Firaxis releases Modding Info

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Forget Stack Combat (well don't, actually !) its civil war that I want to implement, and he definitely indicates it is do-able. Once that is done, I then hope to try and add selectable traits for religions, along the lines of the civics system!!!
Of course, I may need some help and advice from all the pre-existing modders out there !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[conmcb25]

Originally posted by The_Aussie_Lurker
its civil war that I want to implement
Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Ya me too, I really missed that from CIV II.

I remember a couple of civil wars while playing John Ellis's "Colonies" scenario, very fun.

The modding community may reach a "golden age" with this game, that would be pretty cool

[yin26]

Note that the SDK will not ship with the game itself, but rather will be released seperately at a later date. Although Firaxis has given no reason for this, it's typically regarded in the gaming industry that things that ship with a game have to be supported while stuff that's released seperately doesn't necessarily have to be. And for the people at the Firaxis/2K Games support departments their heads would probably explode at the very idea of having to support people with zero programming skills trying to turn Civ4 into an RTS game using SDK

I found this interesting. Makes good sense, actually.

[ajbera]

I also want civil war to be modded in. I've been also been thinking about somehow linking unrest with civic option change.

At present, civics options will probably only be changed for 2 reasons: personal preference/AI coding (I personally philosophically like Free Trade, while Mao Zedong's data makes him prefer State Property), or in response to certain conditions (need to ****** the intrusion of foreign religions, citizens gettin' uppity, etc.)

I think it could be cool to mod the game so that AI citizen unrest, if left unchecked at too low a level, has a chance of changing that civ's civic options. Perhaps an internal revolution, like the French or Communist revolutions, where the people are too unhappy for too damn long, then there's anarchy, perhaps some population or city/tile improvement destruction, and the civ's civic options get shifted (randomly would be very interesting, but specific changes per civ or situation/condition that caused the unrest can be scripted; maybe 1 or 2 civic categories, or a random amount). So the nature of the civ has radically changed. This should be rare, I think, but would be quite cool.

For the player, severe unrest could cause your citizens to clamor for a particular change. If you refuse, the unrest gets worse (with whatever production loss or loss of life & property this entails). If you make the demanded change, the unrest is alleviated.

Civil wars should also incorporate this shift in options. When a splinter civilization splits from the Fatherland, the civics options should be different.

A thought; perhaps the civics change could be related to the cause of unrest. If religion is the primary source of upset, the people could call for a change in the nation's religion civic option; if economic, then they demand a change in economy or labor options.

[conmcb25]

@ajbera:

Or if you force a religion on another CIV, which I believe is possible this "unrest" could lead to civil war in that nation. There is a lot of possibilities here I think

[Adagio]

Civil war

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

I think the easy part in designing a workable civil war model is the actual chance of secession-why, because it follows fairly simply mathematic principles:

(a) Ratio Unhappy to Happy.

(b) Ratio Unhealthy to Healthy.

(c) Ratio of city culture to average national culture.

(d) Distance from 'Capital' (or provincial Capital).

(e) Number and strength of troops in the city (to prevent secession).

(f) multiply by the % of foreign nationals (with a bonus after nationalism is discovered).


(g) A possible muliplier/divider on the basis of game difficulty-from 0-6.

All taken together, this should give you an overall % of a chance for secession.
The hard part would actually be writing a python script for events which can trigger a check for secession-at least for someone like me, with no experience of Python Scripting language. Changing religion, declaring war/peace or changing a civic should all spark a check for secession, as should having 1 or more cities with greater than 50% unhappy or unhealthy. As I said, though, not sure how you might write all of these into the script.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[conmcb25]

A_L, I guess you should start learning Python

Ill look forward to your first mod

[Matches10]

This whole thing reminds me of an old joke...

Comedian: "This new Civ 4 Game is SO moddable....."

Crowd (in unison): "HOW MODDABLE IS IT?"



Seriously, I just read through 9 pages of the very good post talking about the shortcomings of Civ3, what different gamers are looking for and how difficult it is to please different camps - even among hardcore fans of the game, not to mention adding new fans.

So again, the crowd asks, "How moddable is it?" And the answer seems to be: "Very."

