Version 2.8 discussion

cr0ws · Aug 29, 2009

Bezhukov said:
As long as you're aware that the joke's on you, too, and me as well, likely as not, then we're getting somewhere.
On the other hand, technological chauvinism and fundamentalist Christianity are not particularly highly correlated, hence my pointing out the (possible?) bigotry inherent in the connection you suggested, as it is fashionable among those most attuned to the uncouthness of such chauvinism to imagine that fundies are the root of most, if not all, evil; replacing the old nefarious Jew stereotype, or the shiftless Negro, as those have rightfully fallen out of favor. In the (boring) event, fundies are just folks too, and probably more likely to employ windmills and the like than your average enlightened thinker.

Nature is the biggest bigot of all, it's why globalism is NOT and never will be unachievable! It's why western civilization is in a state of decay!

And now that I got that out of me, I've got a realistic upgrade suggestion for modern day armored vehicles. URANIUM DEPLETED MUNITIONS! Which requires uranium and would probably give +75% strength but major drawback is the unit will lose -10% energy per turn? An upgrade for an armored unit specifically designed to break through enemy defenses but eventually becomes useless over time. Just like in real life!

Afforess · Aug 29, 2009

I always thought that it was weird that nuclear power plants in Civ4 never gave off any harmful side-effects like they do in the real world. Nuclear waste should be a negative resource they produce.

Supercheese · Aug 29, 2009

Afforess said:
I always thought that it was weird that nuclear power plants in Civ4 never gave off any harmful side-effects like they do in the real world. Nuclear waste should be a negative resource they produce.

Yeah, that's a good idea. One could also have a "Reprocessing Plant" building that can, as the name implies, reprocess the waste into more fuel (and/or munitions). Or, alternatively, a "Long-Term Waste Storage" facility that stores the waste until it becomes inert. Both buildings would deal with the waste problem ("Removes access to Nuclear Waste from the city"), but be very expensive to construct (large +maintenance penalties, lots of required hammers, etc.) And, of course, if a player didn't deal with the waste, there would be major health penalties.

zappara · Aug 30, 2009

munky said:
maybe zappara you could consider changing a modern windmill to producing electricity (power)?

and i would like to suggest a terrain improvement (not so much a city building imho) called Solar Farm. this would function similar to a windmill, at least in my modern concept of power production only? Sid Meier's classic Alpha Centauri had these solar terraformed lands..

speaking of your quest for modern sci-fi age events, that good old Sid Meier game Alpha Centauri has one of the best tech trees i have ever seen in any game... check it out at http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Sid_Meier's_Alpha_Centauri/Technology_tree. {edit -- now that i think about it another old old school sci-fi game with great tech and is out at abandonia is Master of Orion http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/101/Master+of+Orion.html}

Improvements can't provide power to cities, just food, hammers, gold and happiness.

I do have SMAC still installed (I've had it installed ever since it was released) and it was just yesterday when I was looking it's pedias - v2.8 will use bit more SMAC ideas than previous RoM versions already have.

There's a bunch of other games I've looked for ideas like GalCiv I-II, Total War, Civ Test of Time games and if you look RoM pedias you should see similiraties with those games.

Afforess said:
I don't know if anyone noticed, I think it was the planetfall mod that had a greenhouse improvement. That could be useful.

Yes and it has some other nice things too...

cr0ws said:
And now that I got that out of me, I've got a realistic upgrade suggestion for modern day armored vehicles. URANIUM DEPLETED MUNITIONS! Which requires uranium and would probably give +75% strength but major drawback is the unit will lose -10% energy per turn? An upgrade for an armored unit specifically designed to break through enemy defenses but eventually becomes useless over time. Just like in real life!

Uranium Depleted Ammo was one random event idea I had for promotion events but it hasn't found it's way to RoM - making events is rather time consuming task when testing all the choices.

Afforess said:
I always thought that it was weird that nuclear power plants in Civ4 never gave off any harmful side-effects like they do in the real world. Nuclear waste should be a negative resource they produce.

I wish there was a different system for waste than unhealthiness - it could have opened room for various ideas like landfills, waste to energy plants, radioactive waste etc.

Edit: I was going to answer to few more things but headache is winning this evening so I'll get back to you some time next week...

ravenone · Aug 30, 2009

Is there a beta for 2.8 yet that us impatient people can start to play with/help test?

munky · Aug 30, 2009

zappara said:
Improvements can't provide power to cities, just food, hammers, gold and happiness.

damn them, damn them all..

zappara said:
I do have SMAC still installed (I've had it installed ever since it was released) and it was just yesterday when I was looking it's pedias - v2.8 will use bit more SMAC ideas than previous RoM versions already have.

