The Song of the Moon
- Thread starter JBG
- Start date
Register666666
Warlord
- Joined
- Jun 1, 2006
- Messages
- 131
woodelf said:
That one doesn't seem to work either, lol.
joelwest
Noble
now that I am using "Moon_Map.py" in the PublicMaps folder rather than regular map with moon terrain grafted on the unique lunar resources do appear on the map.
==============================================
BTW, I can understand why I like so many of the other posters are initially not using the Moon map for their first game.
as newbies to the mod our first task is to select a civ to play.
to find out the characteristics of SotM's civ's we go to the "play now" selection of the mod's main menu.
it is counterintuitive to backtrack to a "custom game" or "custom scenario" selection of the mod's main menu once all the civ descriptions have been read in the "play now" selection.
is there a way for a static moon map to appear if someone chooses "play now" for their main menu selection?
==============================================
regarding civ's (corporations or agencies which have leaders), the choices of which leader I would want to play are exactly two - either Hera of the Lunar Republic (corp) or Felicia of NASA (agency) since those are the only two leaders who have increased hammer production as two of their three primary civ traits.
these two leaders represent the two of the three possible "Charters," the third civ leader trait - Independent Charter (Hera) and Scientific Charter (Felicity). ("Pioneers" are all apparently Independent in their civ Charter.) there currently is no SotM leader with the double hammer bonus and the Capitalist Charter.
a description of the third (Charter) civ trait that has eluded other posters on this board since its effects are described not on the leader trait selection help but in the first column of the civics screen (F3).
since an option to change to one of the other two Charter civ traits does NOT appear as the game progresses it should not be listed on the civics screen (F3) at all but rather as a civ trait that is described in the leader section of the Civilopedia and at the start of the ("Play Now") game when leaders traits are listed. (neither of these Charter civ trait descriptions is currently implemented).
Independent Charter leaders ("Pioneers") have +1 Happiness for every soldier in city and -35% war weariness, and so is the militaristic charter. The downside is the missing research bonus the Scientific Charter leaders receive.
Capitalist Charter leaders have +10% war weariness, and so this is the "war weariness bonus neutral" charter. it has NO unique advantages and so until it is redone such leaders should be avoided. (One way to fix this flaw would be to give Pioneers a -15% research bonus.)
Scientific Charter leaders have -1 Happiness for every soldier in city, +35% war weariness, and +20% research so is the pacificist charter. The downside is the need for short wars and more happiness city improvements to offset city growth.
--------------------------------------------
my suggestion is to redo the three possible civ traits so that two hammer addition bonuses are not possible and to add more leaders to achieve a greater variety of traits.
the "Capitalist Charter" needs to be redone so that has some bonus (see above).
==============================================
newcomers may be wondering why my emphasis on hammers.
as the game is currently structured getting all four of the national wonders helps immensely, particularly the Fungus and Military Academy. having city health or GPP's are much less important to building up a strong civ.
depending on the amount of dust sea in the game another civ trait that would be at the top of the list of being useful is a mare-navigator trait similar to the Seafaring trait in Civ 3.
==============================================
BTW, I can understand why I like so many of the other posters are initially not using the Moon map for their first game.
as newbies to the mod our first task is to select a civ to play.
to find out the characteristics of SotM's civ's we go to the "play now" selection of the mod's main menu.
it is counterintuitive to backtrack to a "custom game" or "custom scenario" selection of the mod's main menu once all the civ descriptions have been read in the "play now" selection.
is there a way for a static moon map to appear if someone chooses "play now" for their main menu selection?
