen and nitrogen. Since these are basic ingedients of life, any civilization will have to bring their own, and later extract them from the rocks, which will be a VERY expensive process, energy-wise. Oxygen, on the other hand, is quite abundant (see silicion resource ). True growth of a civ on the moon will be dependent on the availability of hydrogen and nitrogen. You may want to reflect that in your game.

4) Health. I believe the limiting factor of growth after 3) should be health. Check this out: You're living in a cramped space, in an artificial environment, have scarce medical facilities, are subjected to space radiation, breathe oxidizing moon dust every time someone enters through the airlock, your body will have problems adapting to 1/6 earth gravity, and on top of that, it's algae food day in, day out. No going out on saturday night either

5) Habitats. Because of radiation and micrometeorites you would want to build habitats and hydroponics several meters underground, and use the rock as a shield. The glass dome is a more classic idea of a moon habitat, but it's quite impractical. Well ... hell, for classics sake, keep the glass domes

6) Oh, and regarding the research of rocketry. How in the world did we get there in the first place? It's like I had to research hunting AFTER founding ... oh, wait ...

BUT: You did an excellent job on inventing techs for the tech tree, hats off to you!!

Ok before I get totally carried away, good night and keep up the good work!

Regards.

 

[MrC]

What settings are you using? Are you using the Moon_Map script?

Map size
Ridges
Dust Sea

The game runs well until you try to settle a city? No other visible glitches, wierd colors, ect?

I solved it, wasn't even civrelated.

 

[Belizan]

Woodelf etal:

I noticed the Biodome for the citys disappears after the Rover Grage is built. Is this on purpose? So far 0.15 has worked very well (play wise) some tweeks are still needed for cosmetics. BTW I'm really starting to hate the maurading little sh*t barbarians.

You mean the graphical image disappears? I don't think I've noticed that effect. That would be a building display priority issue in the XML for Matt or Woodelf to look at 8).

As for barbarians, we are planning (?) to remove them entirely. We will have other events, however, like moonquakes and asteroid impacts. Expect those in our next release, which we have tentatively slated for about ~3-4 weeks from now.

 

[Belizan]

2) Solar power. A moon day is 28 days long, meaning it's dark 14 days at a time. Thus, solar power is an energy source which is not constantly available. There are 2 solutions to that: The first is, go nuclear, the second is, put huge solar panels at the lagrange-points or in orbit and beam power down from there. Both are feasible with current technology, provided you have enough lifting power. I think a ground based solar panel should be working only every other turn, to reflect that. There's no way ground based solar panels could deliver the amount of energy needed for a serious moon habitat (more than an aluminum can).

I disagree. Turns even in our mod are a year a turn, I believe. At which point, these fluctuations are ammortized over the entire turn. Power can be stored in capacitors, it's output distributed evenly over the turn. As for quantity of power, without an atmosphere, the amount of energy coming in is far more pronounced then on Earth. Further, we're talking about a field of solar panels the size of Cleveland. Keep in mind that tiles are big. I wish I had that hitchiker's quote about the size of the galaxy handy, but... Yeah.. They're big. I will agree with you in so much as I believe all of our city improvements are way too "good".

3) The basic elements. There are elements which are quite rare on the moon, compared to the earth: hydrogen and nitrogen. Since these are basic ingedients of life, any civilization will have to bring their own, and later extract them from the rocks, which will be a VERY expensive process, energy-wise. Oxygen, on the other hand, is quite abundant (see silicion resource ). True growth of a civ on the moon will be dependent on the availability of hydrogen and nitrogen. You may want to reflect that in your game.

Personally, I'm just the code weasel on this project, so I didn't do most of the basic design work (other then a few random inclusive ideas here and there). I have, however, recently started to learn a bit about the moon, which has been giving me fits when looking at our mod. This point right here about Oxygen vs. Hydrogen and Nitrogen, and the quantity of "polar ice" found on the Moon has been top on that list.

4) Health. I believe the limiting factor of growth after 3) should be health. Check this out: You're living in a cramped space, in an artificial environment, have scarce medical facilities, are subjected to space radiation, breathe oxidizing moon dust every time someone enters through the airlock, your body will have problems adapting to 1/6 earth gravity, and on top of that, it's algae food day in, day out. No going out on saturday night either

The algae food aspect is as much as happiness one as a health one. Personally, I have found that health is the major limit on growth in my games. Again, though, I would tend to agree with you that the things are generally "too easy".

5) Habitats. Because of radiation and micrometeorites you would want to build habitats and hydroponics several meters underground, and use the rock as a shield. The glass dome is a more classic idea of a moon habitat, but it's quite impractical. Well ... hell, for classics sake, keep the glass domes

Yeah, and the graphics for underground hydroponic farms are far more problematic as well 8).

