Ultimate civ: The mod of mods:

Would you support ULTIMATE CIV project?

  • Yes, its an AWESOME idea

    Votes: 8 32.0%
  • Yes, I'm a modder, its an awesome idea, and I would also maybe help and participate

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Maybe, I have to see first how this project evolves

    Votes: 3 12.0%
  • No, I think it's a bad idea

    Votes: 14 56.0%

  • Total voters
    25
  • Poll closed .

eduhum

Aahh the gold old days...
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All of this was field back in days
Hi all, I created a thread with an idea that maybe is very difficult to achieve, but very rewarding. But, much to my joy and surprise, Rightfuture, one of the leaders of the Caveman 2 Cosmos super-mod has approved greatly this idea:

Why don't we, all the community, stop and finish all the things that each one is doing and we organize ourselves to collect all the work and coolness each mod has such as maps, civs, techs, etcetcetcetc..... we can and make the
fanmade third expansion for civilization 4?
This is the thread

Here are some things he has said on that thread:

Spoiler :
Speaking on the official behalf of the C2C Team and myself,

Imagine the power of focus and teamwork guys.
We could have 1 great team, and 1 awesome evolving next generation experience.
I have to agree with Eduhum. Fall from Heaven became part of an official CIV expansion, and together we could have a part in improving the next CIV. We would have to be really successful to challenge 2k's total success and more likely we would making a compelling case for all of us to be on the team to make the next CIV 6 or CIV 7. I for one would guarantee that everyone here would have a voice in the next game.
Firaxis adopting our efforts may be a pipe dream but so was FALL FROM HEAVEN being part of an official CIV expansion. You never know what we could accomplish together if we found a way to get past our differences and try for a moment or 2.
I have lived to see and have helped shape very unlikely and unprobable things happen. Firaxis may clip our wings, but at least we attempted to 'Climb to Heaven' together. Our ideas could inspire the next CIV, and our efforts could be a part of gaming history.

I would like to invite Everyone from All mods to join with us to create
the ULTIMATE CIV (MOD OF MODS).

Just imagine the power of everyone working together to focus on creating the best solutions and overcoming all of our differences to everyone's benefit, by having the best game possible.
We could have a Dream Team of great modders leading everyone to debate and improve the ideas until we can all agree (for the sake of keeping things moving) on our direction.

Here is my, I hope compelling case to at least start with C2C and it's team/community.
C2C -Cavemen to Cosmos, is already built on BUG, REVDCM, ROM, AND/RAND, is was created as an allliance between modders with Strategy Only to keep moving that idea forward. They
are working in the Final Frontier Mod and adding an additional Galactic Era. They have rewritten the AI. added terrain, pioneering increasing the resource limit, added viewports, and worked with another mod to add multi-maps. They have completely re-worked the tech tree and are even looking to include alternate history eras, a dimensional era, and anything they can dream up!
They have drawn in participation from some of the great modders like Primem0ver(The Genetic Mod) and release a new version almost every month (with more new features each time than a official expansion). They are even planning to re-write, bypass, and mod the actual Civ IV game engine to be multi-core and have started serious talk about creating an even greater next-gen game from scratch and bridging the two projects.
Seriously.

I argue that C2C is already well on the way to becoming that Dream Team and Dream MOD already, and that it is probably a good idea to consider starting with C2C. I also think we should tie in the ROM and AND communities since C2C includes most of their best, and invite all players, modders, and mod creators to at least come together to at least talk about that bridge. With enough focus and willingness to overcome our differences, who knows how far we could go together. C2C has time and time again shown a willingness to completely rework even settled concepts from scratch to make them better. Strategy Only, the leader of C2C himself stresses that everyone has a voice and a place in making C2C the best game ever, and that any idea can be improved. (i will edit this post to quote him). C2C was created on the idea of separate modders coming together to create MORE of a good thing with the best parts of both AND and ROM and is already much more. C2C is already a great step towards the ultimate community mod and certainly qualifies as the next step in the BUG/REVDCM/ROM/AND progression. There is nothing that isn't open to better ideas or people's involvement.
Based on this argument I think C2C should at least be the starting foundation for all this greatness. We probably should at least consider it.

