Vincentz Infinite Projects [VIP MOD]

:coffee: Uploaded 99G :deal:

Thank you.

And Hellooooo to you and Family! :)

JosEPh

And family says hellooooo back :)
I've actually started to play Hotseat with my 4 year old son a couple of days ago. He have a pretty good grasp at the creation of the universe, and now its time to teach him a bit of history the fun way. And what better way than a game of civ ;)
He plays surprisingly well :king:

On a side note....
Thinking about extending the extended movepoints to airunits as well. Sort of:
Recon Missions cost 1 mp
Strike and Bomb cost 2 mp
Intercept cost 1 mp

And airunits start with 2 mp, but can gain additional mp with promotions.

Alternatively the range could be calculated:
Recon Missions cost 3 mp
Strike and Bomb cost 5 mp
Intercept cost 5 mp

so f.ex. a Biplane Fighter could have 12 mp, and could do a recon range 4 (4 out, 3 recon, 4 home) or a strike range 3 (3 out, 5 strike, 3 home) or 2xIntercep (2 x 5), while a range 30 Strategic Bomber could do 2 bombing run range 5 (5+5+5 x 2) or a single at range 12 (12+5+12)

I think I would prefer the first, both for coding and simplicity.
 
Nice. Was going to make a few observations, but noticed you have a new update. Think I'll give that a spin or two before I shoot off my mouth :D.

Gratz on the Hotseat with the youngling. I started all four of my boys play various iterations of Civ when they were at a young age. We usually have a Direct IP match with all of us about once a month or so. Lots of fun.
 
@ drak and everyone else :D

You dont have to pull a big pile together to post here. If there is even a tiny bit wrong or a "maybe what if" suggestion, dont hesitate to post it here. Its what this thread is for ;)

I really value input and bug reports.

I will soon be looking into adding/adjusting XML as the adding of new units/buildings/promotions etc cannot be done mid-game (not savegame compatible), so any suggestions regarding those are also very welcome.
 
I will soon be looking into adding/adjusting XML as the adding of new units/buildings/promotions etc cannot be done mid-game (not savegame compatible), so any suggestions regarding those are also very welcome.

In AND it is. I don't know what modmod or code is responsible but we can happily change ANYTHING and keep the save game running :)
Just thought you may be interested.
 
In AND it is. I don't know what modmod or code is responsible but we can happily change ANYTHING and keep the save game running :)
Just thought you may be interested.
Absolutely!
If there are no downsides to it, and its not too complicated to implement, then I'm all for it.
Its a PITA when playing a game, and having an idea for some buildings or units, but have to wait (which often means forgetting about it) until starting a new game.
Alternative is to have parallel installs, but that just ends up messy.

Edit :
CHANGED:
Railroad now have 7.5 moves instead of 10 to bridge between the Paved Road (2 mp) and Highways (1 mp).
Airunits use 2 movepoints to do airstrike and airbomb, while remaining with 1 mp for Recon and Interceptions.
Aviation Tech gives +1 mp to Air units.
 
Hi vincentz ! I just registered only to say that your mod is trully great, its my favourite. VIP really make Civ4 BTS a more playable and interesting in gameplay terms without stupid additions. Bless you for all that hard work!
Im long time Civ fanatic, started playing from Civilization 2 long time ago and fall in love with this game. I just downloading latest VIP and of course I want to play it all time :)
.
For now I have no questions or suggestions, only one issue I encountered:
all movies running bad in my pc (especially wonder movies). In normal BTS I'm changed in the .ini to hide game background while movies are playing (black background is visible when movies playing rather than map itself). However how to make the same with your mod ?
 
Thanks for the kind words. :)

To speed up movies add (or change if already there) these settings in the drive:\Users\your username\Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword\CivilizationIV.ini

; Dont show the game background during movies - may speed up movie playing
HideMovieBackground = 1

; Don't skip frames if falling behind
BinkNoSkip = 0

; Show movies using hi-color, not true-color (may be faster)
Bink16Bit = 1

; Copy ever other scanline during movie playback (faster)
BinkInterlace = 1

the last one gives me headaches tbh, but is the most efficient.

ingame you can select the low quality movies in the graphics section of options.
 
