TOT questions and observations

[Venger]

I've played my first game of TOT. Now I'm pretty much a veteran of Civ2, haven't played a game of Civ that was anything but Deity since Civ2 came out. But...I've always played without spaceships.

So I decide to try the extended game. Strangely, I cannot get my ship to a reasonable chance of success. Anyways, I assume there is a way to get to Alpha Centauri without using the spaceship. But how? I've gotten dreadnaughts there, ubt my goal is to get a colonist there. How?

Also, the end game evolves way to quick on transcendence. I'm thinking of removing it as a tech option and force a showdown. I was obsoleting units faster than I could build them. When the new advances start rolling, it's all to quick to transcendence. And the new units, well kinda suck. They should be more marginal in improvement. They also look kinda dumb. Magog? 8 ball? Freaking please.

I like the multiworld option, but...

Also...tips on spaceships. I built one with 16 structure, 7 propulsion, 6 fuel, 3 habitat, 3 life support, 4 solar, pop 30, support 50, energy 66, mass 22800, fuel 75%. This beast takes 40 some years to get there and has only a 7% chance of success? What'd the hell I do wrong? I normally just stomp everyone into the ground, so this spaceship thing is a little new...

Thanks,

Venger

[Cam]

Venger,

To answer a few of your questions...

On the spaceship, you could check out; ltswww.epfl.ch/~winkler/civ2.html#Spaceship - but the problem is the lack of structurals. Also you should have your components as an equal number as is the case with your modules.

As for the extended game, "sadly" I can't offer you help as I've always got to AC first. I've found very little to be gained by actually doing too much settling there - instead, as you mention, go after Transcendence.

I think they've tried to slow down the race to Transcendence by deliberately making the technology Wonders go obsolete (i.e. mess up my Science City) - and having Michalangelo go was a pain . You're right though - it could have been more effective to extend the game further, add some new Wonders and force the player to make more of an effort to settle, if not conquer AC. But hey, I still have fun!

[Venger]

I thought that may be it. As a first time shipbuilder, I really screwed the pooch...

As to Transendence, it should require research and some other aspects, i.e. no unhappy people, no disorder, no hunger, yada yada yada. Frankly, it's about to get a great big nil in the rules.txt.

I've never bult a science city. I've tended to favor other wonders over those of a science city. I'm not opposed to it however... but TOT (my whole 1 big game of it) seems to temper my ability to get a huge science lead till the end of the game. Only one settler, the absolute WORST starting position (the first two random worlds I actually quit after a few turns, after seeing I was stuck on all of 16 squares of usable terrain, the second was not much better), and some bad luck...

Venger
P.S. Please forgive the unremittingly bad grammar and spelling in my original post. It was very late, and my homophones were all over the place...

[ravagon]

With regards to the techfest/unitfest after researching ultrastring (?) theory, you might want to take a page out of Mick's Time Threat Scenario.

ie: Make some/all of the advanced techs event driven in that you receive them in an event but you have to research 5 to 10 future techs between each such event.

Anyway, just a suggestion....

PS: You could always alter the stats of the new units too.

[Venger]

Events. Hmm. I thought those only applied in scenarios. I'd really like to slow the tech paradigm after the last original techs are researched...

I have a feeling that to like the game, I'm going to need to modify the rules and such. Alot of these units are simply laughable. 8 ball. Jeez...

Some techs need to be added. Sub-light travel, translight speed, artificial intelligence, siege warfare, gravitational flight, etc. I'm going to be busy. Now I need some artistic geniuses to come up with new unit graphics...

I love Civ, but the new units are so ill thought out. Who drew the cyborgs? Looks like gumby. Or a tall smurf. Entrix. Great. Transformers, more than meets the eye...

Venger

[The Mad Monk]

The problem is that somebody decided it would be more 'efficient' to re-use graphics; every graphic for the new units in extended civ is shared with either the fantasy game, the SF game, or both. Usually, the graphic in question makes a hell of a lot more sense in the other games.

The high level techs make more sense in the SF game; I would recommend you try that.

[Cam]

Venger,

ravagon's suggestion is a good one, and could be done several ways, such as with an 'enable technology' in combination with a 'randomise turn' or 'delay' event.

Your proposal of adding more tech's sadly will involve removing others from the tree to make space, as all 100 slots are used - for instance, make diplomats obsolete and spies available with Communism and use Espionage for an extra 'futuristic' technology.

Modifying the unit images should be straight forward. Work out which ones you want to replace - rename the original sprite, copy the new one over (presumably from the sci-fi game) and likewise copy the image into the approprite slot in units.bmp. If need be, you can also look at modifying the 'pedia descriptions of units as well.

These things are fixable, but I suspect that the fact you need to customise it is the frustration you have. I agree with the Monk in that it would have been great if Microprose had created new unit sprites for the Extended Game rather than just copy some over from the Sci-Fi one.

[The ANZAC]

I wss wondering how, for ToT scenarios, you get the scenario's units to appear and not the default ones. I have substituted the units.gif in the main menu with mine, but when I play the scenario, the game's units appear on the map while the scenario's appear in the city production list. Anyone know how to remedy this?

[Cam]

The Anzac,

I refer you to this thread on Animation Lockout if this is your problem...
apolyton.net/forums/Forum29/HTML/000695.html

Also, you mention 'unit.gif' however ToT has adopted the bitmap format, so this may be a problem (n.b. I've not tested ToT bmp vs. gif, however have been led to understand bmp format's the go).

[The ANZAC]

I know, but in the main directory there's a Units.gif and I rename it something else and replace it with a Units.bmp from a scenario