I think the person (I will have to edit this after I look him up) who was taking over AND wanted to merge the best parts of the K-mod with C2C to finish AND relatively recently.
I happen to agree that a good place to start is merging in the k-mod so I will start a thread (to be linked here) for just that purpose. Ultimately I think the creators and content of many of the great mods should be invited to participate. We could then easily have the ultimate Dream Team, not to mention the Ultimate MOD, and potentially the ULTIMATE SIMULATON GAME.

C2C, The K-MOD, the new AND, the old AND, ROM, Legends of Revolutions, and a bunch of other mods qualify as mods meant to create the Ultimate MOD. Why Can't we all come together to make a better one? None of the other projects have to be abandoned or ignored, heck they may all benefit from team effort and cross-pollination. I argue that we need 1 single united effort to team up on. We could make efforts to work together to bridge the best of parts of them. No matter what, our United Effort would end up different. I thought Extra, and then ROM, and then AND would be the ultimate community mod and bring people together. I think it is time we considered coming together for the purpose of finding greatness. I think a lot of people would support the group efforts to merge the major efforts together. With the mod creator and community support it is even possible.
I for one would love to see the best ideas come together, and the limits of modding pushed. I want to play that united evolution of a game that could blow away the next Civ 6. Some of these mods ain't far from pushing those limits already. C2C definitely has potential, and because they have a powerful team, it is just a good place to start. At least give it a chance and consider it. They are considering creating a next gen game right now and bridging the the 2 projects. I say we start building bridges and see what the best we can do together can be.

I'm going to at least set up a thread and link it here to bring the discussion to 1 single place.
You never know where this journey can take us.

@Eduhum, Vincentz, Lemon Merchant, the Creator of the K-MOD, everybody who posted here, the C2C Team, the contributors and participants to the BUG, REVDCM, ROM, AND, and pretty much any modder, past modder, and player please consider joining this new/existing effort together. Differences of opinions and obstacles are just challenges that we are more likely to overcome together. All we have to do is focus, and help make room for each other's ideas. Imagine the best coming together, we certainly can get farther than by ourselves. We are united in our love for CIV and our desire to see the best game ever!

To start:
Here is a link to a similar post and conversation someone just started in the C2C forum.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=484339
(I will post a link to new thread to bring us all together asap)

A journey is always more possible when you cross the next hill to see the hidden path beyond. All you have to do is take a step to get closer. History is littered with things that important people thought were not possible. Just imagine if we could all come together. The United States and the Apollo Space Program were just ideas at first. Teenagers have recently radically improved Cancer research, built a fusion reactor in their garage, and done some pretty amazing things. I have seen average people reach far beyond themselves. Do you really want to limit what is possible, and what you really want?
You never know how far you can go until you try.
Just imagine what could be possible if we all try. You might surprise yourself. For the LOVE of CIV!


Spoiler :
Quote:
Originally Posted by calibur
StartegyOnly, when I invited him here, replied only by pointing out that C2C could be much less taxing because of the viewport feature. While not incorrect, that's not the spirit you're referring to. And he's the only one of the five very prominent modders I contacted who responded as of yet.
However, as you are a member of the C2C team, perhaps you can spread this thought among them. Perhaps we could even get all modders into it to create the One mod to rule them all.
You seem to have vision, persuasion, and experience. You could lead the way. Lemon is also a viable candidate for this, the regulars here, at least in the general discussion forum, know her.
If we can get large enough support, perhaps we could truly create the greatest game ever, as you suggest in the other forum.
I could work only as a missionary, and not an efficient one at that, but i'll do my best if this is a truly viable thing.

That's what Karadoc is for.
If could we could start with C2C or a fair merge of major mods, then the creators of these mods would more likely join in. No-one wants to throw out their existing efforts or control of their pet project. I think a fair merge would set the best common ground and a good foundation. I would like to hear everyone's opinions on what they would want. I think that Strategy Only would be up for it if we don't throw away C2C, and the same would go for many projects. Merging would probably be the one way we could get support from each project's modders and community. I see no way past that. Unless we have complete buy-in I don't see any of the existing project's completely blending together. Done right it's possible. Shared code makes shared development easier. Obviously it would be hard not have conflict on what we decide on together. That will take some time and work. If we stay united in our common goal then we will find a way.

