Vincentz Infinite Projects [VIP MOD]

[vincentz]

Changelog 0.86
Removed Naval from Hinduism Promotion (too mobile navy)
Allowed Musketeer to upgrade to Trench Infantry (longer lifes for musketeer, plus more diversity)
added yellow stars to the citybar for guild hq's (couldnt see where guilds were founded)

 

[JosEPh_II]

Guess I won't be finishing my 0.84 game. I'm getting even slower....

JosEPh

 

[vincentz]

Extended the VIP Loader a bit

 

[vincentz]

Extended it a bit more

 

[vincentz]

Been messing with the promotions

Spoiler :

and also organized practically everything into button Atlas. Still have a couple of icons left, but I could instantly feel a speed/response increase, so maybe there was an old defect icon that was cured by putting into atlas.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Cool, every bit helps.

JosEPh

 

[vincentz]

Cool, every bit helps.

JosEPh

Sure does, though I'm VERY surprised how fast the mod is running. I'm around turn 1000 and have just gotten my first planes and an armored car. Though there was/is ALOT of balancing, the game (which is a large 15 player epic map) have turns around 10-20 seconds (in the good old rom days the turns would have been around 3-5 minutes at this time (on a better computer))
My primary concern right now is the building cost from the renaissance era and onwards. It could be a factor that I was Ottoman which get a lot of building boni, but all the buildings cost too little and there are too few of them.
I change all the ship strengths and costs plus all the airplane costs, plus adding quite a few promotions to airforce (in vanilla when having 17 XP a plane couldnt upgrade further )
I'm also unhappy about the tech flow in the industrial era (zappara didnt add enough techs for WWI military IMO), so I need to put in a couple of interesting techs. Luckely there is room in the tech tree around there Need some buffertechs between industrial and WWII.
It is kinda strange finally getting planes and vehicles for the first time. I've been creating this mod for over a year, but every time I restarted due to balancing changes, so it was great getting autos and biplanes. (though when I looked at the map, one AI already have had them for quite a while).
After this playthrough I finally have a mod that maybe only sounds 0.86, but will feel like a 1.0

 

[vincentz]

been playing with photoshop + patterns = new (optional) textures for hills/mountains/grassland/plains/desert.

Spoiler :

 

[vincentz]

and expanded the VIP loader again again

Spoiler :

 

[vincentz]

uploaded 0.86.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=17723

Any comments are much appreciated

edit : MediaFire is up again, and 4Share sucks!!! (90 sec delay for downloading stinks!!!), so will change server ASAP.

 

[Jwitti]

I downloaded, but there was no difference. I tried using the VIP opener, but it couldn't find Civ4BeyondtheSword.exe

Any suggestions?

 

[MacCoise]

Hi

wow, what a great mod!

A few comments:

is it not possible to play without barbarians or to enable "raze city"?

It can take a but long IMO to get to ocean travel.......

It seems also to be quite easy- I have to play two levels above what i normally play..

It's also quite easy to keep citizens happy and healthy- I dont like the way resources pop up, any way of disabling this?

but overall its excellent

 

[vincentz]

1) I downloaded, but there was no difference.

2) I tried using the VIP opener, but it couldn't find Civ4BeyondtheSword.exe

Any suggestions?

1) No difference between? 0.85 or vanilla bts? not sure what you mean.

2) Thats strange. I tried to use basic dos commands, so it didnt need to look up the registry. Was it the "Run VIP" or the "VIP Loader" that didnt work?
What kind of BtS do you have? (steam/complete/"normal")?
I believe the folder structure should be so that going 2 folder levels up from the VIP folder should bring you to the program file of BtS.
Also the folder name should remain VIP (not VIP 0.86 or similar)
Its not that important to run the loader though. Basically it just changes the loading screens, theme color and terrain graphics.

Hi

wow, what a great mod!

A few comments:

1) is it not possible to play without barbarians or to enable "raze city"?

2) It can take a but long IMO to get to ocean travel.......

3) It seems also to be quite easy- I have to play two levels above what i normally play..

4) It's also quite easy to keep citizens happy and healthy- I dont like the way resources pop up, any way of disabling this?

but overall its excellent

1) sure is. I never do, thats why I've disabled the options, but they can be enabled (made visible) in
VIP\Assets\XML\GameInfo\CIV4GameOptionInfos.xml
I'll enable all of them again in the next version.

