v7 feedback

[GeoModder]

And it seems I need to tinker with the marine lab as well.
It's way too high on the sea. I'll lower it to a reasonable hight.

 

[GeoModder]

Where did you place the marine lab? I can't find it in the .fpk?

 

[Maniac]

Where did you place the marine lab? I can't find it in the .fpk?

I only create a new pak file when releasing a new full version.
Anyway, the Marine Lab is indeed put in a strange place: the Structures/Cities folder. Reason is because the Arrival cityset and the Marine Lab share the box.dds. But if I understand correctly, I could throw that box.dds in a seperate 'shared' folder, and everything would still work?

I just discovered that the Small map setting gives 7 factions, just as the Standard map setting. I leftover from testing patch g?

That's an intentional change. I 1) kinda like crowded maps, and 2) kinda like having all 7 factions around.
Do you prefer only five?

Anyway, I use small maps for the 100-turn AI autoplay test before releasing a patch, so it's useful to have all factions around for that test. You never know it's only one of the factions causing a problem. Has happened before.

 

[GeoModder]

Well, no problem for 7 factions on a small map in my book, but I suggest you change the settings for the smaller maptypes accordingly.

Thanks for the Marine Lab location. In the next upload I'll add a folder path for the location of the "Shared" folder.

 

[Maniac]

I noticed, with Quick Combat off, that (the animations of) battles involving the Cyborg unit last very long. Other people also having this issue? Anyone knows what determines the length of a battle?

 

[Thunder_Gr]

My guess here is that the battle lasts until one of the units is dead or it retreats. If they have many hit points, it may take a while. Many first strikes for one side does make the animations last longer, also.

 

[kenken244]

Animations have nothing to do with combat. It is all done beforehand and then the game animates it so that the appropriate no. of units are left.

 

[Thunder_Gr]

I do not see how this is different than what I said.
The battle is done beforehand. Then animations to represent the way the battle went are generated.
First strike animations are generated for units having first strikes and the number of them displayed is proportional to the real number the unit got in the battle.
Hits displayed in the animation are proportional to the real number of attacks that made during the combat calculation.

So, the more First strikes and number of attacks in real combat, the longer the animation sequel

 

[Maniac]

Has any of you actually tried if they have the same problem as me?

I was testing a little something. I used a Cyborg (which has no first strikes) to attack a fungal tower, and the battle lasted very long, and there was a long pause before the cyborg death animation. When I attacked a fungal tower with a scout patrol, the battle length was normal.

Could it be in the kfm files? These are just copied from NextWar of course.

 

[Teodosio]

I was testing a little something. I used a Cyborg (which has no first strikes) to attack a fungal tower, and the battle lasted very long, and there was a long pause before the cyborg death animation. When I attacked a fungal tower with a scout patrol, the battle length was normal.

Combat with cyborgs is always slow, even if I never experienced long pauses.
It seems to me that the combat is slow just because there are 8 cyborg figures for unit, while scouts and others have 2-3 figures. So when a cyborg unit is defeated the dying animation is repeated 8 times, while it is repeated only 2-3 times for most other units.
Reducing the figures for Cyborg units would improve the issue.

 

[Maniac]

Ah, thanks, seems like a likely culprit. I'll try it out. (I've always used single unit models, so I didn't notice this)

 

[Pfeffersack]

Patch 7f runs very stable for me (except some non-reproduceable crashes I get after frequent alt-tabbing), also no major bugs so far. I played Deidre one more time and again, it felt a lot easier compared to the other factions. I still think Planetfall works too much in favor for the "green strategy":

- You make the best out of the increasing FC (started out with 25, reached 30=2147,
35=2190, 40=2235, 45=2286, 50=2338, 53=2397), which soon kills of farms a viable alternative - I'm not able to get beyond Outposts with them and even that happens only with the very early ones around my capital. As said earlier, the Terraformed civic helps in theory, but appears when its already to late (means FC is already crippling high). I'm not sure what can be done about this, but it appears to me that fungus is still growing too fast outside faction borders - even after 300 turns there is still a decent amount of surface unsettled and here fungus has evolved into a kind of carpet. Especially the oceans are a problem, because the AI never seems to think about building sea-colonies. Also their expansion speed seems to dwindle over the curse of the game...they don't seem be interested in settling oversea islands, if they are more then a few tiles away and often they start to lose cities to native life in the midgame, while being only occasionally able to recapture them.

