5701

Modding the xmls is very easy; getting those changes to “stick” in the game is the hard part (for me).

They have some packing/loading/referencing system for mods which might well be fantastic for hard core full overhaul modders but is a pain if you just want to tweak a few values.

5702

I dunno about the low level modding for newbies thing on Civ5 yet, but I do know that this is literally the best mod support I have ever seen.

Hot loading/unloading mods after dl/install all from in game without a single restart of the client? That’s fucking slick.

Well yeah of course it does. I want a domination victory, the AI is going for a space victory, I have nukes, fuck you guys I’m nuking your asses back to the stone age. Worst case scenario, based on my count of their uranium they had supplies enough for four a-bombs or two missiles, and only one of my cities was in range for a shot from a missile from their continent. My second best city, but that’s an acceptable loss. If they wanted to hit others, they’d need a carrier or a nuke sub. They didn’t have a carrier, and I had subs/destroyers watching their ports and patrolling my coastline. So nothing was getting through!

I mean, could you imagine Russia nuking the US just because we’re setting up a space ship to go to Alpha Centauri? That’d be absurd!

5703

Minor mods I like:
[ul]
[li]Unlimited Barbarian XP (normally, units at level 3 and beyond cannot gain XP by killing barbarians. This mod eliminates that restriction, and is fun to use with the “raging barbarians” selection)
[/li][li]Balance - Crossbow upgrade to Cannon (as it sounds, crossbow units will upgrade to cannons and thereby keep their ranged bonuses)
[/li][li]Policy - Free Warrior (balances out the Honor policy by granting a free warrior by your capital when you open up the tree, as I’d felt until the recent changes that it was rather underpowered and now I still view the overall chain as being a little weak)
[/li][li]jmknpk_Wonders_All_NationalWonders (fun to use now and then, this makes all wonders national wonders, allowing each nation to build a Great Wall, Pyramids, etc.)
[/li][li]any clock mod (so you’re always aware of exactly how much time “just one more turn” is really costing you)
[/li][li]Unique Balance (gives each vanilla/non-DLC civ two unique units and one unique building - this has not been updated for the DLC civs, but perhaps its maker may get around to it eventually)
[/li][/ul]
All the above work for both player and AI alike without any conflicts.

5704

Yeah, I finally found them. Under a deeper XML subdirectory than I’d expected.

That’s what I’ve been reading. It sounds like a substantial pain if you’re not going the full on mod route, which is moot to me anyway because that route won’t work for multiplayer. :-/

5705

Yeah, it’s not bad, and slick on the surface. The downside is that fewer moddable aspects are exposed than in Civ 4, and the mods don’t work for multiplayer. Seems strictly worse than Civ 4 modding, despite Civ 4’s klunky mod loader.

We’ll see. I’m planning to try to bypass the mod loader and just pour in Vanilla Extended to override the base rule, so that it’ll work for hotseat. If that’s at least feasible I’ll be moderately happy, but it shouldn’t be such a pain.

5706

Meh, I’ve had all of zero mp experiences in Civ. So whether it works there isn’t a huge concern for me.

As to what got exposed, I don’t remember mods that changed civ4 really radically until they released an sdk. But I haven’t touched the moddable files yet so who knows.

5707

Fall of Heaven is a prettty big change. oops, didn’t see the sdk part. not sure when that was released in relation. sorry.

5708

Apropos, weren’t there just some weeks ago talks about them finally getting ready to release the proper SDK?
They still haven’t gone through with that, though, have they?
I noticed a huge (by Civ5 standards) influx of new people in the Civ5 modding forums at Civfanatics, but failed to find anything substantial about the SDK release.

Despite being very indifferent about Civ5 in it’s current state, I’d still be interested in seeing what enterprising modders would make of it.