We could potentially inspire major modders and past luminaries like Afforress and Zapparra (sorry about any misspelling I will fix) to give their blessing, advice, or sit in. We could start with modders showing their support at first. I think the key is to focus on the goal which is to simply take the best, fit it together, and improve on it for the purpose of making the best game possible. I think we all stand on common ground here. So we have the united goal and vision.
Next would be to pitch the Dream Team and Team Leaders together for the major mods with the purpose of finding the best way to come together. I would focus on desire and natural strengths. Each person will probably gravitate to do what they prefer best. I have actual business world experience at coordinating chiefs and naturally study that philosophy; so I think I have solutions that these guys would be agreeable to. I could definitely play chairperson, organizer, and coordinator. I think that once we set up a meeting that roles and egos would sort themselves out. We just have to first decide on the team.
Then we can develop the vision outline for what the best of our team wants to do so that we can pitch it to each part of the community.
We could even approach other modding and gaming/game design forums.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Imp. Knoedel
tl; dr: So what you are saying is, you want the ultimate mod to be a misch-masch of everything and the kitchen sink's mother?
Now don't get me wrong, I do think this idea has potential, but I don't think this more=better mentality is the right way to go.

Also you might want to use the Final Frontier Plus modmod instead of the regular one that came with BtS, it removed many of its bugs and added some new content so it is actually balanced and playable.
Not a misc-mash more of a best of and a better direction to move in.
C2C is working at integrating the Final Frontier Mod and of course working and they are looking at Final Frontier Plus and others. It would be nice to encourage feature porting and teamwork both ways.

What I'm saying is to create a mod together based on the best of what already exists, and for us to team up to see what can happen. Start with a merge of the best couple of mods, and fix the rest, then explore ideas together. Experimental modules could be testable for stable releases. Sometimes a revised unstable version could be released for testing features that affect larger parts. The core could take a while, but a design document outline could be worked out for an ideal version or just to work on new features. Each features could have it's own discussion thread. It would definitely take mod teams from major mods to pull this off.

I'm not interested in all ideas being completely thrown together. Start with a good core, C2C has a lot of these ideas already together and could be the best agreeable foundation with AND, ROM, REVDCM, and BUG already in it and a good bit of major new features. I want the ULTIMATE CIV/SIM mod to bridge the better ideas, and carve off the bad ones, while still exploring new ones. I want the best modders to moderate so that it doesn't fall apart or descend into chaos or obstacles, and be open to the best of the community.

I think that maybe we should take K-MOD and/or Legend of Revolutions and work them together to create bridge core mod, and then take best ideas to the next level, working together to overcome obstacles and find better ways to do things.
Many of these mods started by combining 2 mods, and a pretty good way to progress is deciding the best way to proceed. There has to be a way to fit the best of what already exists with a start from scratch plan. Having threads where we merge the major components like C2C and K-MOD for example. And then having the community stabilize the version, could be the best way to not have to rework everything.
ROM worked in REVDCM at some point, and REV DCM was a merge of Revolutions and Dale's Combat mod, so it is possible to pull something off and work it out. Especially with communities and mod teams coming together to figure out how to do it better.
Fleshing out a good plan is a start. We could have an outline and fairly consider mods and modder hierarchy to keep things from descending into chaos.

For starters, If I had to set a few rules. I would:
1. Allow all ideas to be openly debated, separately from development threads, to be discussed based on their merit. So that progress can be made and ongoing discussions to improve features can proceed at all times while not slowing development. At some point decisions have to be made to keep things moving.

2. Have a process to settle disagreements so that everyone is heard. Compromises and decisions should be able to be revisited. No one's ideas are not -valuable. Disagreements should not destroy our attempts to make something better together.

