29-05-2003 08:20									#1
	New Mod: Rise of Civs (working title) Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

Note: I just changed the name, maybe people will take it more seriously with a serious name.

I've been hacking around with the data\*.xml files and gotten some interesting variations to work. There's still some outstanding bugs (with RoN or with my stuff, not sure), so I'm hoping someone has an idea.

Gameplay Changes:

City Development.
+ City Radius is smaller, forcing you to pick and choose which buildings you really want in each city.
+ Military buildings must now be built in city radius.
+ Military buildings can only be built 1/city
+ Farms can only be built 1/city (bugged)
+ Farms can be built outside the city radius (bugged)
+ Cities must be built further apart

Military Units:
+ Completely new unit advancement tree
+ 15 Unit classes: Light/Medium/Heavy Infantry, Light/Heavy Cavalry, HQ, Intelligence, Spy, Artillery, Light Artillery, Fighter, Tactical/Strategic Bombers, Battleship, Cruiser, Sub, Carrier
+ All units have new combat strengths, speed, range, etc.
+ All cavalry now three figures
+ Unit attack/strength/range now scales more significantly over ages
+ Headquarters unit merges General and Supply Wagon and provides Versailles healing power.

Military Buildings:
+ Production buildings repurposed: Barracks builds LI/MI/LC/Scout. Stable is now Academy and builds HQ and Spy. Siege Factory is now Smithy and builds HI/HC and the two artillery pieces.
+ Tower has stronger attack, stronger range, can no longer garrison units.
+ All units can garrison in Fort, which has larger LOS but less attack capability

Tech Development:
+ Recommended play, on Very Expensive/Slow setting
+ 3 sub-levels of unit strength can be researched per level (bugged)
+ New military researches cheap, but extremely slow
+ Not all unit types have new levels for each age

Notes about the new unit tech tree:

I'll add a list of the units and when you get them, but basically, you don't get a new unit for each class every time you advance an age. For example, the Medium Infantry class has a new unit at Ancient, Classical, Medieval... and then Industrial. This contributes to the different ages having different 'feels' for the battles they have.

Current Bugs:

Farm-Limit bug. I've set a property in rules.xml to set the max number of farms in a city to 1. I've also set the flag in the building object to limit it to one per city. However, in all playtesting so far, I've been able to build unlimited farms in a city.

Outside-city-farm-bug. ALthough you can build farms outside a city, your citizens won't actually work it. I had a strange behavior where citizens would move to it to try to work it, and get stuck in a loop where they couldn't, and kept trying.

A possible workaround may be to not make farms a 'workable' entity. It only generates the default food output, and you just have to place a lot of them.

Unit-upgrade bug. This has been impossible to replicate, but I've gotten it twice. It seems that somehow during the course of a game, you can reach a point where despite upgrading the unit class, it only lets you build units of the original class. I.e., I can only build Javelins but I've researched Muskets.

I have no idea what to do to workaround that. All the dependencies are there. I can only get it when I'm not trying to. Normally, I can upgrade a unit all the way through the tree.

Project State:

Working on these bugs, and finishing implementing all the units. Right now I only have normal land units (no artillery, ships, planes) configured up to the end of Enlightenment Age. I've got their stats in an XLS, I just have to enter them in the XML. Everything else is done.

Does anyone know if BHG staff still monitor these forums? I'd love to get some input from them.

vc

Last edited by voodooc on 31-05-2003 at 08:58

	29-05-2003 13:35									#2
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

sounds pretty cool mod...be interesting to try out...really turns the unit production paradigm on its head from the AOK model. i like it.


for the farm bug...ya make it unworkable would be one solution but i think to balance it out it should only supply half the food, besides its makes sense the way u did it, ie) city is just city and farming is all in the country side.

what would also be cool for your HQ is if the HQ can only work as a healing station when its "setup"


but.."Rise of Pants"? maybe "Rise of Cities" might be more fitting

Last edited by One_Dead_Villy on 29-05-2003 at 14:32

	29-05-2003 21:09									#3
	Got spare money?

How'd you make it so military buildings have to be in the city radius?

	29-05-2003 21:58									#4
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

There's a flag in the buildingrules xml file that you set.

That's a cool idea for the HQ, I don't think I can control that though. For all the xml files they have in there... it doesn't seem *that* moddable. And man, whoever designed that XML DTD... needs more than a 5 minute introduction to XML. :O

vc

	30-05-2003 01:55									#5
	Remove this text

New Unit Tree:

A list of the new branches for the tree, as well as the new unit types gained at each age.

