PolyCast Episode 30: "Let There Be Shiny" Transcript

[DanQ]

The thirtieth episode of PolyCast, the official Apolyton Civilization Site (ACS) podcast, is the second in the series to be transcribed. PolyCast is a bi-weekly, one-hour production in an effort to give the Civ community an interactive voice, those who would prefer to read the content of the show -- in whole or in part -- can now do so once again. ACS user Ian "AAHZ" Hodges agreed to transcribe an episode once again but other volunteers are needed to make this more of a regular occurence.

For easier readability, each segment/topic is contained within its own post within the thread it is presented in. For discussion on the content of the episode itself, please go to its official thread.

[DanQ]

Intro

Dan: This is Episode 30

Oscar: Do I have to do anything special with the configuration here or-

Dan: Yeah, you could do some things with your configuration. But yeah it’s not necessary. We’ll just hit record. Just press the red record button

Ken: Hit the shiny red record button.

Dan: Yes. Very shiny

Oscar: Uh. It’s not shiny.

Dan: *Gasp* all right OSCAR I’m gonna have to ask you to leave.

~laughter~

Oscar: Oh if I touch it, it shines a little.

Dan: Yes. You move your mouse over and then it shines.

Oscar: Oh.

Dan: Oooh.

Oscar: Oh my God -- I’m blinded!

~laughter~

Dan: Do not look directly AT the button...

[DanQ]

Summary

Wouter: In the News we revisit the tech tree for Galactic Civilizations II.

Tony: In Modcast today, some religions may be founded too late and to barb or not to barb… that is the question.

Dan: In the Workshop, unit modeling and the status of the Second Revolution Mod.

Ken: In the Senate today we discuss Code of Laws technology, is it overrated? Or underrated? And Civics choices for Spacerace Victory.

Dan: Then another 2 Senate topics, these from the Vault. First, preference for starting out with a scout or a warrior in CivIV, and then 19 episodes later is better than never. At last the 5 worst Wonders of the World list compiled PRE Beyond the Sword.

Oscar: Today in the Mailbag we had a report that CivIII: Conquests will not work on Vista due to a font problem. We also gave a solution for it.

[DanQ]

News

Dan: Just re-visiting Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords technology tree in the next expansion.

Ken: What are they gonna do to the tech tree again besides having different ones for different races? Are they gonna scramble it all up?

Oscar: Yeah I think it’s having different tech tree for different races. It’s a pretty big deal I think.

Tony: Well that will actually be kind of cool, I always had trouble with Dread Lords getting spanked by whatever those bastard alien tough ones are I can’t remember but I was real ticked off about it.

Dan: Tony, this is a family-friendly show.

~laughter~

Tony: I’ve been spanked in only the healthiest of ways.

Ken: Well you know when they say different technology trees though, what do they REALLY mean? Is it a whole technology tree from scratch with a new set of technologies? It couldn’t be that much. Probably gonna be ok you guys get this tech and you guys get this thing, it’s basically the same tech tree.

Wouter: No, it’s supposed to be completely different trees.

Tony: Wow that’s a lot of work.

Wouter: Yeah it seems like a lot of work to me.

Ken: I'll believe it when I see it.

Tony: What I want to know when you do customize civ in Galactic Civ, when you make your own from scratch, how does it determine which tech tree you get.

Wouter: That’s a good question.

Tony: Is it by the picture you choose?

Ken: Maybe you just pick it as another parameter.

Tony: Ever since MOO2, I’ve always liked to play the custom civ for the space empires.

Ken: Yeah, when I play MOO1, my favorites are the bird guys, the Alkari? And lizard guys. And bear guys; I’m playing a nice game mauling up everyone. And who else is good… oh and the insect guys.

Tony: I love the insect guys…

Oscar: For some reason I always play human in everything. I don’t know

Tony: You’re xenophobic.

Ken: Human lover!

~laughter~

Ken: Down with the hu-mons!

Tony: HUMON!

Dan: This interview on GameSpot says that having new technology trees for civilizations opens the door to some spectacular new styles of game play, for example the evil DRENGIN Empire has a technology called compulsory labor which would when researched lets the Drengin build slave pits on their world for better production. If such a world gets liberated the slave pits are still there leaving a moral quandary for the conqueror: keep the slave pits or spend the money to replace them with normal factories, or something else.

Ken: Interesting.

Tony: That’s pretty cool.

Dan: We’ve talked before about giving players choices and how many choices are too many choices and don’t just add choices for choices sake… but that sounds like an interesting choice.

Tony: Adding replay value doesn’t really come into that choices scheme because each tech tree is the set of choices and encourages people to keep playing the game and buying expansions.

Ken: What I would really like to see though is that instead of just having the tech trees be different, there is a whole set of very, very different technologies. It would go all the way down to things like: these guys have engines on their spaceships and they jump instantly from one point to another. These guys have solar-sails and these guys have warp drives and these guys have nuclear engines and things like this. Be very different so the very structure of the game, how you move your ships around, how your shields absorb damage, how your weapons shoot… would be completely different.

Tony: That would be cool.

Dan: Well [Project Lead] Brad [Wardell] does say that in addition to the different technology trees, with this second expansion, each race also has corresponding unique weapons, defenses, and planetary improvements. Now just how extensive those weapons, defenses, and planetary improvements are, or how differentiated they are, remains to be seen.

Ken: Yeah. We have green lasers as opposed to your blue lasers.

~laughter~

Dan: Well, ken, how are you supposed to tell your enemies apart if you don’t have those distinctions?

Ken: Good point. “Captain. Shoot the guy with the green laser!”

Dan: Then you get so many races in the game that you start running out of colors so its “no! No! They have the DARK green lasers we have the LIGHT green lasers. OH NO!”

~laughter~

Ken: “No, no! Those magenta lasers are out allies! Idiots!”

Dan: “Is that sky blue or ocean blue? OH NO!”

~laughter~

Ken: And the stealthy race comes along with black lasers and you can’t even see them.

~laughter~

Dan: Oh! Multicolored lasers!

~laughter~

Dan: Are we the red and blue or the red and green? I don’t remember anymore...

Oscar: The rainbow laser.

Ken: “Oh no… they’ve gone PLAID!”

~language~

Dan: At which point there are no more sequels to GalCiv, because they’ve killed the franchise.

Tony: Oh no.

