Updating the AU mod for C3C. - Page 2

ducki · November 14, 2003, 13:23

I'd definitely vote for Dominae and Alexman to be on the panel, though I've been so inactive, my vote might not be worth the paper it's printed on.

lockstep · November 14, 2003, 14:09

Another vote for Alexman and Dominae.

And if nbarclay is still interested in the AU mod, I'd like to nominate him.

alexman · November 14, 2003, 14:14

lockstep, you vanished there for a while, but if you're interested, I nominate you.

lockstep · November 14, 2003, 15:45

Many thanks, alexman - I'd be interested, but unless the panel includes seven or nine persons, I'm afraid I'd only crowd out more experienced Civ players. However, I'm definitely looking forward to the upcoming mod discussions.

Side note: I'm quite sure that it was the AU mod that convinced Firaxis/Breakaway to include zero range bombardment for archer type units into the epic game. Congratulations, alexman - I remember this was your 'beloved' feature!

player1 · November 14, 2003, 19:19

I just made plans for C3C version of Patch suggestion MOD if anybody is interested.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=101611

Tassadar500 · November 14, 2003, 19:31

lockstep do you want to be on the panel? You can be since I decided it would be best to have an election of sorts. Even if you don't make it try to participate in the next AU course that Dominae is creating

alexman · November 14, 2003, 19:43

I don't think being on this panel should be decided by a popularity contest.

Whoever:
1) is nominated
2) is interested
3) can consistently put in the time and effort
should be automatically included.

There is no reason why the people making the decisions should be few compared to the people participating in the AU games, as long as members of the panel always show up to discuss and vote on the issues that we are debating.

The only requirement should be that the panel is an odd number of people, and I'm sure someone will volunteer to be on the panel only if there is otherwise an even number.

Tassadar500 · November 14, 2003, 20:04

Alexman, the thing is I don't want 7 or more people on this panel. It's just to many. I am hoping for 3 or 5 people and I believe there are more people than that who want/should be on the panel. I don't think people would like me or Rhothaerill just to pick ourselves

alexman · November 14, 2003, 20:08

Why is 7 too many? Even 17 would be fine with me. I say, the more qualified people, the better. Keeps them involved, otherwise they might wander off and forget about the AU.

lockstep · November 14, 2003, 20:10

If there's really some sort of election, I may as well be a contestant.

But as I noted before, I'll also participate in discussing the upcoming modifications if I'm not one of the three/five/(insert odd number) panel persons. I'm enthusiastic about the AU mod idea (again) because Firaxis and Breakaway took a lot of AU's v1.17 features and incorporated it into the standard epic game - basically, this is a modmakers dream come true.

As for the next AU course, I'll likely give it a try - at least if playing on Monarch is an option. (I've won a few Emperor games in PtW, but that was largely due to extraordinary starting locations.)

Tassadar500 · November 14, 2003, 20:12

lockstep in the AU you can play at any level you wish

Dominae · November 14, 2003, 23:44

Perhaps we could have an even number of "regular" panelist positions, and one "voice of the people" position. Obviously this would be highly undemocratic, but at least non-panelists would have some say in what's going on (thereby hopefully keeping their interest).

The reason I would like to keep the panel small is to ensure that everyone on it is working in the best interests of the AU mod, and not just what they would like to see modified in their own games. From the chaos in alexman's 'FIRAXIS: A list of EASY fixes...' thread, it's obvious that different people want to play the game in different ways. We're looking for the "AU mod way" here. I firmly believe that only a small group of people should be responsible for maintaining the AU mod philosophy. All the others are responsible for coming up with new and exciting ideas.

(By the way, the "chaos" in that thread is good chaos...I'm sure Breakaway/Firaxis is reading every bit of it intently.)

Dominae

Theseus · November 15, 2003, 15:11

I'd like to be on the panel.

We should take our time on this: Due to delivery dates, and also due to the Conquests, people around the world will not have had sufficient time to get used to the stock epic game for a while.

Tall Stranger · November 15, 2003, 15:16

I agree with Dominae here. Adding too many people to the formal panel could turn the AU mod into a "flavor of the month" sort of thing, rather than a mod dedicated to improving the AI and forcing the player to make harder strategic choices. A relatively small number of panelists would work best.

I'd also add that, based on the names of the people being nominated/ talked about as panelists, I can't say I'm particularly worried about them not taking popular input seriously. Every one of them has shown themselves to be more than willing to consider the ideas of others in the AU process. Provided there is an opportunity for open debate/ discussion of the mod (which is never a problem around here), I think a relatively small panel (5 seems right) would work best.

alexman · November 16, 2003, 02:34

Okay, I'm convinced. 6 on the panel, with the "voice of the people" as a tie-breaker, sounds great.

Tassadar500 · November 16, 2003, 02:44

So let's see. So far we have these confirmed:

Dominae
Theseus
ZargonX
Alexman
lockstep
Nor Me

Seems like a good panel, eh?

Rhothaerill · November 16, 2003, 05:28

I'm back again...this time from a vacation in Maui. Aloha.

I have a lot of catching up to do, both in RL and here, so I'm going to stand by my post a few weeks ago that I would not be a good panelist for a while. I haven't even played Conquests once yet!

Still I will happily give my opinions once I have a few.

alexman · November 16, 2003, 10:06

Quote:

Originally posted by Nor Me
I have the time and would be prepared to do it.

ZargonX · November 16, 2003, 18:53

I would agree that we need to take our time. As said, many people around the world don't even have the game yet, so we need to wait on them in order to hear their opinions. Furthermore, I know speaking for myself I still need more time with epic game to really start drawing good suggestions (dang Sengoku... taking up all my time...

