Planetfall, the Alpha Centauri total conversion mod for Civ4 BtS

[Bobchillingworth]

Good catch, I think that's it. Kind of odd that it displays that way.



Btw, why can helicopters take the promotion to get defensive bonuses from rocky terrain? It doesn't make much sense to me.

[Maniac]

The change for Morgan might indeed convince others to open borders with him, since there would be something in it for them, although I don't know enough about how the Civ IV trade system works to say whether +25% really makes much of a difference for anyone. I don't think that Morgan's trade route bonus should necessarily be the main emphasis for his economic advantages though, just because Planetfall doesn't really have too many ways of increasing trade route numbers. Plus, let's be honest, trade routes are a passive bonus, and they just aren't very sexy. You run into the "Organized is a good trait, but too boring" type of issue people have mentioned elsewhere.

In order to make the trade bonus something more active for everyone, I was thinking of tying the trade route bonus to the AI's attitude towards you. +/-10% for every +/-1 the AI has towards you. Human trading partners could get a bonus for sharing favourite civics (already in) and state religion.

I don't think you're very likely to see anybody trading with Zak in an RB game due to almost none of the MP matches here using tech-trading; the general feeling is that it forces games to devolve into tech-cartel diplomacy & speeds up game pacing in a bad way, as techs can arrive so quickly that units are obsolete before they have a chance to do much of anything.

Could that be a side-effect of quick game speed?

I assume this only works for Windows version of Civ4?

Yeah, only for Windows. Or at least not for Mac. Planetfall has a custom DLL, and Mac can't run mods which have one.

Good catch, I think that's it. Kind of odd that it displays that way.

It's the only way I could get it to work. That combat strength function gives me a headache.

Btw, why can helicopters take the promotion to get defensive bonuses from rocky terrain? It doesn't make much sense to me.

Elaborate.

***

Someone said that as the Believers they tried to have a different religion than everyone else to get the +20% combat bonus with everyone. That's not really my design intention. I was hoping that with the Believers players would attack the heathens, but still try to spread their religion to as many players as possible. If that's not happening, I was thinking about reducing their combat bonus to +10%, but instead giving them a unique national project which gives them +1 culture for every base which follows their state religion.

***

FYI, here's what I've done so far for the next patch:

. The threshold (initial and increase) for the Believer cultural golden age has been doubled.
. Morgan gets two unique buildings: Morgan Entertainment replaces Rec Commons and provides a happiness resource of the same name. Morgan Pharmaceuticals replaces Children's Creche, provides a health resource of the same name and gives a Merchant specialist slot. Both buildings can be hurried with credits without having Nanites.
. Morgan's -10% to military production has been removed.
. If one of the cities of a trade route is Morgan's, both trade partners receive +50% to the base trade profit.
. Removed the +1 Planet from all Headquarters.
. Non-combat units can't pick the Scavenger special ability.
. Interface: fixed the Believer cultural golden age string.
. Interface: "corporations" show correct yield/commerce increase.
. Bug fix: Unity Library gives free tech correctly in PBEMs.

Here is what I'd still like to do before releasing the next patch:

unity pods: chopper, rover, unity bay, handicap worms (see earlier in thread)
unity bays/rovers can't be found within range of 8 of your HQ?
remove NoBadResults from unity rover
remove rover upgrade from unity supplies
make AIs more likely to sign defensive pacts if a faction is gobbling up others one by one - AI_defensivePactTrade CvPlayerAI::AI_getConquestVictoryStage()
defense pacts no longer require any tech/tech_basic
cultural golden age counter above scores
trade route bonus depends on attitude
believer project: culture for religion
Bioreactor and Atmospheric Processor provide a Psych Chaplain slot (so that there are more vertical expansion option to get extra culture)

[Sareln]

@Maniac, those sound like good changes

I think Bob's saying that Vanguard Units (Rover/Chopper/Roter/Etc) can take Guerrilla I as a special ability and gain the benefit from rocky terrain even though you'd think a chopper wouldn't benefit from defensive terrain.

[Bobchillingworth]

In order to make the trade bonus something more active for everyone, I was thinking of tying the trade route bonus to the AI's attitude towards you. +/-10% for every +/-1 the AI has towards you. Human trading partners could get a bonus for sharing favourite civics (already in) and state religion.