GROUND UNITS

Infantry Class

LI: Light Infantry
--------------------
- built at: barracks
- costs: 100% food

Fastest infantry class, also takes the least damage. Decent attack value, longest range of normal missile units.
Useful against anything that can be kept at a distance.

progression:
- Javelin (I)
- Bow (II)
- Arquebus (IV)
- Musket (V)
- Rifleman (VI)
- Jump Infantry (VIII)

MI: Medium Infantry
--------------------
- built at: barracks
- costs: 75% food, 25% wood

Good filler infantry class, all around average. Non-gunpowder units have Pike, gunpowder units are anti-tank. Less effective against heavy infantry.

progression:
- Spear (I)
- Pike (III)
- AT (VI)
- Powered Inf (VIII)

HI: Heavy Infantry
--------------------
- built at: smithy/factory
- costs: 50% food, 50% metal

Hand-to-hand infantry class. The most staying power of any other class, good damage. Extremely slow; vulnerable to harrassment from LI and LC.

progression:
- Sword (II)
- Foot Knight (III)
- Grenadier (V)
- SMG (VI)
- Mech (VII)

LC: Light Cavalry
--------------------
- built at: barracks
- costs: 25% gold, 75% wood
(costs change to oil/wood at Industrial)

Recon and harrassment cavalry class. Ranged attacks. Less staying power than LI, but fastest unit in game. Range inferior to regular LI. Useful for harrassing MI, HI, flanking, raiding.

progression:
- Horsemen (I)
- Horse Bow (II)
- Dragoon (IV)
- Carabineer (V)
- Recon (VII)

HC: Heavy Cavalry
--------------------
- built at: smithy/factory
- costs: 50% gold, 50% metal
(costs change to oil/metal at Industrial)

Shock attack class. Less staying power than HI but more hitting power than any other standard ground class. Effective vs. HI, LI, and LC (if you can close). Murdered by MI.

progression:
- Mtd Spear (II)
- Knight (III)
- Lancer (IV)
- Armor (VI)
- Hovertank (VIII)

A: Artillery
--------------------
- built at: smithy/factory
- costs: 33% metal, 66% wood

Siege class. Takes a long time to deploy and reload; minimum range hampers firing vs. troops. Useful against buildings.

HA: Light (Horse) Artillery
--------------------
- built at: smithy/factory
- costs: 33% metal, 66% food

Field artillery. Quick deployment, refire rate. No minimum range. Effective vs. ground troops, ships.

HQ: Headquarters
--------------------
- built at: academy
- costs: gold

Combined supply/general unit. Single type for all ages.

INT: Intelligence
--------------------
- built at: garrison
- costs: food

(ships and planes will be listed later)

	31-05-2003 08:57									#6
	Suffering from ads?

Update:

I was unable to make farms work outside the city radius. Turning off the 'g' flag made it so they didn't produce resources at all. There's no way to give them a default food output that they generate without workers. Any time you build them outside the city, they can't take workers.

So I put the 'g' flag back, took off the 'j' flag (which lets you build them outside the city).

I then upped the farm limit/city to 20. I'll be testing it shortly.

With town space being a premium, and the ability to place as many farms as you want, should allow for some interesting town development.

vc

	02-06-2003 05:22									#7
	Support Apolyton

Yet Another Update:

Fixed a bug I discovered where the Enlightenment Age LC would crash the game. The problem was, it was originally a Hussar (melee unit). I had made it a ranged unit without assigning a projectile speed.

Added the artillery units. The regular artillery (siege) units work as expected. I've decreased the projectile speed and removed the splash damage so thaty're pretty useless against troops.

The anti-troop artillery units (Horse Artillery) aren't working as planned, although they look really funny. They get stuck in some strange pack/unpack loop, or otherwise they point away from the enemy and go through their firing animation. I couldn't tell if they were actually attacking.

Battles end up being much more long and drawn out. Since everyone now has healing generals, that also contributes to battle duration.

I'm gonna try to finish off the Industrial+ age units this week, and hopefully have something people can download. I'll look at those siege units again and see what I might have busted.

vc

	05-12-2003 08:40									#8
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

Yet another collapsed mod...

I bet I'm annoying people by reviving old threads but damn it's annoying ME that all these great mods aren't even finished...

- PTM