3. We should have stability, focus, individual, and experimental phases for development.

4. Allow the most experienced of modders to take a leadership role , and evolve natural hierarchical relationships to keep things working smoothly together. While I do have a good bit of project management experience, some programming and modding experience, and a lot of years pouring over designing such a game. I do believe that we need both organizers like Strategy Only, Lemon, as well as other Mod Team leaders to fit together the best way possible. The goal is the most important thing to me, to see the best mod/game possible, so far as people want me to lead, I have no problem with that role, I just want to guarantee that every other leader is comfortable and working together fairly. I want everyone to have maximum room for their ideas and desires to thrive. Fitting everyone's vision together will not be easy, but it is possible. To have the best game and Dream Team possible we must see the value in fitting our individual vision together so that we can have the best collective one.

5. I think we need to have the combined mod-team make decisions to keep things moving, and the community to keep open debate for future changes to be considered for future versions. This way neither derails the other.

I do think we should refer to this as the ONE mod. Or the ULTCIVSIM mod to be more descriptive. I still think we should consider C2C as the best starting component or at least a major one. All the stability issues, and stripping would occur with major merges afterward anyway. Starting from scratch is probably not a good idea. We want as many teams, modders, and players as possible to feel part of this.
Think of this as the spiritual successor to all these mods. I am sure that features will be ported back to the communities and the individual expressions/mods will continue. We are bridging these mods to create ONE mod to rule them all so that we can create new features together, and we can have one community project to work on together.
The more these mods share features the more that components will improve the whole community. Every person mod has it's place, everybody takes their turn at being burnt out. It is a good argument that we share a community mod and a preferred individual project so we have 2 projects to work on. 1 will always be a focus. I should argue that a community mod allows us all to do more things and pioneer farther. So ONE mod to bridge them Most allows efforts to benefit both projects.

I am all about working together to better achieve our goal.
Let's figure out the best way to make this happen.
Consider this a work in progress and a goal to start on.
Let us get to know one another and bridge people as best we can.

Anyone who wants to improve our plan or join us is welcome to. Please speak up.
It all starts with an idea. I want to see this happen. I am always open to changing or improving any ideas we have. For tonite this is a good start.


Spoiler :
Quote:
Originally Posted by damerell
I think there are at least three ideas banging around here:

1) the grab-bag mod of everything - but C2C is already insanely huge.
2) the "best of the best"... but who agrees what's the best? Everyone thinks their own stuff is best and you're back at square one.
3) the simple rebalancing of broken stuff... but how far does that go?

How about.
1. Unity to make ONE mod.
2. not grab bag. Best ideas worked out. Start with the ones we can work out best, and proceed. Who decides what is best? The team of modders has experience with good judgement, the community can check that. I am certain that this can be worked out.

I agree C2C is bigger than all the other mods combined already. Taking mods like K-mod and Legends of Revolutions and merging them all together will be even bigger. Much will probably probably get temporarily removed for stability sake and worked back in so it can be balanced. Some will probably be removed after much thought and review. I am thinking we should keep a lite version of the mod for older machines, but work on making the major mod the focus. The best is not necessarily the smallest either. Bigger or smaller is only nice when it adds something. I think the philosophy of these mods have to be fit together. Most of them add things, so figuring out what will make things better is key. I'm not one to cut out ideas that can be made better. I'm also not one to add unnecessary things. We want to work out what will keep the communities in the most agreement until we can work out the best combinations.

3. It will always be tough to find agreement. Sometimes issues will not be settled. We work on what we can agree on. We develop the next best until we can improve it. A lot of what we must decide on will be the best we can agree on right now. Who agrees will be worked out once we have a team. I'm going to do my best to make sure everyone is heard, and have no desire to interfere with the best possible decisions being made. Experience and good judgement will be tested by figuring out how to work together. Obviously those who lead teams have proven judgement. It won't be to hard to figure out who does what best, and to set up specializations and areas of expertise. Leadership and teamwork will be worked out once we have the team. I will do my best to insure that the team and the community can work together fairly. I have a lot of real-world experience and study in this area.

