Total Conversion collaboration?

[epicivfreak]

I've recently started playing Civ5 again (don't plan on paying for Civ6 until the Complete Edition is available for around $10, because that's about all Firaxis' games are worth to me - ). Of course, the default gameplay quickly bored me, so I tried a bunch of mods & total conversion mods.

There seems to be no one solution, currently available, that really satisfies me for this particular iteration of Civilization, so I've been thinking about doing my own total conversion mod. Anyone interested in working together on such a huge project?

 

[epicivfreak]

A little more info. Just for the record, I've been working on a "holistic" design for a civ-like mod/game for several months. While it's not 100% completed, so there's still room for outside ideas and influence, I've got most of the "big picture" nailed down. I've even playtested some of it as a "board game" where I made all the bits from poster board & stickers on poker chips & whatnot. It was fun as it was then, albeit a bit of a pain to manage all the moving parts and be all the players, though I've done some modifications based on those playtests to smooth some flaws out.

So, at this point, I know virtually nothing about Civ5 modding, though I've done some programming in the past. It would be a huge help to have experienced Civ5 modders on board, but I'm ready to go it alone if need be.

 

[cd5ssmffan]

Sounds interesting but what do you mean by holistic design? in fact, letting people know what your mod is specifically about/based upon would probably fetch some more enthusiasm here and there
Also, I think it's good that you have created a boardgame and tested it out, ive seen the phrase "function over flavor" posted before which is an important factor to games like civ.

 

[ashendashin]

Currently the only active community around here is the Community Patch Project, so your best bet would be incorporating the community patch DLL and involving yourself with its modders/devs https://github.com/LoneGazebo/Community-Patch-DLL

 

[epicivfreak]

Currently the only active community around here is the Community Patch Project, so your best bet would be incorporating the community patch DLL and involving yourself with its modders/devs https://github.com/LoneGazebo/Community-Patch-DLL

Thanks. I'd already gathered the impression that the best place to start, since it was the most actively developed Civ5 mod was the CPP. I was going to use it as a base and do a mod-mod of it. However, over the past two days I playtested it, and I've come to absolutely hate the EUI mod embedded within...

While I agree that Civ5, by default, gives far too little info, that mod gives far, far too much info, all at once. It's an annoying level of information overload, IMHO.

And, add to that, installing that mod broke my Civ5. Despite clearing the cache and all that other jazz, no matter what I did, Civ5 seemed to still try and load EUI, which made all other mods & even the base game unplayable, so I uninstalled CPP, and then ultimately had to uninstall Civ5, and am now having to reinstall the game.

I already had enough headache with Civ5, in that at least 50% of the time I'd get a crash to a pure black screen when I tried to start the damn game, at this point, I'm quite thoroughly pissed, and am strongly considering buying Civ6, or just saying F-it, I'll start my own game from scratch or possibly just wait and mod Civ7, because Civ6 looks like absolute crap to me. Looking at screenshots of the map graphics alone is enough to make me want to puke.

Needless to say, I'll not be going through the headache of messing with CPP again anytime soon.

 

[ashendashin]

Thanks. I'd already gathered the impression that the best place to start, since it was the most actively developed Civ5 mod was the CPP. I was going to use it as a base and do a mod-mod of it. However, over the past two days I playtested it, and I've come to absolutely hate the EUI mod embedded within...

While I agree that Civ5, by default, gives far too little info, that mod gives far, far too much info, all at once. It's an annoying level of information overload, IMHO.

And, add to that, installing that mod broke my Civ5. Despite clearing the cache and all that other jazz, no matter what I did, Civ5 seemed to still try and load EUI, which made all other mods & even the base game unplayable, so I uninstalled CPP, and then ultimately had to uninstall Civ5, and am now having to reinstall the game.

I already had enough headache with Civ5, in that at least 50% of the time I'd get a crash to a pure black screen when I tried to start the damn game, at this point, I'm quite thoroughly pissed, and am strongly considering buying Civ6, or just saying F-it, I'll start my own game from scratch or possibly just wait and mod Civ7, because Civ6 looks like absolute crap to me. Looking at screenshots of the map graphics alone is enough to make me want to puke.

Needless to say, I'll not be going through the headache of messing with CPP again anytime soon.

EUI is entirely optional and the base CP doesn't come with it. If you used the installer you most likely chose the default Vox Populi install, which is a total overhaul of the game that uses the CP as its core.
EUI goes in the actual steam game folder in civ5\assets\dlc as UI_bc1.

 

[epicivfreak]

Thanks, I'd realized what was going on after posting, of course - not bothering to read anything and just going through the motions of installing CPP, while I knew I was way too tired to be doing anything other than watching TV (neurological disorder - long story), and also assuming it was just like any other mod.
So, yeah, that's my fault.

After 20 crashes to black & forced restarts of the computer yesterday while messing with other mods and whatnot, I'm still pretty pissed with Civ5 and its crashing all the damn time. That still has me thinking of whipping out an old 2d Hex Engine, going at it from scratch, instead of modding.

 

[epicivfreak]

Sounds interesting but what do you mean by holistic design? in fact, letting people know what your mod is specifically about/based upon would probably fetch some more enthusiasm here and there
Also, I think it's good that you have created a boardgame and tested it out, ive seen the phrase "function over flavor" posted before which is an important factor to games like civ.

By holistic design I mean that all the different systems are interrelated and reliant upon one another to function - removing one of the systems would cause the rest to come crashing down. I haven't played Civ6, but I've heard this is even more of an issue there - where all of the disparate game systems feel tacked on separately, so that you could remove one and it would be hardly noticable.

