Modding "Final Frontier" in Civ 4 Beyond The Sword

[Sovereign]

(reposted from my thread in Civ 4 General as per suggestion of a fellow poster)

Hey all,

I have a few questions about the "Final Frontier" mod. I've been trying to figure out a few things to enhance the gameplay somewhat. However, I can't seem to find what I need to change in the XML and Assets folder.

1. I'm looking to expand the Starbase culture borders from a radius of 2 squares to the following:

Starbase I: 2 square radius
Starbase II: 3 square radius
Starbase III: 4 square radius

Where can I do this? I can't find "Culture generation" for the Starbase unit anywhere in the Unit XML file.

2. How do I increase the population size the habitation domes give? As it stands, the habitation domes only give +1 population limit to each planet. I'm looking to increase that to +2 or even +3 population limit.

3. How do I fix the scaled up population of each "city" or solar system? At size 1, its 1,000 people I believe. In other Civ mods and main Beyond The Sword games, a size 1 city has 10,000 people. How do I fix the Final Frontier population to match the Civ 4 city population or a bit higher?

The reason I'm looking to fix the starbases is to fill in all these *annoying* gaps in my cultural borders in Final Frontier. In standard games on Earth (or your typical Civ 4 vanilla or Civ 4 Beyond the Sword games), I don't have any problem with these gaps in cultural borders. I just fill these gaps in with cities. But the problem in Final Frontier is that star systems sometimes are like 5+ squares away from each other, and it's annoying as hell to have many gaps in-between my systems. Nothing illustrates this well than space pirates popping up in the middle of my empire rather than the fringes, or enemy civ's slipping in a constructor unit to build a starbase or two in the middle of my empire *WITHOUT* open borders enabled.

In other words, am I stuck with building like 100 - 200 starbases to fill in every last little square within my empire if I can't fix the starbase cultural borders? That's way overkill. Thats like 10k - 20k cash, plus another 50k - 100k cash to upgrade to Starbase III's. Not to mention that it would destroy all the challenge of the game, since AI units would go commit suicide at my starbases and get themselves killed en-masse. No mega threat of big unit stacks bearing down on solar systems anymore, which takes some fun out of the game.

Also I'd have to delete bazillions of missiles that all these starbases would be producing. Each starbase produces a missile every 15 turns, so I'll end up getting 100 - 200 units every 15 turns. A lot of button mashing to "disband" or delete them all. Otherwise in like 100 turns or so, I'll have 1000 missiles, which is gonna take a huge chunk out of my economy, maintainence, and possibly even "end of turn" game speed itself. Thats why I want to have starbases give much bigger cultural borders so that I don't have to deal with these particular problems.

The reason why I'm looking to up the population stuff (habitation domes and city population levels) is to really have an epic space empire with billions of people, instead of like 30+ star systems with just 10 million people spread through them. A well developed 30+ star system empire should have like 50 billion people or more, not 10 million.

Does anybody here know how I can fix Final Frontier assets to reflect all these issues I have? Other than these issues, Final Frontier is a wonderful mod that I can't just seem to stop playing. I've stayed up until like 1 or 2 AM playing it on days I'm supposed to wake up at like 6 AM for my daily commute. (grin)

[deanej]

All of this stuff is in python. The starbase stuff is in CvFinalFrontierEvents.py (under a comment that says "starbase stuff"). The culture for all three bases is done in the same method, so I'm not sure how do it like you want, but the radius can be increased. To change the culture, change

		# Create culture around unit
		for iXLoop in range(iX-2, iX+3):
			for iYLoop in range(iY-2, iY+3):

to (I think):

		# Create culture around unit
		for iXLoop in range(iX-3, iX+4):
			for iYLoop in range(iY-3, iY+4):

You could make it so that starbases create missile less frequently. To change the missiles, change:

						if (iTurnCreated != iCurrentTurn):
							iTurnsSinceCreation = iCurrentTurn - iTurnCreated
							# Produce Missile every 15 turns
							if (iTurnsSinceCreation % 15 == 0):

to:

						if (iTurnCreated != iCurrentTurn):
							iTurnsSinceCreation = iCurrentTurn - iTurnCreated
							# Produce Missile every 15 turns
							if (iTurnsSinceCreation % 30 == 0):

The population from habitation system is located at the very bottom of CvSolarSystem.py. To increase the population limit, change:

g_aiBuildingPopCapIncrease[5] = 1		# Habitation Center

to:

g_aiBuildingPopCapIncrease[5] = 2		# Habitation Center