4. rebalancing and bug squashing is a constant exercise. Before a stable release there needs to be a united bug squashing and stability phase. Broken stuff needs to have a coordinated plan if it's major. Minor stuff can be worked out along the way. Lot's of these best practices are used in the programming industry. I see this as an at-will project like C2C with people focusing on what they want to as well as what they are best at. It will remain casual and flexible as at-will work should progress, but we will come together to follow a loose business structure so that the project remains sound.
Pacing between people and teams will have to be worked out.

5. All of this is a work-in-progress and these are just my ideas. I want us to work to figure out what are the ones we can agree on. I want differing opinions and disagreements to help us want to overcome obstacles. I am of the mindset that the diversity of our experience makes us stronger, and disagreeing can motivate us to come up with better solutions. All of this is negotiable. The whole purpose is to get the best people together and work this out. This is just an idea to keep it together and make it work. And we all want the best ideas, it is the collective of the best ideas, not the compromise of the one's we can just live with that we are aiming for.

Anyone feel free to comment, you all are who makes this possible. We are going to have to ask to figure this all out and get people to see the vision.
In it's simplest fixed form.
1. We have one common goal, to take the best ideas and the best people to create a Dream Project that is the best CIV/SIM game possible. And to create the best Dream Team with those who have proven or will prove themselves and to give everyone a voice. I want every major community to have a representation/participation if possible.
2. We want to start with what exists, the best projects, and see what we can do together.
3. We want to be able to keep the best ideas possible. Create the best stable versions, and explore new ideas with experimental ones.
4. Stick together to guarantee this can happen. Make room for everyone's vision, and have a plan for keeping disagreements productive and ongoing.
5. Keep from limiting ourselves or getting in each other's way, so that we can enjoy the creation process together and free our imagination.
Until I can put it simpler, clearer or better. I hope this gives everyone an idea of what could be.


Spoiler :
So the goal we all share is to create and play the best possible civ game, a mod of mods that can encompass the goals and best parts of the other mods.

A 'ONE' MOD that will keep improving CIV IV and take the best ideas (not a grab bag or a collection of all the ideas) of the community and the other mods.

We probably agree on:
1. Using the best ideas that we all pretty much agree on.
2. Dream Team: give good reasons for the best modders to come together, and try to bridge the best mods so we don't have to completely start from scratch, for the purpose of creating the best possible mod and improving it.
3. Focus on a fast turn time mod that plays on older machines (probably have a lite core version)
4. Allow for the best ideas (like navigable rivers), ideas from ROM, AND, K-MOD, and C2C without having too much too handle. Take what we like and improve them, and remove the parts we generally agree that we don't like. Basically build a bridge between the best mods to improve them, and make a combined better mod. The reason not to throw away everything is because it is all potentially useful, and the reason not to include everything is because we don't want it to be bloated or overburdened. We want the ideas to improve the quality (not necessarily quantity) of the game. If the idea improves the game, it should be added, not for the sake of adding to add content.
5. Streamline it: Consider all the ideas but work hard to fit the best ones. People should be able to play a quick game or a long long game as they wish. Clear, useful options, and grouping could solve some problems. The game can be made deeper and better without getting lost in it, or removing all the ideas. Grouping and management can improve handling of many of these ideas.
6. Improved AI.
7. New expansion like major features to the point of creating a community Civ 6.
8. and much more I think we can agree on.
9. I honestly believe everyone's points and issues can be addressed you can have more ideas and content as long you don't get lost in them and as long as you can play them, have better gameplay and make it more fun.

I think every concern should be addressed so please keep your ideas and thoughts coming.
The goal is to bridge C2C, K-MOD, Legends of Revolutions, AND2.0 and the whole Civfanatics community.
It will be a fusion and a combination of mods and projects as well as a pursuit of a Community Civ 6. We are not trying to completely replace these mods or outdo them, we are trying to bring them together and make something together. C2C, for example is doing much of what this project is aimed for. Many of the mods are reinventing the wheel, adding new features and new ideas, like terrain, ai, and game mechanics. We want to debate and work these things out so it is a community creation between all of these things that removes the negatives and include the positives. To make the best mods with the best things, so we all can have a mod that we can work on together, and that we can agree is improving. We want to debate the concerns and worries so that we can overcome them, not so that we can disagree and fracture into thousands of different project. It is our purpose to unite so we can all figure out how to overcome those disagreements and have a game that we can more and more agree upon. A game that gets better and better because we are giving our best to improve it. A game that is the best Civilization and more that we can collectively dream up. Not a common denominator of the average of what everyone wants, but the challenge of coming up with the best decisions the best content, and the best choices of what to have in, and the best to remove.

