Who Wants A Real Civ-like Mod?

[FrostyBoy]

I'm planning to make a more civilization style mod. One that takes you a week rather than an hour. (an hour? pft, so unrewarding. )

of course, I felt it was strange to start with a slightly advanced civ (with the library and village, etc).

I've always liked the idea of starting from a cave and working your way up from there.



The other problem was that RoN is scaled too high to have any earth-like experiences. So I struggled to scale everything downwards - and I finally succeed!


I have scaled down tree's, buildings, units, everything! and the illusion is great, you really feel that there is a lot of land and open space, you don't feel closed in by the edges. In the game I tested, I built the pyramids to see how a large wonder would stand against a tiny citizen, and it looked great, the pyramid dwarfed the citizens - making the pyramid look massive.

Anyway here are two pictures, one with the buildings changed and shrunk, the other showing that even though the units are smaller, you still get the feeling that you have a massive army. (and there are only 150 men in that screenshot!). Also, I had NO problem finding any unit or distinquishing the units from one another.

[FrostyBoy]

Note that the images have really poor quality coz the file size was quite big previous

And in this screenshot below, the buildings haven't been shrunk, only the units.

[Buckets]

Wow! That looks great! Can't wait to see how it all turns out.

[alva]

Very cool idea Snoops , be sure to keep us updated

[PMKeates]

Congratulations

Congratulations, you seem to be doing a good job of it so far

One of the first things I noticed (Other than the infantry being smaller ) was that the infantry seemed more to scale in comparison to some of the other units, namely the aircraft carrier and the battleship. It now looks like you could fit those little bliters into a ship!

[Downer]

Wow! That looks very nice Snoopy, and I like your idea!

If the "Big Huge" map is too small for what you're doing I think you can edit the mapsizes in the rules.xml file and make them a lot bigger.

[mw5299]

great job! l hope you can zoom up to see the details of your troops.

[Antrine]

How about these modifications: Pop Limit; 300, 350, 375, 400, 525, 650, 775, 800. Commerce Cap: 150, 250, 350, 400, 460, 520, 600, 700. Cost/Time ratio for all research set 3/5. Ramp final value at end 100% instead 50%. Goody Box raised to 100 (from 25). And big huge map size increased to 160 instead 100. Play with against fewer computer players however, to ease the burden on computer resources. Now you are lost on the map and moving in forward through the Ages in turtle time. Also play at the slowest speed setting, use pause often and now this feels like Civilization II all moded out!
Except much better!!
Thanks all for all tips and ideas plastered here all about.

[Boris Godunov]

Unbelievable...Sn00py, if you pull this off, you may actually get me to buy the game solely because of your mod!

[Inverse Icarus]

couple of questions sn00p:

1. are the borders scaleable? ie, does a city extend the same borders as it did in the original game?

2. what level of zoom are you using for your screen shots? i cant distinguish the unit types

[FrostyBoy]

Thanks antrine for the suggestions

uber, i'm still looking at editing the borders, I do want to scale them, I also want to allow for cities outside the border for the first few eras.

the first screenshot is the closest zoom the 2nd screenshot is the furtherest.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Sn00py
I also want to allow for cities outside the border for the first few eras.

Wouldn't that severely change the dynamic of the game? Why do you want to do this?

[FrostyBoy]

There must be freedom in the beginning, coz that's the way it was.

Of course, building cities too far away are going to probably hurt you more than help you.

[One_Dead_Villy]

great job....

combine it with some of the high pop cap...extreme slow research and high cost research mods etc...then it would rock, well more like roll...but u get it


but starting with a town isnt unreasonable for a civ like game. a civilization didnt start with cavemen, it started with the first farmers. we have hundreds of throusands of years of being cavemen, but within 10,000 years of farming, we're here with rockets in space from the 1st seed into the ground on purpose.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Sn00py
There must be freedom in the beginning, coz that's the way it was.

Of course, building cities too far away are going to probably hurt you more than help you.

Well, I have to disagree. I'm not sure what you mean by "that's the way it was." Keep in mind early civilization was confined to solitary City-States. People from Ur weren't going to go off and found a city in North Africa.

Even if that were the case, gameplay > realism, and I think allowing the founding of cities far away would be severely unbalancing. I don't agree that it would hurt more, if you think about it. You could access resources that ordinarily you wouldn't have, and you'd have two bases in which to build troops that can explore faster and strategically surround other civs.