~laughter~

Oscar: One thing I liked what they did in Dark Avatar is how they streamlined the tech-tree. Removing those big lines of laser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and all that and replace it with one laser technology with different milestones. It was much better for the eye at least.

Tony: I haven’t played Dark Avatar yet I’ve only played Dread Lords. I know exactly what you’re talking about though.

Oscar: I want to go to the end of the line and there was this list 1, 2, 3, 4, and on and on and on.

Ken: It just seems that these Stardock guys do change a lot of the core mechanics of their games with each expansion pack.

Tony: Yeah. Well they’re doing their jobs the best they can. I think they have nothing but room for improvement as far as I can see and I think there should never be a time when you should stop improving a game, you know?

Ken: That’s a pretty loaded statement, “nothing but room for improvement?” sounds like you’re saying its crap.

~laughter~

Tony: Only in the nicest way.

Oscar: Yeah I really like how they support the game. How they treat the customers.

Dan: Interesting, Tony, you said only in the nicest way both in relation to improvements to the game as well as spanking. Hmmm?

~laughter~

Tony: Oh boy. Me and my big mouth.

~language~

Ken: When is this thing coming out again, this expansion pack?

Wouter: Next month.

Ken: Oh really.

Oscar: Yeah, November.

Ken: I’ll make it a buy if I ever get Windows working again.

~laughter~

Tony: So this is never?

~laughter~

Ken: Maybe for Linux? I hope they do.

Dan: Microsoft, if you don’t like these disparaging comments about your operating system on this show, sponsor us, contact…

~laughter~

Tony: Wait a sec… this might not be the best deal after all.

~laughter~

Ken: Or, just sue us.

Tony: Nooo.

Dan: The opinions of KEN do not necessarily reflect-

~laughter~

Wouter: Well you can’t pluck an empty chicken.

Ken: Well, that was some strange European expression.

~laughter~

Tony: We have robots to pluck them in America.

Dan: Coming soon to GalCiv2: Giant Death Robots that pluck chickens. Wait, what?

Oscar: Well there is a Death Star, no?

Ken: Yes the Death Star knockoff.

Oscar: Like the one in star wars?

Tony: Or in Masters of Orion 2.

Ken: And what was the name they chose for it? Terror sphere or doom ball?

Dan: Terror star, terror something.

Ken: Giant bad ball? I don’t know, something.

Tony: Death nipple.

Dan: Are you in marketing, KEN?

Wouter: Please don’t make a sci-fi mod KEN.

Ken: Giant… Hurt Ball?

~laughter~

Ken: And TONY family show, family show. You thought you were gonna slip it by us.

Tony: Oh come on. No one heard anything.

[DanQ]

Modcast

Dan: Even post-BtS the WTBC0 holds that those religions that are founded early are still too darn dominant. Particularly in single player where humans don’t b-line for some and the AI tends to found the very late. The earlier founded ones have widely spread and adopted and we can extend that to the newer religions finding it harder to spread themselves, let alone be adopted. Especially says Sarius on Pangaea’s where every religion has the opportunity to spread like wildfire very early on. So to this end WTBC0, and no I will not try to say that 3 times fast, proposes 4 possible solutions.

Allow philosophy to be researched once you research Aesthetics so you don’t need to research Drama, required for BtS because that’s when Aesthetics was introduced. Reduce philosophies tech cost adjusting going down from 800 beakers to 700, but that’s just a base debating point for game balancing discussion. Reduce theology’s technology cost, but as I’m sure as what beaker value to even suggest, since this tech allows the theocracy civic (theology is currently at 500 beakers.) Reduce Divine Rights tech cost to a suggestion of 1000 beakers from 1200 and also remove the requirement to have Theology before this tech can be researched, so it would only require Monarchy, and Monarchy itself requires 300 beakers.

Ken: Way too early.

Tony: You I think that they placed the religions in the tech tree to emulate the series of their discovery throughout our history, but I think that that’s a waste of time because what if I’m playing USA in the beginning and I start off Hindu throughout the whole game? There’s no reason to have if you’re going to balance that you know?

Ken: I think that they just need to MOD the spread factors for the later religions to the point where they’ll catch up and when you’re playing with you get to pick whatever religion you want, they’ll have it automatically done. First religion founded gets a spread factor of a low number and it just increases sequentially to the last religion founded whatever it may be, just random at that point. It just gets the highest spread factor so they balance out. By the end of the game you have a good balance of religions.

Tony: That’s good.

Oscar: Yeah, it is.

Dan: Time Traveler suggests where we have a tech already in the tech tree that allows us to found a religion whether its one we can choose, because we are playing BtS or before then when it’s a set one, he suggests that when the first civ that discovers this tech gets one religion, but then the next civ that discovers that tech also gets to found a religion.

Ken: Well then everyone would found a religion when they got there right? There would only be one religion founding tech in the whole game?

Dan: That could be a problem because you are not going to need as many techs then in order to prod you to found a religion, but, I think he’s arguing that because you would have an earlier tech right now that allows you to found a religion if you’re the first one, well that second early tech if you’re the second person there, you can found a religion as well. That way all the religions will be founded earlier on in the game because you would only have to get to an earlier tech and you would kind of have a second chance. You wouldn’t have to be the first person. Second place would also get a crack at founding a religion.

Ken: Well it takes away the whole get there first: me, me me/winner take all approach, which is vital to civ.

Tony: Yeah I agree.

Ken: Why would I rush to technologies if there wasn’t this big I get it first reward? It’s like wonders.

Tony: I think that BTS’s addition of choose your own religion when you found one, I think that was the biggest upgrade to the standard religion system. I just find it unfortunate that it’s in that really obscure options list in you’re custom game instead of being a main feature of the settings of a normal game.

Ken: Well, heck, you probably wanted it to be the default setting didn’t you?

Tony: Um, a little bit. But see then it takes away from our guys who are history nuts who enjoy Hinduism and Buddhism being so ancient.

Ken: I never hear anyone say that. Actually, “damn there’s too much Hinduism and Buddhism in the game.”

Dan: Well, since that option exists but it’s not required you can either have it or not. I guess you’re pleasing everyone a little bit. Compromise.

Wouter: Well I think the current system where you can pick your own religion I think basically works fine. You might be able to tweak things a little bit, but I don’t see a need for all 7 religions being dominant in every game. If you play on a continents map, or something like that, it’s quite common that you’re particular continent; nobody gets to found one of the early 3 religions, by definition one of the newer does get to be very dominant. At least on you’re continent.