6) Oh, and regarding the research of rocketry. How in the world did we get there in the first place? It's like I had to research hunting AFTER founding ... oh, wait ...

OMG! Thank you! I have been winging about this since day one . I hadn't realized they had managed to slip that by me 8). Again, not that I've really been a major design contributor thus far. Personally, I have proposed that the earliest military units not be armed rovers or lunar marines, but ICBMs--conventional and nuclear. After all, we have implicit earth trade. Obviously we have missile technology.

BUT: You did an excellent job on inventing techs for the tech tree, hats off to you!!

That would be largely woodelf and JBG. Although I think all of us contributed to an extent.

Thanks for your comments .

 

[Holistic]

Played some, and I really liked this mod. Although, next time I'll make sure to turn off Barbarians. My comments might be slightly redudant and raise very minor points, but here are some anyway. Since I played an isolationist builder game (which is slightly too easy without religious differences entering the equation and the AI not building enough food-increasing buildings), I can't really comment much on AI behaviour, nor the "balance" of unit strengths and availabilities. I did however notice some odd behaviour from units that come with... is it Combat I? Sometimes, both (I forgot the names, but they had the) Shock and Formation (icons) I and II were availbale simultaneously. Also, since I didn't expect any, I accidentaly burned my first Great General for a tech. The general spawned from combat with barbarians, is that supposed to happen?

Regarding the names of the civilizations, acronyms are futuristic and all, but slightly "impersonal". The different organizations could perhaps be slightly easier to recognize by e.g. having NASA be called "The Administration", ESA "The Agency", and so forth.

The organizations could also be defined by having agendas the organization is "for" and agendas it's "against", to perhaps make them slightly easier to tell apart. That'd also open for having three "distinct" leaders for each organization (or alternatively two "rebel" leaders for each organization); one that has the same agendas as the organization, one that shares only the "pro"-agenda(s), one that shares only the "anti"-agenda(s). Leaderwise, another idea could be for them to have uniquely named traits, approximating the "sum" of their current traits. This might make each leader easier to "recognize" or at least more "unique". Then again, the benefits are probably marginal at best.

In the absence of religions, which would not "fit" that well in a (more or less) sci-fi setting, ideologies would make a good alternative (and also open for a largely optional branch on the early tech tree). Another option for bloc-building could be civics by (slightly) increasing AI weight on having the "right" civics and making more of them available earlier (and maybe even "upgradeable" with technologies).

Namewise, while Communism is not the government owning everything (since government presumably 'withers away'), it is like Fascism clearly not a "government" civic. "Police State" is somewhat covered by "Anti-Terrorism" ("Mass Surveillance" sounds slightly less contemporary - oh, and are barbarians going to be renamed terrorists?). Single party-state or Totalitarianism might be better "name" for either Communism or Fascism. The other could be replaced by "Oligarchy", but "Board of Directors" or "Committee" might be a better name still.

There's a number of civics in different categories enabling pop-rushing. I'd suggest that the different means of rushing are in the same category so you're never posed with the somewhat odd choice between rushing with either pops or cash.

There's also very many civics that give very many bonus trade routes. Without oceans and rivers, trade routes take a lot of work to create in the first place (especially ones to other civilizations), and I'm not certain that the AI makes it a sufficient priority to build tracks to their neighbours to make the trade routes worth anything (then again, I'm probably wrong). Many civics also give negative hammers and foods from trade routes, which has no effect outside of decreasing bonuses from other sources. One way to make them have an effect could be to introduce another civic category, called "Legal Tender" or something like that.

Also, negative commerce modifiers from civics make trade routes valued "one" worthless. This makes Free Market all the more powerful, especially given difficulty of establishing foreign trade and the number of +1 trade routes on Moon Script-maps. Then again, this might be by design. Perhaps the modifiers to trade route values could use some tweaking (or perhaps they already have been tweaked?).

Buildingwise, biodome (not city biodomes) and city bunkers can be built in the same city, is this by design? Why not drive the food/hammers-tradeoff further? Also, is the Internets supposed to be available? The tech that enables the project comes slightly too early in the tech tree if so.

Manufacturing Plants work exactly like Airports, which seems a bit... odd. The "libraries" that are needed to build universities are not available. Might be a XML-bug -- if universities are supposed to be available in the first place. Neither library nor theater sounds very "futuristic" (well, not like something you'd expect to find on the moon anyway). The buildings could be renamed to something slightly more "fitting" (maybe "Culture Centre" for the latter, "Educational Facilities" for the former).