Which means that it almost feels that they might be focusing in on gaining new fans, and improving and adding some things here or there to make everybody smile. And the key to success is that they have added multiplayer to please the "Power Players" and this (hopefully) unprecendented ability to tweak and mod the game to please the "Sandbox Enthusiasts." I really hope it works out.

And all that said, I'm now a little less angry that I re-discovered Apolyton too late to get my ideas for the next game out there and in discussion by this amazing community, but more angry that I don't come close to having the programming skills necessary to try to implement those ideas in the new game. Not only that, I don't even know enough to know if my ideas are even possible..

[Dale]

Originally posted by The_Aussie_Lurker
I think the easy part in designing a workable civil war model is the actual chance of secession-why, because it follows fairly simply mathematic principles:

(a) Ratio Unhappy to Happy.

(b) Ratio Unhealthy to Healthy.

(c) Ratio of city culture to average national culture.

(d) Distance from 'Capital' (or provincial Capital).

(e) Number and strength of troops in the city (to prevent secession).

(f) multiply by the % of foreign nationals (with a bonus after nationalism is discovered).


(g) A possible muliplier/divider on the basis of game difficulty-from 0-6.

All taken together, this should give you an overall % of a chance for secession.
The hard part would actually be writing a python script for events which can trigger a check for secession-at least for someone like me, with no experience of Python Scripting language. Changing religion, declaring war/peace or changing a civic should all spark a check for secession, as should having 1 or more cities with greater than 50% unhappy or unhealthy. As I said, though, not sure how you might write all of these into the script.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

AL:
I saw your post (CFC was it?) where you outlined all this. However I still disagree with the "lose your cities" thing. I bet if it was implemented like that everyone would be "Woohoo the AI just lost half their civ!" but if it happened to them they'd be all pissy "WTF happened to half my civ!"

Sorry, but I just see the forced lose of cities as a very bad step for gameplay. The AI has a hard-enough time as it is, why make it harder for the AI?

What if a barb mega-spawn occured near the rebellious cities? At least that gives you the chance to defend against it.

Dale

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

I have three answers to that Dale:

1) Thats why it would be a MOD-if you don't want it, don't download it. Even if you download the mod, you can still leave it out of games by setting the 'difficulty' multiplier to 0.

2) You would rarely lose 'half your nation'. Your civilization would have to incredibly vast and terribly mismanaged to lose that many cities-and terribly mismanaged to lose any cities at all. Remember you have to trigger the effect through your actions-it would NOT occur randomly.

3) The civ which would form from secession would be a completely new one-so it wouldn't be like a culture flip. Also, the seceeding civ does not neccessarily have to be at war with you, it all depends on how YOU behave towards them.

Ultimately, I think Civil Wars would add a very important dynamic to the game, especially in the later eras.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[ajbera]

Personally, I'd rather have a civil war than culture flip - more realistic. Make conditions have to be severe for it to occur, and give plenty of warning and opportunities to remedy. If you say "WTF, I lost half my cities!" you haven't been paying too much attention to them in the first place. Serves you right for being a shitty leader.

[James]

I have been playing modded games in Civ III for sometime.

Quote: Our goal is to make this the most moddable version of Civ ever, so we created three levels of tools offering fun, accessible modding options for every type of player - from casual to hard-core.

This is great news.

Does anyone know if the mods are locked once a demo/pbem game is initiated?

[Adm.Naismith]

It seems that you can change in the middle of a game, but the flag "Cheating!" will sign every multiplayer game. I can't remember where that was said by developers.
And you are resurrecting old news anyway.

[Sabre2th]

Originally posted by CyberShy
I'm not a modder, but as a programmer I may start to change really indept things of the game, like the AI or indeed the stack war.

I think that someone at Firaxis said: "Other games released SDK's, but since most games only last for 12 months and then grow old, really interesting things didn't spread so far on a large scale, but since the civ mod community is big and long lasting, this may be really interesting."

I wonder what will happen to this game.
I really wonder.

I'm really more interested in what WON'T happen to this game

Giving that kind of power to fanatics is plain dangerous