I’ve had games in which the 5th or 6th religion became very big. Not every game, and certainly not on Pangaea. It depends on the map type and stuff like that. I think its fine. As long as it’s not every time Buddhism, every time Hinduism, I’m fine with the system as it is.

Tony: You know, um, to make a point on what you just said, I’ve had some continent games where Buddhism or Hinduism for instance, the early religions have hopped the ocean. Somehow. I think they should add some code that prevents spread of religion over continents until astronomy or something is researched.

Ken: I think that was a bug. And I think I wrote it.

Wouter: You would think that also, yeah.

Ken: You remember a mod I made where I was going to do something else and I accidentally caused religions to jump over between continents that had no contention at all?

Dan: It’s your fault!

Ken: Yeah.

Dan: Ken admits it and is looking for forgiveness. Do you forgive him Tony?

Tony: All right…

Dan: (chuckles)

Wouter: No, never seen that

Tony: That happened to me actually it’s weird. This happened in Warlords though.

Ken: ‘Cause I specifically remember that happening. What the f{beep}.

Dan: vs. adjusting that with the seventh religion being founded specifically that they get their holy shrine built automatically with its founding. Uh, I’m not liking that idea.

Ken: Maybe it’s cheaper or something like that? Balance it?

Wouter: You could get two missionaries.

Tony: I like that idea extra missionaries.

Ken: Yeah. Maybe a higher missionary limit.

Dan: Yeah I was thinking 3. Instead of 1 have 3. Keep the endgame simultaneous max there, but have 3.

Ken: I think maybe do it by max is equal to the order of the religion. First religion 1 max, 12, all the way up to 7 so the last religion can spread like wildfire.

Tony: The later religions are the only ones that give you a bonus missionary when they are founded the early ones don’t.

Ken: Its just 1 missionary. There’s a guy here cour-de-leon?

Dan: I think its courdelion.

Ken: Uh, he says have religions founded by prophets instead and I’m like, ”hmm that’s a good idea.” tricky to implement possibly, but, it could work.

Tony: Always an extra prophet ability.

Dan: Yeah it shifts the likely focus of having more religions being founded earlier on, they’ll have a better chance of spreading.

Wouter: Problem then becomes it’s quite hard to get a prophet if you don’t have a religion.

Ken: Yeah you pretty much have to build a wonder of some sort.

Dan: Yeah. Wodan11, “if great prophets are what are required to found religions players would be more likely to beeline for tech that would give them access to early wonders that carry the great prophet points.” hello Stonehenge, particularly now in BtS with post-obsolesce with astronomy than calendar. Perhaps even more so the Oracle, which as we know does not expire at all. Perhaps what you could do, either increase the great prophet points in the wonders, or perhaps nominally with a couple early builds like monument. You could give them the possibility for some great people points. Essentially it’s if you decide. Great prophets are now going to found religion perhaps there is some additional game balancing you are going to need to do. I like the idea too, but if it doesn’t go far enough.

Ken: Yeah, it definitely needs something because I think just everybody being able to found one religion, from 1 prophet right at the beginning of the game, you get them all too early. Everyone would get a prophet.

Wouter: Yeah.

Ken: Everyone would have a religion before you would usually see half the religions founded right now. You’d have everything maxed out.

Wouter: Yeah, from a realism point of view it does make sense. From a game play point of view it’s problematic, particularly what Ken says. You get all the religions in the first 100 turns of the game, or so, and that’s not quite what you want either, I think.

Ken: Maybe they can spit it the way they do with golden ages.

Wouter: You want some spread.

Ken: So the first one you have to have 1 prophet. Then you have to have 2 prophets. Then 3 prophets, that would actually take a long time. You would have to save up your prophets for ages.

Wouter: Yeah, but then it’s maybe not worthwhile anymore. Especially not after the 3rd religion.

Ken: Yeah.

Oscar: I think that tweaking the spread rates of the later religions is the best idea. To spread much faster.

Tony: That’s an XML mod, that’s easy.

Ken: Well if you use the hard-coded order on a normal game, but, you would have to do something tricky for BtS to dynamically change it based on what you selected.

Wouter: BtS looks at the starting tech not the name of the religion.

Ken: Oh ok. So it’s changing automatic.

Wouter: Because I have found that something like Judaism, put at a late tech, it had a higher spread rate than it would have had as an early tech, and you did get a missionary and all that stuff.

Ken: Oh ok.

Dan: Yeah the spread rate itself is a relatively easy change. Also what also has to be changed game play wise, if anything, is also minimal.

Wouter: Yeah any solution you can come up with also has a lot of problems with it. If you just tweak the spread rate a little bit and maybe give the last religion 1 or 2 extra missionaries, I think that’s the most elegant solution.

Dan: Speaking of problematic solutions, LDC again, however you pronounce that.

(Everyone attempts to pronounce his name)

Dan: I was closer than the first time, not that that is saying much, suggests permitting later founding religions to overcome older ones by destroying them in the process, and would require the ousted religion to send a missionary to possibly even to be allowed back in.

~Everyone: Oohhhh~

Tony: Yeah that happens in real life but we don’t like to admit it.

Dan: Even if I were to accept that notion of the idea in the game, which I don’t, why couldn’t the older ones then spread back and possibly push the newer ones out. Even in cities where they previously didn’t have a presence. So no, no, no…

Tony: It’s war!

Dan: (Laughs)

Ken: I can possibly see something like that as an option. Say you have 1 state religion, and you found another religion, and you have a schism with the old religion, and some of it conveys some of your old religions into the new religion. Kind of like get it going faster.

Dan: That might sound like an interesting scenario but I’m not sure I’d want that in the game otherwise.

Tony: Religious persecution is very ugly and I wouldn’t want to have to see it every time I play the game.

Ken: Yeah, but you’ve been using the same argument to say, “Well war is ugly so we shouldn’t have that in the game either.”

Tony: No, war is fun.

~laughter~

Wouter: No I think the biggest problem here is lack of control. If you work very hard to get your religions spread all over the map then suddenly you lose half the places where you founded it. That’s not a lot of fun.

Dan: ‘SlightlyMadman’ suggests certain religions competing with certain others. He then goes to naming certain religions competing with certain others.