Thanks for fast reply :) I know about these settings, problem is that there in normal BTS a HideMovieBackground = 1 working nice, while in VIP not and game background it is still shown during movies playback :(
 
I tried "fullscreen movies" in Platy options panel and its still showing all that game background under a movie, because movies still shutter when playing :( why I cant hide background like in normal BTS..

also my first question:
in normal BTS you can see how many espionage points you have acummulated to specific civ, in VIP somehow I dont understand it. Its showing me for example: Mansa Musa 18/540. but when I sucessfully complete a spy mission its showing me a totally different points left.. whats wrong with that ?
 
I'll try to look at the original code, though Im not strong with Python which is the GUI overlay on screens and such, which brings us to the next question ;)

I didnt like the "spy points only work on specific civ" so I changed it to a Total Pool of Espionage Points (TPooEP) instead of a Civ Specific Pool of EP CSPoEP, however the places where I wanted to show the TPoEP is in Python programming language as well, so instead I put it after completing missions AND when mouse-over the spies espionage mission action button.
Its a bit of a hack, but it will work for now.

Downside of changing to TPoEP is that the passive espionage missions (see research, see cities, see graph) would very quickly be accessible against all the civs.
I let the graph be shown at all time now (it was imho annoying that the player had to spend espionage points on seeing the graph so now its free)
The other two I have plans to make into active missions (with the spy staying on plot after missions, it wont be a PITA to take a small mission now and then)

So, what about the CSPoEP? Well, it still have its function:
The more CSPoEP spend against a civ makes missions against that civ cheaper as well as protects against their espionage missions and counter their spies.

The result : Lets say you a bordering civA who sends lots of spies, and want to steal a tech from civB.
If you spend CSPoEP on civA, you will more likely catch their spies as well as reduce their number of attacks (since their costs have increased)
If you spend CSPoEP on civB you will reduce the mission cost to steal the tech.

Since these two examples in original BtS are based on a ForeverSpendEspionagePointsAgainstSpecificCiv instead of a CurrentEspionagePointsAgainstSpecificCiv the numbers shown will actually represent the actual calculations a lot better imho. (sorry for the long acronyms, but anyone who have looked at the espionage code in the SDK will get the joke)
 
Starting a new game with all the new bells and whistles :D. I'll post comments as the game goes on.

Definitely love being able to see with the new large fonts Bro. You have no idea how awesome that is to these old eyes, my heartfelt thanks.
 
Can you (and everyone else for that sake) keep an eye out for the Labor civics.
The AI, due to the improvement bonus and weight system, are very happy with Serfdom.

Im not really happy with the bonuses in especially Labor, and since Slavery, Caste System and Serfdom is basically a Class divided society with slavery at the bottom, its imho difficult to give some advantages/disadvantages to some and not the other, so suggestions here are very welcome :D
 
Can you (and everyone else for that sake) keep an eye out for the Labor civics.
The AI, due to the improvement bonus and weight system, are very happy with Serfdom.

Im not really happy with the bonuses in especially Labor, and since Slavery, Caste System and Serfdom is basically a Class divided society with slavery at the bottom, its imho difficult to give some advantages/disadvantages to some and not the other, so suggestions here are very welcome :D

I can give you some observations that I've gained so far... Well, lol, observations, puzzlement, colorful metaphors, and several YGTBFKM's!

To answer your questions, slavery appeared to offer minimal returns for the investments given into it. I switched as soon as I was able.

Caste and Serfdom was about average benefits until I hit city 5, then everything kind of tanked. I switched to Republic as soon as I got it. As to the AI's, I honestly don't know. I haven't quite figured out your new spy mechanics yet to really provide any solid info ( I'll get to my confusion of spys later).
Khmer, Inca, and Otto's all seem to be doing decent with 4-5 cities, but they appear to be taking their time with improving their BFC's. Currently, we're all lovey-dovey with all the same religion, and I control the AP. Other AI's, I have no clue about, as I just teched optics, and haven't built a caravel as of yet. Will let you know when I get more info.