My personal feeling about this is that Firaxis dragged their feet far, FAR too long and that most modders went back to Civ4 or moved away entirely, and it’ll be challenging for the game to garner a new modder crowd from what’s left, but I could very well be proven wrong, given the amount of Civ5 supporters here and elsewhere.
We’ll see, I guess.

rezaf

5709

Tried the Vanilla Enhanced again last night. The latest version is still pretty pokey and again, I just don’t much like it. The enhanced defense values negate any kind of possible early-game attack and so I felt my early game opportunities were extremely limited. Went back to regular Civ V and felt the early game was much better.

I know there’s a lot of room for improvement with Civ V, but I’ll be damned if I can find a mod that actually does the trick without screwing it up.

5710

Civ4 saw a lot of people jump back to 3 until things stabilized. Once this one stops changing all the time and people get used to it, you’ll start to see more and better mods.

I don’t remember seeing a really good mod for a game earlier than a year or two after release. Second version of FFH was after BtS if I remember right, and Rhye’s weird thing took forever and a day.

Kitchen sink mods generally take less time.

Big bummer for me is that almost none of the best Civ3 scenario writers never made the leap, and a bunch of em just got bored and left.

5711

Well, except Civ3 and Civ4 early modding were a thrillride of tons of little stuff being pumped out, like new units, buildings, leaderheads, city graphics etc. - in short mostly the stuff Civ5 doesn’t allow, at least not officially (there’s a way to do units using workarounds, but none to do the rest).

Only after the SDK was released (which was already now a year before the Civ5 SDK, counting from their respective release date) did bigger and more ambitious stuff really get … err … even bigger and more ambitious.
You know, exactly the kind of stuff Civ5 modding isn’t built for either, because the modding structure in scripting etc. is totally inflexible and non-modular, as opposed to the XML.

That doesn’t mean modders cannot fix is when they have the access to the means, just that it’ll be a lot of work.
I mainly hope that the SDK will bring proper means of adding everything graphical to the table, because that’s, imo, the main thing holding back Civ5 modding. Back when Civ5 was released, there were some fancy modding ideas thrown around, but people packed their stuff and left when they realized there’s no telling when the game will allow them to even properly START with their mod by adding basic stuff like buildings and stuff, let alone more complex scripting.

rezaf

5712

Hmm, no one catch that 2K announced Civ V GotY edition for September 27? Contents:

…contains previously released digital content and bonus items in a single package featuring:

– Sid Meier’s Civilization V (standalone game);
– Civilization and Scenario Pack: The Mongols;
– Civilization Pack: Babylon;
– Cradle of Civilization Map Packs: Mesopotamia, Americas, Asia and Mediterranean;
– Double Civilization and Scenario Pack: Spain and Inca;
– Civilization and Scenario Pack: Polynesia;
– Civilization and Scenario Pack: Denmark – The Vikings;
– Explorer’s Map Pack;
– Sid Meier’s Civilization V digital soundtrack.

And at $50, considering the Steam sales, this isn’t a deal. Odd that they are doing this without adding in the Korea civ nor giving anything new.

5713

I can hear the uproar already.

5714

Considering how there is more than $50 in DLC alone, I can’t see how this wouldn’t be a deal - especially when hit by the inevitable holiday sale.

5715

Considering I just bought all the DLC for much less than $50 (including Korea) I’d say it is a bad deal.

5716

From where? The base game alone is $30 when not on sale too. Maybe with all the DLC and the base game on sale it would be a bad deal if the GOTY version wasn’t also on sale.

5717

That’s nice… now they need to make a DLC combo pack (that includes all the DLC, not just some of it) for all the people who actually own the game and would like to buy all the DLC together.

These publishers still have some work to do, to figure out how to get people to buy their content without dribbling it out.

5718

Check out the lowest price figure for each Civ V item.

http://steamsales.rhekua.com/search.php?term=civ+v

Civ V’s lowest price was $12.50 during the Summer Sale.

The DLC has been on sale at various times at 50%.

If you’re going to compare each part’s normal price to the GotY bundle, then it’s less of a deal, but this is Steam. Everyone knows that if you don’t need it at launch, you should wait for the deep sale, right?

5719

My gut reaction on seeing the GOTY offer is that they are just about done with this game.

5720

Jeez, it seems like they haven’t even really gotten started.