Ken: Oh, no.

Dan: Uh, that’s just Maki:ng a bad idea worse.

Tony: Yeah, we’ve gotten into the scary zone.

Dan: ~Laughs~ PolyCast is a scary zone Tony. I thought you knew that by now.

Tony: Uh, I’m learning so slowly.

[[INTERMEZZO]]

Dan: To barb or not to barb, that is the question.

Tony: I’ve been always playing with barbarians ever since the great wall came out; it’s just too strong a wonder not to have them turned on.

Dan: This user in question ‘Soneji’. He has barbs enabled and although he finds attacks annoying it’s a hell of a lot more realistic in the earlier years as compared to not having them. He also argues that capturing barb cities can save on production. I think there’s an important word: CAN.

Ken: Yeah, I just go with the regular barb settings but occasionally I just have these games where I am being swamped by them. I think it has something to do with the random numbers generated and the rest of the map being filled out and I still got some space near me that’s unexplored, but they’re just coming at me from every angle, and I’m building and building defenses. It’s all I can do just to hold them off. And even then-

Oscar: Well you can dispel the fog and they don’t come near.

Ken: Yeah, I can’t even get there to explore the fog.

Tony: I think that has something to do with axmen, that’s what I think.

Ken: Yeah it’s the axmen. I don’t have any trouble with warriors.

Tony: A well upgraded archer, if you have 2 per city, at least one with city defense, I noticed that if they are fully healed they take the axe men almost every time. Especially if you build on hills.

Ken: Yes, yes. But it’s like 3 axe men at a time.

Tony: Oh, god, I’ve played those games. I usually just quit them.

Oscar: I think what the problem is the destruction of the improvements and the killing of workers, for example.

Wouter: Exactly.

Oscar: The barb is running around and you can’t improve your land and they even destroy it. But I like them. It makes the world feel more alive. Eventually I would like to see them evolve into minor civs or something like that.

Tony: That would be cool

Ken: Yeah. About the time they get railroads they should finally become a civilization.

Dan: Yeah if they’ve managed to hold on for that long and they’ve got some cities- ~laughs~

Ken: Yeah, sure. “Hey guys we are like a size 26 city now, we really ought to like give ourselves a name.”

Tony: (Chuckles)

Dan: “Alright go for 26ers. Woo, 26ers, yay!”

~Laughter~

Tony: “Oh we lost a population point, oh crap!”

~Laughter~

Tony: The name’s not good anymore.

Dan: “Oh no, we are now the civilization formally known as the 26ers. Wooo!”

~Laughter~

Dan: Yeah, like Ken, I play with barbs on. Not raging barbarians.

Wouter: I always play with raging barbarians. It’s fun. I mean otherwise its just free XP points. It’s not much of a challenge there.

Tony: That’s a little masochistic, but-

Ken: Free XP. Wooo!

Dan: Yeah. Woo! (laughs)

Ken: Well, I guess to each their own.

Dan: Quote of the thread, ‘SwordofStriker’, “I only play with raging barbarians. Anything less would be uncivilized.”

~Laughter~

Ken: Yeah I wish that the barbarian setting was adjustable in the normal choices when you start a game.

Wouter: A few more options would be nice.

TONY and Dan: Yeah.

Ken: It’s like when you select your world’s size and your speed, and all those things, and its like, they used to have an option there, where it was right in there at the beginning. Timid barbarians, barbarians with pillows, you know.

Wouter: Yeah, exactly. I know CtP had like 4 to 5 options.

Ken: Yeah and SMAC had like “prolific native life form” and stuff like that.

Tony: (Laughs) There’s another fungus or worm.

Dan: Prolific. Hey, hey Ken, this is a family friendly show.

Tony: Oh, gosh.

Dan: (Laughs)

Tony: I would like to see a limited, very limited, form of diplomacy available for barbarians. Like maybe of you pay them a crapload of money, like in civ2, they leave you alone. Or something like that.

Ken: Like, you literally pay through the nose, then they’ll go back for a while, come back another day, that kind of thing?

Tony: Yeah.

Ken: That is historically accurate, because that is what they did most of the time.

Oscar: It was a nice touch in Civ2.

Dan: Yeah, and in CivRev you are going to be able to talk to the barbarians. Woohoo!

Tony: Yay.

~Laughter~

Ken: “Grunt, grunt. Money. Now! Or sex!”

Tony: “Bar, bar, bar…”

Ken: “Pillage, pillage, pillage…”

[DanQ]

Workshop

Tony: What I don’t like about some of the tanks that are out is some of them I actually had to re-animate because the guy who made it just made it a bunch of artifacts and polys just kind of loosely floating together, and I had to actually go in and re-bone the darn thing. Aww it was a pain.

Ken: Tanks have bones?

Tony: Oh, they actually do, they have a turret bone, and a body bone. It just has to do with how they structure the animations and the model. Like an infantry has a lot more bones than a tank or an airplane, an airplane has very few (chuckles.)

Ken: Yeah, so I guess when they do the little turret explosion, where the turret pops off that’s kind of a separate bone to do that?

Tony: Yeah exactly. And when you learn that re-animating method, where you can take a different infantry unit, for instance when I took a scout and put him on a chariot to make a Native American on a chariot, I re-boned that scout to the chariot driver. But I also managed to apply this after many horrible glitches. I managed to apply this to a mechanized unit. Its just good for getting animations onto units that didn’t have any animations at all, you know.

Ken: Hmm.

Tony: It’s a lengthy… process for the most part.

Oscar: Personally I don’t do mods, or modeling, but I model the banner. The flag banner, the other day, and it was, ohhh, I feel very happy.

Tony: Well you model more than me I actually, the most of what I do is manipulate models that are already made. I have trouble fabricating models from scratch. I just don’t know enough.

Oscar: Naaa. Its, what I did is, a very simple thing. The basic shapes, and the cube, a couple of tubes and with a nice texture they look nice. I add the detail by texturing always.

Tony: Yeah I had trouble trying to figure out how to skin a model, because I love Maki:ng textures, I just couldn’t figure out how to put a skin onto the model. It was mind boggling.

Oscar: Pain through the ass. It’s a rut you will be in; I used that all the time.

[[INTERMEZZO]]

Oscar: So Tony, what are you doing right now? Not right now, but modding?