Now, lol, as to my earlier mention of colorful metaphors. here we go, and in no particular order:

1) Install; This kind of puzzled me, as you usually have an installer with your mod ( no biggy, still got it to work). The issue was, that I couldn't connect your VIP icon to your configuration file for set up ( background, colors, etc). Had to go through BTS and select mod in order to get it to work... Without any initial settings.

2) Game set up; Apparently, on your custom game set up, you can have greater than 52 civ slots as your opponents ( Who knew :D), despite the fact that you only have 34 (35?) civs available to choose from.

3) Have I mentioned that I love the graphics?........ I love the graphics :lol:.

4) Units; Curious as to why I can heal some type of units outside my cultural border, but others I have to send to the nearest city in order to heal.

5) Movement; Ok, got to admit, this one kind of messed with me until I figured out what bonuses went with what.. having one worker moving further that another was a tad confusing.

6) Barbs; your barbs have always been lethal ( especially w/RB on), but now apparently you have turned to the Dark Side, and and given them Vegas odds with the RNG :eek:. Roughly 1/3 of my barb encounters have been losses. Despite various promo's, terrain defense, and positioning. Seriously, I lose 1 more mace to a brute on a forested hill, I'm gonna launch nukes... As soon as I tech it first.

On the plus side, the AI appears to be surviving better vs the barbs. I've only seen alerts for 3 AI Civ's lost to the city state. So well done there.

7) Speaking of AI, what's with them marching an unprotected settler 20-30 tiles away from their core, and popping a city right on the edge of my CB? and leaving it unprotected? I'll show pics in a new post ( forgot to "go advanced" when I started this.. Oopsy!)

8) Espionage: Ok, I must be doing something wrong ( entirely possible), as I got a spy in the Khmer cap, enough points, but I can't see research ( i'll post pic). Is the new mechanics explained in your pedia?

9) Golden Ages; Did you reduce the amount of turns for a golden age? I'm on Epic speed, and 9 turns seems a bit harsh for the amount of GP used.

I probably have more, but since it's 4am, and I forgot to write stuff down lol, we'll just go with this for right now. Really loving the mod Vinz, excellent work.
 
Ok, so let's start off with the spy confusion. What am I doing wrong please

Spoiler :
Spy Whoops.JPG


So, here we have an unprotected city. I'm really regretting the def pac I signed a few turns ago.

Spoiler :
Wheres the Beef.JPG



And lastly, here you see your text is off just a bit. Additionally, what are the new icons used for? The castle, Star, wreath, etc, the faded ones?

Spoiler :
Ummnn, Confused.JPG



Thanks for all your hard work bro.
 
First off, thanks for the inputs :D I really appreciate it.

I can give you some observations that I've gained so far... Well, lol, observations, puzzlement, colorful metaphors, and several YGTBFKM's!

To answer your questions, slavery appeared to offer minimal returns for the investments given into it. I switched as soon as I was able.

Yeah, thats the thing. Slavery should be a step up, but isnt atm. Thinking about removing the camp bonus from tribalism. Perhaps even the happiness from Elder Council.

Caste and Serfdom was about average benefits until I hit city 5, then everything kind of tanked.
Tanked? with happiness?

I switched to Republic as soon as I got it. As to the AI's, I honestly don't know. I haven't quite figured out your new spy mechanics yet to really provide any solid info ( I'll get to my confusion of spys later).
Khmer, Inca, and Otto's all seem to be doing decent with 4-5 cities, but they appear to be taking their time with improving their BFC's. Currently, we're all lovey-dovey with all the same religion, and I control the AP. Other AI's, I have no clue about, as I just teched optics, and haven't built a caravel as of yet. Will let you know when I get more info.Now, lol, as to my earlier mention of colorful metaphors. here we go, and in no particular order:



1) Install; This kind of puzzled me, as you usually have an installer with your mod ( no biggy, still got it to work). The issue was, that I couldn't connect your VIP icon to your configuration file for set up ( background, colors, etc). Had to go through BTS and select mod in order to get it to work... Without any initial settings.
Rgr. I'll make installers instead of zips. If you placed the mod the same place as the last installer version, it should hit the start program.
Some settings are personalized for my only though (resolutions, copy gamecore etc), but it looks like you did get some changes to color and font. Its not the font that I use???