==============================================
regarding civ's (corporations or agencies which have leaders), the choices of which leader I would want to play are exactly two - either Hera of the Lunar Republic (corp) or Felicia of NASA (agency) since those are the only two leaders who have increased hammer production as two of their three primary civ traits.
these two leaders represent the two of the three possible "Charters," the third civ leader trait - Independent Charter (Hera) and Scientific Charter (Felicity). ("Pioneers" are all apparently Independent in their civ Charter.) there currently is no SotM leader with the double hammer bonus and the Capitalist Charter.
a description of the third (Charter) civ trait that has eluded other posters on this board since its effects are described not on the leader trait selection help but in the first column of the civics screen (F3).
since an option to change to one of the other two Charter civ traits does NOT appear as the game progresses it should not be listed on the civics screen (F3) at all but rather as a civ trait that is described in the leader section of the Civilopedia and at the start of the ("Play Now") game when leaders traits are listed. (neither of these Charter civ trait descriptions is currently implemented).
Independent Charter leaders ("Pioneers") have +1 Happiness for every soldier in city and -35% war weariness, and so is the militaristic charter. The downside is the missing research bonus the Scientific Charter leaders receive.
Capitalist Charter leaders have +10% war weariness, and so this is the "war weariness bonus neutral" charter. it has NO unique advantages and so until it is redone such leaders should be avoided. (One way to fix this flaw would be to give Pioneers a -15% research bonus.)
Scientific Charter leaders have -1 Happiness for every soldier in city, +35% war weariness, and +20% research so is the pacificist charter. The downside is the need for short wars and more happiness city improvements to offset city growth.
--------------------------------------------
my suggestion is to redo the three possible civ traits so that two hammer addition bonuses are not possible and to add more leaders to achieve a greater variety of traits.
the "Capitalist Charter" needs to be redone so that has some bonus (see above).
==============================================
newcomers may be wondering why my emphasis on hammers.
as the game is currently structured getting all four of the national wonders helps immensely, particularly the Fungus and Military Academy. having city health or GPP's are much less important to building up a strong civ.
depending on the amount of dust sea in the game another civ trait that would be at the top of the list of being useful is a mare-navigator trait similar to the Seafaring trait in Civ 3.
joelwest
Noble
now that I am using "Moon_Map.py" in the PublicMaps folder rather than regular map with moon terrain grafted on there are a different set of bugs. see attached files for game years 171, 205, & 233.
View attachment SotM NASA Felicity AD 171.zip
View attachment SotM NASA Felicity AD 205.zip
View attachment SotM NASA Felicity AD 233.zip
the below analysis is strictly for a play of the mod using a Moon-map from the PublicMaps folder.
see post number 835 for a non Moon-map specific mod spoiler, and an analysis for play of the mod using a land-based map.
====================================
1) the Biodome city improvement is incorrectly listed in the Civilopedia as being available with either Hyproponics or Futuristic Alloys, but is really only available with the latter.
2) unlike the non-Moon map game, the Ion Shield technology does NOT add the one food tile to a dust sea. nor is a port city allowed to build a skimmer (naval) unit in a dust sea tile. the AI civs have not built any skimmers either. (the dust sea can be paved with a road within one's own civ boundaries as previously noted on this board.)
3) it needs to be explicitly stated in the Civilopedia that you can neither build cities nor mine on crater rim tiles. these tiles are all but worthless except for their defense bonus because using Genetic Screening means an engineer specialist will contribute just as much as one of the tiles.
strangely it does not take any more time to build a road over crater rims than any other tile.
my game did not have hill terrain, so the mining improvement was less useful since it only can be used on a tile having a specific resource needing mining.
are you telling me there are no hills on the moon? didn't the moon at one time have volcanic activity that created hills (and gorges)?
4) the Civilopedia also does not state you are unable to build cities on a dust sea tile.
a bug in SotM 0.23 allows the barbarians to do so. see attached year 233 file at lower left edge of the map.
this is a major bug. such a city can never be taken by another civ since such a tile can never be attacked.
5) the military engineer (unlike the non-Moon map version of SotM) has some purpose since he can make radar tower and fort improvements. unfortunately he has the same bug as before, namely this unit is NOT strictly speaking a more powerful version of the engineer unit since there are some improvements such as custom houses the military engineer cannot build.