Tony: I had a data crash on Second Revolution, so I’m taking a break, and I’m playing Half-Life 2 orange box.

Oscar: Oh, cool.

Tony: I was done with the map, placing all the cities on North America and whatnot, and lo and behold I uninstall civ because I had some data problems, and reinstalled it, and it wiped out my backup of the file, and I cussed for about a half an hour, and just said nope. Taking a break.

Ken: I mean it’s not Fall of Second Revolution, or its all done since the last time you updated it?

Tony: I didn’t lose any of the mod, I had the map just started. All I have now is the map of the capital city. I had the map completely populated with cities, and I was about to move on to buildings and units and it would have been released by now, but, ugh!

Ken: Yeah. That’s what diversion control software is good for.

Tony: Oh you want to hear some salt in the wound, I went and downloaded a deleted file recovery program, and the first one I downloaded discovered it right away, something that would’ve helped, and when I tried to recover it, it asked me for money. And when I finally got a freeware going, when I had downloaded a freeware one, it had already overwritten the file by downloading it, so.

Ken: File overwrite. (laughs.) That is some poetic irony there.

Tony: The biggest thing I’m really happy with, is that every civ has like 8 unique units, and that’s what my big central focus was. Replay value per faction.

Ken: That is a lot of unique units.

Tony: Yeah, it came out to be like 70 or some odd unique units.

Ken: Whoa. And you’ve done art for all of them?

Tony: For a large majority of them. I’m not so good at fabricating tanks, so I pulled a lot of those from CFC, but pretty much all of the infantry units, for the most part I did art for, and it was a lot of fun too. Yeah, so, I’m taking a little breather on the Revolution, and well still be uprising soon enough, I hope.

[[INTERMEZZO]]

Dan: Derek “Kael” Paxton on the Civ4 mod Fall from Heaven.

Derek: Everybody that’s on the team right now contributed tons before they were ever invited. There was only one person, ‘Talcus’, who’s on the programming side, that was ever invited that had never, as far as I know, never played Fall from Heaven before that. Never posted in a Fall from Heaven thread.

The reason he was invited, was about 3 months before the SDK was released public, Soren gave me a copy of it to try out and play with a little bit and this is between Fall from Heaven 1 and Fall from Heaven 2. The first thing I realized was this is way beyond my capabilities, and the things that I wanted to do in FFH2, I wasn’t going to be able to do them. So I looked around the community and I saw ‘Talcus’ out there, and he was modding these mod components that I don’t think got as much appreciation as they deserve because he was so far ahead of what anybody else was trying to do.

We are still looking at Civ4 being out just a couple months at this point, and people were kind of tweaking/learning what all the values were and things, and he was designing a Python only spell system, and things that people were not looking to try to do for another 6-8 months. So I asked him would you be interested in modding a spell system for FFH2, and coming onto the team and kind of doing this, and he said sure, and I talked to Soren and he said I could share the SDK system with him early. So he got to be able to rip into it and we got started just he and I there working for a while on what would be FFH2, and getting it made.

I’ve only had I person that I’ve invited that turned me down, and that was White Rabbit, who I invited way back, because he was modding such cool stuff, and a lot of the units we use in the mod were made by him. So I invited him to see if he wanted to join the team and he said, “You know what, no, I love modding stuff for you guys and I love that you guys use it, but my real passion is ethnically diverse units and I want to do that kind of work. So I’m not going to join the team, but ill keep modding fantasy stuff for you guys. It’ll be fine.” So I let that go for a little while, until we got asked to work on BtS, and everybody on the FFH team had to sign a non-disclosure agreement/ so I went back to him at that point and I said, “Hey, you know what, we’d really like to have you on the team and if you are on the team you are going to have to sign this non-disclosure agreement with Firaxis.” That peaked his interest a little bit and he agreed to join then. So… (laughs)

[DanQ]

Senate

Dan: A thread, and a discussion I can’t even believe there is one about this, but here it is: Code of Laws Technology is Overrated. Apparently. ‘oyzar’ says,”If you are not playing a leader that has the organized trait, and are below Monarch level, you don’t need courthouses. You don’t need it to help manage your economy because libraries, markets, and grocers will ALWAYS be better for your commerce cities.” and at even at or above Monarch, courthouses are, “a huge hammer investment for their return.”

Tony: I think it’s a good investment for 5 gold per turn.

Ken: Yeah, because you are going to be running a pretty high research rate a lot of the time. So all those money producing improvements don’t tend to make you that much money when you really look at it. You can save a lot on your maintenance, especially if you are very spread out empire. If you don’t expand in a very nice round sphere, with your capital in the middle, and everything is close. If your are very octopus like, then you can get some really crappy distance maintenance on things and your really need it.

Wouter: And even just the regular maintenance is pretty hefty.

Tony: Yeah.

Wouter: Unless you really want to found only a half dozen cities, or control in any way, whether you found them or conquer them.

Ken: Especially if you go on a giant reign of conquest, you’ve just suddenly doubled the size of your empire from it, and you really don’t want to burn down all those cities. You want to be greedy and keep them all, you need courthouses.

Wouter: I think the problem here is ?? Always looks at the point of view of commerce cities, and in your high commerce cities then a market or a grocery is very efficient, and a courthouse does you relatively little good. Well a courthouse is strong in all other cities. Then some or all those cities will add up to what a single commerce city will give you.

Tony: Yeah the espionage boost is nice in the outlying cities as well.

Oscar: Yeah that’s true.

Ken: And don’t forget the religion.

Wouter: That helps.

Dan: Yeah.

Ken: If you can get there first.

Wouter: And it helps you on your way to Civil Service which is a hugely important tech.

Ken: Huge, yes.

Wouter: It is a pretty important tech. I don’t know if it’s overrated because I don’t really follow the strategy forums all that closely but it is pretty important.

Tony: A lot of the wars I play, I build about 3-4 cities that just produce units, and in those situations courthouses seem a little useless, and it’s hard to get the Civil Service with so specialized cities.

Wouter: Yeah, well it still saves you a lot on maintenance cap. Producing those units to conquer cities you are going to have to lower your maintenance cost. So if you can fins a gap somewhere they do help.

Dan: Because when you got maintenance problems, an ounce of prevention is better than pound of cure.

Tony: That’s true. I also have this strategy where I take all my inexperienced units and just throw them at the walls of the enemy cities. (laughs) That brings the maintenance down.