Hopefully this is of some use, and please do keep up the good work, can't wait for the release of this mod in its full glory.

 

[woodelf]

Keep up the comments. A lot of the oddities are indeed XML type issues where cut/paste left odd values. Keep playing and we'll start cleaning it up.

 

[Entsuropi]

3) The basic elements. There are elements which are quite rare on the moon, compared to the earth: hydrogen and nitrogen. Since these are basic ingedients of life, any civilization will have to bring their own, and later extract them from the rocks, which will be a VERY expensive process, energy-wise. Oxygen, on the other hand, is quite abundant (see silicion resource ). True growth of a civ on the moon will be dependent on the availability of hydrogen and nitrogen. You may want to reflect that in your game.

As I understand it, hydrogen and oxygen can be aquired by splitting the water ice found in various places (some always-dark craters, some underground pockets). This should give hydrogen (useful for a lot of things, mainly industrial processes and probably cars) and oxygen (good for not choking to death, among other things). Admittedly i'm not sure how difficult the splitting process is, but the mod is set in the future.

 

[Drakonik]

Admittedly i'm not sure how difficult the splitting process is, but the mod is set in the future.

It's called electrolysis, and it is nothing more than running an electric current through H20. You could do it at home with a cup of water and a nine volt battery. On a large scale, the only problem would be obtaining a lot of water, and producing a lot of current.

Edit: Make that hydrolysis.

 

[woodelf]

I think we're assuming that once we get there we'll find hydrogen and oxygen locked up in some form or another. We needed to make some leaps of faith.

 

[Xanikk999]

The terrain looks very wierd when i play this mod. But i think thats because i downloaded and installed the blue marble mod.

I see trees and black areas. It cant be a graphical bug because it works fine with vanilla civ. What can i do to make it look like your pics? Do i need to uninstall the blue marble mod?

 

[Xanikk999]

Ok heres a screenshot of how it looks on my pc. I dont know why this is happening. I dont have any graphical problems with vanilla civ4. And i just recently custom built this computer with very good parts.

Can someone help me fix this?

 

[Entsuropi]

Xanikk999, that looks hilarious. That crater looks like it's crumbling into the realms of chaos, or something.



We should arrange a series of multiplayer matches using SotM sometime. For fun, profit, testing and geeky jokes written with the label tool.

 

[Xanikk999]

Xanikk999, that looks hilarious. That crater looks like it's crumbling into the realms of chaos, or something.



We should arrange a series of multiplayer matches using SotM sometime. For fun, profit, testing and geeky jokes written with the label tool.

But do you know how to get the normal terrain back? And i doubt the settler unit is supposed to look like a settler from vanilla civ4.

 

[Boris Badinov]

Xanikk999: Two (2) things to check, that you selected the moon map at the very beginning, and the graphics driver is up to date (mostly the former). I also have the Blue Marble mod installed and the only carry over for me is that the dust seas look like water lakes with a tide no less. So lets see here, the moon causes tides every 12 hours on earth, so would the tides on the moon last 14 days?

Woodelf: are the Laser troops or the UAV platoon supposed to upgrade to Heavy Laser troops? Also after building 'Libraries', 'Universities' just don't want to be built. I guess parents in the future will save a bunch of money on tution.

 

[bcr1776]

Xanikk999: So lets see here, the moon causes tides every 12 hours on earth, so would the tides on the moon last 14 days?

Sounds right, 14 days. Now all we need is a plan to rid the moon of Moose and Squirrel

 

[woodelf]

Woodelf: are the Laser troops or the UAV platoon supposed to upgrade to Heavy Laser troops? Also after building 'Libraries', 'Universities' just don't want to be built. I guess parents in the future will save a bunch of money on tution.

Thanks for the heads-up. Two more cut/paste XML screw ups. I'm going to need to make that separate thread for all of these things you guys find.

Actually I am going to right now over in the main C&C. If you guys don't mind after I give you the link would you post things that need to be fixed. I guess also suggestions as well since they'll be in a central location. That would help out the speed of a patch greatly.

edit: Thread here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=160989 for keeping the bugs and ideas in one place.

 

[bcr1776]

But do you know how to get the normal terrain back? And i doubt the settler unit is supposed to look like a settler from vanilla civ4.

I could only get rid of it by going back to vanilla Civ IV -Complete re-install, delete all files and reg clean. It also vastly improved game play. I think some of the other modpacks really screwed with the way this mod played.

My settler looks pretty much the same.

 

[bcr1776]

I think we're assuming that once we get there we'll find hydrogen and oxygen locked up in some form or another. We needed to make some leaps of faith.

Ice folks, If we can colonize the Moon we can move an asteroid.