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Pfeffersack · May 7, 2009

Teodosio said:
Since I am uploading my save game I will report a small issue I am having since v7. I find in every campaign that I can easily outspend tha AI in espionage. In the espionage screen I see that I can perform missions against my enemies at an average 70% of the cost, and all of this happens before the espionage slider is unlocked and without any purposeful act on my part.
This is a problem because I can see my enemies' territories and often the inside of their cities without effort. I think the issue is due to the "Network Node" being a very early building that allows a Librarian citizen, providing +4 esp points. I always use "auto manage citizens" in my cities that places a Librarian as soon as the network node is built. This at long generates a number of "Hackers" great persons that I settle in my cities, further increasing my espionage points production.
Can I suggest to unlock the espionage slider earlier in the game to enable the AI to keep up? At "Polymorphic Software" for example?

I have the same experience in my games...usually I have espionage costs between 65% and 80% soon...just by settling the frequently appearing hackers. IIRC, Maniac supposed that the Governors logic is somehow broken in regard to employing "Spy Specialists" and he is right...the good new is that this bug is said to be fixed in the newest version (v0.70) of the "Better AI" mod (second bold issues under "Espionage AI" in the first post inside the spoiler):

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=319673

I'm not sure if I would take the hassle and force Librarians manually in the way the governor currently does, so including this fix in Planetfall might work in favor of the AI (which somehow does not seem to value Network Nodes as much, which is think is the only resonable explanation for the discrepancy)

Maniac · May 8, 2009

felix86 said:
Just wondering, are there plans to make planetbusters behave like in SMAC, i.e. turn land into sea?

No.

Teodosio said:
I have a constant crash in my campaign!
The save game is attached. After I click "end turn" the game crashes. I have tried it three times, one of them after rebooting my pc.

I'm not getting a crash.
Could a third person please check if they're getting one?
I've clicked end turn and attached the beginning of MY 2365 to this post. Perhaps the crash won't happen anymore for you in future turns either. :confused:

For your information, Planetary Archives finished production - I set it to stockpile energy. And your deal for White Algae with Yang got cancelled. No idea why.

I always use "auto manage citizens" in my cities that places a Librarian as soon as the network node is built.

You use lots of librarians, so you're #1 in espionage. I don't see a problem there. The problem is with the AI valuing of the librarian specialist. I'll look if I can find the solution in Better AI. Won't be for the next patch though.

Pfeffersack · May 8, 2009

Maniac said:
I'm not getting a crash.
Could a third person please check if they're getting one?
I've clicked end turn and attached the beginning of MY 2365 to this post. Perhaps the crash won't happen anymore for you in future turns either.
For your information, Planetary Archives finished production - I set it to stockpile energy. And your deal for White Algae with Yang got cancelled. No idea why.

I tested the save Teodosio loaded up and I don't experienced a crash after ending the turn as well.

Pfeffersack · May 10, 2009

Maniac said:
You use lots of librarians, so you're #1 in espionage. I don't see a problem there. The problem is with the AI valuing of the librarian specialist. I'll look if I can find the solution in Better AI. Won't be for the next patch though.

Here jdog5000 explains how the spy specialist fix works (post #5):

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=319673

Teodosio · May 10, 2009

Thank you people for having tried my savegame. It still crashes here, perhaps there is a problem with my installation. If it happens again I will let you know. In any case I had already started a new campaign and I will start a new one with the latest patch.

About the excess of espionage spending: I have noticed in my games that this is due in good part to great persons "Hackers" that I settle in my cities. I get several of them in my games since the "Network Nodes" are built very soon and the AI assigns a lot of Librarian specialist.
A possibile solution to avoid settling the Hackers: is it possible to make some technologies researchable by them? It this were the case I would rather use the Hackers GP to bulb technologies than settle them, and this would greatly reduce my espionage spending.
What do you think?

Maniac · May 10, 2009

Pfeffersack said:
Here jdog5000 explains how the spy specialist fix works (post #5):

Thanks!

Teodosio said:
A possibile solution to avoid settling the Hackers: is it possible to make some technologies researchable by them?

Reviewing what techs what great people give is indeed err somewhere on my to do list. Can't tell when I'll get to it though.
In any case, Hackers will then be able to research Discover-themed techs.

Maniac · May 13, 2009

Planetfall has had a small review.