That's a pretty cool concept, very interesting =) Would that be in addition to his already getting +100% routes, or as a replacement?

Could that be a side-effect of quick game speed?

Absolutely. But it's really difficult to run a game using anything slower than Normal speed, and even that can be pushing it, since most games only move at best a turn a day, and sustaining player interest and participation for a game which could potentially last years is almost impossible. 90% of the games here use Quick, if not more.

Elaborate.

Like Sareln above stated, it just seems counter-intuitive that a helicopter is able to gain a defensive advantage from rough terrain, consider that it hovers many feet above the ground.





Regarding your planned changes-

Morgan's -10% to military production has been removed.

Hmm. This would give Morgan a lot of advantages but also completely eliminate his downside. Why not just give his HQ +1 hammer, like you initially suggested? That way he can still build scouts to defend himself quickly in the very early game and his first colony pods don't take a really long time, but his expansions and more expensive military units still get hit by a penalty.



I worry that a lot of the upcoming changes to pods will nerf them too heavily- pods are really fun, they should def. be something players look forward to. And I'd leave the pod bonus on Rovers, and keep Unity Rovers as a Unity Supplies option, since having the option gives you a real decision between exploration or fast growth if you have a capital with lots of resources you can improve with Field Labs, or otherwise just gives you something to do if you lack early resources, since in that case a Former is useless. Also, Santiago's starting Rover gives her a pod advantage which I don't think you want to remove, considering how mediocre she is.



I think there are a couple fairly simple changes which can be taken to make pods acceptable for competitive play:

• Add a couple really bad results to pods. Right now they only seem to give goodies, with the "worst" result just being a map. Bad results could include a couple Mindworms ("While investigating the pod, your unit encounters hostile Native lifeforms!"), the pod transforming into a spawning spot with a single immobile Mind Worm guardian ("Native lifeforms are using the pod as a breeding site!"), or the pod's tile spawning a Fungal Tower ("While attempting to unearth the pod, your unit awakens an enormous Fungal Tower!").
  

[INDENT]- Caveat: Border expansions cannot produce bad results, to prevent inadvertent early eliminations. [/INDENT]
[INDENT]- Caveat: Worms spawned from poor pod results should use an AI which causes them to only patrol a small area, and avoid immediately entering culture to attack cities. This is also to prevent early elims.[/INDENT]
[INDENT]- Caveat: Rovers are exempt from spawning hostiles. If you think this will make Rovers too powerful, perhaps add another poor result which any unit can get, where the pod is simply empty ("Your unit locates the scattered remains of a Unity Pod, destroyed upon impact with Planet's surface.")[/INDENT]

• Make poor results very common for non-Rover units, like maybe 40% of the time. You don't want people to avoid pods, but they shouldn't be like free candy either, which is the situation right now. I know that you have Worms defend some pods, but they take a while to get around to covering them, and they're pretty easy to kill with just a pair of scouts or a flamer.
  

Your other changes look cool


Any thoughts on the suggested buffs / changes to Santiago, Zak, Sven etc?

[Mist]

1) I don't think Morgan needs to loose -10% on unit production. He doesn't really need the +1h from HQ either. He should be able to cash-rush everything from the start though. This would be a very good flavor trait idea for him too, give him a general hit to normal production, but let him spend cash on stuff from the start.

2) I'll be honest, I hate pods as they are now for a multiplayer game. They are fun in SP, but when playing other people it's not good when one person cascades and other four just grit their teeth. Also I think that whatever you do with pods Supply Trawlers and Material Supplies have to go. Early wonders are good, but they should be a conscious decision requiring effort and sacrifice elsewhere. At the moment they are an afterthought of a lucky hut roll.

3) I'll echo sentiments about tech trading. A good trading cartel will tear through techs ungodly fast whatever the game speed, tech trading has no place as a trait in MP games.

4) Espionage comes too late. As it is, by the time it becomes an option you usually have a good and working economy model, ditching that and trying to retool to something that's probably not better would be stupid.