~Laughter~

Dan: The only argument for Code of Laws and in turn Courthouses that I don’t agree with, I guess it’s just my playing style or my difficulty level I’m not sure, is that it opens up the Caste System so you can hire merchants to sustain a flagging economy.

Ken: I never use that thing.

Wouter: I don’t use it, but if you use a specialist economy it’s probably a useful civic, but I’m more of a cottage guy myself.

[[INTERMEZZO]]

Dan: Civic choices for space race victory. ‘Norvin_Green’ is looking for advice for what civics to adopt if you are going for one of these.

Ken: Well obviously Bureaucracy so you can pump out those spaceship components in your capital, along with other cities. Whatever else is going to max out your industry.

Tony: I’d say state property so you don’t have to worry about maintenance at all, you know?

Oscar: If you don’t have a good hammer corporation in your cities…

Ken: Hmm. Yeah, but how many of the corporations are really that great for the space race victory. The amount you have to put in to building that corporation could better go to all the other things that are going to get you the space components later on. I mean I know its kind of an earlier phase where you do the corporations, where you actually get to that stuff,. But getting to that portion of the game is where you want to be building up your industry to really be able to pump out your components later on. You should be building ironworks, **** like that.

Oscar: Universal suffrage is good too for the hammer per turn and its makes a nice addition. Not great, but.

Dan: Yeah. Ken you mentioned earlier Bureaucracy. I can see Bureaucracy later on in the race when it’s become more about production, as opposed to research, and that’s assuming you have a strong capital city, which I hope you would have a strong capital city.

Oscar: Yeah hammer heavy capital.

Ken: Possibly organized religion if you don’t need the research. Or say free religion instead, depends on how your religion situation is, but that’s definitely something you want to consider.

Tony: I don’t think organized helps with spaceship parts. I think aren’t those projects?

Ken: Oh yeah, good point.

Tony: Instead of buildings.

Ken: But you may use it to get the buildings that going to boost you later on like your factories and stuff.

Tony: Yeah, that’s true.

Dan: You mentioned State Property. If your empire wasn’t very large you-

Ken: Might play for the trade routes, pump up to get the research first to get there.

Tony: Caste system might help if you create a lot of specialists to help out with the building.

Ken: Get those great engineers and then pop the parts.

Oscar: But caste system, its merchants, artists, and scientists.

Dan: Yeah no engineers.

Tony: Oh I forgot, I forgot.

Ken: Yeah that’s why it sucks.

Tony: That’s why I don’t use caste system.

~Laughter~

Dan: Someone here, Invisible Stalk, says that you can switch to serfdom, but he says it’s probably not worth the anarchy, your production cities can probably keep up your research anyway.

Ken: Serfdom sucks. Serfdom if for building improvements faster. Right? That has nothing to do with the space race.

Oscar: Oh, maybe you can fast switch all your windmills to mines, and perhaps workshops.

Ken: Yeah. If you are going to do a massive terraforming at the last minute of your cities.

Tony: Personally I think that a spaceship victory is not so much a civics strategy, but a technology tree strategy and a city placement strategy when it comes down to it.

Ken: Yeah because you are going to need at least 3 super production cities, essentially, to build everything. Or maybe if you want to spread it out really far and you, like build 1 component every city. We’re talking like a dozen cities, but-

Tony: Yeah, I actually do that, usually if I play a spaceship, I usually do that intensive builder empire where it’s defensive and huge and giant.

Dan: Mad Scientist also adds that players should consider situations where you are playing certain leaders and traits. He mentions a few there, I’m not going to go into any specifically, but with BtS you may also want to take into consideration unique buildings as well, because you can randomize leaders and civilizations in the game, but that’s an even more situational consideration. I think ‘Norvin_Green’ was looking for generalized advice.

Ken: Yeah. I think the Russians unique building should have given them better space production. It just gives them free scientists.

Tony: I thought it does.

Ken: Blah.

Tony: Really?

Oscar: Oh but they help too.

Ken: Only a tiny bit at the very end. What’s a laboratory? All laboratories give a little spaceship production but their laboratories should give even more. Like I think its +50%. I think it should be a +100% or something like that. That would’ve been more Russian.

Tony: Oh and I always, you know, the space elevator is a great strategy to pursue.

Ken: Yeah. It’s almost a prerequisite. I mean, if you are really in a competition with someone else you usually make it or break it. Who got that wonder? If you are just dancing late walking across the touchdown line, looking backwards, showing them the ball and all that stuff then you don’t need it. But if it’s going to be close it’s very important.

Oscar: Yes.

Tony: And, like the UN, save an engineer for it you know.

Oscar: A golden age is good too.

Ken: Yeah.

Oscar: Perhaps save a couple of great people.

Dan: Golden ages might be worth it, now and BtS, but-

Tony: Not before.

Dan: They reduce the number of great people from the start.

Ken: Yeah one instead of two.

[DanQ]

Vault

FROM EPISODE 20

Dan: From rtmattsleepers, he says that everyone would rather start with a scout that a warrior. Generally speaking, yes, but I think there are some exceptions. First of all smaller, and/or water maps, player difficulty level, and any combination of Isabella, Tokugawa, or Montezuma near me.

Ian: I’ll take my warrior.

Maki:- Yeah, ill take the scout, it doesn’t take that long to build a warrior.

Wouter: Yeah that’s probably the thing. Warrior’s easily built and you don’t need any techs for it.

Ian: The only reason I like siding with the warrior is when I easily kill the kitties I get my woodsman promotion and I can move through forests fairly quickly. There’s a fair good amount of forests generally depending on the map type, where you start, so. Scouts always get destroyed by more powerful animals like bears. Where a warrior could probably defeat a bear if he were really fortified.

Wouter: If you picked the right battlefield, its ok. I always make sure they attack me on a hill with a forest. Ideally from across a river, but that’s of course not always possible.

Ian: That’s definitely the best way to do it, fortified as well.

Imran: Probably a scout.

Ian: Well I’m alone. I’m all alone in my warrior.

Imran:- Well, because a scout you can go and pop all those fun little goody huts. Scout out the area; find a place for another city. Where as with a warrior you get a one movement rate instead of a two is a big hindrance I think in the beginning of the game.