Everyone should look at C2C to see what they are doing, because they are doing alot right. I completely support them. I agree with much of what people say is wrong with it as well. It is getting better. In most ways it is the best thing yet. I think we should come together to make the best game possible. Every effort should be supported. I think we get more done together. I think we should work with and bridge C2C as well as other mods. I think the whole point is to involve the best of these communities and mods so we can make something even better. Together with the best people we can solve bigger problems and make better decisions. We love many of these mods, and we even support each of them getting better. This is not a competition, this is a cooperation to make the best one, not to fight amongst them to see which one wins (we already have that). Isn't it time we collaborated, and shared our best. To cut out what we don't like and improve what we do. To share in the improvement experience. The difference in just creating a new mod with the people who want to, is that we are involving all of the best. The best people, ideas, and the best of what has already been created, so we can make it better. That is why we need the ONE mod. And that is why we should work out our differences. And that is why we should come together, for the love of Civ and for the desire to play a better game!

So I have gone ahead and set up a thread in the C2C mod-mod's forum to bridge the idea and engage the community.
Community bridge to create the Ultimate 'One' MOD and Ultimate Civ Game!
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=484529[/B]
By no means is any of this set in stone. I think that no one has a perfect idea of what to do yet. We need to work together to come up with a plan better than any one of us could have made by ourselves.

Please check out this forum and help me get the plan together to further this goal. The goal should define the plan, not my interpretation of it. This is everyone's best plan, not the best compromise and average of all plans.
Ideas, disagreements we need them both. Let's focus on the positive, making this plan work, not poking holes in it. Let's build a bridge, not dig sinkholes. Let's try to figure out the best way to do this.
We want to aim for making the best game possible. It is the goal. The best of the old and the new.
Let's try to do this together and elevate the best ideas and best people, for the sake of creating the best!


On the other hand, people like Lemon Merchant think this:
Spoiler :
Hmmm.... I have some reservations.

1. I'm not interested in participating in a "kitchen sink" mod.
2. Building on C2C is just extending C2C. I want to do something new. Something fresh.
3. I would prefer if we picked a direction and theme, and started from base BTS. Then add the goodies. The first being an AI fix.
4. I don't want to be involved in a mod that has a 500+ item tech tree. A few new items are fine, but some mods go overboard.
5. As was mentioned, you should be able to play a game in an afternoon.
 
In this thread I have by objective three things:
1: Ask the moderators to put this as sticky until we create a sub-forum to organize the big project.
2: Ask all of you who read this to spread the word and acknowledge the entire community of this website to notice this project. Also, if this is posted in the civfanatics.com entry page as some news, it could be even better
3: I'd want to make a poll to see how much support this could have.

Thank you all for your time
 
I would like to encourage this initiative, and although I am not yet a modder, I hope I can help out in some way.

However...
Why don't we, all the community, stop and finish all the things that each one is doing and we organize ourselves to collect all the work and coolness each mod has such as maps, civs, techs, etcetcetcetc..... we can and make the fanmade third expansion for civilization 4?

This (bolded) would be the worst of all possible outcomes as far as I'm concerned. Modders have quite enough on their plate doing what they do, and they seem perfectly suited to doing exactly what they do (funny that!) - otherwise they wouldn't do it! What they absolutely do not need is any further encouragement to stop what they're doing and do something else that they will unavoidably be less suited for and/or motivated towards.

Amazing, awesome, perhaps even miraculous things have been done by Civ IV modders. That work is all here for everyone to enjoy, and is ongoing, and the game improves yet more with each passing day. I want to encourage this project, but it can certainly go badly wrong. And the worst-case scenario of all is if it interferes with the work of the master-modders.