- You can gain a lot out of your positive planet values (if you go for booster buildings and VoP as Deidre, you always have 3 or 4 as average) as well. Your borders expand really quick without needing religion or buildings, you can pollute the Planet with some dirty terrain improvements (as long as you don't go overborad with it), you are better in fighting native life...and you can have a whole army of captured native life. Since the limit is calculated from the total accumulated positive planet values, it increases over time. Now in 2408 I could have 89 captured native life forms, actually having 14. I did no active hunting and also often fought native life with my own native life (which seems to have no chance to capture, which is healthy restriction IMO) and also lost a couple again, so the number could be a lot higher, if I would have been focussed in that direction.

- You get better along with the AIs, a lot better - as long as no AI ever uses Terraformed (not even the ones running/founding Edenism!!!) with a tendency to pick Hybrid soon, you get more out of heading in the same direction.

- Though I think a discount on city maintenance for Hybrid is fine and I don't even think that 50% is too much, I think it becomes too strong on top of the other advantages. Size matters a lot for all kinds of victories and taking away the costs of size is always a strong advantage.



Some minors things:

- The seemingly missing cap for missionaries can cause AIs to spam them (see picture)

- The victory screen displays an insane amount of subspace generators needed for victory (see picture)

- I like the dropship unit, as it is a comfortable way for oversea transports. However, you need to be careful when moving them around in coastal waters - if you give an order, which leads over a land tile, the drop-ship will auto-unload. Sometimes that might be the intention and save you some extra-clicks, but it can be nasty, if the a cargo is unloaded in the wrong place (in my case near native life), when your plan is to continue travelling.

- I think a council vote every 6 years is too much, especially as long as there are not more cool things to voted about. Sure it does not hurt either...but it's kind of repetive to vote every few turns about if Single Currency should be disabled or continued again.
The behaviour of the AI further worsens things here - unless the code was changed here, all problems present in the standard Civ4 AI (as picking resolutions randomly or making votes hurting themselves, like stopping their own, sucessful wars...). I remember that a version of Better AI was included some time ago...the current Better AI 0.60 runs very stable in my experience and has a lot of improvements on voting behaviour, maybe it would be worth to include.
Votes connected to peace/war/trading/cities are more interesting, but they are too dependant on if the AIs fight at all (though there is to mention that I have played with scattered landing potds again - I kind of don't like the ultra-early conflict, I would rather like to see some action in the mid and late game..) I think some of the SMAX factions could really spice up the game - the space on the map would be more tight (eventually improving the situation with the FC described in the beginning) and more options for coalitions would arise.


In case it is generally useful to see a game in that stage, I uploaded my latest save...

 

[vdex34]

I lol'd at your second pic, something really needs to be done about that. Limit AIs to only 2-3 missionaries maybe?

 

[Tssha]

I don't see why you'd need more than two or three in the first place. Besides, that kind of stockpile can lead to religion rushing which might be a bit imbalanced, since you could potentially change another faction's religion overnight (assuming they found it compelling enough to).

If you're going to convert a faction, it should take some time. The cap of 3 in Civ4 Vanilla was a good idea, for this and other reasons (especially in light of the horde of Planet missionaries in Pfeffersack's pic).

 

[Maniac]

I'm not able to get beyond Outposts with them and even that happens only with the very early ones around my capital. As said earlier, the Terraformed civic helps in theory, but appears when its already to late (means FC is already crippling high).

I could try increasing the farm upgrade bonus of Terraformed?

it appears to me that fungus is still growing too fast outside faction borders - even after 300 turns there is still a decent amount of surface unsettled and here fungus has evolved into a kind of carpet.

Certain areas being fungus carpets is intentional. Though I'd wish more of the land and less of the sea were fungal carpets...

Also their expansion speed seems to dwindle over the curse of the game[/B]...they don't seem be interested in settling oversea islands, if they are more then a few tiles away and often they start to lose cities to native life in the midgame, while being only occasionally able to recapture them.

Hmm, I've been playing a game with the Believers, and so far the AI has been very good at building overseas bases. And only one base, alone on an isolated island, has fallen to native life. Perhaps these two rule changes have made a large difference?:

10. Native Life spawns due to eco-damage (negative Planet) will be immobile for a turn.
11. Native Life spawns due to eco-damage can only spawn on fungus. So no fungus => no spawns.

and you can have a whole army of captured native life. Since the limit is calculated from the total accumulated positive planet values, it increases over time. Now in 2408 I could have 89 captured native life forms, actually having 14.

Well, when I coded in this feature, I just added a random planet requirement per capture number which seemed about right, knowing full well it would need to be rebalanced. It would be very easy to increase the required accumulated planet to capture an extra worm. However just increasing the number overall might make it too hard to capture native life in the early game. So I'm rather thinking the first couple native lifeforms should require less accumulated planet. And I have no inspiration right now how to code this.
Anyway, not a huge problem at the moment I guess. If you actually manage to assemble a 90-worm army, and that army is much bigger than what your opponents can field, then it'll become a priority to find a solution.