Ian: Yes, I can see that, definitely being a possibility, but I’m just going to mention very quickly to close the segment, something Dan mentioned at an earlier pod cast, which of course we all know I listen to. Dual maps-

Imran:- He’s the only one. (laughter)

Ian: 18 civs, no holds barred.

Maki: (Laughs)

Ian: You need your warrior in that case.

Dan: (Laughs)

Wouter: Yeah, then you need the warrior, that’s true.


FROM EPISODE 11

Blake: So now it’s the Pyramids. The 2 most powerful wonder combos are the Pyramids and the Great Library, because the pyramids you get representation, and for the Great Library you have 2 scientists to get the beaker bonus, so… you can also use an engineer from the Pyramids to help the Great Library which is very useful on ??

Dan: We are going to have controversy, because (laughs) guess what’s on my 5 worse lists.

Blake: Bad Dan.

Maki: The Pyramids?

Dan: It is, now there is a reason.

Maki:- Dan?!?

Dan: Now there is a reason. Yes it is overpowered. I think it’s overpowered. But even if you don’t think it’s overpowered, yes it’s powerful, but at the time that you can build it, it’s too costly as far as I’m concerned. 450 hammers?

Blake: In its time. If you don’t have stone you just don’t bother.

Maki: Yeah.

Blake: The other powerful combination is of course the Great Library and the Colossus, which is for a- you need massive amounts of water. That means you have pretty much won because you have so much more commerce than anyone else.

Maki: What else is on your 5 worse list Dan?

Blake: Yeah, let’s hear the five worst now.

Dan: (Chuckle) My next one on the list is Angor Wat.

Blake: What? Yes.

Maki: (Laughs) Yeah that’s sort of, if you miss having something else to go in a great prophet city, and you were trying to use that, but no it’s not that great. You’re alright on that one.

Blake: Let’s face it. If it’s just late, you kind of happy to get a refund because its gold.

(Laughter)

Maki: I have nothing else to build in this city until I research a couple more technologies, oh heck, ill have them build Angor Wat.

Blake: We want a refund. But it’s a bit useful if you’re a spiritual civ and you have many temples, basically you can run a lot of priests, it can be quite useful. Then its kind of real, so.

Dan: And if you have a lot of specialist capability you’re not likely to use priests at this stage of the game.

Blake: That’s fun to use to get at a lot of prophets into a city, probably one through Wall Street and Iron Works. Like if you generate a dozen prophets, that’s like 24 hammers and a hundred extra gold or something. It’s pretty nice.

Dan: Other reasons I have put Angor Wat on this list is there are comparable and even better cultural boosters that are available at the same time and it does become obsolete. So, go away.

Maki: Relatively quickly it becomes obsolete if I remember correctly.

Dan: Yeah obsolete with computers, so.

Maki: Well, depends on how fast your research is going.

Blake: Considering you can light bulb for great scientists fairly early in the game, you cant teach [undecipherable] for a long time. Yeah it does get me as one of the most situational world wonders.

Maki: That’s what we should rename Dan’s list: The Situational Wonders.

Blake: No some of them are just bad so let’s get onto the additional.

Maki: Especially bad ones… do you have some bad ones in there Dan?

Blake: Let’s see if he gets the bad ones correct. Pressure.

Dan: Now onto number 3 on my worse list: Hagia Sophia. Here’s why: benefit about the workers building improvements 50% faster, just go with the serfdom labor civic. Its available to get through research at comparable times, besides when you could build the Hagia Sophia. Again you have comparable or even better culture boosters at or near the same time, and I know there are people out there that are saying, “what about the great prophet people points?” well its not on my best list but I think my better choice that Hagia Sophia that that would be the Spiral Minaret instead where you get plus 1 gold from all state religion buildings too.

Blake: Yeah it’s a bad wonder. I remember, um, reasons for that is it goes obsolete very quickly on a tech which you really need, I think Steam Power.

Maki: Yeah.

Blake: You kind of want to get Steam Power very quickly because it’s a powerful tech.

Maki: You don’t want to delay Steam Power just for that.

Blake: From Engineering to Steam Power is a bit long. Especially it can take a while to actually build the thing because its not a high priority. I think its with marble its built faster, which is a bit weird. Any of the other reasons you probably ran out of work to do until you get Replaceable Parts, which is just before Steam Power. So yes it’s a bad wonder.

Maki: Yeah, he’s actually got a bad one on there! Oh noes!

~laughter~

Dan: The world has come to an end.

Blake: Apocalypse Now.

~laughter~

Dan: I think number 4 on my list is if my memory serves me correctly, I think you Blake will agree with me on this one, The Kremlin.

Blake: Yeah.

Maki: I think I’ve built the Kremlin once just for the heck of it.

Dan: Just to say you did.

Blake: It used to be a lot more beastly before they nerfed it. It was half cost rush. It was very useful, but, now its not quite so good. Its kind of more balanced and you don’t really bother. …

Maki: Now its balanced and boring.

Blake: Yeah. It’s a bit of unbalanced.

Dan: Yeah. Looking from the artist’s booster, a fact that they even get comparable better boosters available to you, and it does become obsolete with fiber optics. So, what’s the point?

Maki: Yeah +2 artist great people points. Ooooh. I could run an artist and get that.

Blake: You don’t really want artists at that stage of the game.

Maki: Yeah, exactly.

Dan: Perhaps this is another case of, “hmm I don’t have anything else to build, ill start building the Kremlin, but gosh I hope someone beats me to it so I can get the gold!”

~Laughter~

Maki: Exactly.

Dan: “Only 3 more turns until its built? Um lets take a few workers off resource building time. There we go.

Maki: “Quick! Someone build it, please!”

Dan: And, finally on my 5 worse list: Versailles

Maki: What?!?

Dan: There’s a reason why. My argument is this: the effects of Versailles can be reasonably obtained, no not perfectly, but they can be reasonably obtained with the national wonder of the Forbidden Palace. Again, with both of them, you’ve got a reduction in maintenance of nearby cities and Forbidden Palace can get you 40% of the culture that Versailles can get. 40% of the culture benefit and 50% of the great merchant people points.

Maki: Yeah but Versailles is useful a few times when I’m built on a really big map and had a fairly large empire. I needed it for that most newest section of it, usually, or in some cases I think I’ve seen other people actually play to build Versailles first and then go conquer on another continent and build the Forbidden Palace over there. So it has some use, its not completely useless.