If you are planning to add significantly to the workload of our heroes the modders, I advise you to ... think again.
 
Haven't you never wanted experience all the experience that all the mods can offer, an experience so vast that you kind feel bad for?
Don't you want just some collection of artwork, maps, reworked AI, etc. that synthesizes and condenses all the talent and effort given by this great community?
 
So, your idea is to merge all the mods which you consider great into one mod? That is your idea of a Mod of Mods? I am not trying to be negative here, I merely want to understand your what your idea is for for the mod of mods.
 
C2C is great, but your C2C-centrism makes me wary, as it does for many others, respected members of the community. I think if we're ever going to get the support TRULY necessary to create this in a manner befitting its name and reaching its potential, we need to start anew. We can still take plenty of ideas from C2C, but we can't use it as a base.
 
Haven't you never wanted experience all the experience that all the mods can offer, an experience so vast that you kind feel bad for?

Maybe once, which is why I've been playing Rocks 2 Rockets. But not in general. What I want is the absolute best, not one-of-everything; a bare minimum of units and technologies added (and never mind the total implausibility of sending a ship to Alpha Centauri by 2050) to fix glaring holes, so that when I play I think "how did we ever manage without that unit"; the civics elegantly balanced, so I think "yes, today Serfdom is right for me"; each religion given a little smattering of flavour, and religious change working so that Christianity or Islam may sweep the globe [1]; the things that don't work well, like the Apostolic Palace and global warming, reworked to present real choices to the player; every building built representing a real strategic choice (not a C2C-style Hat Shop).

When you say "start with C2C and add more stuff", I'm already rolling my eyes. Not that people aren't allowed to like that kind of thing - but I think C2C is doing "C2C plus more" quite well already.

[1] Arguably also the number of religions should vary with the number of empires. And a system for religions splitting into sub-religions would be a nice causus belli. Christianity wouldn't come out with Theocracy, but as a fork of Judaeism, and then potentially fork again.
 
In the absence of this option (No, I think its a good idea but it wont turn out well), I voted #4.
 
Why don't we, all the community, stop and finish all the things that each one is doing and we organize ourselves to collect all the work and coolness each mod has such as maps, civs, techs, etcetcetcetc..... we can and make the
fanmade third expansion for civilization 4?

This is a terrible, terrible, terrible idea. This is one of the most terrible ideas I've heard in a long time. I'm only one paragraph in, and I have to tell you this is a terrible, terrible idea.

For starters, I like Realism Invictus. I like Caveman2Cosmos. While some things in each mod would be nice to have in the other, you still come to the conclusion that you want to play one sometimes, and the other othertimes. Why? They're two different mods with two different design philosophies.

And that's the thing. Each modder has their own design philosophy.

Speaking on the official behalf of the C2C Team and myself,

Imagine the power of focus and teamwork guys.
We could have 1 great team, and 1 awesome evolving next generation experience.
I have to agree with Eduhum. Fall from Heaven became part of an official CIV expansion, and together we could have a part in improving the next CIV.

Fall from Heaven wasn't a standalone game, or even the main focus of the expansion.

We would have to be really successful to challenge 2k's total success and more likely we would making a compelling case for all of us to be on the team to make the next CIV 6 or CIV 7. I for one would guarantee that everyone here would have a voice in the next game.

I sure as hell wouldn't want that design philosophy for an actual game. Again, C2C is great as an expansion. As for trying to be its own, developed game based on market pressure? Well, look up Manga Mundi.

Firaxis adopting our efforts may be a pipe dream but so was FALL FROM HEAVEN being part of an official CIV expansion. You never know what we could accomplish together if we found a way to get past our differences and try for a moment or 2.

Fall from Heaven was a mod included as part of the expansion. It was not the expansion.

I would like to invite Everyone from All mods to join with us to create
the ULTIMATE CIV (MOD OF MODS).

Extremely subjective, or else I wouldn't enjoy playing RI and LoR.