What I specifically wanted to do is address core problems that the Civ Series has had since day one, which have had various band-aids applied to them in various iterations and mods, but have never really been adequately fixed. Not everyone will agree that they are indeed problems, but I see them as such, so...

• Everything in the game comes down to Fill the X-Bucket with X-Points to Acquire the Thing. Civ5 really highlights the problem like never before (Food Points and Production Points at the city-level; There's Science Points, Culture Points, Faith Points - Points ad nauseam.) There are other methods that could and should be used to Acquire Things.
• Exploring the entire map happens way too early. Exploration should happen in stages so that some element of mystery and discovery is maintained for much longer than currently. Sailing around the world and/or moving armies from Europe to China in the BC's should not be possible.
• The game lacks dynamics. By mid-game, it's boring and predictable.
  
• Technological advancement on the Tree, once you've got it figured out, is especially boring and predictable.

 

[cd5ssmffan]

That's a lot of stuff. seems like you are better off creating your own game to be honest

 

[ashendashin]

• Everything in the game comes down to Fill the X-Bucket with X-Points to Acquire the Thing. Civ5 really highlights the problem like never before (Food Points and Production Points at the city-level; There's Science Points, Culture Points, Faith Points - Points ad nauseam.) There are other methods that could and should be used to Acquire Things.

• Exploring the entire map happens way too early. Exploration should happen in stages so that some element of mystery and discovery is maintained for much longer than currently. Sailing around the world and/or moving armies from Europe to China in the BC's should not be possible.

• The game lacks dynamics. By mid-game, it's boring and predictable.

• Technological advancement on the Tree, once you've got it figured out, is especially boring and predictable.

The last two can be addressed just fine. The others...well, deeper exploration might be a bit of a problem with the games memory limit. JFD made an exploration mod with the CP but I dunno if it really addressed how small things feel. I got a touch of a grand feeling when playing Vox Populi with 43 civs so maybe if it can be reasonably stable with the added depth it'd work.
Bucket filling seems integral to how the whole game functions. Dunno how much of a conversion you can do in regards to that. I'm actually kinda interested in that point so maybe @Gazebo could pitch in some knowledge.

 

[epicivfreak]

With regard to "Exploration," I've got a fix in mind for that. It's an old idea of mine, that I've posted about before, to put a cap on the number of tiles away from you Civilization that your units can move, not just the number of tiles your unit can move per turn. This way, you simply can't move from one side of the map to the other in the BC's. Whether that's a hard cap or soft cap is debatable.

I think I used to called it "Operational Range" and it's basically a second kind of movement point. Each time you move a tile outside of your borders, you follow the usual movement rules so that you can only move a limited distance per turn, however, each movement also subtracts '1' from your OR. When the units OR reaches '0' a number of options are possible:

• The unit is transported back to the capital on the following turn.
• The unit is transported back to the nearest owned tile on the following turn.
  
• The unit starts loosing HP until it gets back to an owned tile.
• Etc.

As for the bucket-filling, that was also my biggest concern - that it's a necessary function of the game. So, for the mod, I was thinking that I'd just minimize the importance of filling the buckets by providing other mechanics that fill the bucket faster. It would cost so many points to fill the various buckets, that you'd rarely actually go through the the motion of filling one the usual way. One example of this already exists in Civ5, with the Great Engineer. The importance of filling the production bucket goes out the window when building a wonder if you have one of those handy - you simply build the wonder in a turn. Vox Populi's random event system is also another example of this, where the player is given a choice of responses and I could reuse that system, modifying the values such that they'd minimize the importance of bucket-filling. Of course, minimizing the importance of bucket-filling is just side-stepping the issue, not eliminating it.

 

[ashendashin]

With regard to "Exploration," I've got a fix in mind for that. It's an old idea of mine, that I've posted about before, to put a cap on the number of tiles away from you Civilization that your units can move, not just the number of tiles your unit can move per turn. This way, you simply can't move from one side of the map to the other in the BC's. Whether that's a hard cap or soft cap is debatable.

I think I used to called it "Operational Range" and it's basically a second kind of movement point. Each time you move a tile outside of your borders, you follow the usual movement rules so that you can only move a limited distance per turn, however, each movement also subtracts '1' from your OR. When the units OR reaches '0' a number of options are possible:

• The unit is transported back to the capital on the following turn.
• The unit is transported back to the nearest owned tile on the following turn.
  
• The unit starts loosing HP until it gets back to an owned tile.
• Etc.

As for the bucket-filling, that was also my biggest concern - that it's a necessary function of the game. So, for the mod, I was thinking that I'd just minimize the importance of filling the buckets by providing other mechanics that fill the bucket faster. It would cost so many points to fill the various buckets, that you'd rarely actually go through the the motion of filling one the usual way. One example of this already exists in Civ5, with the Great Engineer. The importance of filling the production bucket goes out the window when building a wonder if you have one of those handy - you simply build the wonder in a turn. Vox Populi's random event system is also another example of this, where the player is given a choice of responses and I could reuse that system, modifying the values such that they'd minimize the importance of bucket-filling. Of course, minimizing the importance of bucket-filling is just side-stepping the issue, not eliminating it.

If you decide to look into what the game can handle then I'd advise asking @Gazebo (feels bad spamming him but this is only the third time I've tried summoning him outside of his domain).
He's been working on the DLL for years so that'd be the quickest way to figure out the limits. I know that adding extra tile consideration to the AI is hell on memory, and VP already has plenty of actions to make the bucket filling faster and more interactive in place of outright replacing them.