6) the Wonders are not duplicated, so there can be only one theatre, library, or military site in a city. (the duplication problem is linked somehow to not using a moon map.) however the queuing problem remains, eg multiple turrets can be queued until one is actually built.
7) the university improvement is broken (year 171). it is grayed out saying I need to build a library even though a library has already been built. ditto for the laboratory improvement (year 205). it is grayed since it says I need to build an already built observatory.
not having labs with their 50% spaceship building bonus makes it seem pointless to continue past the intial ability to start a SS casing. (however I did, and won again at "Augustus Caesar" Hall of Fame level in a quick Noble game.)
8) the trade union improvement is an allowed improvement, but worthless. early in the game is costs five turns to get a measly one coin. compare this to the collector which is also available early in the game. some cities come with a free trade union for no apparent reason.
for trade unions to become useful their coinage needs to be raised to at least three.
9) unlike vanilla Civ 4 or Civ 3 if you skip early techs this mod eventually gives you them for free if you wait long enough.
10) linked systems and resident alien improvements are not functional. recycling is supposed to end all building pollution but its effect is either nonexistent or minimal (taking yuck from 20 to 17).
11) the AI believe it or not is even dumber than on a land derived map. this because the civs are randomly distributed over the entire moon rather than being concentrated near each other. hence the inefficient civs live on until their less braindead neighbors finally encroach on them over a 100 years into a quick game.
I was attacked 15 turns before the date of the first file (in the year 156) by the second strongest civ. we had open borders so it should known I had level 12 tanks to its measly level eight UAV platoons and level 6 tanks. by year 171 I had already taken three of its cities.
the AI refused to talk (so I could not stop the war) until it was left with only one city. its position vis a vis myself was so weak the only damage it inflicted inside my borders the entire war was to kill an engineer on the turn it declared war.
in comparison at least one of the civs from the land based map was not quite so dumb. rather than be utterly destroyed it offered me back the city it had originally taken from me in the first war plus some coin.
another of the land map civs was not so smart. even when I was poised to take its last city with superior force it refused to talk. I waited several turns for it to change its mind and it never did. talk about deathwish.
12) the debris works fine as native goody huts in a Moon map based game. debris is not generated in a non Moon-map based game.
13) I would appreciate a post on this board indicating whether the issues raised in this entry (and entry 835 for a land-based map) will have an interim fix before the overall mod is revamped and the entire tech tree filled in.
until the bugs I have identified are addressed I have little motivation to continue playing the SotM mod.
however if you come up with a patch I will test the mod again.
View attachment SotM NASA Felicity AD 171.zip
View attachment SotM NASA Felicity AD 205.zip
View attachment SotM NASA Felicity AD 233.zip
the below analysis is strictly for a play of the mod using a Moon-map from the PublicMaps folder.
see post number 835 for a non Moon-map specific mod spoiler, and an analysis for play of the mod using a land-based map.
====================================
1) the Biodome city improvement is incorrectly listed in the Civilopedia as being available with either Hyproponics or Futuristic Alloys, but is really only available with the latter.
2) unlike the non-Moon map game, the Ion Shield technology does NOT add the one food tile to a dust sea. nor is a port city allowed to build a skimmer (naval) unit in a dust sea tile. the AI civs have not built any skimmers either. (the dust sea can be paved with a road within one's own civ boundaries as previously noted on this board.)
3) it needs to be explicitly stated in the Civilopedia that you can neither build cities nor mine on crater rim tiles. these tiles are all but worthless except for their defense bonus because using Genetic Screening means an engineer specialist will contribute just as much as one of the tiles.
strangely it does not take any more time to build a road over crater rims than any other tile.
my game did not have hill terrain, so the mining improvement was less useful since it only can be used on a tile having a specific resource needing mining.
are you telling me there are no hills on the moon? didn't the moon at one time have volcanic activity that created hills (and gorges)?
