[Mod] NORMAL game pace: SLOWER TECH but more normal unit building! (Other fixes too)

[bitbucket]

Originally posted by dearmad


I'm not making it earlier than it is in the vanilla game. My goal is to keep jungle around a lot longer than the vanilla game does. Reflect how a Jungle truly is a a force of nature until certain technologies come into play.

Sorry, I missed the earlier change you had made, moving jungle clearing to medicine.

[Dzhel]

I started a new game without any mods. Saved it. Loaded it. Then tried to load my save with your mod & the problem still happens. So strange. If I missed something just let me know. Thanks for the help so far.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Hiya Dearmad. Looks like a great start to this mod-it is always great to see someone who chooses not to complain about what they don't like about a game, but actually 'rolls up their sleeves' and gets to work making it more to their liking !
Just one suggestion for you re: uranium. I agree that physics is WAY too early to be revealing uranium but, IMO, so is fission. So how about this-why not put the Atomic Theory tech back into the game (with prereq being either physics and/or scientific method) and have uranium appear there?

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[JDexter]

I've played a few regular games and it's really going through the eras too fast IMO. So nice mod this is, played a little while with it already, but need to finish a game with it to really feel the difference.

About 0.5:
Resources in jungle should really be possible to be used before biologie... like gems or bananas.

@The Aussie Lurker:
How exactly do you invent fission without an element to split? Marie Curie had radiactive elements (I think she even had uranium), so did Otto Hahn.

[dearmad]

Originally posted by JDexter
I've played a few regular games and it's really going through the eras too fast IMO. So nice mod this is, played a little while with it already, but need to finish a game with it to really feel the difference.

About 0.5:
Resources in jungle should really be possible to be used before biologie... like gems or bananas.

@The Aussie Lurker:
How exactly do you invent fission without an element to split? Marie Curie had radiactive elements (I think she even had uranium), so did Otto Hahn.

Jungles: You CAN mine, camp and plantation the jungle all earlier than Biology as long as you have GUNPOWDER. I figure you get the natives to do the dirty work at the end of a gun... Gunpowder is a lto earlier than Biology.

Aussie:
I don't understand- you want a tech *later* than Fission for Uranium to appear?

[dearmad]

Originally posted by Dzhel
I started a new game without any mods. Saved it. Loaded it. Then tried to load my save with your mod & the problem still happens. So strange. If I missed something just let me know. Thanks for the help so far.

I'm stumped. I'm not encountering this problem at all. Do other mods work for you?

Anyone ELSE having this problem?

[JDexter]

Ah that's just fine than, haven't gotten to gunpowder yet (but soon! ). At gunpowder it's fine IMO.

[Edited]Aaaah I DO have that error, too!
My mod directory is as follows "C:\Johannes\My Games\Civilization 4\MODS\Slower Tech+Balance" - might the length be a problem or the "+"?

[Andrew1999]

Moving Uranium to Fission was the very first thing I did. Nuclear-powered galleons were pretty ridiculous.

With regard to the jungle, maybe you could simulate the effect a different way?

1. No city founding in jungles. You'd have to wait for your culture radius to grow into the jungle and a worker to chop it down before you go there.

2. Crank the unhealthiness level for jungles up to a ridiculous amount. Your new city may starve to death without adequate health support from trade, techs, and buildings.

[dearmad]

Andrew:

An interesting idea. Worth some thought. My concern would be with the AI handling that. The way it is now, the Jungle cities I had (and I was a Banana Republic, literally!) stayed very small, like villages until I could finally clear away the Jungle and develop. The ONE exception was a city on a river in the jungle that grew reasonably well.

The Jungle between me and the Mongols grew a bit and got deeper on us which was cool. And when he attacked me we ha an awsome Jungle/forest war going on (1900 or so). It made the forest/jungle unit upgrade totally worth it!

JDexter:
Also roads through jungle are impossible until gunpowder too. It's all abouit making the natives do your bidding...

To all:
Jungles are worth 5 production points when you whack 'em down. FYI. (A tiny boost to make up for years of fearing those deep, dark, primeval forests... )



For my 2 cents it seemed to simulate the situation

[JDexter]

I found out some more about that loading bug.

First I tried to load the mod than the save game. Restarting with the mod (no loading the saved game) works fine. Loading the save game with the mod already loaded tells me that I need to load the mod (and if I want to restart to do that)!

Also the indicated mod path is as follows:
"mod\C:\Johannes\My Games\Civ..." (rest as above), so maybe the game has the wrong mod path initially (in the .ini I don't have a mod path specified, standard setting = 0).
Of course there is no directory \mod\C:\...

[Edit] I've been using the 0.4 version.

[Edit 2] I started a new game and saved right away, this time using 0.5. Still same error on load (wants to use that weird directory that doesn't exist on a PC ).
Even with a hex editor I tried to change the path (the correct path to the mod is saved at the beginning of every savegame; on vanilla c4 there is no path there at all). When I removed the "C:\...\" everything it displayed the remaining entry, until only the actual directory "Slower Tech+Balance" remained (without a single "\", because "\mods\\Slower Tech+Balance" wouldn't work obviously). It crashes to desktop without a comment.

BTW: The bug is NOT because of your mod directory containing a "+" or spaces, I renamed it to test it.

[dearmad]

yeah that's the exact same thing I ran into. I think it's a bug of sorts. The mod is, after all, just placed in its directory like any other.

I tried to specify the mod path, etc., and could never get my savegame to load again...

I recommend switching to 0.5, as it adds a few things and fixes the dates better I think (I REALLY want feedback on this, as everyone's experience will vary). And you can switch without ruining your game at all.

[pkk8888]

Hi dearmad - really like your changes - keep it up and I will never play Civ the old way again. Just a quick couple of questions. The game length is now 515 turns - how close is that to epic? I really like the epic games, where every unit count in winning a war. In civ4 the units comes so fast, its not really an issue - not how I like playing a game.

Ohh one last thing - how difficult would it be to make it multiplayer? Im living in a dorm, and we are 4 guys who are playing multiplayer like mad right now. Would love these changes in multiplayer!

pkk888

[dearmad]

hey,

For mujltiplayer, it's already enabled. Just share the mod and have everyone load the same one.

I will be updating the mod once it's balanced fairly well to also mimic the EPIC game when you select EPIC game. Epic game length is something like 600+ turns, maybe 625 or so.

When I finish this mod, I'll plug it into both EPIC and QUICK modes, so those will be affected as well. Right now I'm trying to just balance it for NORMAL.

One thing I'm definitely waiting on with hope is that FIRAXIS expose the multiplier for spy mission costs so I can cut those in half or even to 25%! They are WAY too expensive as it is right now, and just not worth the risk...

[dearmad]

JDEXTER:

Please test another mod now too to see if any of those work.

Did you change anything else in your INI file?

[JDexter]

I found a solution for this problem:
You can just use the Mods folder in the game directory instead of the "My Games" directory for the mod. It asks to load from the correct location then (and it succeeds in loading the mod and game).

No, I didn't change anything in the mod's INI and only standard stuff in civ's INI (don't remember what, but things like no movies = 1 i.E.).

(Since I don't have a different mod yet I can't try it, but I will report if one behaves differently than yours.)