There's a bunch of other games I've looked for ideas like GalCiv I-II, Total War, Civ Test of Time games and if you look RoM pedias you should see similiraties with those games.

... and the Alien Crossfire expansion to SMAC? Personally it may be the best strategy game ever written for the PC. I cannot find another game, CIV is a maybe, that deploys such devious wondrous AI from the computer... playing next to Sanitago or Miriam just tests your abilities... talking about it now makes me want to play a game!

and now you have me off thinking about using it with gameranger.com... :goodjob:

Menzoberranzan · Aug 31, 2009

My apologies if this has been suggested, but 17 pages is a lot to read.

I'd love to see a "Build Canal" improvement for workers to create. I really hate having to build a city in a bad place just to enable my naval units to cross an isthmus, instead of traveling around a continent. Ideally, the canal should be limited in range (5 squares?) and start and end next to an ocean (Panama Canal or Suez Canal) or inland lake (Great Lakes Canals)

Afforess · Aug 31, 2009

Menzoberranzan said:
My apologies if this has been suggested, but 17 pages is a lot to read.

I'd love to see a "Build Canal" improvement for workers to create. I really hate having to build a city in a bad place just to enable my naval units to cross an isthmus, instead of traveling around a continent. Ideally, the canal should be limited in range (5 squares?) and start and end next to an ocean (Panama Canal or Suez Canal) or inland lake (Great Lakes Canals)

Forts can be used as a canal. Forts work up to two spaces at at time, and ships can move through them. Strategically placing a city on the third spot, then two more forts would allow for a large 5 tile canal.

Dharmaserf · Sep 1, 2009

zappara said:
Not sure yet. I'm trying to find any historical referencies to actual holy wars that were caused by other religions than christianity - like how Islam spread to India etc. The progress with such research is slow and in most cases very little is told about the actual troops, what kind of equipment they had, what they were called, what holy sites were involved that could be used as national/great wonders etc? I'm not expert with religion history so I'll appreciate any help with this. For eaxmple take a look at List of Wars in Muslim world - the amount of information that needs checking/reading is massive and this is just about one religion and RoM has 11!

I'm also trying to find out what future might bring to our cities ie. what new buildings/wonders are there under construction?
Here's few I've found:
5 amazing buildings of the futurel
wind-powered skyscraper
Floating building for water rising refugees

I haven't gotten through the whole thread yet. Still on page 12. However, I am a scholar of Eastern religions, so I could help out if you have any questions or need help with ideas and so forth. While I am not very familiar with Asian military history aside from the basics, I am much more versed in cultural phenomena. Let me know, I'd be happy to contribute to such a great mod.

Bezhukov · Sep 1, 2009

zappara said:
Improvements can't provide power to cities, just food, hammers, gold and happiness.

I do have SMAC still installed (I've had it installed ever since it was released) and it was just yesterday when I was looking it's pedias - v2.8 will use bit more SMAC ideas than previous RoM versions already have.

There's a bunch of other games I've looked for ideas like GalCiv I-II, Total War, Civ Test of Time games and if you look RoM pedias you should see similiraties with those games.

Yes and it has some other nice things too...

This might be of interest as well. Best tech tree ever.

Bezhukov · Sep 1, 2009

Afforess said:
Forts can be used as a canal. Forts work up to two spaces at at time, and ships can move through them. Strategically placing a city on the third spot, then two more forts would allow for a large 5 tile canal.

The AI recently taught me how this can be tactically abused as well. He parked a Trireme in a choke-point fort, which neither my land nor sea units could attack!

dudeSDCA · Sep 1, 2009

Zap,

Love, love, love, love, love your mod. You are a god amongst men :-)

Three questions (one easy, the others a bit harder):
1) Can you post a beta 2.8 version when you get something stable for us to try out and provide feedback on?

2) One of my pet peeves about Civ is the limit of only being able to build 1 thing in the queue irrespective of how hammers you have. For instance, if I am producing 150 hammers, and something costs 30 hammers, I should be able to produce 5 in 1 turn. I suspect this is hard-coded -- but any thoughts on if this could actually be fixed? It always seemed really silly to me that I could have some huge city with all these resources, but only able to build 1 warrior.