4) the Civilopedia also does not state you are unable to build cities on a dust sea tile.
a bug in SotM 0.23 allows the barbarians to do so. see attached year 233 file at lower left edge of the map.
this is a major bug. such a city can never be taken by another civ since such a tile can never be attacked.
5) the military engineer (unlike the non-Moon map version of SotM) has some purpose since he can make radar tower and fort improvements. unfortunately he has the same bug as before, namely this unit is NOT strictly speaking a more powerful version of the engineer unit since there are some improvements such as custom houses the military engineer cannot build.
6) the Wonders are not duplicated, so there can be only one theatre, library, or military site in a city. (the duplication problem is linked somehow to not using a moon map.) however the queuing problem remains, eg multiple turrets can be queued until one is actually built.
7) the university improvement is broken (year 171). it is grayed out saying I need to build a library even though a library has already been built. ditto for the laboratory improvement (year 205). it is grayed since it says I need to build an already built observatory.
not having labs with their 50% spaceship building bonus makes it seem pointless to continue past the intial ability to start a SS casing. (however I did, and won again at "Augustus Caesar" Hall of Fame level in a quick Noble game.)
8) the trade union improvement is an allowed improvement, but worthless. early in the game is costs five turns to get a measly one coin. compare this to the collector which is also available early in the game. some cities come with a free trade union for no apparent reason.
for trade unions to become useful their coinage needs to be raised to at least three.
9) unlike vanilla Civ 4 or Civ 3 if you skip early techs this mod eventually gives you them for free if you wait long enough.
10) linked systems and resident alien improvements are not functional. recycling is supposed to end all building pollution but its effect is either nonexistent or minimal (taking yuck from 20 to 17).
11) the AI believe it or not is even dumber than on a land derived map. this because the civs are randomly distributed over the entire moon rather than being concentrated near each other. hence the inefficient civs live on until their less braindead neighbors finally encroach on them over a 100 years into a quick game.
I was attacked 15 turns before the date of the first file (in the year 156) by the second strongest civ. we had open borders so it should known I had level 12 tanks to its measly level eight UAV platoons and level 6 tanks. by year 171 I had already taken three of its cities.
the AI refused to talk (so I could not stop the war) until it was left with only one city. its position vis a vis myself was so weak the only damage it inflicted inside my borders the entire war was to kill an engineer on the turn it declared war.
in comparison at least one of the civs from the land based map was not quite so dumb. rather than be utterly destroyed it offered me back the city it had originally taken from me in the first war plus some coin.
another of the land map civs was not so smart. even when I was poised to take its last city with superior force it refused to talk. I waited several turns for it to change its mind and it never did. talk about deathwish.
12) the debris works fine as native goody huts in a Moon map based game. debris is not generated in a non Moon-map based game.
13) I would appreciate a post on this board indicating whether the issues raised in this entry (and entry 835 for a land-based map) will have an interim fix before the overall mod is revamped and the entire tech tree filled in.
until the bugs I have identified are addressed I have little motivation to continue playing the SotM mod.
however if you come up with a patch I will test the mod again.
OgreFodder
Chieftain
I have just resently started to play Civ IV having never played any of the other versions. I found this sight and love the idea of modding to get the most out of the basic game concept.
The problem I am having with the "Song of the Moon" Mod is that it will only play for 11 turns and determine a winner. I have changed the goals for the game and whether I am running a time of conquest goal, it quits after 11 turns.
I have checked all the setting that I can, but I can't find a wayy to make the game last longer. This doesn't happen with any of the games original Mods or any of the mods I have downloaded from CivFanatics.
Please help! I feel like such an idiot!
Learning a mod is easier, allowing you to get to actually playing the game, devising strategies, if it follows some rational pattern and is not just total gibberish and magic. Everybody knows history, and history based mods put us in a familiar world, where all we need to learn is how it is represented. We may not know exactly the combat value of a swordsman but we have an inkling what iron working is. If you are drawn to a star wars mod you know the star wars mileux and its just like history for you. But in a totally made up sci fi world it is much harder. Logical cohesion is essential.