Do you guys share his experiences? If so, do you have any ideas on how to improve on these issues?

For the record, using SMAC's leader dialogue in diplomacy is on the to-do list, though it would certainly speed things up if someone offered to move all the dialogue into XML files.

Tssha · May 13, 2009

It's his opinion. Me, I'm just happy to see the old leaders portraits, putter around with formers and transform the face of Planet.

He's got a point though. Psi combat doesn't happen nearly enough...not without fungal blooms, anyway.

I think I'll stop there. I don't really share his opinion much. It's hard to transfer those things like music and movies to Planetfall without violating copyright (and bulking up the download size). Diplomacy text would help, but I think this guy would be aided by the perspective that this mod is still a work in progress...albeit with a solid gameplay mechanic. In fact, half the reason I don't play it much anymore is because it's still pretty far from completion.

Don't sweat it that much. Though, I may take a look at the diplo text someday...and I have a few ideas of my own of diplo text that might work. I've even written down some new lines of my own. Since there's only a few faction leaders, it would be nice if there was some way to have certain leaders (like Morgan) get different diplo text from all the other leaders (even if only slightly different). For instance, alluding to the fact that because he was a stowaway, you aren't well known to the faction leader you're talking to on first contact. For the others, they can refer to their time on the Unity, and remark on old friendships or old rivalries. Not that I know of any rivalries from the Unity days...

Yeah...I think diplo text could be better. It's your mod though, so it's your call what goes in it.

kansa · May 13, 2009

I only agree with one thing and that is not enough mind worms

Maniac · May 13, 2009

To those who don't encounter enough native life: do you play with Raging Barbarians turned On or Off?

Tssha said:
but I think this guy would be aided by the perspective that this mod is still a work in progress...

Is there certain stuff in particular which makes you feel Planetfall is a work in progress? I can always move up stuff on the to-do list.

Teodosio · May 14, 2009

Maniac said:
Is there certain stuff in particular which makes you feel Planetfall is a work in progress? I can always move up stuff on the to-do list.

I have read that review. First of all, let me say that in my opinion Planefall at the moment is better than SMAC. SMAC is a great game and one of my favourites, but in many aspects it is really outdated now (mainly about interface and graphics).

A couple of ideas:
First, what surely gives an impression of work-in-progress are the Datalinks, they are almost empty. I think this is a sensitive issue, particularly for new players that want info about how to play the game. We must say that at this point a good number of things are different from vanilla Civilization, so having a guide in-game would be a great help and a major step to eliminate the feeling of "work-in-progress". I hope someone is planning to work on the Datalinks; if there is no one I could do something after I have finished working on buttons and gamefonts.

Second, the reviewer tells the truth when he says that the details do a lot to create the atmosphere. In this respect there is a thing that Planefall is missing at the moment: events. In SMAC there were both scripted events (dialogues with the planet-mind when a particular tecnology was researched or when you first meet the worms) and random events (resources drop or boom in a base for a number of turns, or the great "communication disruption" that was a pain but also my favourite

). It would be nice to bring back some events and possibly to create new ones.

Question: can you put your to-do list on a dedicated thread, so that we can see it and send comments/proposals?

Maniac · May 14, 2009

Teodosio said:
I have read that review. First of all, let me say that in my opinion Planefall at the moment is better than SMAC. SMAC is a great game and one of my favourites, but in many aspects it is really outdated now (mainly about interface and graphics).

Yeah. In his latest Podcast, Troy Goodfellow (who wrote that review) said he fired up SMAC recently and was amazed at how bad the interface was. :lol:

I wonder if that was recorded before or after giving Planetfall a go.

Datalinks, they are almost empty

The Datalinks is supposed to provide two things:
1) Provide information
2) Provide flavour

You are talking about the information part now.
The Datalinks is completely up to date with with the new tags for improvements, features, buildings... I've also added a couple Hints in the Hints section based on questions I've been asked recently. Do you have ideas what else I can do?

The review states that it takes forever to learn the tech tree. I'm hoping this may be helped a little by having all the techs and buildings in their correct colour code. I could add Hints explaining what each colour stands for.

There are Brian's Tips. I wouldn't really know what kind of information to put in those. I have always found those completely useless in vanilla Civ. Those should probably be written by someone else.

I hope someone is planning to work on the Datalinks; if there is no one I could do something after I have finished working on buttons and gamefonts.

