2 NEW MODS: Withdraw & Famous People of History

[Dale]

Okay, on the weekend I got a little bored, so I wrote some more mods. Just sent them off to Rich today.

1. Withdraw mod.

- Forces the AI off your territory after 5 turns if it agrees to withdraw troops.
- Moves the units to a close border square.
- Moves boats to a close sea square.
- If it can't find a valid spot, it disbands the army. This fixes any problems with island nations, large borders and boats in lakes.

2. Famous People of History (FPH).

This was more a "wonder what this would be like" and I found it actually worked for the game. I won't say much about the mod as it'll spoil the first-time surprises, but I will say that key advances are now more important to get first. For example, the first two key advances I've referenced in the mod is slave labour and iron working. If you get them first, you'll get a surprise. I've tried to allow surprises for the militarist, religious and peaceful player. Hope you guys have fun with it. I did.


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Author of Diplomod. The mod to fix diplomacy.

Rommell to a sub-commander outside Tobruk: "Those Australians are in there somewhere. But where? Let's advance and wait till they shoot, then shoot back."

[Harlan]

Dale,
Your mods sound interesting. Would you mind if I explore the idea of using the Withdraw mod in my Alexander scenario?

Also, about your comment that it would be even more important to get to certain techs first. I worry about people going bazangas with making Feats of Wonder and other things that benefit reaching a certain tech first, cos that will only tend to cause the leading player to pull away even further. It would be more interesting IMHO, to have some of these things happen to the third place player, or last place player or whatever, esp. if they're the AI, to allow them to bounce back.

[WesW]

Good idea, Harlan. Anyone have any specific suggestions for these "feats of mediocrity"?

[Dale]

Harlon, by all means if you or anyone wants to use my mods go for it. I made them to better the game. As long as my name is kept with the mod.

As for the FPH mod, it was just something I was playing around with. I don't suggest running it as a permanent mod, but just a different angle on the game. Maybe think of it as a preview of these generals and folks that Civ3 says it will have. Also, I did think of the problem of leaping ahead, so I tried to make the flagged techs very close but on totally different strategies. For example: at the start of the game, you have to be careful which tech you research first, because it takes so long. If you go for slave labour, then someone else will get iron working before you. I've tried to keep the paths in synch with the techs you would head for if following that strategy. So all in all, because I usually play a diplomatic/economic style of strategy I was getting those special techs and the AI was picking up the military and religious ones.

And anyways, the benefits are not as great as the feats or wonders benefits.

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Author of Diplomod. The mod to fix diplomacy.

Rommell to a sub-commander outside Tobruk: "Those Australians are in there somewhere. But where? Let's advance and wait till they shoot, then shoot back."
[This message has been edited by Dale (edited January 29, 2001).]

[jkadabomb]

The Famous People Mod IS A DEAD LINK!!!!!!!!!!!! I would really love to see what youve done on it and it sounds interesting, so plz get the link fixed asap.

[Diodorus Sicilus]

There's something I've wanted to add to Civ games ever since my first or second CivII game long, long ago, and this seems to be related to it...
To balance the problem of people "pulling away" in tech and benefits of tech/advances, why not have a "diffusion factor' for advances? That is, the longer you are in contact with another civilization that has a certain advance, the more likely it is that the advance will 'diffuse' or spread to your civilization.
It has always seemed very wierd to me, that you could be in contact with a civ that had (for instance) the wheel for hundreds or thousands of years and never pick it up! This could be complicated by having several Levels of Diffusion, from Easy or Almost Automatic (once you see it, you can copy it pretty quickly, like the Wheel, Stirrup, etc) to Average to Hard (takes instruction and tools to make the tools, like Stealth or Iron Working).
The result would be to "level the field" in that it would be very hard to pull ahead technologically and stay there. On the other hand, it would balance the advantage of being isolated (no enemies) by penalizing isolation with slower advances - which was true historically, but in the long run would kill you in a game. Luckily, most of our playing maps are not big enough to keep you isolated for long, so this would only penalize most players early in the game. Once contact was made, the diffusion factors would allow you to catch up pretty quickly, unless someone wants to add a Plague Disaster Mod as well...

[OmniGod]

Fixed the link... sorry about that.