So, how come Alpha Centauri got away with what it did? Cool movies.
So, how come Alpha Centauri got away with what it did? Cool movies.
darkedone02
The Suggestor
Can i ask you a question? what is this? I don't see any new changes in this game but the 23A version name change...
OwieB2003
Warlord
(Quote from the Great Readme File, found in the directory you unzipped the file to)
Change Log:
Updated to run under 1.61.
Change Log:
Updated to run under 1.61.
Cool mod. The technames were (for the most part) original and fairly intuitive, and while the tech texts were somewhat uninspired at times, at least they were there.
I played one or two trial games that didnt get very far in, due to the massive barbarian threat in the game that took me by surprise. (I love the barbarians though, so I'm not recommending to change it unless its to make room for something better such as asteroids and debris. the constant threat of heavy incursions had me playing more militaristically then I would ever dream of in vanilla).
On my last game however, I built up a strong military and posted sentries around my borders, which was quite easy with the dustsea and mountains providing natural walls, and found the game very easy once the barbarian threat was overcome, at least in comparison to vanilla.
the problems...
#1. Dome Refitting. I dont know how many times I refitted my domes thinking they were upgrades of the existing ones, before I realized they were replacing the other. I dont feel its very intuitive playwise, but perhaps that could be addressed by referring the player to the readme in the game's startup. Otherwise I dont bother looking, and dont expect there to be a readme on a mod. The real problem though, was that the AI simply didnt understand they replaced existing ones as well, and always recommended me to build the refit of the other one, forgetting that it had just told me to build the other one. I think this is what caused the AI civs to waste a lot of resources and lose a substantial lead to me.
#2. Dustseas. Its been mentioned elsewhere I think, but while dustseas are a good idea originally, something needs to be provided later to allow units to cross them. I completely dominated the map, but was unable to capture a couple remaining civ's cities due to them being on, or surrounded by, dustsea... and culture wars are too slow and unfeasible.
#3. Techtree completion status ~ I understand that much of the lategame content isnt already in the game, such as nukes, air units, dustsea units... but I found that there was already more then enough basic buildings and units for the entire game, so please, when working on this, try to redistribute units and buildings further down the techtree to help ease up some of the information overload earlier on. Also, units really need to be made obsolete. There were generally only 1 or 2 choices for units, but the list was cluttered with a dozen "options" that I wouldnt bother to take. There was also a noticeable lack of unit upgrading ability. National and World wonders are desperately needed as well, especially if they can offset some of the building clutter.
#4. Civics ~ great ideas. bad balance and overly complicated. If a civic is so strong it warrants a half dozen negative modifiers to balance it, perhaps the positive modifiers should be scaled back a fair bit. Its really tough to advise exactly WHAT is out of balance here, since there were so many different elements on each and every civic, but while playing I simply found the %'s provided for any one area were huge and easy to stack. Sure there may have been a cost, but these costs seemed insignificant and confusing as !@$%. Please consider removing several of the recurring negative penalties, and reduce the bonusses to compensate. While I like the idea of imposing penalties, Vanilla shows that they arent necessary, especially if the choices are expanded so that more "potential bonusses" are sacrificed.
#5. Victory ~ seems like every victory condition except total conquest is disabled ?
Overall, good mod. Could probably use a few more shoves later on to get back on theme a little more, and I found myself confused at what the difference between the factions was at many times, but this was due more to the way Civ4 presents the factions more then anything that modders could do I suppose.
I played one or two trial games that didnt get very far in, due to the massive barbarian threat in the game that took me by surprise. (I love the barbarians though, so I'm not recommending to change it unless its to make room for something better such as asteroids and debris. the constant threat of heavy incursions had me playing more militaristically then I would ever dream of in vanilla).
On my last game however, I built up a strong military and posted sentries around my borders, which was quite easy with the dustsea and mountains providing natural walls, and found the game very easy once the barbarian threat was overcome, at least in comparison to vanilla.
the problems...