I have few ideas on how to make other factions more interesting. I'll write them down soonish if you're interested. I'll also probably vehemently disagree with Bob on that, we seem to have a history of that

[Maniac]

This looks to be the complete changelog for the next patch:

. The threshold (initial and increase) for the Believer cultural golden age has been doubled.
. The Believer's state religion's shrine produces +1 culture per base with the religion (when the shrine is in Believer hands of course).
. The Believer combat bonus against factions which don't share its state religion has been reduced to +10%.
. The Bioreactor and Atmospheric Processor now provide a Psych Chaplain slot.
. Morgan gets two unique buildings: Morgan Entertainment replaces Rec Commons and provides a happiness resource of the same name. Morgan Pharmaceuticals replaces Children's Creche, provides a health resource of the same name and gives a Merchant specialist slot. Both buildings can be hurried with credits without having Nanites.
. Morgan's -10% to military production has been removed.
. Morgan gets double income from foreign trade routes, and +50% income from domestic trade routes. Morgan's trade partner also profits +50%.
. Peace trade modifier limited to +100% instead of +150%.
. Human players sharing the same state religion will gain a +50% bonus to trade routes between them.
. The trade route bonus with the AI depends on the AI Attitude: +/-10% for every +/-1 attitude towards the partner.
. The Chopper unity pod result has been turned into a unique result: only one can be popped.
. Native Life can now spawn from unity pods.
. Unity Rovers are no longer immune from bad unity pod results upon popping.
. Units, with the exception of formers and aquaformers, can no longer be popped from unity pods near your Headquarters.
. The Marine line of units get +25% defense vs. Isles of the Deep and Sealurks.
. Removed the +1 Planet from all Headquarters.
. Non-combat units can't pick the Scavenger special ability.
. Interface: fixed the Believer cultural golden age string.
. Interface: "corporations" show correct yield/commerce increase.
. Bug fix: Unity Library gives free tech correctly in PBEMs.

I'll have to pass on the cultural golden age counter on the main interface. My understanding of that python file is very limited. I did add a (+x culture this turn) to the existing widget inside the base screen though.

I think Bob's saying that Vanguard Units (Rover/Chopper/Roter/Etc) can take Guerrilla I as a special ability and gain the benefit from rocky terrain even though you'd think a chopper wouldn't benefit from defensive terrain.

The attack bonus and withdrawal chance do make sense though. I don't feel like making seperate promotions just for that issue.

That's a pretty cool concept, very interesting =) Would that be in addition to his already getting +100% routes, or as a replacement?

See changelog. All factions' trade routes get the AI Attitude bonus/penalty.

Absolutely. But it's really difficult to run a game using anything slower than Normal speed, and even that can be pushing it, since most games only move at best a turn a day, and sustaining player interest and participation for a game which could potentially last years is almost impossible. 90% of the games here use Quick, if not more.

3) I'll echo sentiments about tech trading. A good trading cartel will tear through techs ungodly fast whatever the game speed, tech trading has no place as a trait in MP games.

PBEM games here never see the end of the tech tree I assume? (Otherwise no tech trading would defeat the point of quick speed.)

Besides the Zak trait, the thing is, one on one, a Biodomed or Terraformer economy will eat a pro-Planet economy for breakfast. That's intentional. One of the pro-Planeteer's benefits is supposed to lie with better diplomatic relations and cooperation with everyone else who's part of the Concordat. As the Flowering Counter rises, the Concordat members are supposed to form a tech cartel, and are supposed to cover each other's back when a non-Concordat member attacks them.

Without tech trading, without unity pods, without a whole bunch of green AIs to befriend, a Planet strategy doesn't work as well. So I'd really prefer to have tech trading in multiplayer. Couldn't the game pace issue be solved by simply increasing tech costs in multiplayer games? It wouldn't take many lines of code to code for that condition.

Hmm. This would give Morgan a lot of advantages but also completely eliminate his downside. Why not just give his HQ +1 hammer, like you initially suggested? That way he can still build scouts to defend himself quickly in the very early game and his first colony pods don't take a really long time, but his expansions and more expensive military units still get hit by a penalty.

1) I don't think Morgan needs to loose -10% on unit production. He doesn't really need the +1h from HQ either. He should be able to cash-rush everything from the start though. This would be a very good flavor trait idea for him too, give him a general hit to normal production, but let him spend cash on stuff from the start.