2) Ocean travel with caravels? Hopefully not before 1492
I adjusted the cost of almost all the techs, but since I was midgame doing so, I might have "overadjusted" them. Are they taking too long to research?

3) What level do you normally play?
I did some regulations that might have been ideologically sound (IMHO), but is too easy for a human player to take advantage off (or too difficult for the AI to use). Especially the army size reduction via increased goldcost and decreased "free units" (ie % of units that doesnt need maintenance cost due to population size). But also the important Palace/Throneroom tactic needs to be either adjusted by AI weights or simplified).
Though playing on Emperor myself, I do seem to struggle more untill gunpowder'ish than I would do in vanilla. (I just did an early speedy runthrough of a vanilla game earlier this evening cos I suspected the same as you, plus your #4 (resources), but vanilla seemed like a piece of cake. Unfortunately civ (both vanilla and mods) sometimes give you crappy or excelent games (depending on AI and player locations mostly).

mmm. just looked at the diplofiles. just before I published 0.86 I worked on the diplomatic relations, and the file accidently got zip'ed with it. It basically makes AI forget that you declared war on them or their friends "shortly" after, which makes them mostly friendly all the time. Not much of a challenge I guess. I'm going to upload a 0.87 soon where it is fixed.

4) I'll downscale the pop ups some more. already did it a couple of times, but they are still "all over the place" which makes resources less valuable. (though with the guilds there can be early use of multible resource.




But thanks for the input. Keep it coming it makes it alot easier to balance/adjust/improve the mod as I recently became a father so its limited amount I have for playthroughs

 

[Jwitti]

Normal, box BTS, not steam, and there was no difference in gameplay, appearance, or civilopedia (ie, the leaders, units, corporations, etc) from vanilla BTS.

Thank you!
EDIT: oh, and I didn't change the name of anything

 

[MacCoise]

1) sure is. I never do, thats why I've disabled the options, but they can be enabled (made visible) in
VIP\Assets\XML\GameInfo\CIV4GameOptionInfos.xml
I'll enable all of them again in the next version.

2) Ocean travel with caravels? Hopefully not before 1492
I adjusted the cost of almost all the techs, but since I was midgame doing so, I might have "overadjusted" them. Are they taking too long to research?

3) What level do you normally play?
I did some regulations that might have been ideologically sound (IMHO), but is too easy for a human player to take advantage off (or too difficult for the AI to use). Especially the army size reduction via increased goldcost and decreased "free units" (ie % of units that doesnt need maintenance cost due to population size). But also the important Palace/Throneroom tactic needs to be either adjusted by AI weights or simplified).
Though playing on Emperor myself, I do seem to struggle more untill gunpowder'ish than I would do in vanilla. (I just did an early speedy runthrough of a vanilla game earlier this evening cos I suspected the same as you, plus your #4 (resources), but vanilla seemed like a piece of cake. Unfortunately civ (both vanilla and mods) sometimes give you crappy or excelent games (depending on AI and player locations mostly).

mmm. just looked at the diplofiles. just before I published 0.86 I worked on the diplomatic relations, and the file accidently got zip'ed with it. It basically makes AI forget that you declared war on them or their friends "shortly" after, which makes them mostly friendly all the time. Not much of a challenge I guess. I'm going to upload a 0.87 soon where it is fixed.

4) I'll downscale the pop ups some more. already did it a couple of times, but they are still "all over the place" which makes resources less valuable. (though with the guilds there can be early use of multible resource.




But thanks for the input. Keep it coming it makes it alot easier to balance/adjust/improve the mod as I recently became a father so its limited amount I have for playthroughs

The ocean thing is an issue for em probably because i play hemispheres and find that i am ready to go meet other civs on other continents but there is a bit of a drag period where there is not really much to achieve while waiting to get caravels.

On the difficulty thing i normally play on prince in BTS and find it very challenging but in this mod on prince i can hvae double the score of most other civs while my research is only at 30/35%.

On the researcg I think there doesnt seem to be a huge penlaty for having a low research rate? Thats how it appears to me anyway.

One other thing I find is that the penlalty for founding citie sin terms of maintenance can be excessive in the eraly game but like I said it doesnt slow down the research rate as much as you would think. I can have an empire twice the size and population of others and still be able to keep up with them at a low research rate.

