Tomatekh's New Civilizations

[Skaz881]

*Reading back over the previous posts* so the Hittites are getting an update too? In that case I shall wait to try them (trying many different civs lately to see which ones I like the best)

 

[Skaz881]

.............or I'll try them now because I'm too curious to wait.

 

[LastSword]

City is blockaded when LUA says so.

I can't get why you use randomly City iterations several times.
Anyway, if blockade staff is not working, it may be because of local variable.
While checking if player has trade route to another player you have to check every route (current code would not work in various situations). Something like this:
if Players[v.City Owner] == mPlayer then
return

I can help with diploscreen, it will be just good... not fantastic.

 

[Tomatekh]

*Reading back over the previous posts* so the Hittites are getting an update too? In that case I shall wait to try them (trying many different civs lately to see which ones I like the best)

Yeah, the Hittite update is almost done. I haven't posted it yet because I'm still looking for music (at least a peace theme) before I post it. The abilities are somewhat changed, or more moved around than outright changed, as I began to feel the current implementation was too situational.

City is blockaded when LUA says so.

I can't get why you use randomly City iterations several times.
Anyway, if blockade staff is not working, it may be because of local variable.
While checking if player has trade route to another player you have to check every route (current code would not work in various situations). Something like this:
if Players[v.City Owner] == mPlayer then
return

I can help with diploscreen, it will be just good... not fantastic.

The blockade stuff works. Blockading is when you have a naval unit within two tiles of a coastal city (connected to its capital) of a civ you're at war with (a little icon pops up under the city-bar). There is a city:isblockaded check in lua, and then it checks if there's a Cham unit within two tiles to make sure Champa is the one doing the blockade.

The bunch of random city iterations was because I was too lazy to clean up the code for a beta release (I was just writing it in pieces and patching it together to test. It also has a bunch of useless commented out lines still in it.). I'll make it more efficient for the final version.

Thanks for the heads up with the trade route check.

 

[turingmachine]

I think it's cool that you worked in the kind of pointless blockade mechanic from the base game. I'll test it out and give some feedback.

 

[Tomatekh]

Besides the Champa update (above) just a heads up for a few of the other minor updates I released over the past few days:

-Goths and Kievan Rus': Will now switch to alternative graphic files if you don't have Gods and Kings (will correct some uu display issues)
-Historical Religions (all three mods): Corrected the Kilwa reference (was still checking for the GK name), added support for all of Hiram's and LastSword's released civs (current support: my civs, Leugi's civs, More Civ civs, JFD's civs, Hiram's civs, LastSword's civs)
-Expanded Civlopedia Mod: Corrected some entries and added the Danish Beserker BNW changes (completely overlooked them).

Near future plans:
-Pontoon Bridge update
-Hittites update
-Timurids change Meroe city-state (overlap with Kilwa mod)
-Mali (add minor UI code)
-Sumer (minor buff based on feedback)
-Additional christian denominations pack for my historical religions mod
-Update Benin with new art by LastSword

And for people who didn't notice, JFD and Janboruta have been kind enough to provide YnAMP compatibility for my mods here. I'll more officially incorporate it once I replace Meroe in the Timruids mod.

 

[Kuserab]

Yay! I've been waiting for this update with baited breath. Their concept always sounded really cool to me - and they play really interesting.

A couple observations:

1. It's really difficult to tell where other nations have their trade routes (though that might just be firaxis' 'show trade routes' button not working). In order to profit from the wells, I sort of had to guess where to place them outside my borders.

2. It's very difficult to find a good spot to place the wells inside your borders, at least in the game I played. I suppose that's good for making them not overpowered - but it seemed a little frustrating. Maybe allow them on resources? I'm not sure this needs fixing if that was your intention.

3. The UA felt a little limp - I think the main thing was that I was never sure how much it was actually helping me. Although kudos for getting the 'pirated from other civs ports' thing to show up in the interface. All in all, it seemed like a little gold boost was maybe not worth the loss of trade routes that I had to give up - since the world hated me. I suppose early game it might be stronger, but I'm not sure how much it scales.

4. This is just an upstart suggestion - but it seemed a little odd that the UA didn't give a bonus for trade routes. Like 'your trade routes steal a little gold' or something - right now it seems the civ is very relegated to situational conquering, which makes it harder to use their UI.

Anyway, those were just things I observed. I might have been playing them wrong - haven't quite got the handle on them yet.

 

[Tomatekh]

1. If you click or hover over (I forget which) the cargo ship unit on the map it also shows their route, so if you actually see a cargo ship its easier to figure out. Otherwise there's really nothing to be done on my end :/

2. The main reason I prevent improvements from being buildable on resources is to prevent the exploit where you sell a resource to another player, then build over the resource with an improvement that doesn't improve the resource, and you get to keep both the money and the resource and it only costs you a few worker turns. Otherwise I don't really have an issue allowing it. I could also buff the yields/GA bonus to compensate for how often you can build the well. Its something that's very map dependent, and I need to play more games to really get a handle on the frequency you can build the well.

