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MOD: The BALANCER

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  • I replied to Rhuarc's email yesterday, but opera mail is not accepting it or something. I wrote it before catching up on the thread here and seeing what you have been doing lately.

    Anyway, if you want to combine talents, that would be fine with me. I have just finished fixing what I hope is the last bug with my mod, which is far less ambitious than what you are doing. I have attached the bic, excel spreadsheet and misc. readme, which explains what is in the mod along with the spreadsheet.
    I was not able to incorporate many of my best ideas due to the limitations of the editor, but I still think the mod does a lot for the game. After reading the thread here, I am sure there are things that could be refined in it.
    I have added some new units to the game, re-using the original files except for the Crossbowman, which needs to be edited to correct some mistakes in it.
    I need some pointers on how to add new units without having to copy all of the files from the old unit into the new folder. I read a thread about how to do this last night, but I could not follow all of the instructions.
    I also don't know what user-created units are available, or how well done they are. I feel pretty good about my current unit progression at least until the Industrial age.
    Civ 3 doesn't need nearly as many units as Ctp2 since you don't have as many unit types. Civ 3 is also not as long as Ctp2 (which I think is a good thing), so you don't need as many unit progressions.
    I spent a lot of time on the buildings and wonders, and I also really like where the govt's are located on the tech tree now(see below).
    Here is the Civiloopedia entry I wrote for Internment Camps, to address an issue brought up earlier in the thread:

    ^Decreases unhappy people in every city in the civ by 2.
    ^{Requires:} Civilization must have a Fascist government.
    #DESC_BLDG_Internment_Camps
    ^
    ^
    ^Many nations constructed internment camps as a place to round up unwanted citizens. The U.S. placed all of its citizens of Japanese decent in the 48 states of the time into such camps following the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Nazis were the most infamous, though, ultimately deciding to exterminate all of the undesirables in its camps as a "Final Solution."

    I have pasted the misc readme below, hope you don't mind, so that people can more easily comment on it. It basically lists the things that don't fit onto the spreadsheet or that you might miss on the tech tree.

    -Citizen value in shields raised to 25.
    -Fortify gives +50% defense.
    -Raised the defense from bombardment of citizens and buildings from 8 to 12. (It was 4 before the patch. This is why bombarding devastated cities while leaving units relatively safe.)
    -Walls now have a bombardment defense of 16.
    -Cities grow to size 8 before needing an Aqueduct. Hopefully this will make Walls and Granaries worth building.
    -Engineering enables irrigation without water.
    -Hills can be irrigated.
    -Mass Transit system now available with Combustion to allow you to combat population pollution earlier.
    -Espionage missions except Sabotage reduced. Investigate city by 70%, all others by 50%.
    -Clear Jungles takes 6 turns, clear Forest 10 turns, 15 shields harvested, build Fortress takes 8 turns instead of 16 on base terrain.
    -All advances cost more.
    -Writing requires Bronze Working, and Gunpowder requires Banking, for unit progression reasons.
    -Espionage has taken The Republic's place in the advances chart. The Republic has been moved to Democracy's position, and Democracy to Espionage's. This allows you to conduct some diplomatic missions earlier, and places all three advances closer to their actual historical spot.
    I moved Fascism to Radio, and the new City State and Theocracy gov's are available with Feudalism and Theology, respectively.
    -MPP and Trade Embargo enabled by Espionage.
    -Cost of the Palace reduced to 30, make that 300, shields. Firaxis is worried about cheating. Well, if you want to palace bounce, that is a tactic. I do not do it personally, because I think it is not the best way to go. And if you are going to cheat, why play the game at all?
    -Cost of Armies and Forbidden Palace reduced to 300 and 200, respectively.
    -Merchants require Currency and Scientists require Philosophy, and give 3 of their respective specialty.
    -Numerous errors with civilization build often/never settings corrected.

    -Please see the civstats spreadsheet for all the changes to buildings, wonders, terrain, resources, governments, units, and more.

