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RevolutionDCM for Rise of Nations
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Author |
File Description |
glider1 |
Posted on 09/07/09 @ 08:40 PM (updated 09/10/09)
File Details |
Needs T&P?: |
Yes |
RevolutionDCM for Rise Of Nations (Thrones and Patriots)
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Author: Glider1
Best contact is on CivFanatics forum:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=8437635#post8437635
Concept
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To slow the game down so that it has more of a single player civ like feel without destroying
the balance of the game or the experience of a real time battle. This is not a simple task
for a variety of game balance reasons, but it has been satisfactorily achieved through some
active script coding. The challenges for human players in this mod are more interesting and
the AI has been improved in three areas as well (see below). The script code is very stable.
Installation
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Thrones and Patriots latest patch should be installed.
1) Backup your Thrones and Patriots programs folder
2) Place this zip into the Thrones and Patriots programs directory
3) Unzip. The mod updates some xml in the data directory and adds a script. That is all.
Mod Playing Conditions
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Because the naval AI is badly implemented, some maps are too unbalanced for decent games.
At this stage the mod has only been tested on Sahara and Warring States.
Recommended difficulty levels start at tough for beginners, then tougher and toughest.
A game can take up to four hours to complete.
Setup conditions are:
1) Solo game quick battle game only
2) Diplomacy eight nations
3) Big huge map
4) No ally los
5) max pop 999
6) Script to select: RevDCM - Sahara
7) All other settings default
Recommended sea maps that the AI is coded to understand are:
Atlantic Sea Power (crashes if bighuge map is adjusted to size 140)
Nile Delta (crashes if bighuge map is adjusted to size 140)
British Isles
Warring States
New World
East Indies
Colonial Powers
Mediterranean
Script Change log V1.00
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1) The human player is handicapped according to the current age with increasing handicaps
as the age increases. This balances out the resource rate inefficiency of the AI especially
in the late game. The handicap is in the form of periodic removal of small quantities of all
resources that scale with age and difficulty level. The interesting side effect of this system
is that each of the ages can be independently adjusted from within the script, to iron out
the resource rate curves from human to AI across the ages. Think of this change as systematic
corruption losses that occur within a society.
2) All defending players get compensated while being attacked by another player so that
they can have a chance to defend. The rate for food, timber, metal and knowledge are restored
back to the vanilla game rate during the battle. It's mirroring a war effort concept but
actually is a requirement to balance warfare when the warfare rate is at the vanilla speed but
the resource collection rate is not. Note that oil and wealth aren't benefited by the war effort.
3) The human player only has to deal with corruption that increases with the size of their nation.
A single unit amount is subtracted from everything except knowledge increasing with the number of cities
in a regular period of elapsed time. The effect can be nullified by garrisoning 3 units per city
(think of them as police). Garrisoning citizens is not a good idea because it will cost more than
three times the corruption because of lost production and civilian garrison penalties (see below).
Garrisoning merchants can be done but is probably inefficient.
4) There is a penalty for all nations for garrisoning civilians. Only the basic resources food,
timber and metal are penalised, increasing with the number of civilians garrisoned and the age.
This is required to balance out the need for attackers to be able to damage the defenders economy
in a slowed resource collection rate mod like this.
5) The reward for human players sacking an AI capital is reduced. The reward gets bigger for each age.
150 in Ancient scaling to 500 in the information age. Only food, timber, metal and wealth are adjusted
which counters the hardcoded algorithm used in the game. This is required in a slowed resource
collection rate mod.
6) An auto unit ejector algorithm will eject citizens from cities if the city is not being attacked.
This addresses a bug in the AI that causes the AI to leave citizens garrisoned in cities when they
should be out in the field working.
7) AI armies now retreat from peaceful territories rather than die from attrition for no good purpose.
8) The AI now knows how to use cruise missiles
9) The score and information screens are hidden so as to force the human player to learn about their
rivals through scouting and espionage. When the pause button is hit, the players score is displayed.
10) The script automatically stops every half hour for two minutes, in order to force the player to
take a break. After two minutes play can be resumed. This can be turned off by modifying the script.
XML Change log V1.00
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- All missile ranges doubled
- Merchants and caravans take longer to build (to compensate raiders raiding them)
- Big huge map size increased to 120
- Nuke embargo timers slowed by a factor of 4
- Wonder timer slowed by a factor of 4
- Retake capital slowed by a factor of 4
- Market cycle rate slowed by a factor of 4
- Goody values reduced
- Terra Cotta wonder free unit slowed by a factor of 4
- population cap raised to 1000
- gather rate slowed by a factor of 4
- Scout noises made less annoying when commanding them to move
- All buildings enabled just for fun and eye candy. The AI will build superflous buildings only if it has a big lead.
Script modding notes
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Most if not all variables can be changed at the very end of the script, where main execution occurs.
Play notes:
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Recorded games only work for a while from the beginning of a game load. They eventually go out of sync. The best idea
is to save a game just prior to battle and reload. The recorded game will be faithful for the duration of the battle at least.
To Do List:
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1) Teach the AI to use carriers
Glider1 |
Author | Comments & Reviews ( All | Comments Only | Reviews Only ) |
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Wadis10 |
Posted on 09/10/09 @ 02:19 AM
Your scripting ideas sound very interesting, I will have to check this out. |
glider1
File Author |
Posted on 09/10/09 @ 02:47 AM
Thanks Wadis. To balance out the game at the slower gather rate requires active scripting like this mod does. There is no way to balance it just using xml.
The first thing you to notice, is that even though the gather rate is four times as slow as vanilla, the ability to continue a war time economy during a real time battle is not impeded and the AI will be able to produce defenders during the battle. This cannot happen in a balanced way if you slow the gather rate down without scripting.
The second thing to notice is that the attacking party can do balanced raiding damage as well, and they can damage the economy very much like the vanilla game. This also cannot be done if you slow the gather rate done without scripting.
The third really nice thing to notice, is that you can customize the human handicap rate for each age to tailer your preferred playing style against the AI. The default handicap is designed to allow both the AI and human to rush in the ancient and classical ages, but to slow the human player down significantly in the latter ages, where the AI becomes quite inefficient, despite a few scripting algorithms I have added to try and improve that. This makes the latter ages much more enjoyable and challenging.
There are a lot of unplayable maps in RoN because of the limited AI, but so far Sahara and Warring States play pretty nice. Of course the script file can be copied, renamed and the handicaps tailored for each type of map as well.
It is a pity that a lot of the AI code is unavailable to modify, but this is the best that can be done. There is still some more scope if there is any interest to continue this mod.
Enjoy! RoN is now a lot of fun, almost but not quite as much fun as civ.
Cheers. |
glider1
File Author |
Posted on 09/25/09 @ 07:02 PM
The mod now has a forum:
http://ron.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=10,5867,,10
Cheers |
HGDL v0.8.2 |
Statistics |
Downloads: | 567 |
Favorites: [] | 0 |
Size: | 90.92 KB |
Added: | 09/07/09 |
Updated: | 09/10/09 |
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