3) The other pet peeve is the time it takes for the AI to actually move all it's units, one at a time, and it's overall impact on turn-time. Is there any way -- maybe something better AI could work on at your recommendation, to get the AI to plot out all it's "domestic" moves and move all it's pieces simultaneously? This would be a HUGE improvement in AI turn time.

Just my $0.02. Like I said, I love your mod and have been playing it since 1.X. Keep up the AWESOME job!!

Afforess · Sep 1, 2009

2) One of my pet peeves about Civ is the limit of only being able to build 1 thing in the queue irrespective of how hammers you have. For instance, if I am producing 150 hammers, and something costs 30 hammers, I should be able to produce 5 in 1 turn. I suspect this is hard-coded -- but any thoughts on if this could actually be fixed? It always seemed really silly to me that I could have some huge city with all these resources, but only able to build 1 warrior.

Shameless self-promotion time:

Se my RoM modmod, it has exactly what you want in it, called the "Multiple Production Mod."

zappara · Sep 1, 2009

ravenone said:
Is there a beta for 2.8 yet that us impatient people can start to play with/help test?

Yes there will be beta soon - after I've included most of the Transhuman era changes. glider recently posted that next RevDCM version is couple weeks away from the release so I got now couple weeks before I can merge it to RoM (which will improve AI etc.). Now the RoM 2.8 version I'm working on is already in pretty good shape (see current patch notes below) so I guess I could make beta any day now... though I need to finish up the changes to manufactured resources first...

munky said:
... and the Alien Crossfire expansion to SMAC? Personally it may be the best strategy game ever written for the PC. I cannot find another game, CIV is a maybe, that deploys such devious wondrous AI from the computer... playing next to Sanitago or Miriam just tests your abilities... talking about it now makes me want to play a game! and now you have me off thinking about using it with gameranger.com...

Yes, Alien Crossfire too

I wish they added SMAC's terrain system to Civ 5 - truely 3d terrain would enhance the game a lot.

Dharmaserf said:
I haven't gotten through the whole thread yet. Still on page 12. However, I am a scholar of Eastern religions, so I could help out if you have any questions or need help with ideas and so forth. While I am not very familiar with Asian military history aside from the basics, I am much more versed in cultural phenomena. Let me know, I'd be happy to contribute to such a great mod.

See 2.6 Discussion - Religion -thread. There was some great ideas already posted like in this post. While that post gives a good list of things that could used in RoM, the hard part is to decide what effects each building/wonder/unit should have and also historical background is needed (pedia). Though pedia is missing still from many objects in RoM but it's continueing process to add them.

Bezhukov said:
This might be of interest as well. Best tech tree ever.

I think I remember seeing that game but never played it myself. Can't remember what its tech tree was like.

and the latest patch notes:

Spoiler :

At this point all promotion and unit changes/additions should be ready - just some minor tweaking might be needed. Building/wonder/national wonder changes are still pretty much work in progress as there's still some transhuman era techs that need bit more stuff... feel free to suggest transhuman era wonders (with the effects)

In above changes you might notice the spearman change and the new Javelineer unit type which upgrades to spearman. I hope this change finally settles the issues with spearman unit.

Another unit addition is the AA Halftrack which was requested few times - I finally found graphics for such unit.

Ice Wolf · Sep 1, 2009

My thoughts

1. Another civic for society that represents a slave society as seen in the Roman Empire and Antebellum Southern United States.

2. A wonder could be first man on Mars which gives plus %10 beakers and +1 in diplomatic relations to all other civilizations because of advancing humanity.

3. A new technology, smokeless gunpowder which was a boon for the militaries at the time. It three times more powerful than gunpowder and did not make any of the smoke that gunpowder made.

Dharmaserf · Sep 1, 2009

Well... as per the discussion up thread about other religions crusades, I could give a few preliminary thoughts. I'll go take a look at the religions thread when I get a moment.

I am assuming we want crusades around the middle ages period. But perhaps some of the earlier religions could get involved.