    -Temporarily omitted: note that Marble is a bonus resource, and thus not tradable, though it is necessary for several buildings and wonders. I did this purposely to scramble the game some. Now you may have a decision to make if you do not have any marble in your territory.
    -Temporarily omitted: Copper is necessary for most modern units, and usually accompanies Oil. It is also necessary for the Colossus and Statue of Liberty. The icon is that of a copper ale stein.
    -Temporarily omitted: I saw a TV program which mentioned that it took a 40-acre forest to construct a ship like the HMS Victory, so this was one of the reasons for the new Oak strategic resource. It is necessary for offensive wooden warships. Transport types do not require it so that a civ will not be land-bound if they do not happen to have it.
    -Since only two new resource icons can be presently added to the game, I have had some resources share icons. Aluminum and uranium share an icon, since they are the last two resources to appear in the game, and have been plentiful in my games. They retain their old values, availabilities and uses. Also, Apples, Fruits and Dates share an icon. Each adds two food to the terrain value.

    The following are from the Balancer mod, which was the foundation from which I built the Medieval mod III.
    -availablity of resources tweaked:
    Iron available with bronze working
    saltpeter available with invention
    coal available with metallurgy
    Oil available with industrialization
    rubber available with electricty
    aluminum with mass production
    Uranium with atomic theory
    -Fascism now enabled by Radio.
    -Medpack: Horses- no preq. (It's not like they are minerals hidden underground.)
    This should help relieve the "can't trade for a resource because the guy doesn't have the
    necessary tech" situation.
    -added to the list of great leaders for each civilization, each civ has at least 6 now
    -Recycling Center now adds 2 culture and Mass-Transit 1 culture
    -power plants tweaked
    Coal: 50%, Hydro: 100%, Solar: 100%, Nuclear, 150%
    Rather than coal, hydro and solar all having the same production value
    -factories, manufacturing plants, offshore platforms, all add -1 culture per
    turn. Coal and Nuclear Plants add -2 culture per turn.
    -upgraded tax collectors and scientists to collecting three each of their respective commodity
    -cheaper nuclear weapons
    -Added new Government "Fascism," which is the best military government in this game
    -Changed Wealth shields-to-gold ratio down to 4:1 from the default 8:1.
    Attached Files

    Comment


    • EDIT: I must have misunderstood you, because you already did this in your mod.

      -------------------------

      Here is acopy of part of the colonist.ini from the newest Balancer Version. These are the lines that were changed. All you need to do is add a path. I believe either forward slash (/) or backslash (\) work fine.


      [Animations]
      DEFAULT=../settler/settDefault.flc
      RUN=../settler/settRun.flc
      DEATH=../settler/settDeath.flc
      FIDGET=../settler/settFidget.flc
      BUILD=../settler/settBuild.flc
      CAPTURE=../settler/SettlerCaptured.flc
      [Sound Effects]
      RUN=../settler/SettlerRun.amb
      FIDGET=../settler/SettlerFidget.wav
      BUILD=../settler/SettlerBuild.wav
      Last edited by Elucidus; March 8, 2002, 15:55.
      Yours in gaming,
      ~Luc

      Comment


      • Also, I've been thinking about post-poning the work on 3.0 and waiting until they make it the tech tree editing more user friendly and maybe allow you to add Eras and change the End Game Year.

        Would you mind if I incorporated many of the newer changes to the balancer (the new citizens, etc...) into your Bic?

        Also there are a few Unit creators out there that seem to be doing a decent job, better than I can anyway. Like SpencerH, for example.
        Yours in gaming,
        ~Luc

        Comment


        • Wes,

          Are you going to add in new wonder spalshes? Do you want me to? I have most of them already.

          Edit: Noticed your Bic had bad links to most of the civilopedia entries. They were missing BLDG_. I fixed it.
          Last edited by Elucidus; March 8, 2002, 16:13.
          Yours in gaming,
          ~Luc

          Comment


          • 'lu, I just checked my bic, and found no buildings or wonders missing the BLDG_ part. Don't use the new files with the mod on my webpage. I have not had access to my webpage since they had to move the site to the new servers, so I cannot delete the bad mod posted there. The attachment above is just so people can see basically what I have been up to.
            If you let me know where, I will send you the full version of the mod to post on the balancer webpage.

            As far as combining mods, that would be fine. I didn't know which one you would want to use as the basis. I do know that I would welcome any and all help with graphics, civilopedia (we need initials for this file, btw- any suggestions anyone?), etc., as I don't feel like doing them myself right now.

            I have not extensively play-tested the mod. I have mostly been trying to get the bugs out of it, so I have not played into the Industial age in a loooong time. If anyone has any comments on my work, good or bad, please let me know here. I will do my best to give the latest posted version of the Balancer mod a good review some time this weekend.
            What I have always tried to do is get as many people as possible commenting on the mod and giving their ideas on how to improve it. I have always been very impressed with the intelligence and knowledge of the people here, and the more people you can get involved, the better the resulting mod will be.