1) Morgan used to be able to hurry units with credits, but that ability got moved to the Data Angels, as part of their "mobile hideouts" theme. Without unit hurrying as part of the Morgan package, the military production penalty makes less sense.
2) I care greatly about AI performance. While the human player would be good at finding ways around a production penalty, the AI wouldn't.

I worry that a lot of the upcoming changes to pods will nerf them too heavily- pods are really fun, they should def. be something players look forward to. And I'd leave the pod bonus on Rovers, and keep Unity Rovers as a Unity Supplies option, since having the option gives you a real decision between exploration or fast growth if you have a capital with lots of resources you can improve with Field Labs, or otherwise just gives you something to do if you lack early resources, since in that case a Former is useless.

Unity Supplies still upgrades to Unity Rover. For a moment I had the wrong idea that a Unity Supplies can also upgrade to a Rover (perhaps I should rename that unit to Recon Rover to avoid confusion). But that's only possible when you have Doc:Mob. I don't like having that direct upgrade path visible as, because of the Morale promotions, it's always better to upgrade to Unity Rover first.

I think there are a couple fairly simple changes which can be taken to make pods acceptable for competitive play:

• Add a couple really bad results to pods. Right now they only seem to give goodies, with the "worst" result just being a map. Bad results could include a couple Mindworms ("While investigating the pod, your unit encounters hostile Native lifeforms!"), the pod transforming into a spawning spot with a single immobile Mind Worm guardian ("Native lifeforms are using the pod as a breeding site!"), or the pod's tile spawning a Fungal Tower ("While attempting to unearth the pod, your unit awakens an enormous Fungal Tower!").
  

Under the new patch no-noBadResults units will have a 25-30% chance of popping native life. For now in 5 out of 6 cases the result will be a non-lethal fungal tower or spore launcher though. Again I worry about AI performance if there would be too many lethal pod results.

There actually already was a pod result in XML for spawning fungal towers, but because the C++ code didn't consider the idea of immobile pod spawns, the goodie result never fired...

[INDENT]- Caveat: Border expansions cannot produce bad results, to prevent inadvertent early eliminations. [/INDENT]
[INDENT]- Caveat: Worms spawned from poor pod results should use an AI which causes them to only patrol a small area, and avoid immediately entering culture to attack cities. This is also to prevent early elims.[/INDENT]
[INDENT]- Caveat: Rovers are exempt from spawning hostiles.[/INDENT]

That's the case already.

Any thoughts on the suggested buffs / changes to Santiago, Zak, Sven etc?

Miriam

I first want to try out a simple doubling/tripling/whatever-works of the threshold before attempting more complicated and time consuming code changes.

Zak:

A scientist slot on a cheap building is still an invitation for ICS. It's no coincidence that the engineer/merchant/scientist only become available from level 4 120 hammer buildings onwards.

I'm willing to risk a merchant slot on the new Morgan Pharmeceuticals, because Morgan's corporations push him heavily towards a tall strategy. But Zak doesn't have anything else to push him in a tall direction.

Lal:

Exploration and unity pods just aren't part of the Peacekeeper theme.

Yesterday I had the idea that for the Peacekeepers any happiness from their buildings could get added to a counter (thus further encouraging a builder playstyle). If the counter reaches a threshold, they get a golden age... However, any war weariness unhappiness experienced by OTHER factions gets deducted from their happiness GA counter. It might encourage the Peacekeeper player to act as... (duh!) peacekeepers. :D

Perhaps the Free Drones could get a similar mechanic, but for them any drones in other factions' bases gets deducted from their GA counter. So then the Drones would get a heavy incentive to for instance attack factions who make heavy use of genejack factories.

Santiago:
Selrahc's idea for her to get a free special ability on every unit is a great one. I know that she gets extra Great General production, but I do not think it is sufficient.

If that trait is considered too weak, I'd rather give a boost to great generals or military academies, but not simply give them +1 spec ab slot. A great general point boost is more interesting because:
1) to benefit from it, you must actually get out and do something, not wait 196 turns before declaring war. +1 spec ab slot is in that sense a passive trait, and we don't like those.
2) great generals can also provide +2XP, so using native life remains an option.
3) GG points offer the option for synergy with Citizen's Defense Force, and in the future perhaps the Neural Amplifier.