3. The values are off at the moment. I know this, and I also tend to generally balance on the weaker side for a lot of first releases, so I'll probably buff the values. One thing I am going to do is add a base value in addition to the era scale. (Currently it only checks era count, which is great for scaling into late game, but results in near useless values in the early early game, so a base value in addition to the era count). I'm cautious to set the value too high because it does also remove the gold from the opponents treasury. In this sense there's also a defensive aspect to the UA where if someone declares war on you, the longer it lasts the more it hurts their economy (of course the AI cheating with yields is a different issue). It would be interesting to get feedback with someone playing against an AI Champa and how annoying they found this aspect (though, again, maybe it won't be much until I buff the values). I wouldn't say the UA is supposed to replace the gold from trade routes, i.e go a pure domination route and declare war on everybody, though. I guess, maybe compliment them in the sense of inevitable war? I actually wish Civ V had the hidden nationality mechanic from past civ games. It would give the excuse to allow the UA during peace time. (I mean, I could still create a blockade type deal during peace time, but then it becomes a way to to passively attack a civ in a way they couldn't defend against which is what people didn't lilke with the civ's previous ability).

4. I had a few reasons for not buffing Trade Routes themselves. If you make your trade routes steal extra gold, its really just a more complicated way of having "trade routes generate +2 gold" or whatever, which overlaps with Morocco's ability. Having your trade routes just drain extra gold from the civ (while not giving additional to you); people didn't like my previous ability that allowed you to passively attack a civ in a way they couldn't defend against. Finally, having you steal gold from trade routes sent to you, it becomes a question of why would I ever trade with Champa if sending trade routes to them actually hurts me.

Thanks for the feedback. The civ is still unfinished and it helps me make a final product that hopefully will be fun to play.

 

[turingmachine]

Still playing a game with Champa, so the full report will wait till later, but I thought the update would include the improvement art Leugi showed a few pages back.

 

[Skaz881]

When I've played as and against the Tupi and Benin, I've noticed that the Maloca/Iya is covered in flashy red and white squares (and in the case of the Iya pixilate when the screen moves). I know from the Tupi screenshots that this isn't how they're are supposed to look and am wondering if this is a problem on my end?

 

[Krajzen]

I have this thing when setting mod resources/improvements in world builder :d

 

[Tomatekh]

When I've played as and against the Tupi and Benin, I've noticed that the Maloca/Iya is covered in flashy red and white squares (and in the case of the Iya pixilate when the screen moves). I know from the Tupi screenshots that this isn't how they're are supposed to look and am wondering if this is a problem on my end?

I have this thing when setting mod resources/improvements in world builder :d

I haven't experienced this, so I can't directly comment. You'd have to ask Leugi as he's the one that's made every unique improvement graphic used in civ mods.

 

[Leugi]

Didn't experience that either, so no idea. Anyway, since the Inmortal Well's name has changed, so has the model hehe.

 

[Tomatekh]

Didn't experience that either, so no idea. Anyway, since the Inmortal Well's name has changed, so has the model hehe.

Spoiler :

Perfect!!

 

[Skaz881]

I haven't experienced this, so I can't directly comment. You'd have to ask Leugi as he's the one that's made every unique improvement graphic used in civ mods.

Here is the link to the screenshot I took if anyone wants to take a look and has possibly encountered this before (hope this works): http://steamcommunity.com/id/dragonprincess/screenshot/3314951615623352347

 

[ubergeneral]

I had the UI lose it's texture too in a game with the tupi. It was fine until I decided to save and reload. After it looked all wierd. Next time I loaded that save it was fine.

 

[Skaz881]

Should I also post a screenshot of a Maloca instead of just an Iya?

 

[JFD]

-A lot of the yield changes which aren't constant per turn are now moved to notification messages instead of the top panel. (I'm afraid these will get annoying real quick, though).

Why don't you try using event messages instead. They're the little messages that go along the top of the screen, like when you found a city, or yield an effect from an ancient ruin. You'd use:

Events.GameplayAlertMessage(alertmessage)

 

[Tomatekh]

Why don't you try using event messages instead. They're the little messages that go along the top of the screen, like when you found a city, or yield an effect from an ancient ruin. You'd use:

Events.GameplayAlertMessage(alertmessage)

I didn't event think of that (mainly because I never used event messages before). For the golden age point count that might work really well. The cargo ship thing I'm thinking I might keep as a side notification because it lets me set a plot for people to jump to and see where it's happening.

Thanks.

 

[Leugi]

@Improvement Issue: from the looks of it the texture suddenly unloads or something. However, it has never happened to me; it may be video-card related somehow.