2) Game set up; Apparently, on your custom game set up, you can have greater than 52 civ slots as your opponents ( Who knew :D), despite the fact that you only have 34 (35?) civs available to choose from.
There are room for 80 civs. I had quite a few new civs, but decided to wait until mod is further developed as it takes ages to load them.

3) Have I mentioned that I love the graphics?........ I love the graphics :lol:.
Thanks :D

4) Units; Curious as to why I can heal some type of units outside my cultural border, but others I have to send to the nearest city in order to heal.
It depends on how much they are damaged and where they are. They can heal :
Max 25% in enemy territory
Max 50% in neutral territory
Max 75% in friendly territory
Max 100% in friendly city
This is increased with healing promotions at a factor of 5, so if a unit have healing I (5%) it will be able to heal 25% more than the above, f.ex. 75% in neutral territory.

5) Movement; Ok, got to admit, this one kind of messed with me until I figured out what bonuses went with what.. having one worker moving further that another was a tad confusing.
It is a bit confusing, and it does require extra micromanagement to optimize it. What I need to do is add a "How much movement cost at tile" in the widget (can be same line as Unit per Tile), that will hopefully clear things up a bit.

6) Barbs; your barbs have always been lethal ( especially w/RB on), but now apparently you have turned to the Dark Side, and and given them Vegas odds with the RNG :eek:. Roughly 1/3 of my barb encounters have been losses. Despite various promo's, terrain defense, and positioning. Seriously, I lose 1 more mace to a brute on a forested hill, I'm gonna launch nukes... As soon as I tech it first.

On the plus side, the AI appears to be surviving better vs the barbs. I've only seen alerts for 3 AI Civ's lost to the city state. So well done there.
I never play with RB on. Cutting down 3 AI sounds like a lot to me, especially because those are the worst case scenario, so I expect the rest of the AI to also take a hit from barbs, which could explain why they havent improved their tiles as much.
I would recommend playing without RB on for this cause.

7) Speaking of AI, what's with them marching an unprotected settler 20-30 tiles away from their core, and popping a city right on the edge of my CB? and leaving it unprotected? I'll show pics in a new post ( forgot to "go advanced" when I started this.. Oopsy!)
That does look strange. I guess he really really wanted that weed....

8) Espionage: Ok, I must be doing something wrong ( entirely possible), as I got a spy in the Khmer cap, enough points, but I can't see research ( i'll post pic). Is the new mechanics explained in your pedia?
I explained it a few posts up. Because changing to TotalPoolofEspionagePoints instead of CivSpecificEspionagePoints I made some of the passive missions to Active missions, though havent added code for them yet. There is a trick though, when having Agents they can see inside the city, where the AIs current research is shown. Maybe I add that feature to spies as well, and remove the See research altogether.

9) Golden Ages; Did you reduce the amount of turns for a golden age? I'm on Epic speed, and 9 turns seems a bit harsh for the amount of GP used.
The number of turns in a golden age is randomized. Iirc its +-50% of 10 turns on normal speed, which would be btween 8-15 on Epic, so you have been unlucky.

I probably have more, but since it's 4am, and I forgot to write stuff down lol, we'll just go with this for right now. Really loving the mod Vinz, excellent work.
It was alot I think. I appreciate the time taken to post this :D

Ok, so let's start off with the spy confusion. What am I doing wrong please



So, here we have an unprotected city. I'm really regretting the def pac I signed a few turns ago.




And lastly, here you see your text is off just a bit. Additionally, what are the new icons used for? The castle, Star, wreath, etc, the faded ones?