Blake: My problem it’s so darn expensive. Kind of need it build in a fairly new city to get a benefit from it, but its not going to save you a lot of time, so?

Maki: Yeah that’s why I think I saw people building Versailles in their more homeland area, and building the Forbidden Palace elsewhere because it’s a lot cheaper.

Blake: Usually by then you just run State Property if you want to get that effect. Then later it goes to being completely useless. Its obsolete with State Property. So the thing you cant believe is that you don’t have, what is it the Chechen Itza? +25% city defense.

Maki: Chicken pizza. (giggle) Sorry it’s a mental nickname so ill remember how to pronounce it. Chicken pizza.

Blake: Chicken pizza. (laughs). It’s the chicken pizza wonder. +25% defense is not much. It really doesn’t do anything.

Maki: And then it goes away with rifling.

Blake: Because you are just going to bomb-dive it down in the same number of turns anyway.

Maki: Yeah that just needs an extra catapult or two to get it down.

Blake: Well it takes the same number of turns. 4 turns to blast it down with it. 4 turns without it. So what’s the point? Need to make it take longer to bombard down if its any use to build it. But there just isn’t. So I just kind of replace the pyramids with that wonder and that ?? to be fairly good.

Dan: I can’t believe to remember the name of this, Maki, you think of chicken pizza. I can’t believe you would insult chicken pizza that way, now come on.

Maki: It sounds the same, almost.

Dan: How insensitive can you be!

Maki: Yeah the real life wonder is a lot cooler than the Civ 4 wonder.

~Laughter~

Dan: Any others?

Maki: Hmm.

Dan: Yes? No?

Blake: I’d put the 3 Gorges on the worst list. You want it on the worst list because it comes too late and its too expensive.

Maki: Well most games that I’ve gotten that far in the game I do end up building it, but then again most of those games I’ve already got a pretty good lead anyway.

Blake: The thing is coal plants are really, really cheap. Only 150 hammers which is pretty cheap [undecipherable]... once you’ve done that the 3 Gorges is not so useful. Its just a bit of [undecipherable] on health. It is useful occasionally but a lot of the time isn’t.

[DanQ]

Mailbag

Dan: We got an email that wasn’t specifically directed at the show. I actually did reply personal to this already, but the likelihood that she will hear this on the show is probably kind of minimal, but hope springs eternal. “I purchased a new laptop with the Windows Vista operating system and was disappointed to get an error loading font error code 28 when I tried to start Civ 3. Any help will be appreciated. Thank you.” this message from Emily Humes.

Tony: Now, now. Hold on I can get her help right now. Don’t use Vista! (Laughter) uh-oh Microsoft is going to strike me down.

~Laughter~

Ken: We recommend the upgrade to XP.

~Laughter~

Dan: Now, unfortunately id like to be able to say that from my research I was able to determine that it was Windows Vista was the problem, but apparently it can also happen to those on XP and 2000. Talking specifically about Civ 3 Conquests, so I guess my question to Emily, “is that the version of civ 3 you are trying to run?” what you want to do is go into the Conquests folder, and then re-name the file LSANS.FOT to anything else that you like so long as it is not LSANS.FOT. You should now be able to run the game. You should be able to find Conquests under the following default directory structure on your system: program files/infogrames interactive/civilization 3.

This blog-post Thunderpeel2001.blogspot.com. I wasn’t able to try this myself, as of course I’m running XP, but again it appears not to be an issue limited to those running Civ 3 on Vista systems. Based on a number of comments directly it seems this has worked for a number of others as well. Apparently the reason for this is that within the LSANS.FOT file is instructions for Civilization to load the actual font file, which actually ends with the extension TTF, from apparently hard-coded to look for the Breakaway directory under “C:“, under breakaway Civ3 Conquests LSANS.TTF, and the file isn’t there.

So the game wont load. Of course this is the name for the default path for the game, so Breakaway games should include this name for the file with their patch. If you remember Civ Conquests was developed by both Firaxis and Breakaway Games.

Tony: I did not know that.

Dan: Yes. The only thing this person said on this blog-post scratching my head was, “I wanted to post this on a civ 3 forums somewhere, but I couldn’t find an active thread about the problem so at least here it should be for good. Hope it helps somebody.“ You know what, blog-poster, if you have something you want to communicate and you don’t see an active thread on it, you can start a thread of your own did you know that? You’re welcome. This blog-poster I mean not Emily. Although the blog-poster posted the solution could very well be female, that’s true. There are women on the internet and there are girls that play Civ. WOOO! Girls play Civ!

~Laughter~

Dan: If you thought an episode of PolyCast was going to go by without that line, you were sorely mistaken.

Tony: Well thank goodness I feel relieved now that I’ve heard it. My wife plays Civ.

Dan: Oh! Wives playing Civ. Woo!

~Laughter~

Dan: From what I have read, also about Civ 4, there has been – I’ve seen some conformation – that Civ 4 will run on the 64 bit version of Vista, but with Vista specifically you may need to do under Administrator accounts, set it to XP service pack 2 compatibility mode.

Tony: You know its funny you mention that I’m running Windows XP Professional and 64 editions so I’m running 64 bit XP, and Civ runs great on it. It runs really great on it.

[DanQ]

Outro

Dan: Advice on how to start with Boudica. What you want to do is you want to take her out on a nice date and some flowers, get to know her, ask her what she likes, listen…be a good communicator.

Tony: Step 2, move on to the blouse. Oh wait that wasn’t family-friendly at all.

Dan: (Laughs)

Oscar: You have to remember all girls want to be flattered, but they don’t want you to be all the time around them and you have to show them that you have some strength of character.

Tony: Yeah, or you can move to the blouse.

Dan: (Laughs)

Tony: I really liked the next thread title – I just read ahead. It is a true statement at least for Civ 4, “Tokugawa is a bastard.”

Tony: (Laughs)

Oscar: I like him. For some reason. He’s mean. I want him to be my friend. But he doesn’t like me; what can I do? The bastard!

[ZEE]

[Zoid]

Re: Intro

Originally posted by DanQ

Oscar: Oh if I touch it, it shines a little.

Ehrm... Male bonding?

[DanQ]

Re: Re: Intro

Originally posted by AAHZ

Originally posted by Zoid
Ehrm... Male bonding?

[DanQ]

Thank You to AAHZ

This is a belayed thank you to AAHZ for providing this episode transcript.