[MOD] FexFX - Bigger & Longer

[tatertot18]

First, still loving the mod. Its about 1500 and I'm currently involved in a war against the Romans on the nearby continent, I love being able to field huge armies of redcoats.

A few things I've noticed while playing though -

We need more Great People names. We were out of unique scientists by about 750 AD. It was weird to see Enrico Fermi born in 725 and then a bunch of generics after him. Entertainers, engineers, and merchants seem to be holding their own though.

Also, I'm not sure if this is just me, but I found that after about 1000 AD the my tech rate just went off the charts. I went from 15-20 turn discoveries to about 8 turns and by 1500 both myself and Washington have extensive rail networks and I'm launching Battleships. Before my first ironclad could be launched they were obsolete, same goes for musketmen. This was a big shock after most of the game moving much slower.

Finally, is this mod compatible with pre-made maps? I want to use it with the huge earth map that Aeric67 made and was wondering if that is possible? Or is there no problem because his map is just a scenario??

[FexFX]

I had not even considered the whole Great persons thing!

As to the tech rates problem you are having...
I had yet to encounter such a complication.
I am in 1666 and the most advanced Civ is using Cavalry...

Are you playing FX-Grand on an FX-Huge Map?

And heck, I guess that battleships in 1500 is better than Alpha Centari in 1200 which I have seen people do!

It would depend on the map and how much the map is a scenario...If the map sets custom times then it will likely not work.

[tatertot18]

Yeah I'm playing the 1000 turn game on the FX-Huge map. I have probably 15-20 fully developed cities on my home island, so I have a fairly large empire. Like I said, it is only Washington and myself that are this developed, and it only happened in the past 100 turns, so maybe I need to turn up the difficulty a notch.

Yeah, the world map is just a scenario because it locks in the starting locations for each civilization. The map is quite large, 180xsomething else I can't remember. Not quite FX-Huge, but its the biggest Earth map I've seen so far. Maybe that would be another project for you.....

[FexFX]

Actually, that is larger than my map!

And it sounds like you and Washington hvae somehow tapped into something sweet!

Question...been fighting many wars?

Its possible that my warlike pbehaviour has stunted my scientific growth a bit

[tatertot18]

Yeah I do tend to shy away from a large number of wars. I'll usually launch one late-ancient era against my weakest neighbor for some breathing room, then go into hyper-building mode until I industrialize. I usually play terra maps and I love to have first pick at New World colonies.

I think after I try this earth map I'll go with a FX-Huge Pangea map (do those work?) with raging barbarians on so I am forced to build a larger military early on.

[FexFX]

Git-R-Done TaterTot!

Its almost an interesting statement that if we hadn't had so many wars in our history we might have advanced faster scientifically.

:P

[FexFX]

The year is 1866.

That Son of a Motherless dog Napolean thought to wage a brief war with me, but I beat his troops soundly, losing only a few farms but no cities. After the war was over, that smarmy bastard decided to encroach on my territory by building a city in a nearly uninhabitable location between two of the cities I had taken from the pathetic english! This small hamlet was like a mote of dust in my eye, a thing not to be tollerated! I pondered crushing him, however as I had just sued for peace, declaring war would be unseemly.

Pondering this predicament, I chose to dispatch a settler accompanied by my finest troops, and my greatest artist to a nearby patch of open ground. It was in truth a jungle whic I had no interest in, but Napolean had sparked my ire.

I erected a town just to spit him and then instructed my artist to create a masterpiece to make the gods weep! The result was very satisfying. Napoleans folly is now so thoroughly surrounded by the culture of the greek people that the people of his town are detined to become mine.

Having allowed much of my military to founder during the period of relative peace following my conquest of the english, I decided it was time to take a few years off from my pursuit of railroads, and threw everything I could into amassing enough wealth to bring every troop in my military up to modern standards. I quickly amassed a fortune with which to accomplish this.

Now I am playing the waiting game.
Soon I will have railroads, and then tanks.
When that happens I will build battleships with which to spread the way of the greeks to all of the lesser peoples of the world.

I think I shall begin by slaughtering that pompous arse Napolean!

[FexFX]

601 downloads between here and civfanatics!

[FexFX]

Over 700 downloads between here and there!!

[tatertot18]

I highly recommend using this mod with Aeric67's Earth map. 180x87 gives plenty of room for all 18 civs. His map is posted over at Civ Fanatics, check it out!!!

[FexFX]

Whoa!
Looks like I've forgotten to look at a few places!
I have only been checking my download numbers between here and CivFanatics complimentary thread!
I forgot to check the Apolyton Directory, and Filefront!
Adding those in this mod has been downloaded 1018 times!!!

[FexFX]

Okay, some mysteries have been unraveled.
There are different multipliers for research in the Game Speed, World Size and Game Difficulty settings!!

So, because I tested and balanced this for FX-Grand or FX-Epic on FX-Huge with a Difficulty of Noble...
If you play the game on anything Smaller than FX-Huge, or any Difficulty less than Noble...you may find the tech tree goes way too fast.

I am adding this to the laundry list of small things to be tweaked and balanced in a future version of this mod:

1) Fix Great Person research Bonuses.
2) Add more Great Person names to stretch out over twice as many turns.
3) Fix The Maps types that currently fail to work with FX-Huge map sizes.
4) Balance research for all difficulties and all map sizes.
5) find a way to increase AI agression a little.

Those are the big items on the list.
None of which should stop anyone from enjoying a game of FX-Grand/FX-Epic on an FX-Huge map at Noble Difficulty. However I feel these are enough to warrant a new version of the mod.

[tatertot18]

Just curious, have the duration of Golden Ages been balanced for the different speeds?

On a side note, I'm still loving this mod and tempted to make these the default settings for Civ IV. I can't wait to see what it is like with a few more tweaks.

[FexFX]

The Duration of a Golden age will be a bit longer than an Epic game in both modes, being longest in FX-Grand, however, I am not certain that it feels properly balanced yet...why dont you let me know how it feels to you.

[tatertot18]

I would but I haven't bothered triggering one yet..... I've found that with the extended turns, super specialists are just too good to pass up for most of the game. Perhaps toning them down 1 beaker/coin/hammer each??