Just imagine the power of everyone working together to focus on creating the best solutions and overcoming all of our differences to everyone's benefit, by having the best game possible.
We could have a Dream Team of great modders leading everyone to debate and improve the ideas until we can all agree (for the sake of keeping things moving) on our direction.

Define best game. Define dream team. What is the philosophy of said team?

Here is my, I hope compelling case to at least start with C2C and it's team/community.
C2C -Cavemen to Cosmos, is already built on BUG, REVDCM, ROM, AND/RAND, is was created as an allliance between modders with Strategy Only to keep moving that idea forward. They
are working in the Final Frontier Mod and adding an additional Galactic Era. They have rewritten the AI. added terrain, pioneering increasing the resource limit, added viewports, and worked with another mod to add multi-maps. They have completely re-worked the tech tree and are even looking to include alternate history eras, a dimensional era, and anything they can dream up!
They have drawn in participation from some of the great modders like Primem0ver(The Genetic Mod) and release a new version almost every month (with more new features each time than a official expansion). They are even planning to re-write, bypass, and mod the actual Civ IV game engine to be multi-core and have started serious talk about creating an even greater next-gen game from scratch and bridging the two projects.
Seriously.

Seriously.

The only thing I think that most players would agree with is multicore support. Secondly, who would play this mod? People who already play C2C. So why not just keep developing C2C?

I argue that C2C is already well on the way to becoming that Dream Team and Dream MOD already, and that it is probably a good idea to consider starting with C2C.

:rolleyes:

C2C, The K-MOD, the new AND, the old AND, ROM, Legends of Revolutions, and a bunch of other mods qualify as mods meant to create the Ultimate MOD.


I find it extremely amusing you mentioned K-Mod and LoR. Both mods stressed a minimalist approach to creating a "commercial" expansion. ROM and AND also went down the path of cutting and balancing.

Why Can't we all come together to make a better one? None of the other projects have to be abandoned or ignored, heck they may all benefit from team effort and cross-pollination.

Cross-pollination can already happen without trying to get every modder to design something they probably don't want to design.
*****

Really, I read the rest of the post, and most of my arguments are the same.

The "ultimate" civilization would ultimately look like a stylized, strip down version of C2C. Better AI, a fleshier tech tree (but not fat as hell), more units to fill the gaps, maybe Revolutions as an option, and multicore.

Because that is what an expansion is. If Beyond the Sword looked like Caveman2Cosmos, modding it significantly would be difficult.
 
On the other hand, people like Lemon Merchant think this:
Thanks very much for pointing me out as the lone voice of dissent. Really appreciated.
 
How can it be considered a minority opinion? He's losing the poll. :crazyeye:

For the record Sonoreal, I agree completely with your analysis although, since I'm not a modder, my opinion doesn't really count.
 
How can it be considered a minority opinion? He's losing the poll. :crazyeye:

Sonereal's point was that its being portrayed as minority opinion (as the rest of the post is dedicated to the OP's opinion, with that last bit being an afterthought).
 
Hey, I didn't want to portray him as the minority opinion! I'm no social engineer
 
Sorry, I hate to be negative because I'd love to see another official add-on, but I just don't see this happening. We have a lot of interesting mods around, many allready finished and community-proven, some still in development. There should be stuff around for many tastes - stuff for many years to play and enjoy. And no matter what happens based on this idea - it won't be official anyway. Best thing is we get a handfull of talented people really coming up with another great mod - which would be phantastic, go for it. Or it just gets blown by the massive scale and scope and expectations that can't be fullfilled and dies unfinished like so many other sad projects. But to be honest I would prefer (as an example) a finished K-Mod over K-Mod getting abandoned and Karadoc's work going to this not really tangible mega-project...
 
gps, why would k-mod get abandoned, and isn't it already finished?

Well, here's what the OP posted:

Why don't we, all the community, stop and finish all the things that each one is doing.....

That's the question I referred to.

And here are some random post from the K-Mod development thread from two days ago:

@Karadoc still greatly appreciating your mod and the continuing work.

version 1.39 is up :D

Sound quite like there is still a lot of WIP...
 
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