)

Tassadar500 · November 16, 2003, 19:00

Zargon believe me, we are not rushing this. It will take four days alone to decide the "Power of the People" position and then a long time just discussing and debating some things we could implement in the mod.

MrWhereItsAt · November 16, 2003, 20:04

By "voice of the people", what would you be looking for?

Dominae · November 16, 2003, 20:54

We poll on certain issues, and let the results act as a seperate panelist.

Dominae

alexman · November 20, 2003, 15:19

Since the plan is to build the new AU mod for C3C from scratch, so I would like to start the discussion about what to include in the first version.

Let's gather all the initial ideas here, and then we can open one thread for each idea. In those threads we can debate whether we need a change, and if so, what the change should be.

Wouldn't it be cool if the readme can provide a link to the discussion thread for each change, where new players can find the arguments for each change? Ideally, the threads would even include in-game proof or tests that support the need for a change and demonstrate that the change works and is balanced.

An obvious start would be to look at AU mod v1.17, and decide which of those changes to keep and which not. Another place to look might be the 'easy fixes' thread in the Conquests forum, as it provides some observations from people that have been playing the game.

What does everyone think? Too much trouble, or worth it?

ZargonX · November 20, 2003, 15:47

I think that is a good point to start from, alexman. If there are things to be salvaged from the old version, they should be salvaged. And the "Easy Fixes" thread is definately a good place to look, as many of those suggestions can be implemented via the editor.

Dominae · November 20, 2003, 16:13

Yes, the AU mod version 1.17 is a great place to start. I'll look at it in detail tonight.

Dominae

lockstep · November 20, 2003, 17:00

Like Dominae, I think we should reevaluate the v1.17 change list in the light of C3C. This may result in a breakdown like[list=a][*]changes that were adopted in the epic game as they stood (e.g. Great Wall providing walls to towns),[*]changes that were adopted in principle, but not in the exact specification (e.g. zero range bombardment for archer type units, yet with only 50% of the corresponding attack value),[*]changes that were not implemented, but are pretty likely to be substituted by one of the features introduced in C3C (e.g. no higher attack value for submarines, yet the ability to do stealth attacks),[*]unimplemented changes where an arguable, yet less clear-cut connection to a new C3C feature exists (e.g. Military Academy still requires a victorious army, but against the background of vast changes to leaders),[*]umimplemented changes without any arguable 'C3C feature connection' (e.g. the number of Cure for Cancer's happy faces).[/list=a]Obviously, we should start the new AU mod version with class e changes (and do some self-praise for class a

). Class c changes should get axed, at least for now. Mainly, we should take a close look at class b and class d and - after doing some playtesting - decide about a possible re-introduction of some of these former changes. IMO, 'class b'-revivals don't pose a problem, but one would have to give very solid reasons for reviving class d changes.

Afterwards, we can start to tinker with entirely new modifications.

Nor Me · November 20, 2003, 17:13

Yes, we'll have almost every change in the PTW version of the AU mod as many of them have been affected by conquests and the rest are probably still applicable.

It would be nice to have seperate threads for each group of changes. I certainly wouldn't want to trawl through the 1300 posts we've had so far to see if someone else suggested something. Most of the important details weren't even in the threads themselves. The downside would be if people kept on starting new threads on old topics rather than posting in existing ones. It'd be optimistic to get everything about a change in one thread but better linking would be useful.

Lockstep (I need to refresh for crossposts more often), I'd imagine they'll be plenty of new changes to fix things that are judged wrong with conquests or to partially counteract known bugs.

I'd propose we divide this into areas like unit changes, goverment changes, changes that only the AI should see and other changes.

We might need several threads on unit changes though I doubt anything useful beyond what we've already got is likely.

lockstep · November 20, 2003, 17:36

Quote:

Originally posted by Nor Me
Lockstep (I need to refresh for crossposts more often), I'd imagine they'll be plenty of new changes to fix things that are judged wrong with conquests or to partially counteract known bugs..

I wouldn't want to counteract bugs that I expect to be fixed soon, but that's just me. As for fixing new imbalances - naturally, we should start discussions quite soon, but right now I rather get the urge (like Dominae, obviously) to check off the v1.17 list. Also, some of C3C's needed fixes are very likely to bring about some controversy (e.g. Republic's unit support), and I'd rather not resolve that issue until the AU panel is up and running.

EDIT: OTOH, right now the panel IS for the most part up and running.

alexman · November 20, 2003, 18:06

I think that we now have a more clear understanding of the goals of the mod than when we first started (see Dominae's first post in this thread). For this reason, I would prefer to start completely from scratch, not from v1.17.

Of course all the ideas in the old mod will be considered (especially lockstep's class e), and there are some no-brainer changes in 1.17 that we should keep, but I would feel better if each change got a fresh evaluation based on the goals of the mod.

I also prefer that each group of related changes gets its own thread for discussion (as opposed to one thread for all city improvement changes, for example). Not only it is easier to find previous discussions that way, but also if one day the change gets removed from the mod, we could simply unlink the related thread from the main thread, and not have irrelevant discussions clutter the documentation of the latest version.

Rhothaerill · November 20, 2003, 18:22

I'm not a panelist, but I support the idea of multiple threads for discussion purposes.

Wading through the current PTW AU mod thread is a bit of a task.

Also I'd recommend that the main thread be topped (just ask Ming

) and the thread starter who links all the other threads be someone who is very active (Nuclear Master or one of the more active panel members like Dominae or alexman).