#1. Dome Refitting. I dont know how many times I refitted my domes thinking they were upgrades of the existing ones, before I realized they were replacing the other. I dont feel its very intuitive playwise, but perhaps that could be addressed by referring the player to the readme in the game's startup. Otherwise I dont bother looking, and dont expect there to be a readme on a mod. The real problem though, was that the AI simply didnt understand they replaced existing ones as well, and always recommended me to build the refit of the other one, forgetting that it had just told me to build the other one. I think this is what caused the AI civs to waste a lot of resources and lose a substantial lead to me.
#2. Dustseas. Its been mentioned elsewhere I think, but while dustseas are a good idea originally, something needs to be provided later to allow units to cross them. I completely dominated the map, but was unable to capture a couple remaining civ's cities due to them being on, or surrounded by, dustsea... and culture wars are too slow and unfeasible.
#3. Techtree completion status ~ I understand that much of the lategame content isnt already in the game, such as nukes, air units, dustsea units... but I found that there was already more then enough basic buildings and units for the entire game, so please, when working on this, try to redistribute units and buildings further down the techtree to help ease up some of the information overload earlier on. Also, units really need to be made obsolete. There were generally only 1 or 2 choices for units, but the list was cluttered with a dozen "options" that I wouldnt bother to take. There was also a noticeable lack of unit upgrading ability. National and World wonders are desperately needed as well, especially if they can offset some of the building clutter.
#4. Civics ~ great ideas. bad balance and overly complicated. If a civic is so strong it warrants a half dozen negative modifiers to balance it, perhaps the positive modifiers should be scaled back a fair bit. Its really tough to advise exactly WHAT is out of balance here, since there were so many different elements on each and every civic, but while playing I simply found the %'s provided for any one area were huge and easy to stack. Sure there may have been a cost, but these costs seemed insignificant and confusing as !@$%. Please consider removing several of the recurring negative penalties, and reduce the bonusses to compensate. While I like the idea of imposing penalties, Vanilla shows that they arent necessary, especially if the choices are expanded so that more "potential bonusses" are sacrificed.
#5. Victory ~ seems like every victory condition except total conquest is disabled ?
Overall, good mod. Could probably use a few more shoves later on to get back on theme a little more, and I found myself confused at what the difference between the factions was at many times, but this was due more to the way Civ4 presents the factions more then anything that modders could do I suppose.
R
Rabbit, White
Guest
Just wanted to offer a suggestion to the SoM team in response to point 4 by Rashad.
I haven't played this mod and have limited experience with modified civics. So, now that we've esteblished that I am completely unqualified to make the following suggestion I will make it anyway
When designing civics it might be a good idea to start small, as it were. Meaning, use only few modifiers, positive or negative. Civics are very hard to balance because they affect the game differently depending on other factors, such as religion or tech progress. In addition of course, there are many possible civics combinations making the task even more difficult.
So, it might be advantageous to look at each civic and decide what is its primary idea, goal or theme and, at first, only implement those modifiers that directly (and clearly) promote that. Later on, once the civics feel good and balanced, start adding the "flavor" modifiers - the ones that flesh out the ideas behind the civics even further and "widen" their effects to areas of the game that might not directly relate to the civic in question. This should make balancing easier as it will be a gradual process.
Anyway, just a thought I had on the issue and if you already figured this out, or you're taking a different approach, feel free to ignore it.
I haven't played this mod and have limited experience with modified civics. So, now that we've esteblished that I am completely unqualified to make the following suggestion I will make it anyway
When designing civics it might be a good idea to start small, as it were. Meaning, use only few modifiers, positive or negative. Civics are very hard to balance because they affect the game differently depending on other factors, such as religion or tech progress. In addition of course, there are many possible civics combinations making the task even more difficult.