Thanks for all your hard work bro.

Pic1:
6000 gold!!! holy buddha thats a lot! Im in 1836 AD and is struggling with gold at 50%, and you are running 10% with a surplus??? What difficulty?
Also, the font is not the right one. I did forget to change all the color schemes to the new font, though the size of the font is pretty big, so I wonder if there is a problem showing the right font.
Anyone else have this font instead of the one in my screenshots?

Pic2:
I think he might have been hit by a barb, and either didnt have any gold to heal so it just stand still somewhere, or he have returned to a city to heal 100%. I havent experienced unprotected cities so far, but will try a Epic game next time to see if it makes any difference.

Pic3:
Weird that the icons show that way (the bottom build bar). Since there is no text there, it shouldnt make a difference. and it really shouldnt make a horizontal scroll bar.
What resolution do you use?

The faded icons are dividers. In vanilla it would be a new line, but thats imho silly if you have 4 buildings, 2 wonders and 1 project and 4 processes. That would be 4 lines. In VIP it would be able to be on 1 line only.
So the helmet is units, castle is buildings, the star is wonders, the leafs are projects and the repeating arrow is processes.


Edit:
Platy have put a new item in Platypedia, where I'm going to describe the most gamechanging VIP mechanisms, as a lot of them are mostly: "WTH?!?!" to new as well as old VIP players since I'm modding mostly in the gamecore now.
 
First off, thanks for the inputs :D I really appreciate it.



Yeah, thats the thing. Slavery should be a step up, but isnt atm. Thinking about removing the camp bonus from tribalism. Perhaps even the happiness from Elder Council.

That would probably work a bit better. Oh, while I'm at it, how come University only gives one scientist?


Tanked? with happiness?

Happiness, economy, growth ( food), It just seemed like everything slowed down a lot before pop growth happened again. Granted, I'm not an expert at the slavery civic, but it just didn't seem worth it to use.






Rgr. I'll make installers instead of zips. If you placed the mod the same place as the last installer version, it should hit the start program.
Some settings are personalized for my only though (resolutions, copy gamecore etc), but it looks like you did get some changes to color and font. Its not the font that I use???

That would be great. Um, oops. I deleted your previous version before installing this one. As to the color and font, that's what loaded at game start, I didn't change anything. Now I'm really curious as to what the fonts and colors should be.


There are room for 80 civs. I had quite a few new civs, but decided to wait until mod is further developed as it takes ages to load them.

Whoo Hoo! 80 Civs? Bring 'em on.


Thanks :D

Your Welcome.


It depends on how much they are damaged and where they are. They can heal :
Max 25% in enemy territory
Max 50% in neutral territory
Max 75% in friendly territory
Max 100% in friendly city
This is increased with healing promotions at a factor of 5, so if a unit have healing I (5%) it will be able to heal 25% more than the above, f.ex. 75% in neutral territory.

Ok, that's what I figured. TY for confirming.


It is a bit confusing, and it does require extra micromanagement to optimize it. What I need to do is add a "How much movement cost at tile" in the widget (can be same line as Unit per Tile), that will hopefully clear things up a bit.

Ok.


I never play with RB on. Cutting down 3 AI sounds like a lot to me, especially because those are the worst case scenario, so I expect the rest of the AI to also take a hit from barbs, which could explain why they havent improved their tiles as much.
I would recommend playing without RB on for this cause.

RB is currently off, and barbs are still showing up with rather annoying consistency.


That does look strange. I guess he really really wanted that weed....

Well, cash crops are cash crops, lol.


I explained it a few posts up. Because changing to TotalPoolofEspionagePoints instead of CivSpecificEspionagePoints I made some of the passive missions to Active missions, though havent added code for them yet. There is a trick though, when having Agents they can see inside the city, where the AIs current research is shown. Maybe I add that feature to spies as well, and remove the See research altogether.

Ok, so I need to op the "see city" task instead of the "see research until you get everything fixed, NP.