Like Lal, she should get better results from Unity Pods (the Spartans are more cautious than the other factions in opening them, and therefore are more likely to preserve whatever is inside.)

bNoBadResults units, such as the Rover, already get extra credits from unity pods. This should become more significant now that Unity Rovers no longer have bNoBadResults.

Sven is probably the weakest-

If the Pirates needed a boost, the first thing I'd try is give them a free Hydro Plant. If that doesn't suffice, a free Perimeter Defense. At the moment I'm not convinced though they need a boost. My tactics for dealing with IoDs:
1) Only plant Kelp around bases which are threatened by native life. That's AI code I put in myself, because Kelp can't be pillaged.
2) Never attack native life on fungus. Wait until they move off it.
3) When you gain access to the Ranged promotion, don't attack native life before it has been bombarded to 60% health. This requires a big fleet of submarines, but you want that anyway, and can be used for raiding other factions when the IoD threat has been dealt with.
4) When you have a big fleet, you can just station them in any base threatened by native life. In my PBEM at CFC in which I'm heavily anti-Planet, at one point because of a series of fungal blooms I had more than 10 sealurks and IoDs swimming around in my territory (those were exciting turns ) but because I had 10 submarines myself stationed in my bases, the native AI didn't dare to attack them.

Following these guidelines, even though I still regularly get a fungal bloom, I never lose ships anymore.

In the patch I've given the Marine line of units +25% defense vs IoDs and sealurks. Combined with the +50% defense on sea plots they already have, that should make them better defenders than submarines.

2) I'll be honest, I hate pods as they are now for a multiplayer game. They are fun in SP, but when playing other people it's not good when one person cascades and other four just grit their teeth. Also I think that whatever you do with pods Supply Trawlers and Material Supplies have to go. Early wonders are good, but they should be a conscious decision requiring effort and sacrifice elsewhere. At the moment they are an afterthought of a lucky hut roll.

I think the current PBEM here on RB actually offers an argument they're not imba.

Even though Bob has popped four Supply Trawlers so far, he has only managed to build one Unity Bay. The reason why he couldn't build more, is because you also need techs to build the Bays, and other players beat him to those techs. That leaves him with the less valuable Technician specialist. In addition trawlers popped far away from your homelands run the risk of being sunk on the way home. The requirement of researching techs and the risk of being sunk means the element of effort and sacrifice is present.

4) Espionage comes too late. As it is, by the time it becomes an option you usually have a good and working economy model, ditching that and trying to retool to something that's probably not better would be stupid.

Could you give a more concrete example of an economy that can't be retooled well to espionage? Specialists can be changed on the fly, and research hospitals and energy banks become available at the same tech level as the espionage goodies, so I don't understand what you mean by this.

I have few ideas on how to make other factions more interesting. I'll write them down soonish if you're interested.

Certainly. Though be warned I have a history of disagreeing with 90% of the suggestions people make, as you can see from my response to Bobchillingworth. :cute:

[Krill]

PBEM games here never see the end of the tech tree I assume? (Otherwise no tech trading would defeat the point of quick speed.)

Game speed doesn't alter the decision you have to make, it just speeds the game up. Basically it's a condensed game where you have to do more on each turn.

Some NTT games have seen the end of the tech tree, but most end before then when one player runs away with the game. Tech trading generally has the effect of making war much less profitable (as there are less turns between critical military techs due to quicker tech speed with trading) and always causes a shift in the metagame. Tech trading is a mechanic that needs to be very carefully balanced, and I think one of the critical points is that it can't enter the game too early otherwise it forces co-operation. You also need to add a mechanic that enables players to not tech trade (as tech trading can be a "lose" button for 1 player), in base civ that is the known tech bonus, but I'm not sure what you have here.

[Mist]

Besides the Zak trait, the thing is, one on one, a Biodomed or Terraformer economy will eat a pro-Planet economy for breakfast. That's intentional.

Okay, this is the point where you have to decide whether this is a good SP mod or a good MP mod, you can't have both. Take this, and most of the other feedback posted here by people from an angle of wanting good MP.