That would be awesome! Though like you say, I'd say the gamefont and buttons have higher priority. People with gamefont editing skills are more rare than people with XML editing skills.

Planefall is missing at the moment: events

While they indeed add flavour, from a gameplay perspective these are about as low priority as it gets. I'd rather have a well-balanced base game first. Anyway, that's the reason why I haven't given those much thought yet.

For random events to be worthwhile, there should also be a sufficiently large pool of them, so you don't always get the same. That's a problem at the moment. So people should suggest ideas for random events. If people take the initiative on this, I can move them up on the priority list.

Question: can you put your to-do list on a dedicated thread, so that we can see it and send comments/proposals?

I'm not sure that would be of much use. They are just random ideas which I sometimes discard later and short notes to remind myself of what to do. I don't know if they would be intelligible to others. Anyway, at least I write them in English, so here goes:

...

in the next post - I exceeded the character limit.

Maniac · May 14, 2009

Spoiler :

Pfeffersack · May 14, 2009

@ Planetfall Review

I don't miss blind research that much. Surely, more options almost never hurt, but there is so much more which I think is more important.

I also don't have a problem to cope with the tech tree.

Regarding mindworms...the author of the review likely hasn't played the builds before the latest changes to sea fungus and spawning spots (in which their was too much native life and fungus for my taste, with or without "raging an"). Now things feel much more calm (though I haven't test raging with 8c so far). If something should be changed again, the this change should lead to more native life (=units), but not again to a lot more fungus.

He has a point regarding atmosphere, though my biggest desire here aren't wonder movies or similar things, but the personality of leaders (and the missing ones from SMAX) - e.g. Morgan should have more Gold available for trade then the others, Miriam should become especially mad if you have the wrong religion, Deidre should hate you for having a negative Planetvalue, Lal for commiting atrocities and so on...
Currently they just feel to similar.

I would like to see the old random events, as well...especially that Perihel event every 80 years comes to my mind.

I also sometimes miss some cool special stuff like Unit Workshop, Global Warming, Echolon Mirrors, Pod Outcomes (earthquake, new rivers, battle ogres), the tectonic and fungus missiles, "planet pearls" from killed native life or those useful 100-turns-loan you give out or take, but I'm aware that most of that stuff is likely either close to impossible to implement in the Civ4 engine or that I would not fit balance-wise (some things in SMAC were probably just "cool" because they were too powerful in the hand of the human player vs. a rather incompetent AI)

Pfeffersack · May 14, 2009

I like the change from inflation to higher unit costs. We have replaced a statically growing cost with something dynamic, which you can influence with your playstyle.
Police State has get a serious boost with this and time will tell if the higher unit cost are fair regarding the balance of building vs. warmongering (eventually a similar designed building maintenance could level the playfiled, if needed)
But the best about that change is that the AI plays like you have removed their brakes...in my current game Miriam has already 17(!) bases, Deidre around a dozen.

There is a small (display) glitch in the way the Planet Value (PV) figure and the "total net +/- accumulated through the game" (I will abbreviate this to TN) interact which each other (not a new problem of 8c, but I somehow never came round to reporting and taking a save) sometimes. It has some gameplay impact, but for the worse it might greatly confuse new players.
I will explain it with the example of my current game. Playing the Hive, I started my game with fast population growth and many mines/farms and soon got in the red area with both figures. But then a couple of things changed my situation (Deidre as neighbour infected me with the VoP, I discovered the Manifold Nexus and probably most important, the charm of pop-rushing).
In the consequence, the -300 TN I had accumulated vanished within 30 turns or so - however, the PV figure raised much slower.And here the problem started...the PV was still negative and in the reds, while I started already to accumulate a postive TN.
The excess favorable planet value from all the bases was correctly applied to TN each turn, but the entire figured was still displayed red - and obviously counted as a negative figure as well, because if you exceed 100+ you expect to be able to capture native life. But that doesn't work (the hoover help doesn't display any capacity here as well). The situation magically corrected in the moment the PV passed the 0.00-line. The problem can occur BTW just the other way round - if a "planet fried" suddenly starts to pollute the planet, it takes some time to bring the average PV down - and during this phase, he can still go for native life. To make the problem better vissible, I have attached the hoovers of the PV figure from the years 2225 and 2226, also the save of 2225. Even if the impact on native life captured is intended (one might argue that PV is just the deciding figure), then the wrong colour should be change if possible.

