Version 2.8 discussion

[Carwyn]

Would the BUG forum also be the place to ask if we could have a feature to add something in the middle of the build queue? I'll have a few things lined up and realize I left out something important, I'd rather not have to remake the whole queue to put it in, just to find out I forgot something else! I remember being able to do that in previous versions. Also in Civ 3 you could redo the most recent portion of your tech research without having to start over, I miss that too.

 

[dr.Hyde]

can you make Stone a lot less rare in random maps please? I routinely play Huge maps with two or even just a single Stone resource

The problem is in CIV4BonusInfos.xml file. Stone is set to appear only on 2 types of terrains - desert and plains. Combined with the random chance that is same as other rare resources (10 while Lead has 25 for example) it makes it very very rare. You should be able to make it more frequent by increasing random chance to appear (to 25 for example) or add new terrain types where stone can appear.

I'll try to change that for myself and see how it goes.

Edit: Seems that it worked fine. I added stone to most of the other terrain types and available in jungle, forests and near rivers. The game still doesn't spam them everywhere but stone is much more frequent as it should be.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

is it possible to add a loop feature to the building que? eg: i want my city to make a spearman, then archer, then axeman, then spearman... so i would click on a spearman then shift click archer then shift click spearman then click a loop button so it will keep building those units untill i unclick the loop?

You could always click alt spearman, shift-alt archer then shift-alt axeman. This would give you a queue which would create each unit in turn until you say otherwise.

 

[Saarud]

First I really love this mod... it really has brought me back to Civ 4 after playing other games for a long time. One thing I'd like to see change is some of the resource requirements for units. Take Iron for example... the iron spots in the game I interpret as particulary large amounts of iron in one place but iron should exist on many other places as well. Alot of units could have their resource requirement removed and instead increase the build time while making a build bonuses for some resources. Kinda like spearmen have right now.

Also is it only me that find trade caravans insanely good? I was able to keep my science rate at 100% during almost the whole game (played to 1000 ad or so in epic mode) while I spew out trade caravans. The AI and me kept the same tech development for a long time until I started massmaking trade caravans and I could both colonize like crazy and keep my science rate at 100%. I also bribed them so much that noone declared war on me.

 

[Afforess]

First I really love this mod... it really has brought me back to Civ 4 after playing other games for a long time. One thing I'd like to see change is some of the resource requirements for units. Take Iron for example... the iron spots in the game I interpret as particulary large amounts of iron in one place but iron should exist on many other places as well. Alot of units could have their resource requirement removed and instead increase the build time while making a build bonuses for some resources. Kinda like spearmen have right now.

That sounds like a cool idea. I would like to see it implemented too. Resources should be vital to gameplay. Also, I feel that coal should be revealed much earlier. How else did ancient blacksmiths heat their forges? Coal burning was also common to heat homes in the pre-industrial era.

Also is it only me that find trade caravans insanely good? I was able to keep my science rate at 100% during almost the whole game (played to 1000 ad or so in epic mode) while I spew out trade caravans. The AI and me kept the same tech development for a long time until I started massmaking trade caravans and I could both colonize like crazy and keep my science rate at 100%. I also bribed them so much that noone declared war on me.

Shhh... You'll give away my secret strategy.

 

[cheesemijit]

i can't do that because i play with start as minor civs with agressive AI . i normally go on snail or marathon speed and i usualy run out of buildings to build in a city and any more units would cripple my economy so i start to churn out trade caravans but use their production hurry to get my weaker production cities its core buildings faster.

 

[vincentz]

Also is it only me that find trade caravans insanely good? I was able to keep my science rate at 100% during almost the whole game (played to 1000 ad or so in epic mode) while I spew out trade caravans. The AI and me kept the same tech development for a long time until I started massmaking trade caravans and I could both colonize like crazy and keep my science rate at 100%. I also bribed them so much that noone declared war on me.

And since the AI never uses this feature that makes it, in my eyes, a cheat/exploit/bug.

 

[Carwyn]

And since the AI never uses this feature that makes it, in my eyes, a cheat/exploit/bug.

I've had the AI send me trade caravans, though they don't seem to spam them like some players.

Since we play with tech trading off, you need all the help you can get!

 

[vincentz]

Trade caravans or Great Merchants? They look exactly like eachother. The AI will send Great Merchants but not Trade Caravans (Unless its fixed in 2.71)
Maybe the AI wont build TC in my games because I almost always use Aggressive AI game option. Dono.

 

[Afforess]

Trade caravans or Great Merchants? They look exactly like eachother. The AI will send Great Merchants but not Trade Caravans (Unless its fixed in 2.71)
Maybe the AI wont build TC in my games because I almost always use Aggressive AI game option. Dono.

I took a look at the AI instructions for trade caravans,

Spoiler :

			<UnitAIs>
				<UnitAI>
					<UnitAIType>UNITAI_MERCHANT</UnitAIType>
					<bUnitAI>1</bUnitAI>
				</UnitAI>
				<UnitAI>
					<UnitAIType>UNITAI_ENGINEER</UnitAIType>
					<bUnitAI>1</bUnitAI>
				</UnitAI>
			</UnitAIs>

but I can see nothing wrong with them. Perhaps the AI just doesn't value them enough. After all, the AI doesn't have to recruit Great people, they just appear for them. Anyone tried increasing the AIWieght number from 0 to 10 or 20? That would encourage them to build them.

 

[vincentz]

I dont know about the AIweight. Doesnt seems to work as intended. I have tried to mess with it alot. Latest with my guilds. I had to completely change the structure of the guilds, because the AI didnt want to build a unit that would give it a free guild (corporation). I also noticed that giving multible choices to a nonworker/-workboat would make the AI choose the first, ignoring the best (Again with my guilds). Also the <UnitAIs/> doesnt work entirely as intended. I think the key to use the <NotUnitAIs/> telling the AI what NOT to do.