So I'd really prefer to have tech trading in multiplayer. Couldn't the game pace issue be solved by simply increasing tech costs in multiplayer games? It wouldn't take many lines of code to code for that condition.

Anything that forces people to form cartels is bad in MP. People are forced to form cartels if not forming them is suboptimal. Tech costs don't do a whole lot, 2 players pooling resources together will still tech faster than one player alone, even if the techs start costing 10x of current values. The only way of preventing cartels from being dominant is either introducing drawbacks on sharing tech, or accelerating single players as they start lagging behind.

1) Morgan used to be able to hurry units with credits, but that ability got moved to the Data Angels, as part of their "mobile hideouts" theme. Without unit hurrying as part of the Morgan package, the military production penalty makes less sense.
2) I care greatly about AI performance. While the human player would be good at finding ways around a production penalty, the AI wouldn't.

Again, AI concerns are irrelevant from serious MP point of view. Cash-buying stuff ( not only units ) *screams* Morgan. Production nerf with cash buying would make Morgan as unique and probably as powerful as Yang.

A scientist slot on a cheap building is still an invitation for ICS. It's no coincidence that the engineer/merchant/scientist only become available from level 4 120 hammer buildings onwards.

Add a maintenance cost to it, scientists are not exactly known from handling paperwork in an efficient way. Give every University building that offers a specialist slot a Sci slot in addition, *but* make those buildings add 10% to city maintenance. Opportunity, cost. Interesting. Very Zak.

I think the current PBEM here on RB actually offers an argument they're not imba.

I'm not saying pods are imba. I'm saying they are not fun for people that don't get very good rolls on them. I got Cryobay only because I also got a Trawler and by virtue of turn order. Selrahc got Library only because he must have started on it from t0 and Hydrophonics is not on a planet friendly tech. Bob also got few hundred beakers worth of techs from pods. Do you know how far ahead would I be in the game right now with few hundred beakers worth of tech? The PBEM is still competitive only because people either got very suitable starts ( me ) or go into a very deep beelines for stuff ( Charles, Sareln ). I'd like to point out that Nic ragequit already :neenernee

Could you give a more concrete example of an economy that can't be retooled well to espionage?

I'm not saying it can't be retooled. I'm saying, why would you if it's not much better? And if it is much better ( would have to play against humans to be sure ), then we have a completely different problem. Angling from esp economy from the start is not viable because you both need ton of food for librarians and ton of hammers for probe teams. And with plenty food and hammers you're probably running Terraformed already.

[Bobchillingworth]

I agree with everything Mist wrote :neenernee


Well except:

Give every University building that offers a specialist slot a Sci slot in addition, *but* make those buildings add 10% to city maintenance.

Would need to be adjusted lower, since there are a ton of buildings which unlock specialist slots, and you don't want to discourage Zak from building more than a few per city (or forcing him to always run low-maintenance civics).



Anyway, apologies if you already know how these work, but there is really no way at present for a lone player to compete with a tech cartel.

At the very basic level, a tech cartel has at least one funder for every techer. Take the example of a two-person cartel; Player A runs 0% science and focuses their empire on simply producing as much gold or energy or whatever as possible. This then is almost all gifted to Player B, who instead entirely emphasizes raw beaker production. As techs come in, Player B gifts them to Player A. This set up is always going to research better than a single person not in a cartel (or two people not coordinating together), because it is far more efficient- Player B can always research at 100% science, and both players A and B can avoid expending production on science / gold multipliers, respectively. This hyper-specialized division of labor could be particularly pronounced in Planetfall, as the Build Research and Build Wealth options are incredibly efficient.

Exacerbating the situation, Players A and B also will almost always form a military alliance, since both stand to lose should their partner fall. Player A has no reason to attack Player B. Player B could try to betray A by refusing to hand over their latest tech, but they have very little impetus to switch from "receiving free money" to "fighting a Death War".


It gets even worse with more players involved. In a five-player game for instance, Players A & B may bring in C, who focuses on military production to free the others up to work even more on gold and beaker output.




Simply put, this is not a fun way to play a game. I think the vast majority of players here who have participated in one of RB's rare tech-trading games (Pitboss 3 being the best example, and most infamous), can testify that it is not enjoyable playing a cog in a tech cartel machine. But there really are no alternatives; players who reject the system are resigning themselves to be fodder.


