Version 4.2 Discussion Thread

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Wow am I tired... Alright, here goes.

I have finally fixed all the broken screenshot links in the Download sticky, and added the BIG NEW ONE.

I have also finally updated the Change Log sticky with the 4.1b notes I made last December (organized and condensed but not in category/bullet form yet), and my 4.2 raw notes so far.


This is shaping up to be THE definitive version of my mod. I believe I've finally fixed all the remaining bugs and issues, and I am VERY excited about where it's headed. But it's not quite there yet. Current ETA for release is still looking like 2 to 3 weeks. Sorry folks, I'm working as fast as I can.

Anywho, hope you all enjoy the long-overdue update. Just reading all those notes should keep you busy for a while, lol.
 
Hey most of us that are still here at CFC are a patient lot.;)

I promise to keep watching. :)

JosEPh
 
Okay, a few things to mention, now that I'm awake again. :)

First of all, the TechTree screenshots (including the brand-new one!) are, in fact, full-size, but you can't see them that way in the MediaFire "viewer" page because the width is too extreme, apparently. If you save it to your machine with the "Download" button though, you can then open it in Windows Photo Viewer (or whatever you want to use), and it will magnify properly. This will make it easier to scrutinize, if you're so inclined. ;)

Secondly, there is some icon stuff I have to mention once again in a time-stamped forum post, since I'm still furious about the response I got when I tried to lay claim to the major icon work I did 8 years ago that everyone copied without giving me any credit. Sorry, but I have an excellent memory and I hold grudges. My apologies for the tedium, but at least I thought of a better way to format it lol:

I made the "neon-orange, left-facing, arms-and-legs-out-wide" Monk icon myself. I used the Afterworld "black-robot-silhouete-with-yellow-left-and-blue-right-background" icon for my version of the Martial Arts promotion. Most of the rest in this update are C2C icons, with the main thing being my use of "full" icons with no transparent background for some Resources - I'm fairly sure I'm the first to ever do this. I moved C2C's "SS Navcom" icon from the Flanking Event promotion to the TechTree's Terrain/Feature movement-enabling widget, which works massively better than C2C's "Antigrav" gray boots icon which it replaces. (I moved Antigrav to the Morale promotion, which works much better too.) I also put Civ3's "Counter-Reformation" red-and-yellow-cross-on-light-red-background icon on the King Richard's Crusade wonder, which I think works brilliantly; C2C's "Great Hunt" icon on the Atlatl unit; C2C's "Fluorite Mine" icon on the Ice Golem unit, which looks awesome; C2C's "Counting" icon on the Writing tech (thanks for that one, it's perfect!); C2C's "Elephant Riding" icon on the War Elephant unit itself; C2C's "Mark of the Scorpion" icon on the Hunter promotion; C2C's "Deer Trainer" icon on the Great Tournament wonder (waaay better than the actual-building icon); C2C's "Aquarium" icon on the Whaler promotion; C2C's "Theoretical Physics" icon on the Alchemy tech (thanks a TON for that one, it's FANTASTIC!); and C2C's "Holy Warfare" icon on the Fundamentalism tech (though I liked the crossed-scimitars-on-red-background one a lot too).
 
Lastly, there are some major new gameplay rules buried in the 4.2 raw notes. They will end up in the "Stuff to Know" sticky at release, but are worth mentioning explicitly here:

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1) Animals that are "Can Only Defend" and have a Withdrawal chance, can now perform a second type of Defensive Withdrawal: they can retreat to an empty adjacent tile (that matches their Native settings) when they would otherwise die in combat. This rule ONLY applies to ANIMAL units, and only to ones that are defensive-only.

It is designed to simulate prey animal herds taking flight on the Great African Plains when predators attack. :) It mainly applies to the new prey animal types I've added (Zebra, Wildebeest, Giraffe, Penguin, Caribou, and Musk Ox), but it can affect some of the big ones (like the new Hippopotamus), and some of the existing ones (like the Gorilla and Orangutan). The prey animals have been given Gold-When-Killed values to make them worth pursuing (simulating the value of their meat without having to resort to an ACTUAL kill-animals-to-grow-your-cities setup like Avain did), and the apes have been given the new Research-When-Killed stat instead. ;)

This does NOT affect the Sandworm, since it's classified as a Monster and not an Animal.

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2) I haven't implemented this yet, but it's on my docket for today: I'm going to add a "bAquatic" tag that will extend the forced-Native system for animals to also require them to stay next to rivers, lakes, or coast, unless moving in Marsh terrain. There are several animals that need this and it's actually pretty simple to do. :)

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3) I have added the long-overdue Cotton resource from the vanilla mod content which makes things even worse, but even without that, there was a really-fairly-serious gameplay issue with the large number of Luxury and Health resources in MongooseMod compared to vanilla. In the past I had partially compensated for this by using a different setup for cities' starting happiness/health values plus how much you could get and lose directly on the tech tree, but it was still fairly common for cities to balloon in size around the end of the Classical era with a large number of resources harvested or traded-for. This, in turn, put extra stress on the research costs of Medieval and Renaissance techs. But since I love all the additional Resources and the variety that comes with them, I wanted to find a better solution than removing things. So, WITH ALL THAT IN MIND, here's my brilliant new idea:

Buildings that double the happiness/health values of resources have had caps put in place. They are not currently reflected in-game since there was no easy way to explain this, so I'm putting it here instead. The caps are a bit complicated, but they make perfect sense and are definitely the right solution to the problem. I've divided certain Resources into subgroups. A building cannot double the last/final Resource in any given subgroup. Here is the full list:

Forge: "Silver Gems Gold"
Market: "Silk Furs" / "Ivory Pearls" / "Hemp Cotton" / "Walrus Whales"
Broadcast Tower (and American Mall): "Dramas Singles Movies"

Granary: "Corn Wheat Rice"
Grocer: "Apples Bananas" / "Barley Wine"
Supermarket: "Bison Cows" / "Pigs Sheep Deer"
Harbor: "Fish Shrimp Clams Crabs"

Resources THEMSELVES are 100% identical to how they've always been. This change ONLY affects buildings. So, for example, if you have a Forge and ONE of its resources, you get +2 happiness. If you have a Forge and TWO of its resources, you get +4 happiness. But if you have a Forge and ALL THREE of its resources, you only get +5 happiness.

The Market is the hardest-hit of any single building by this change since it can lose UP TO -4 happiness versus what it did before, but given the long list of resources it doubles, that was really an insane amount of power for a single building to have anyway.

The MAXIMUM effect, if you're near the end of the tech tree and have collected all resources, would thus be -6 happiness and -6 health versus what was possible before (except for Cotton not existing before, heh). But players with fewer resources will be largely unaffected throughout the game. :)
 
3. So glad you didn't go to % on this. %'s get messy quick, while simple addition/subtract is so straight forward.

Actually all sound good and glad you made the post.

JosEPh
 
3. So glad you didn't go to % on this. %'s get messy quick, while simple addition/subtract is so straight forward.

Thanks. :) To be honest that approach never even seriously crossed my mind, but I can see how it might be tempting if a mod was already using fractional values for most of its stuff.

The best part about my change is that the capped resources show up correctly in the City View. To use the Forge example again, if you have all 3 of its resources, it'll display "Silver +2, Gems +2, Gold +1" in the Resource Icon column, automatically. And if you then, say, trade away your last Gems, it'll automatically update to saying "Silver +2, Gold +2". I already tested the HELL out of my code changes for this, and am 100% certain it works right under every conceivable circumstance. ;)

I just hope it's enough, lol. If I end up needing to lower the values further it'll get more dicey, but I'm pretty optimistic this new rule will get the job done as-is. Keep in mind also, that MM 4.1 added a fair amount of + and - Health effects directly into the TechTree, with the total weight being a bit more negative than before. So that will tie into this situation as well.
 
Just showing in to say "Hi". The progress on Version 4.2 is very good news :)

Keep up the good work, LunarMongoose.

I will update my Africa map to be loadable with Version 4.2. and to include the new terrain/animals as soon as possible.

@Anybody who is playing MM 4.1: Unfortunately I never updated my Africa map for that version -last map update was for version 4.0 -, so if you want to try it out, you will need to wait a little bit.
 
Bi-weekly check in, how are things going LunarMongoose?

:wavey:

JosEPh :)
 
Bi-weekly check in. Hope you are having a great 4th weekend LM.

JosEPh :)
 
1 month and 10 day check in.

:scan:

Nothin'. :dunno:

JosEPh
 
I'm still here! ... Don't pack your bags just yet. :p

Sigh... Okay fine, I'll stop delaying posting, lol. So here's the timeline, in case you're wondering:

1) Six weeks ago, I THOUGHT I was almost done, but I ended up going off on another tangent with the update. This took a solid 2 weeks of work basically, and doesn't affect gameplay ONE SINGLE BIT, but it was the most refreshing and invigorating thing I've done in quite a while, hehe. I randomly decided to go through the C2C art pak files manually, in order, on the desktop rather than in-game. This took forever, but it meant I didn't miss anything compared to cursory Pedia glances, and I found a ton of great (and a fair amount of really-great) unit artwork I'd never seen before. I was also reminded of a few things I'd skipped in the distant past, artwork-wise.

Anywho, long story short, MM 4.2 has a completely rebuilt from the ground up ethnic unit artwork system. Some stupid stuff I did WAY back in the pre-BTS days with vanilla's ethnic models got fixed, I found lots of uses for lots of specialty models on MM's custom units, I cleaned up and organized the CIV4ArtDefines_Unit.xml file (yay!), and I painstakingly went through and greatly improved the ethnic assignments for each Civ. I also grabbed some additional unit graphics directly off the forum here, particularly from TheCapo's thread.

Also, the Barbarians have been almost completely re-skinned in the first 4 eras, with most of their units now being - graphically - from the Pirate Civ somebody made, which is freaking awesome, btw. Then, to go along with that, I added a couple more Barb UUs: the Ghost Ship (Galleon) and Dread Pirate (Pirate), which is in addition to the existing 3 (Shaman, Witch Doctor, Wild Axeman).