- The seemingly missing cap for missionaries can cause AIs to spam them (see picture)

As a last-minute change for patch g, I set the national limit for missionaries to 10. The reason for removing the cap was because I gave all missionaries a medic promotion, so they have an additional purpose.
I guess I'll need to have a look how FfH solved the endless missionary problem.

- The victory screen displays an insane amount of subspace generators needed for victory (see picture)

Yep I know. Unfortunately I don't know the cause or solution.

you give an order, which leads over a land tile, the drop-ship will auto-unload

I'll check it out. Perhaps I could make the auto-unload for the AI only or something.

- I think a council vote every 6 years is too much, especially as long as there are not more cool things to voted about.

Ideas for interesting repetitive council proposals are welcome.
Anyway yeah, I think the Planetary Council and the White Pines council (renamed 'the Concordat'?) are gonna be the next big thing I'm gonna focus on.


In other news, in my Believer game (with the aforementioned fungal bloom changes included) I tried to cause as much eco-damage as I possibly could. There was a decade (the 2170's IIRC) where I had to spend all my resources on building units replacing the ones I lost in native life combat. However once I focused on clearing out all the fungus in a 7x7 square around my super-polluting headquarters (it had the Unity Mining Laser), it was easy cruising. I also built three Bunkers positioned around New Jerusalem, so that I could range strike at any native life spawns, and significantly reduce my own losses in direct combat. However by the time I built those, I had just about finished clearing all the fungus. If fighting native life needs to be further made easier, I could place Bunkers earlier in the tech tree, at Superconductor. However with the fungal bloom changes in this latest patch g, fighting native life seems very doable to me. Your experiences with these changes would always be nice to hear!

 

[The_J]

Yep I know. Unfortunately I don't know the cause or solution.

Just one point: It's not related to planetfall, i have also the error, but also no solution.

 

[Pfeffersack]

I could try increasing the farm upgrade bonus of Terraformed?

At least it would not hurt in any regard, I think - so far, I haven't seen the latest farm levels in action even when I used Terraformed and the AI needs more incentive to choose it anway.

Certain areas being fungus carpets is intentional. Though I'd wish more of the land and less of the sea were fungal carpets...
(...)
10. Native Life spawns due to eco-damage (negative Planet) will be immobile for a turn.
11. Native Life spawns due to eco-damage can only spawn on fungus. So no fungus => no spawns.
(...)
In other news, in my Believer game (with the aforementioned fungal bloom changes included) I tried to cause as much eco-damage as I possibly could. There was a decade (the 2170's IIRC) where I had to spend all my resources on building units replacing the ones I lost in native life combat. However once I focused on clearing out all the fungus in a 7x7 square around my super-polluting headquarters (it had the Unity Mining Laser), it was easy cruising. I also built three Bunkers positioned around New Jerusalem, so that I could range strike at any native life spawns, and significantly reduce my own losses in direct combat. However by the time I built those, I had just about finished clearing all the fungus. If fighting native life needs to be further made easier, I could place Bunkers earlier in the tech tree, at Superconductor. However with the fungal bloom changes in this latest patch g, fighting native life seems very doable to me. Your experiences with these changes would always be nice to hear!

Indeed my first game with patch g played out a bit differently and I think your changes had an impact (I cleaned my main island from fungus and did not have serious problems with fighting native life, also no reports of lost AI bases). However, I also changed my usual sealevel choice from "medium" to "low" and choosed an "arid" instead of a "tropical climate and I think those parameters have an impact as well.

As you said, fungus carpets are common on sea, but happen more rarely on land - so I guess the sealevel has a serious effect on the FC. Its increases slowed down soon in my game (starting out at 23, it reached 31 with the usual 8-12 turn increases in 2186. After that the increments lay somewhere between 15 and 30 years, so it reached 43 in the year 2402).

I'm not sure on the arid climate, don't see any hints on that fungus spreads better or less good depending on rainfall. However, it seems to hinder the AI a bit. I outgrowed them more than usual and had a comfortable absolute majority, when the PC first voted. Not all of them understand the importance of planting kelp and likely they don't priorize techs helping with food as much as a human does under such circumstances (e.g. reasearching and using condensators)

I will try another game with patch g, this time using "high" sealevel, to see if the oceans are the culprit for the steep FC increase - if thats the case, it might be enough to change something about the fungus grow rate on sea.