[Dale]

Just so I know how the mod goes in the real world, how are people finding the Famous People of History mod? Do they find it kills balance? How does it play? Does it work how I hope it works, by making special units more important? Just like to know.

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Author of Diplomod. The mod to fix diplomacy.

Rommell to a sub-commander outside Tobruk: "Those Australians are in there somewhere. But where? Let's advance and wait till they shoot, then shoot back."

[Gwap]

quote: Originally posted by WesW on 01-29-2001 03:11 PM Good idea, Harlan. Anyone have any specific suggestions for these "feats of mediocrity"?

LOL! I was about to suggest that you read A History of England, but that might upset some people who will then come to bombard me with facts about stuff they invented.

Suggested Feats of mediocraty/Feats for losers:

Tabloid Press
Your Empire is the third to build publishing houses in many of your cities. For the next 100 turns your population will violently react to anything that involves foreigners (AI establishes embassy, trade route, cancels trade route, asks to exchange maps, blablabla).

Out-dated public administration
Your empire has still not upgraded from Monarchy. For the next 25 turns, income -10% and settlers will get lost due to clerical errors.

National Health Service
Your empire is now the xth to build hospitals in many of your cities, but your health care system lets you down. The developing two-tier system aggravates the differences between the rich and the poor. Happiness -3. (-2 accumulators for having Tabloid Press and Out-dated public administration feats).

Lowest Life Expectancy of the Civilised World
(requires the Fish&Chips advance) Your empire now has the lowest life expectancy of all. All cities will decrease in population by 5 and maintenance cost of hospitals, drug stores, etc. will double (happiness -2 if you have Tabloid Press, double cost again for Out-dated public administration and National Health Service feats).

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Nostalgia isn't what it used to be
[This message has been edited by Gwap (edited January 31, 2001).]

[Chris Horscroft]

LOL Gwap! More feats of mediocrity:

The Deep Fried Mars Bar effect - your civ is the xth to build a set number of shopping malls (terrain improvement). All your units take a ten percent health cut as they hang out at malls in off duty hours, eating junk food.

The no-underwear impact. Your nation is the last to build hoplites. All hoplites you build for the next 250 years will insist on going into battle in tartan rugs and without underwear. Your enemies gain a 10 percent attack combat advantage due to your inappropriate battledress.

The North Sea Oil complaint. You are the last nation to build oil rigs. Half their benefit goes to the treasury of your nearest neighbour. Your citizens, however, get a loyalty boost from complaining about this.

And don't get me started about bagpipes...

Seriously, WesW, IMHO the mediocrity impact should mainly be
1) a boost to your science rate if you are researching techs that rivals with whom you have an embassy already have.
2) the first nation to build ANY improvement (for example, factories) gets 5 or 10% less of the production/happiness/growth increase from them than subsequent builders get, for (say) 25 turns - as inefficiencies offset some of the boosts that the improvements could theoretically provide.

You may want to alter the effect of 2) by age - ancient advances don't suffer from it, renaissance pioneers lose 5%, modern 10% etc. This would try to include the complexity factor and the difficulty in getting more advanced stuff right first time.

In effect, the pioneer would then lose some of the advantage for a short period, reflecting the learning curve.

Is that the sort of thing you're considering?

[WesW]

Yeah, Chris, those sound about like what I had in mind. The learning curve effect especially is a good idea.
The Tabloid Press one reminded me that for a long time, since books were so rare, people thought that anything written in a book had to be true. Perhaps the first civ to build a given number of Printing Presses can experience an unhappiness factor due to all the mis-information they are exposed to.

All the humorous ideas were very funny, btw.

Also, I just don't understand the importance that Scots place on not wearing underwear with a kilt. It seems that you would end up with raw nuts for the "honor" of potentially exposing yourself every time you went up the stairs or a stiff wind blew.

[Matthew Watson]

You'll nae catch me in a kilt. But then, look where I'm from... ;-)

[Gwap]

Hey! I only live there.

I think the absence of underwear may have been a wonderful gap in the tech tree.

Besides, I live on the west coast, where the men are tough... and the girls even tougher: check out what they wear on Saturday nights. Compared to that a kilt (underpants or no) would be woolly bliss!

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Nostalgia isn't what it used to be
[This message has been edited by Gwap (edited February 14, 2001).]