Tech cartels are also not conductive for the long-term stability of a game. A two-player cartel going up against a three or four-player cartel is in a hopeless situation, while two three-player cartels may be roughly equally matched, but are then essentially playing a 1 vs 1 teamer game, which is likely not what the players intended to sign up for.







________


Completely unrelated to the above, I did want to point out that:

My tactics for dealing with IoDs:
1) Only plant Kelp around bases which are threatened by native life. That's AI code I put in myself, because Kelp can't be pillaged.
2) Never attack native life on fungus. Wait until they move off it.
3) When you gain access to the Ranged promotion, don't attack native life before it has been bombarded to 60% health. This requires a big fleet of submarines, but you want that anyway, and can be used for raiding other factions when the IoD threat has been dealt with.
4) When you have a big fleet, you can just station them in any base threatened by native life. In my PBEM at CFC in which I'm heavily anti-Planet, at one point because of a series of fungal blooms I had more than 10 sealurks and IoDs swimming around in my territory (those were exciting turns ) but because I had 10 submarines myself stationed in my bases, the native AI didn't dare to attack them.

Is actually a perfect example of why I think Sven is weak. Having to keep 10 submarines stationed in each base (or even just sitting around in one's empire), is a ludicrous expense to pay for basic safety vs. native life. Having to rely on a mono-improvement economy is incredibly boring. The issue with the Pirates is that sea bases are inherently much more difficult to defend than land ones. If I'm playing as anti-planet Miriam, all I need are a few flamers in every city with fungus nearby, and I can redistribute them as soon as Teraforming automatically removes potential spawning locations. Mindworms will at most move a couple tiles a turn, and you can see encroaching Worms well in advance, to get defenders ready. The aquatic environment offers Sven no such advantages- native life zooms in from any direction at 3-4 moves per turn. Many of the attackers will be invisible. None can be killed at a consistently cost-effective ratio, as Sven lacks any sort of cheap anti-psi unit once he unlocks subs and obsoletes gunboats (okay, you can ranged-bombard them, but that isn't an option for a long time). Worms go out of their way to travel across the map to fight you. It is a far harsher environment than anything any of the other leaders has to endure.


Your planned buff to Marines will help solve some, but not all of this problem. I think that both free Hydro Plants and Perimeter Defenses for seabases are a necessity. This isn't even getting into the fact that he has severe health and happiness issues for ages, until he can get around to settling unoccupied islands (which he has to hope host useful resources).








Anyway. I might comment on some of your other responses / suggested changes later. Suffice it to say that I really respect the work you have put into this mod, and I have already gotten hours of enjoyment out of it, but I am not convinced that some of the new adjustments are steps in the right direction =)

[Maniac]

Okay, this is the point where you have to decide whether this is a good SP mod or a good MP mod, you can't have both. Take this, and most of the other feedback posted here by people from an angle of wanting good MP.

Planetfall is of course primarily played by most in single player.

Anything that forces people to form cartels is bad in MP. People are forced to form cartels if not forming them is suboptimal. Tech costs don't do a whole lot, 2 players pooling resources together will still tech faster than one player alone, even if the techs start costing 10x of current values. The only way of preventing cartels from being dominant is either introducing drawbacks on sharing tech, or accelerating single players as they start lagging behind.

The cost increase suggestion was in response to you/Bob/? saying that units became obsolete too fast.

Tech trading strongly encourages cooperation, but lack of tech trading seems to strongly encourage conflict. My impression is the PBEMs here might as well be Always War games. Is this what you and most other players are looking for? Personally I'd like to play a game in which *both* conflict and cooperation are valid options.

A question by the way: unless in Planetfall you're Transcending of course, only one player can win. Doesn't this mean that cartels can only ever be temporary arrangements, and eventually conflict between the former partners will erupt?

You also need to add a mechanic that enables players to not tech trade (as tech trading can be a "lose" button for 1 player), in base civ that is the known tech bonus, but I'm not sure what you have here.

Espionage can fulfill the role. I have no idea right now if the cost for stealing techs are balanced (they're just the vanilla costs) as you don't need to use espionage much in single player. But balancing it seems just a matter of getting the numbers right.