BTW, land units being able to move over sea saves a lot of MM. I like this change



I noticed also a small graphical glitch regarding PC councils (which seems to have no gameplay impact, though) - in this game I see to have always tons of votes (never had that in older versions). The save is the end of my turn before the vote on the picture comes up:

 

[Maniac]

Quick note:

you give an order, which leads over a land tile, the drop-ship will auto-unload

I have yet to encounter this myself. Do you perhaps also have a save where you're just about to move on a plot where your units get auto-unloaded?

 

[Maniac]

I'm not sure on the arid climate, don't see any hints on that fungus spreads better or less good depending on rainfall.

Rainfall has no effect. I was thinking about this early in Planetfall development, but I'd say on land there already are enough restrictions on xenofungus spreading: highlands, monsoon jungle and ice terrain.

Btw, just so we're on the same page: the height of the flowering counter value itself is no problem, right? It's the side-effects that 1) a Terraforming strategy makes little sense, and 2) all the sea eventually gets covered in fungus carpet, which are the problems, no?

Besides differentiating land and sea fungus growth, I was just now thinking I could also add a new (Geothermal) Shallows terrain. It would not prevent fungal blooms like trenches or highlands do, but I could forbid natural fungus growth on it.

Or even better, rename Shelf back to Coast, and name the new terrain type (which does not need adjacent land) Shelf. Coast would then give one nutrient and two commerce instead of two nutrients. Shelf could then perhaps even give three food. Would give an encouragement to settle the high seas. Now, with all those mobile IoDs running around, it's not a good idea to colonize the seas while you still have open land left.

However, it seems to hinder the AI a bit.

Yeah, the AI is rather poor in that game. How did the Gaians get stuck on two bases for instance!
Eg compare them with my Believer game.

BTW, land units being able to move over sea saves a lot of MM. I like this change

Me too. Hell, if I could select one idea to include in Civ5, this simple thing might actually be it.

Only a pity even native life walking on water, appears with a transport foil. IoD would fit better obviously.

I noticed also a small graphical glitch regarding PC councils

Ah, the problem is that I copied the vanilla Civ4 GameTextInfos in the Planetfall text folder, but certain text strings of that vanilla file have been changed in BtS text files. By copying the vanilla file in the Planetfall folder, I'm once again overwriting the BtS changes. :dizzy: In any case, that "you have X votes" line is not supposed to show at all in BtS. The issue will be fixed in version 8, whenever that might be. (Or you could, after I release the next patch, delete Civ4GameTextInfos.xml in the Planetfall text folder)

 

[Pfeffersack]

I have yet to encounter this myself. Do you perhaps also have a save where you're just about to move on a plot where your units get auto-unloaded?

I didn't stumble into this with 7g so far. Will post a save, if it happens again.

Btw, just so we're on the same page: the height of the flowering counter value itself is no problem, right? It's the side-effects that 1) a Terraforming strategy makes little sense, and 2) all the sea eventually gets covered in fungus carpet, which are the problems, no?

Yes - unless of course a growing FC has other unwanted side effects as well, which I haven't discovered yet I'm always refering to it, as it a measure for both fungus coverage and overall native life activity.

Besides differentiating land and sea fungus growth, I was just now thinking I could also add a new (Geothermal) Shallows terrain. It would not prevent fungal blooms like trenches or highlands do, but I could forbid natural fungus growth on it.

Or even better, rename Shelf back to Coast, and name the new terrain type (which does not need adjacent land) Shelf. Coast would then give one nutrient and two commerce instead of two nutrients. Shelf could then perhaps even give three food. Would give an encouragement to settle the high seas. Now, with all those mobile IoDs running around, it's not a good idea to colonize the seas while you still have open land left.

I like those ideas. I'm now really convinced that the key lies in the seas here - I played around 100 turns into a game with high sealevel (all other settings the same, me plaing Morgan again) and the FC climbed faster (increases often every 4-6 years) and higher (in 2213 37 compared to 32 in my last game)

Yeah, the AI is rather poor in that game. How did the Gaians get stuck on two bases for instance!
Eg compare them with my Believer game.

I wasn't able to open it for some reason (the error indicated that it has something to do with the folder name of the mod, which should be "Planetfall" - mine is "Planetfall v7")

Indeed the AI performance greatly varies. It seems to depend a lot on their start, while it is hard to detect any faction-related patterns (which is by the way a big improvement over unmodded SMAC, where you could count on Morgan being weak all the time e.g.) I also don't understand why they sometimes expand a lot, while especially small faction often don't seem to priorize colony pods or sea colonies (those ones are rarely seen in the AIs hands anyway, as least in my games)