            I read a post about how to add new advances with all the arrows and stuff, and it was ridiculus. This game was obviously not meant to be modded to any serious degree. I read a portion of the chat where Soren said that he did not believe in giving users access to a scripting language because it just gives them an opportunity to create bugs. I know that Ctp's slic is buggy as hell, yet the talented guys over there have done amazing things with it, and are doing more all the time.
            Ctp's tech chart is set up differently, and is easier to add things to. Anyway, I don't expect them to do anything to make adding techs easier; I just don't see how they could without some major overhaul of the way the tech chart is displayed.

            Comment


            • As far as adding techs, I had found an easier way. All they would have to do is have the program recognize a different naming scheme and dynamically create the buttons on the science advisor screen. Creating the background image with the arrows isn't hard or tedius at all.

              The BIC I downloaded was from this page. Or so I thought. It has all sorts of errors I've been fixing. Here I was thinking I was helping out and I had the wrong version. lol

              If the full version isn't much more than a few of meg send it here.


              EDIT: I'll let you know as soon as it is up
              Yours in gaming,
              ~Luc

              Comment


              • Elucidus

                here is a couple of questions from a fellow modmaker, and hopefully you can help me out

                I edited the civilopedia.txt, the pediaicons.txt, and got a new units_32.pcx file with the correct number of unit spaces, though those spaces are blank

                However, my new buildings do not show up in the build queue, and one of my units, the outrigger which uses the galley icon, shows up as a stealth bomber in the build queue

                can you give me any help or any advice on how to fix this?

                thanks in advance for your help!

                Comment


                • Eww, a stealth bombing outrigger.

                  Well, as far as the units, Wesw has been the one to add/change those. So we'll have to wait for his response on that one.

                  On the buldings side have you edited the Art/City Screen/buildings-large.pcx and buildings-small.pcx?

                  I believe that is where it gets the icons from. Specifically the buildings-small.pcx for the build queue. I hope I have been of some assistance. Let me know if there is anything else I can do for you and keep up the great work.
                  Yours in gaming,
                  ~Luc

                  Comment


                  • Elucidus

                    thanks for responding, i was hoping you'd know since you are very knowledgeable about most other parts of modding

                    but i have not changed the buildings-large.pcx and buildings-small.pcx but it seemed like the copy tool did, or am i mistaken?

                    anyways thanks for the encouragement, i took a look at your new tech chart and it looked really good, so you guys keep up the good work as well

                    Comment


                    • Well, if the copytool did, all I can say is WOW, that is one heck of a tool. Does the file have a bunch of blank tiles at the end? If so that is your problem, if not than you may not have the required tiles for the buildings you added. Let me know and I'll try to help out.

                      And thanks for the encouragement, but we are going a less dramatic route since then.
                      Yours in gaming,
                      ~Luc

                      Comment


                      • Wes,

                        I updated the science advisor screen with the updated tech tree you gave me. Can you check it out and make sure I didn't miss anything? I used the excel file you included as a guide. I've been looking at those tech tree lines so much lately I can't tell which way is up.

                        If anyone one else wants to check it out, have at it.
                        Last edited by Elucidus; April 20, 2002, 20:53.
                        Yours in gaming,
                        ~Luc

                        Comment


                        • Luc, you will need to email me the file. I keep getting invalid archive errors whenever I try to open the attachment.

                          Korn, the units, blds, etc. show up in the build queue in the order that they appear in the bic file. The pics are shown in the order in which they appear in their file, so you need to order the pics to match the bic. There is one exception- the last eight pics from the units.pcx always need to be last (the units after the Privateer, which have era-specific icons), and the new units you add should be placed before them.
                          Last edited by WesW; March 10, 2002, 22:20.

                          Comment


                          • Look in my signature and you will find a link to a thread that has a fix for invalid archives. The fix is hosted on my website so you don't have to worry about the fix being corrupted

                            Comment


                            • Mizac, I need more detailed instructions on how to use the dos file. It has been too long.

                              Btw, are people still having trouble with the settler or worker graphics disappearing from the build queue when you enter the modern era?
                              Also, are there any problems with the Colonist in the modern era?

                              Comment


                              • Should be able to type pkzipfix in a dos prompt and it should give you instructions. BTW, I sent the file to you.
                                Yours in gaming,
                                ~Luc

                                Comment

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