Another thing regarding the PV figure...you can see the AI value for it, if you hoover above their score. The AI doesn't seem to be very good at managing this. All of them are more or less deep in the reds, even Deidre with VoP and running Hybrid. The AI's love for farms might be one reason, but I also noticed that my governor will not always recognize the value of Empath specialists - I often have to force them manually. Perhaps at least the Deidre AI could priorize them (together with buildings like the Biolab)

I also wondered, why my Mass Driver near People's Teeming in the attached save cannot be promoted with AAA tracking...is there any hidden (because I could not find anything in the Datalinks) prequesite - beside Polymorphic Software, which I have - for it?

Edit: Those to-do list is indeed impressing...still reading, many interesting ideas :goodjob:

Tssha · May 14, 2009

Yeah, I've tried taking a look at the Leaderhead values for some of my own modding work...I've looked for real Leaderhead information: tutorials, references, descriptions of XML values and what altering them does (and what values are ludicrously high...or gamebreaking) and what have I found?

Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zip.

The one file that alters how the AI deals with the world, and there's zero documentation. At least, that I can find.

It's not surprising that all the faction leaders act the same. If their LeaderheadInfos numbers are all similar, they'll all act the same. Unfortunately, at this point it looks like if I want a guide on leaderhead values and how to use them, I'm going to have to write it myself.

Hell, my mod isn't even runable yet. How am I supposed to test this stuff?

Teodosio · May 15, 2009

Maniac said:
You are talking about the information part now.
The Datalinks is completely up to date with with the new tags for improvements, features, buildings... I've also added a couple Hints in the Hints section based on questions I've been asked recently. Do you have ideas what else I can do?

I don't know if it is just me, but though all the entries are present, there are no descriptions, expect for technologies. Adding descriptions for units, buildings and resources would do a lot to create the atmosphere. Buildings' descriptions could be taken from SMAC. I'm sure many players would be curious to know what is a "Manifold Nexus" (I asked you that myself) or a "Locust of Chiron".
Furthermore, more info would be needed about gameplay mechanics. It would be good and very useful for new players to create a section "Planetfall concepts" (akin to the present "BtS concepts"). It could contain info about such things as "Planet Value", "Flowering counter", "PSI combat", units transport on sea, and so on.

Maniac said:
The review states that it takes forever to learn the tech tree. I'm hoping this may be helped a little by having all the techs and buildings in their correct colour code. I could add Hints explaining what each colour stands for.

I don't see that as a drawback, in fact I appreciate that there are many things to discover and that a campaing can last long.

Psyringe · May 15, 2009

Regarding the review, I think it (somewhat unnecessarily) focused on the question whether Planetfall is better than SMAC. I don't think that this is an important question, especially because Planetfall was never meant as "the mod that makes you never play SMAC again", and Maniac has been quite frank about that.

However, it's also important to see that this blog entry was never meant as a complete review. It seems to be a collection of some semi-random thoughts that occurred to the author while trying Planetfall. For a blog entry, this is perfectly okay. Treating the blog entry like a complete review (and holding it against the standards that apply to one) would be doing the same to its author that he did to Maniac - i.e., criticizing a product for not being something that it never aspired to be in the first place.

Anyway.

The review does raise some points with which I agree, but I also always assumed that these would be dealt with in Planetfall's further development, like the diplo texts. (And according to Maniac's posts on the subject, I seem to have been correct.) I'm not sure whether the reviewer realized that Planetfall is still a WIP, he probably should have mentioned it in his blog because it's important for readers to know that there's a good chance that the problems he mentions will be solved later on.

There's one point though where there may be a misunderstanding going on, that's the importance of the narrative. One of the things that raised SMAC above many other Civ games was that it was not only a strategy game, it was a strategy game with a powerful narrative that unfolded while you played. This narrative, enhanced through tons of little details that I'll mention shortly, made the playing experience unique. And I think the reviewer is correct in saying that Planetfall currently doesn't capture this aspect of SMAC very well.