Like I said also because there are so many resources it seems quite esay to keep cities healthy and happy lathough i have only played to medieval period yet!!!!

Thanks agian for a great mod- you have reinvigorated the whole game for me!

 

[MacCoise]

Oh, and congratualtions on the baby!

 

[vincentz]

Normal, box BTS, not steam, and there was no difference in gameplay, appearance, or civilopedia (ie, the leaders, units, corporations, etc) from vanilla BTS.

Thank you!
EDIT: oh, and I didn't change the name of anything

thats strange. even if you load the mod from inside the game?

what OS do you have? (win7/vista/xp) and what path is the program installed in? (c:\Program Files/Sid Meiers Civ...etc)

and..well, just to make sure. did you place the VIP folder from the ZIP in the :
....Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Mods

1) The ocean thing is an issue for em probably because i play hemispheres and find that i am ready to go meet other civs on other continents but there is a bit of a drag period where there is not really much to achieve while waiting to get caravels.

2) On the difficulty thing i normally play on prince in BTS and find it very challenging but in this mod on prince i can hvae double the score of most other civs while my research is only at 30/35%.

3) On the researcg I think there doesnt seem to be a huge penlaty for having a low research rate? Thats how it appears to me anyway.

4) One other thing I find is that the penlalty for founding citie sin terms of maintenance can be excessive in the eraly game but like I said it doesnt slow down the research rate as much as you would think. I can have an empire twice the size and population of others and still be able to keep up with them at a low research rate.

5) Like I said also because there are so many resources it seems quite esay to keep cities healthy and happy lathough i have only played to medieval period yet!!!!

Thanks agian for a great mod- you have reinvigorated the whole game for me!

1) thats one of the reasons I made the Guilds. To have something to do in a peacefull mid-game Though after changing a lot of the resource given buildings to Great Person generated buildings, there are some gabs. My plan was to add 20-30 buildings, but make them upgradeable via a SDK (customized civ4gamecore.dll).
(Fishing Village -> harbour -> commercial port f.ex)

2) I'm currently in a game approaching WWII era, and have made quite a few modifications. Maybe I did too many, so the game will be unbalanced early on. Have to check.

3) Its mainly because of Elder Council which provides free science (+3 iirc)

4) I've been struggling with a way to counter "the bigger the better" effect that civ4 has. So far with limited luck. While there certainly are a "bigger/better" effect in real world (a.k.a. superpowers) there are countries that on a civ map would still be in the stone age, but are doing quite well (England and Japan to mention a few).
One way to do is to raise the distance and number of cities maintenance (which I did, but undid it again as I had messed up the file in other aspects). I'll have a look at that file again.
I wish I could maintain the "struggle" there is in the beginning, coz later on when the ball starts to roll it becomes too easy, and hence boring.
I went the other way regarding unit maintenance since 0.86. though I havent tested it yet. I really like the turnspeed that the somehow small armies give, but when conquering civs they tend to give up too easy. (gonna change some diplomacy too)
Another plan I had was to make the AI more receptive to form alliances. This is to prevent the (human) player to just steamroll one civ after another.

5) definately going to adjust it. Just not fun when theres no "rare" resources anymore.

 

[Jwitti]

XP, in Program Files/Firaxis Games/Sidmeiers Civilization IV/Beyond the Sword/Modsas opposed to the MODS folder in My Documents (which is where I normally put them)

 

[vincentz]

XP, in Program Files/Firaxis Games/Sidmeiers Civilization IV/Beyond the Sword/Modsas opposed to the MODS folder in My Documents (which is where I normally put them)

maybe its the program blocker XP has that causes the problem (UAC or User Account Control), but then it would have blocked you from even putting the mod there in the first place. The VIP loader uses the simple dos command "cd.." to change directory up 2 times (from Program Files/Firaxis Games/Sidmeiers Civilization IV/Beyond the Sword/Mods/VIP to Program Files/Firaxis Games/Sidmeiers Civilization IV/Beyond the Sword/) to where the Civ4BeyondSword.exe is located.

Is the UAC active? and what happens if you try to load the mod from ingame?

 

[Jwitti]

I always load the mod from in game, It comes up with no difference. If I use the loader, then it can't find the civ .exe, and I couldn't find it in an independent search either.