---

So that was the first 2 weeks, lol. Now then...

2) Four weeks ago, planned/scheduled 3-week visit by parents started. I was originally trying to get 4.2 released BEFORE that happened, but obviously I failed. Oh well. There's always a lot that goes on while they're here, and then in addition to that I try to diet and lose weight more than usual during these events as well, which saps my energy. As a result I didn't get much done on the mod for 3 weeks, though I did manage a few small things from my list.

3) Then this last week... Meh. Busier than I was expecting, heh. I should be MOSTLY free to finish things up now. I'm basically down to my long list of stuff to check and test (most of which should be fine), and the big AI merge. Probably ANOTHER 2-3 weeks to release, realistically. Sorry, heh.

---

Lastly, just want to mention I actually DID send Rakete4 a "beta" copy of the entire 4.2 mod as it was a couple weeks ago, so that he could work on his Africa map update while I'm finishing up the actual mod. Unfortunately his last email sounded a bit, erm, unenthusiastic heh, and I haven't heard from him since. I'm still hoping he wants to finish it, but I guess we'll see.

I'll update the Change Log sticky again when I get a chance. For crying out loud though, check out the awesome Tech Tree screenshot in the Download sticky that I SPECIFICALLY MENTIONED in the first post of this thread! I don't think it's gotten much attention yet for some reason, lol.
 
Lastly, just want to mention I actually DID send Rakete4 a "beta" copy of the entire 4.2 mod as it was a couple weeks ago, so that he could work on his Africa map update while I'm finishing up the actual mod. Unfortunately his last email sounded a bit, erm, unenthusiastic heh, and I haven't heard from him since. I'm still hoping he wants to finish it, but I guess we'll see.

No worries, I will finish the map update. Just a bit much work overload at my job right now.
But the main reason for the delay was this:

When I got everything running and started to actually edit the map a couple weeks ago, you mentioned that there might be a possibility to have customized xml-files for scenarios like mine. This brought everyhing to a standstill, because while you brought up a great idea, which is good, immediately I realized that this will very likely become another IT hassle for me :wallbash:, of which I have had so many in the past months and I felt like my IT-problem-solving capacities were already exploited, so that up to now I didn't feel like going for another 24 hours+ "google, search and try" hassle.

Anyway - writing this post reminds me to go for the hassle soon. After all I want to have the map-update ready when you publish the mod ;).
 
After 4.2 is available I "might" make some suggestions on Founding Religions and the Tech path used.

But I want to see if the Tech leader has the same free rein to Religions that vanilla BtS gives first.

JosEPh :)
 
Hey! I got you to post! ;)

:lol:

JosEPh
 
Hey! I got you to post! ;)

Umm... I posted yesterday because of your third check-in post... And I kinda thought religions was a strange question since it seemed like something you probably knew already... Sigh.
 
I do, but after the 4.2 release I may make some suggestions. If of course you would want to hear them at all. As 4.2 sounds like it might be your last effort here. Just sayin'.

JosEPh
 
I do, but after the 4.2 release I may make some suggestions. If of course you would want to hear them at all. As 4.2 sounds like it might be your last effort here. Just sayin'.

Last effort?! Pfft. Oh ye of little faith...

Get it? Faith? Cuz you were talking about religions and stuff. ;)

4.2 may be the last REALLY FREAKIN _HUGE_ update, but only because I THINK I've finally got all the MAJOR areas of work that exist addressed.

(Ethnic unit models had been mostly ignored since the beginning, for example. I had added a few here and there over the years, but I'd never done a full revamp of that whole system. There shouldn't be any more things like that out there.)

I expect to continue tweaking things for gameplay and balance purposes for a long time, and there are DEFINITELY several major AI projects that remain if I ever feel like undertaking them. There will probably also be additional K-Mod updates, and more unit models, that trickle in over the years, that I will want to add.

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I will say, however, that I am VERY happy with all aspects of the religion system, so you may have a hard time convincing me. That doesn't mean I don't want to hear it though! :)

Keep in mind also, that the religion-founding placements were designed to be, not just in the correct order chronologically (which vanilla was sorely lacking), but also to be in the right columns for the year-range assignments I gave the columns, which are shown in all the Tech Tree screenshots.

Here's a copy of the link btw, in case people don't want to go find it:

FLOCK TO MY TECH TREE, PURTY-TURNKEY-TURKEY-BIRDIES!!!

Mwa ha ha...

MWAAAA ha haaaa...
 
Finally caught up with real-life stuff... More or less.

Finally started the K-Mod code merge... Gulp.

The end is nigh... Unless it's not. Although it probably is. Give or take.
 
Just piping in to give my sincere thanks and encourage to LunarMongoose for this amazing mod and also to Rakete for the Map work.

I've been silent for a long time, real life getting in the way, but I've just gone and installed Civ4 back on my new comp and have come back to look for the latest version of the Mongoosemod. Amazed and humbled to see you are STILL working on it. Amazing and again, appreciations to you sir!
 
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