Maniac asked what could be done to improve this. Here are some suggestions (note that this is some kind of brainstorming, I'm just throwing out ideas and at this stage I'm not concerned with how hard or easy these would be to implement - that's for Maniac to decide, I'm just adding some more suggestions for him to decide upon):

- Adding the SMAC/SMAX interludes through event scripting

- Adding the full tech descriptions to the Datalinks. In SMAC, each tech has two descriptions - one is flavor and has a voice-over that plays upon discovering the tech, the other is more technical and usually links the tech to the one required for it. The former enhances the atmosphere, characterizes the factions, and strengthens the narrative. The latter helps understanding and memorizing the tech tree (something that is difficult for a SciFi game, as the reviewer correctly observed).

- Add more such flavor information throughout the game, inventing new texts for those situations where no original text exists. Example: There's a voiceover where Lal describes how the atmosphere of a faction's base can be observed in the rec commons. He goes on to describe several ways of what different factions build as rec commons. This text is absolutely great because it fulfills so many tasks that are important for the narrative: It characterizes several factions' ideologies by illustrating their idea of recreation. It fosters Lal's position as a perceptive observer of mankind. It also transports the idea, quite early in the game, that building X for faction A isn't identical to building X for faction B, in fact they may be very different things that just happen to have the same effect and purpose. Last but not least, it inspires our imagination with regard to how the bases might look like from the inside. Having more of such quotes would be great.

- Adding the wonder movies (another great way of SMAC to enhance the atmosphere and immerse the player in the narrative), perhaps by finding a conversion tool which allows users to translate movies from SMAC's format to a format that Civ4 understands.

- Also, as already mentioned by Maniac, adding unique diplomacy texts for each faction would go a good way towards these goals as well.

Pfeffersack · May 15, 2009

Tssha said:
Yeah, I've tried taking a look at the Leaderhead values for some of my own modding work...I've looked for real Leaderhead information: tutorials, references, descriptions of XML values and what altering them does (and what values are ludicrously high...or gamebreaking) and what have I found?

Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zip.

The one file that alters how the AI deals with the world, and there's zero documentation. At least, that I can find.

It's not surprising that all the faction leaders act the same. If their LeaderheadInfos numbers are all similar, they'll all act the same. Unfortunately, at this point it looks like if I want a guide on leaderhead values and how to use them, I'm going to have to write it myself.

Hell, my mod isn't even runable yet. How am I supposed to test this stuff?

I digged up some interesting links regarding the meanings of the variables in the leaderhead XML:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=181620 (XML values explained)

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=145867&highlight=dogpile (XML values explained)

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=177450 (XML values determining AI relations)

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=139740 (XML values explained)

There is no complete guide explaining everything, but I think it will be possible to work with the most important variables. The BTS standard leaders are probably the best comparison line - we all know how they behave and if you compare for an XML tag the leaders with the highest and lowest and how they behave in game, you might get a pretty good idea how certain numbers for a variable work (of course only if you know what it influences). Of course, this method fails for all the unused stuff - there is a couple of tags in the leaderhead XML, where each leader has the same value.

Since I'm very interested in improving this aspect of Planetfall, I would be willing to sum up the known facts from the various sources and write a comprehensive list of the XML values of the leaderhead file. For each variable, I will give an explanation what is its effect (if possible) and the maximum and minimum value under BTS rules, together with the leaders having those extrem values.

In the next step we can try then to assign resonable values to the Planetfall leaders.

Maniac · May 15, 2009

Maniac said:
TIs there certain stuff in particular which makes you feel Planetfall is a work in progress? I can always move up stuff on the to-do list.

Pssht, Tssha.

Pfeffersack said:
Police State has get a serious boost with this

Unless I did something wrong, Police State does not change special ability costs, only the basic unit maintenance.

Perhaps this can be used somehow to create a difference between a large Hive army of unupgraded units versus a Spartan smaller army of elite units.

There is a small (display) glitch in the way the Planet Value (PV) figure and the "total net +/- accumulated through the game" (I will abbreviate this to TN) interact which each other

Fixed!

Mass Driver cannot be promoted with AAA tracking

Fixed!

Teodosio said:
I don't know if it is just me, but though all the entries are present, there are no descriptions, expect for technologies. Adding descriptions for units, buildings and resources would do a lot to create the atmosphere. Buildings' descriptions could be taken from SMAC.

SMAC doesn't have building descriptions. Do you mean the voice quotes perhaps?

Pfeffersack said:
In the next step we can try then to assign resonable values to the Planetfall leaders.

Would be awesome!

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