The number of turns in a golden age is randomized. Iirc its +-50% of 10 turns on normal speed, which would be btween 8-15 on Epic, so you have been unlucky.

Well, that just figures. Lol, I wouldn't want me to be lucky, that would just be boring :D


It was alot I think. I appreciate the time taken to post this :D



Pic1:
6000 gold!!! holy buddha thats a lot! Im in 1836 AD and is struggling with gold at 50%, and you are running 10% with a surplus??? What difficulty?
Also, the font is not the right one. I did forget to change all the color schemes to the new font, though the size of the font is pretty big, so I wonder if there is a problem showing the right font.
Anyone else have this font instead of the one in my screenshots?

Monarch difficulty. As to the font/color, that's what the game started with. As for the gold, that was a Shift T option, and I have a couple of heavily promo'd scout units. I usually give myself a couple of bonuses when investigating a new mod ( which your new version basically is) until I understand the new concepts. On the plus side, I gave the AI's gold and tech to stay evenly paced with me, just to be fair :crazyeye:.

Pic2:
I think he might have been hit by a barb, and either didnt have any gold to heal so it just stand still somewhere, or he have returned to a city to heal 100%. I havent experienced unprotected cities so far, but will try a Epic game next time to see if it makes any difference.

Ok.

Pic3:
Weird that the icons show that way (the bottom build bar). Since there is no text there, it shouldnt make a difference. and it really shouldnt make a horizontal scroll bar.
What resolution do you use?

1600x 900

The faded icons are dividers. In vanilla it would be a new line, but thats imho silly if you have 4 buildings, 2 wonders and 1 project and 4 processes. That would be 4 lines. In VIP it would be able to be on 1 line only.
So the helmet is units, castle is buildings, the star is wonders, the leafs are projects and the repeating arrow is processes.


Edit:
Platy have put a new item in Platypedia, where I'm going to describe the most gamechanging VIP mechanisms, as a lot of them are mostly: "WTH?!?!" to new as well as old VIP players since I'm modding mostly in the gamecore now.

Well, ok then. Get 'er dun :mischief:
 
Lmao! ok, I'm obviously clueless with your new Espionage updates. You got a "how to do Espionage for idiots" manual lying around somewhere? Because the only things I can do spy ops wise it the basics. Can't do any of your new bells and whistles.
 
Updated to latest Platy, and will try to write something in the intro section. Let me know if its understandable and somewhat correct english (English have become my third language now, following Danish and Baby language ;))

Espionage Changes:
  • The spy will no longer magically teleport to the owners capital after completing a mission, but instead stay on the tile without being able to move for some turns depending on the mission difficulty.
  • Instead of using the Civilization specific Espionage Points, the Espionage missions will draw from a Total Pool of Espionage Points, however, setting the weights in the Espionage Screen will improve success and costs of missions against that civilization and increase the chance of catching their spies in your homeland.
  • The Total Pool of Espionage Points can be seen by mouse-over a spy's mission button and after a successful mission.
  • Note: The three first missons (City Visibility, Investigate City and See Research) are under construction and wont work atm. However, when standing on a city the spy can investigate the city by double clicking the citybar.
  • The spies gets XP from buildings and completing missions. Promotions include faster movement, better visibility and decreased chance of getting caught.



There is a small edit to get the spy to be able to see their cities :
in CIV4UnitInfos.xml under <Class>UNITCLASS_SPY</Class> change

<bInvestigate>0</bInvestigate>
to
<bInvestigate>1</bInvestigate>

edit :
Thanks once again Platy :D
Edited wonder movie file to enable hide background option.
Spoiler :
DvAG59j.jpg
 
thank you much vincentz for good explanation about espionage system :-) I like it, working good so far.
These new changes like ability to display movies without background are included now ? if so, where to download it? ..Im confused since there in this thread I found only 0.99G version, and its just a zip file without installer.. ah and what it is? look: www.gamepressure.com/download.asp?ID=53859
.
version 1.0 ? 200mb ? Thats why Im confused..
 
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