Hellinism - In game it seems a mix of Greco/Roman. As such, a historically more accurate generalization about greco/roman religion should note that the Roman understanding of religion was different than our own. Our own contemporary definition of religion relates to the Christian reinterpretation of the latin religio. Before this reinterpretation, religio was related to traditio... that is, religion was tradition. It didn't matter what one believed. What mattered was that one kept up the socially sanctified organizational and ritual structures of the traditions. As such, the Roman empire was very skilled at bringing in new traditions. They just had to port them into their own cultural structures that made sense of these traditions. The closest thing to a crusade was the few hundred years of internal purges of Christian understandings. Early Christians, who challenged this structure, were deemed atheists by the Romans. The Christians were anti-religious to the Romans because they didn't want to play by the structures that defined religiosity for hundreds of years. But, as we know, eventually the popularity of Christianity as well as its usefulness in restructuring Roman norms became a focal point for internal reform. So, Hellenic crusade would be more internal than anything. The Romans were a very tolerant religious society, if one accepted playing by their rules.

Daoism - In the later part of the Han dynasty (2nd c. CE) and then throughout the periods leading up to and including the Tang dynasty (7-10th c. CE) Daoist understandings of the relationship between Heaven and Earth engendered large mass movements that evoked whole political-ideological regions to rise up to bring forth Heaven's order on Earth. Indeed, repressing one of these in the Han dynasty was so draining on the dynasty that it never recovered and it dissolved. Translating this into game terms, I would say that it would be a crusade of political, cultural and military conquest (as opposed to material and ideological like the Christian crusades), where there is an attempt to bring the whole world under one cosmological political order. Thinking about it, I think it would be the case that the Daoist crusaders would have boons to science and culture if a city was taken, or for each unit served. There were no real special military units. Perhaps high-ranking Daoist ritual specialists could be units. I could try and detail some of hte major buildings and individuals and create archetypes for a Daoist crusade based on this. Perhaps buildings that give special promotions to any units made: a kind of "Heavenly Masters" promotion that decreases rebellion in a city or adds science from pillage/city conquest instead of gold.

NOTE: One of the biggest problems I think in coming to terms with this question is that the category of religion itself is problematic for understanding non-European religions. India and China had their own ways of understanding what we now call religion. So, porting Western ideas of crusades would require some reinterpretation or even violence to history. On the other hand... while Christianity and Islam might have crusades, perhaps we can add some equivalent but quite different movements.

For Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism, for example, a major factor in medieval india was the shift towards tantra for political rulers. The non-dualism of tantra was appealing to rulers because it allowed for an ethic beyond the orthodox and contributed to a kind of military adventurism. This was a great spur to political and economic transformation in the subcontinent. We might combine this with Hinduism for a mandala or concentric circle approach to religious justifications for increasing one's political boundaries through military means. Perhaps a tantric practitioner unit that can give a bonus to other units, either in a stack or once per turn give a promotion/bonus. These specialists were usually advisors to rulers and their rituals in court settings were an impetus for confidence and political certainty. So perhaps another unit that gives bonuses to production in cities?

As for Buddhism... there are so many instances of its combination with various regions that it is difficult for me to generalize. The mongols became Buddhists and are in fact the ones who set up the Dalai lama as the political head of Tibet. In China, we hear about the Shaolin monks. In Japan, monasteries had standing armies. In India, the situation was pretty much the same as I describe in the previous paragraph. In South east asia, Buddhism was part and parcel of the most expansive empires of the region. So, perhaps we should take that as our guide. A Buddhist "crusade" would be to help pacify an empire, by providing it structure (indeed, this is why it was chosen in Tibet to become a state religion). So maybe Buddhist 'crusade' buildings that give -war weariness, +to happiness and lower mainenance costs or something. Buddhism might be handy for empire-builders to have larger empires.

Leading up to WWII, and oversimplifying, Shinto was aligned with nativism and nationalism in Japan and was quite successful in unifying Japan's purpose and providing ideological certainty to reform. Less anarchy time for civic changes perhaps? Purging of other religions and a bonus when Shinto is the only religion and must be state religion.

Confucianism as the state religion was good at taking what it saw as the best of other religions and making that its own. Neoconfucian orthodoxy was for 800 years or so the defining ideology of China. Very good defensively actually. The mongols conquered China, began the Yuan dynasty, and within a couple generations were quickly sinified, and became domesticated under the Chinese status quo. Does it make sense to think of a defensive crusade?

Anyway, these are thoughts off the top of my head. I'd love to get some feedback on these historical observations, because then I could think more concretely about how it would work in-game. I like the idea of flavored crusades.

M

Dharmaserf · Sep 1, 2009

Oh, and I wrote this up last night. Hopefully you can parse the sleepy/shorthand brainstorming:

Transhuman random events:

Alien invasion negative: powerful aliens land in the cultural borders of the top 1-3 civs ready to fight!