Another way to encourage unitproduction is the
<iAsset>1</iAsset> and
<iPower>0</iPower>

The first is for score the second is for powerscore.

Anyway. back to the caravan. I'll try to remove the Production/EngineerAI and tell it NOT to recon, give it some asset and return with hopefully good news

 

[Flay]

The problem is in CIV4BonusInfos.xml file. Stone is set to appear only on 2 types of terrains - desert and plains. Combined with the random chance that is same as other rare resources (10 while Lead has 25 for example) it makes it very very rare. You should be able to make it more frequent by increasing random chance to appear (to 25 for example) or add new terrain types where stone can appear.

I'll try to change that for myself and see how it goes.

Edit: Seems that it worked fine. I added stone to most of the other terrain types and available in jungle, forests and near rivers. The game still doesn't spam them everywhere but stone is much more frequent as it should be.

I have never get STONES on my "territory" let say up to 15 citys, on multyplayers game.
Archipelagos
small to large map
3 to 5 player + minimum as many AI + Barbarian civ

That is having played over 100 games since I start playing ROM.

. . . . . Hum I host maybe thats why . . .

So yes please more stone.
and bye the way what are the balanced resources in ROM. cause There is always players missing horses, metal (sometimes all of them !!!!)

 

[Endwar 005]

I had a thought earlier on about how a "Seperate" map may work. Perhaps a new sort of mapscript could be made that placed a section of land off the minimap to represent another planet/moon. Maybe it could go above the polar caps, where it is practically unaccessible. There would have to be something done about making a certain terrain to keep this place hidden from submarines and other ships that may be able to come near the terrain, such as the lair of the final boss (Name???) in FFH1. It would have to stay completely invisible though, it wouldn't make sense for a ship to come up to some huge mountains blocking off another "Planet".

 

[Afforess]

I suppose this is a rather large change, but It would be nice to merge TheLopez's Mercenary addon to ROM. It is completely python based (no SDK changes), but I lack the python knowledge to merge it myself. (I already tried and failed.) There is a working BTS version on the last page. I ran it as a standalone mod and had no issues, even with BTS 3.19. Anyways, that's what I would like to see added to ROM.

 

[Sarkyn]

To keep this short, I think for me the 3 things that would really improve the mod would be:

1) A review and expansion of promotions (particularly great general promotions).

2) A careful review of units - with particular eye to making sure every single one has a purpose and isn't clutter

3) A focus on creating new options for modmodders. Adding things to the main mod so that modmod creators can easily swing the mod into different and interesting directions. This is what will keep the mod being interesting on the 10th, 100th and 1000th play.

Just my 2c!

There is a lot of inspiration for good options for modmoders in the FFH2 stuff, and there is also a lot of great promotion stuff being done in a variety of other mods. Not too hard or new territory

 

[Sarkyn]

Oh, and I also modded STONE to be more reliable.

Simply copy-paste the terrain allowable from something like Uranium over the top of the Stone entry. There is *no* reason stone shouldn't be quarryable in any sort of terrain, really.

 

[little_cyclone]

I'd like to see the re-introduction of the "Education" set of civics. Or maybe someone could make a minimod of it

 

[zappara]

To keep this short, I think for me the 3 things that would really improve the mod would be:

1) A review and expansion of promotions (particularly great general promotions).

2) A careful review of units - with particular eye to making sure every single one has a purpose and isn't clutter

3) A focus on creating new options for modmodders. Adding things to the main mod so that modmod creators can easily swing the mod into different and interesting directions. This is what will keep the mod being interesting on the 10th, 100th and 1000th play.

Just my 2c!

There is a lot of inspiration for good options for modmoders in the FFH2 stuff, and there is also a lot of great promotion stuff being done in a variety of other mods. Not too hard or new territory

1) Expansion to promotion system has already begun for late game units. As an example all the robotic and high technology units will have access to Combat AI 1.0 - 4.0 promotion line and to various other new "computer based" promotion lines.

2) This has been ongoing process since the first release of RoM and there will be unit changes in just about every RoM patch so v2.8 won't be any different. In fact there's already couple changes in place and now for example Carriers get -50% strength on coast (I just recently watched documentary about Carriers...).

3) I think RoM 2.7 was a major step towards your request. The WoC modular system makes it lot easier to make all kinds of modmods for RoM without conflicts with other modmods. Basically modmods could change everything in RoM through modules now if someone wanted to (though that kind of task would be couple years project ). I'm happy to see that there's already so many modmods made for RoM and that the number is increasing every day. It's like RoM has reached the state of Beyond the Sword - a great platform to make more mods for it!

 

[Vylinius]

Endwar what your talking about has been done. Check out Future Mod for something like that. But I had an idea that Zap could do a more Fall from Heaven approach. Well FFH has scenarios right in a campaign like format? Well you could use that as way for space like once you research a certain tech you gain access to the scenario button allowing you to pick your solar system using a map like in Future Mod. After another certain tech or techs you can gain access to the scenarios in the more galactic phase and pick one if there is more than one that is and continue on from that point to the end game.So you wouldn't need to make layers of maps just allow during the game access to go to the next stage. So this would be optional and it might work, but I am not sure how you could put the map scripts and terrains from final frontier and future mod together though.

 

[royal62184]

I'm not 100% sure if you finished everything in the future era but some cool things were just released:

Hovertank
Psionic Gate
Subspace Generator

I apologize if this is already in your mod, I haven't downloaded 2.7 with the new future era stuff yet.