So, it might be advantageous to look at each civic and decide what is its primary idea, goal or theme and, at first, only implement those modifiers that directly (and clearly) promote that. Later on, once the civics feel good and balanced, start adding the "flavor" modifiers - the ones that flesh out the ideas behind the civics even further and "widen" their effects to areas of the game that might not directly relate to the civic in question. This should make balancing easier as it will be a gradual process.
Anyway, just a thought I had on the issue and if you already figured this out, or you're taking a different approach, feel free to ignore it.
Thanks Rashad. Belizan is moving and we're still in limbo.
I am trying to keep all of these ideas in mind.
@Rabbit - Yeah, if we were to do SotM again (which we hope to) starting small and then adding by need is the way to go.
I am trying to keep all of these ideas in mind.
@Rabbit - Yeah, if we were to do SotM again (which we hope to) starting small and then adding by need is the way to go.
joelwest
Noble
Rashad said:
hi, you are the first player besides myself (joelwest) to recently post a detailed analysis of the games you played of SotM.
were all your games using the Moon-map? you will find SotM plays differently with a land-based map.
I never had problems such as you describe with barbarians at the gates in the early game.
did you set the barb aggression level to "raging?" I left my barb aggr level at the game default level.
Rashad said:
this strange behavior has been noted starting with the very first posts on this board. since the domes can be refitted, the bug is not the option to do so. the bug is the fact the civilopedia entries describing the two as mutually exclusive have not been written.
I personally always play with the food biodome option since "getting food out of thin air" is the key to winning this mod (and not something the AI apparently knows how to do very well).
the food biodome option does force the player to be conscious of its negative defense factor and build walls, etc. to compensate.
I personally would only switch to a defense biodome if the city is on the verge of being taken.
Rashad said:
to get a feel for how the naval units (skimmers) currently operate play a SotM game with a land-based map which has "oceans." (I used a fractal continent map myself for a land-based map.)
it is counter-intuitive, but for some reason all three skimmer units work fine on a land-based map whereas they do not work at all on a Moon-based map.
as you noted, on a Moon-based map island or archipelago states potentially will remain isolated unless a nearby city's cultural borders allows a series of roads across dust sea tiles to create a path to nearby coastal islands.
on the Moon-based map in the game I played virtually EVERY tile in the whole grid (Moon) could be reached using the above technique since all coasts had nearby islands that could serve as a bridge to get ever deeper into a nearby dust sea/dust ocean.
did you try this technique?
the only case "island-hopping" did not work in the game I played was when I tried to attack a civ on an island with an area of only one tile. in that case amphibious attack was disallowed by the mod and hence the civ could never be NEVER be attacked or conquered.
Rashad said:
please make suggestions for some new Wonders.
BTW, if you do play on a land-based map you will find the Wonders allow for duplicate buildings, ie two theatres, two mushroom farms, and two military acadamies. this behaviour is not found in the Moon-based map version of SotM.
all maps allow the player to queue up a supposedly unique unit (such as a turret) more than once until it has actually been built.
there is also a problem if you conquer a civ. in that case the mod gets confused and allows you to build duplicate ion shields, etc.
Rashad said:
I also found all the negative bonuses to be quite confusing.
in practice I periodically did "what if's" to see which Civics were actually better at a given point in the game.
Spoiler :
Rashad said:
I did not find this to be the case in the two games I played to completion.
the space race victory was enabled in my games, but its conditions were not satisfactory.
the mod changes vanilla Civ 4 space victory so that it is only necessary to build five (simultaneous) SS casings to achieve a space victory.
Rashad said:
it has been noted from the very first posts on this board that all the factions are indistinguishable as are the leaders.
the next patch needs leaderheads to be included, even if only static images.
joelwest said:
My first false start was with a terran map, then I hunted down the moonmap and moved it. An installer would be helpful in alleviating this at some point, but not necessary yet, I imagine.
Same here, I played at default/standard for all I believe.
Honestly, no matter how well you document it, there will be players like me that only read things when they run into problems.