Alien invasion positive: powerful aliens boost one non-vassal lowest 1-3 civ. Auto golden age.

Alien diplomacy: A choice. Alien civilization makes long distance contact with you. 1. Tell them to hit the road, I'm too busy. No effect. Small chance of event reoccuring for another civ. 2. Establish basic communication. Expend gold, a significant amount. Gain +1 relations with all civs. Gain +3% or so research for 10 turns. 3. Expend all our available manpower to develop deep communication. -5% production for 10 turns. +10% science for 20 turns.

District 9. Aliens crashland! 1. Pillage their stuff! Gain some research and prod, increase local rebeliousness for that city, increase unhapiness. 2. Help somewhat. Take what they give. small research bonus. 3. Rescue! Spend gold and gain 1 technology. +1 happyness for 10 turns.

Grey goo! Negative: nanotech run amock! starts in random square in a civ that can do nanotech... spreads unless paid off. recurring until paid in full. Destroys tiles into desert or buildings in cities.

Grey goo! Positive: nanotech AI collaboration gives production bonus in one city.

Mutation! Negative: Super-mutated abominations land in civ borders and attack.

Mutation! Positive: A supermutation is found! 1. Awesome, spend money and test on animals. food/health bonus. 2. Awesome, spend money to test on soldiers. permanent/temporary -1 happiness in all cities. All units get +X xp? 3. I'm broke. Put it out of its misery.

AI brainstorming!: AI finds new economic techniques. +1 trade routes in city. OR AI revolutionizes socio-polticial theory. +1 diplomatic relations.

munky · Sep 1, 2009

Bezhukov said:
This might be of interest as well. Best tech tree ever.

wasn't that the tech tree that you could spin on an axis? best visual tech tree from any game. ascendancy had something that just didnt pass mustard to the other sci-fi games, i bought it and played it for a while but it didnt keep me riveted like the other ones. i think i will dig it up because for me a lot of modern games just are not nearly as good as past ones. since i dont give a major hoot about graphics, i prefer AI and game stability, i go dosbox and retro a lot...

munky · Sep 1, 2009

Menzoberranzan said:
My apologies if this has been suggested, but 17 pages is a lot to read.

I'd love to see a "Build Canal" improvement for workers to create. I really hate having to build a city in a bad place just to enable my naval units to cross an isthmus, instead of traveling around a continent. Ideally, the canal should be limited in range (5 squares?) and start and end next to an ocean (Panama Canal or Suez Canal) or inland lake (Great Lakes Canals)

from memory, :confused:

, but i think in the thread for suggestion for 2.7 we went into great detail about canals. i would like to see a sticky post on this the same way forts has one.

for one, the notion of forts being used as a canal for a modern day aircraft carrier is probably the most fantasy b.s. concept in all of CIV. a fort built in 2500 b.c. can also land a Stealth Fighter? and how does two forts next to each other make a canal? why do we tolerate this notion, of "oh yeah, and it can carry ships too!" since when does a stockade work as a fortified harbor?

this excuse of absurdity should be corrected for those looking to put historical reality into CIV imho. in all reality there are only two main canals i can think of that can take large modern day ships (panama and suez) but historically there are thousands of other canals that worked prior to the industrial age.

i will dig up that post thread about canals and link here... Ok found it, at http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=8041720#post8041720. at #274... :crazyeye:

Bezhukov · Sep 1, 2009

munky said:
wasn't that the tech tree that you could spin on an axis? best visual tech tree from any game. ascendancy had something that just didnt pass mustard to the other sci-fi games, i bought it and played it for a while but it didnt keep me riveted like the other ones. i think i will dig it up because for me a lot of modern games just are not nearly as good as past ones. since i dont give a major hoot about graphics, i prefer AI and game stability, i go dosbox and retro a lot...

Well, the Ascendancy AI makes RoM AI look like Sid himself, which kinda undermines the whole thing. The wiki mentions some efforts to take that really unrivaled tech tree and to better explore the design space it opened up. What better place to do that than RoM? Now if we could only get our own AI to join along...

If you're able to get a copy running on Dosbox, I'd be curious for some tips on how you managed it.

Version 2.8 discussion

Prince

The White Wizard

Zeppelin Commander

Mod Designer

Warlord

Warlord

Chieftain

The White Wizard

Chieftain

Deity

Deity

Prince

The White Wizard

Mod Designer

Chieftain

Chieftain

Chieftain

Warlord

Warlord

Deity

Similar threads