The key to the mod for me was establishing a curtain of sentries around my borders, so the defense of the cities became moot, as they never came under attack after I got my borders secured.
You seem to have a pretty good grasp at coming up with technames, so I'll leave it up to you. I made a suggestion for the Dune mod that I think will work here as well. Instead of having wonders represent solely physical creations, they could also represent diplomatic or economic agreements the civilization has made. (derived from EE3's colonial aspects in large part). In reference to the Moon, these could be used to represent continuing resources being provided from earth once the infrastructure is in place.
For instance, a national wonder "Immigration Office" could provide the resource "Immigrant". Once an immigration policy with the port of origin is established this would make future negotiations easier. Say a world wonder: "Trade Agreements" could provide 1 of the two or three basic resources required for manufacturing era 1/2 military units, and having access to Immigrants would speed construction by half.
(i also considered slaves, indentured servants, or convicts for the immigrants... slaves is too outdated... indentured servants is too long... but convict labor might be appropriate even if immigrants are used)
A second major type of World/National wonder could be reserved for later. Whatever buildings turn out to be the "least useful" after extensive playtesting, make a wonder that builds all of them in the civilization. This ensures that the wonder will be limited in power, but also provides a greater presence of the buildings in the game.
I didnt play on a terran map after i realized there was a moon map. I did see that many or all buildings and units were duplicated on techs for some reason ?
i noticed the same things you did, although i think it merely reflects a failure of the current civic selection then anything else.
I was completely confused by the various emergency civics and never bothered to check if i could even use them as they didnt seem to be worthwhile and the time-burn concerned me. (ie.. if im gonna experience 2-3 turns of downtime from revolution... i should REALLY benefit from these 4-5 turns of a civic).
i think genetic screening could work best if the WHOLE emergency civic branch was treated as a "temporary/reactionary" civic branch, and suffered from the same sort of penalties. (perhaps +1 unhappiness cumulatively each turn after 5 or 10). genetic screening also needs a tech prereq, and greater diversity in the other "wartime" techs could be beneficial.
oh, i didnt realize that. i only saw that not all the parts were available to be built, so i assumed it wasnt possible.
i'm not sure leaderheads would really be necessary, but it would likely be a step in the right direction towards establishing some character for the factions (even vanilla seems to struggle giving visible personality to the factions, even moreso then civ1-civ3, imo)
joelwest
Noble
Rashad said:
I am interested on your comments after playing the mod on a terran map. in particular the skimmers work on a terran map, but not on a Luna map.
my memory is that when you first pick the biodomes there are the two choices. after that the choices say "refit" in both cases.
since players may want to change domes, this does give a reminder the option is available. however a better solution (besides the Civilopedia updates) would be a readme file in the root that discusses this problem and other mod problems.
one of my cities did come under attack from an opposing civ, but its position was indefensable given the troup level I had at the time. in retrospect I should have switched to the bunker biodome type to make the taking of this city more costly.
these are great Wonder ideas. unfortunately the creators are delaying a patch update pending a complete overhaul of this mod.
this has the side effect of not allowing the interest in this mod grow since so many players are not willing to live with the bugs.
I do think players would be willing to live with an incomplete tech tree however.
I am not sure what you mean. do you mean a player can queue mulitiple builds of an improvement until it has actually been built?
I agree GS is too powerful as it stands. however it does not seem to be a candidate for time limited duration since a civ could choose (in real life) to permanently adopt GS.
I am open for suggestions on what negatives should accompany it. more war weariness is obvious, but what else? xenophobia, such as no foreign trade routes?
the leaderheads in vanilla Civ 4 can be annoying since the animation never changes, but at least it allows a player to associate certain civ behaviours with certain civs.
in the SothM games I played I was clueless of the identity of the surrounding civs until two of them decided to attack me.
=========================
on another note, would you agree the hammer increasing Civ trait is clearly the best and hence Felicity and Hera are the only real options of which civs to play?
