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The only thing I regret is that having gotten this far, we're gonna fall back down from space some time next update and actually have to deal with terrestrial concerns again. And even at the furthest point i've gotten (Nanotech), you're still pretty decently heavily invested in dealing with Earth based stuff. So unless that changes in the last few parts of the game space is always going to be at least a little bit of a sideshow. On the other hand, we wouldn't want to actually start LIKING the game, now would we? Jossar fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Apr 26, 2020 |
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Apr 26, 2020 02:53
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https://comb.io/nVigzc
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Apr 26, 2020 03:21
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how long have you been waiting to post that
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Apr 26, 2020 05:25
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Great to see an LP of this. I'm gonna have to go back and catch up on the thread. Some of the design decisions in this mod are so wildly incoherent, but it still manages to keep me playing.
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Apr 26, 2020 07:39
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Good thing we are researching Fire Suppression in the screenshot of the literal flat circle Sun 
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Apr 26, 2020 10:52
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Jossar’s Playthrough – Atomic 4   Globalization removes a lot of small buildings, provides access to a lot of small wonders, adds another annoying crime building (the Druglord’s Mansion), and adds two very nice civics. World Language is more of a free incremental increase, but Skilled Workers is a really big improvement over Secured Borders.    Tourism provides a number of miscellaneous cute bonuses to things that are “touristy” in nature, and provides a few buildings and wonders along those lines. It also lets us found our 2nd to last corporation, MileHigh Travels International. That’s all the ones we can reach based on technology, the last is simply waiting on another Great Artist to show up, if ever. The bonuses for these corporations isn’t as important as the ones I made sure to found ASAP though, so I can wait.    Here we go, the really big nature friendly techs of the Atomic Era, complete with us learning how to recycle our garbage. Even if you can live without fixing them, it’s still nice to get rid of the pollution penalties eventually, especially before desertification starts en masse.  Space Stations is the next big tech because it allows you to build Space Shuttles. These Space Shuttles then build the first level of Space Stations.  I said these were more akin to Space Settlers and that’s sort of true. At some point you’ll get rockets which cannot turn into space settlers until they dock in a Level 3 Space Station, so you need them for later colonization. But until that point (sometime in… I want to say mid-late Information Era but I’m not 100% sure) they’re functionally a tile improvement. I also may have blocked out the earlier parts of this process from my memory because the early Space Station mechanics SUCK. You only get two Space Shuttles and they take 50 turns to build the level 1 space stations, which we can’t improve until tech advances allow it. I forget if you can build more powerful Space Stations directly later on or if they need to be upgraded from their lesser forms and frankly I’d rather not take the chance.  Welcome to the moon.  Step 1: Construct Lunar Rover. Press the button to send it directly to the moon.  Step 2: Your lunar rover is on the moon. The devs stated that as part of the improved map process they want to make it so lunar exploration is more comprehensive. However with the maps as they currently work there is no point to having the rover explore because you can already see everything except for enemies standing outside the fog of war. Unless you’ve let moon barbarians show up by not letting them have any space on Earth, nothing spawns in space. Click the button to send the Rover back to earth as a reward unit.  Step 3: Use the reward to construct a national wonder. I have no idea Moon Rocks are ever useful again or it’s just a free science building at this point. Apart from maybe 1-2 things that are mostly just resource reveals that is all that space has for you for the rest of the Atomic Era. Back to Earth it is.  Oh no. Not this garbage again. The last thing I need is more buildings which produce more gold and crime.  Away with you, away! Let’s talk about National Ordinances now that they’re relevant again. They ban certain types of buildings in a category throughout the entirety of your civilization. Gambling buildings suck forever because you will never need more money and they generate crime, easy ban. Prostitution related buildings are a mixed bag, but I think it’s net positive to get rid of them. Banning alcohol sort of isn’t worth it because you get more health but lose some food and crime goes skyrocketing as Speakeasies become available. Still it’s nice to see that these are of mixed benefits rather than uniformly awful. Regardless of the previous prohibitions that you do, you don’t want to enact the National Drug Prohibition, despite the ridiculous amounts of crime the relevant buildings generate. Doing so also shuts down the pharmaceutical industry – it relies on “Drugs”, you see, tanking anything related to modern health care.  So of course the game is more than happy to start dumping increasingly large piles of drugs on you from this point onwards. (Techs not mentioned: Astronautics, Astro Environmental Systems, Conglomerates, Modern Health Care, Fascism, Communism, Guerilla Warfare, Dada, Surrealism, Postmodernism) I gotta think about how I want to do the next update. Another “art” update would probably be bad, but there’s also not a lot for the rest of the Atomic Era that isn’t incremental upgrades or adding more minor buildings if I want to get to Information ASAP. Probably gonna pick some less immediately necessary techs just to have something to show off that isn’t inventing new forms of sports 4 times in a row. Jossar fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Apr 26, 2020 |
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Apr 26, 2020 16:52
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Because for the ast millenia our people had no issues with gambling up to this point, somehow
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Apr 26, 2020 17:43
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Seraphic Neoman posted:Because for the ast millenia our people had no issues with gambling up to this point, somehow Or drugs, or prostitution.
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Apr 26, 2020 18:24
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quote:Unless you’ve let moon barbarians show up by not letting them have any space on Earth Can Moon barbarians found Moon cities?
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Apr 26, 2020 18:43
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Bloodly posted:Can Moon barbarians found Moon cities? They'd better. Considering this mod I'll be disappointed if there isn't a Whalers on the Moon culture.
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Apr 26, 2020 18:58
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Bloodly posted:Can Moon barbarians found Moon cities? Yes. Of course it will basically never get above size 1 as it will be counted as an Earth city thus getting none of the lunar buildings and they’ll never be able to leave the city as units besides rovers that can actually walk on the moon don’t show up for, I want to say, two more eras?
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Apr 26, 2020 19:11
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quote: I thought they'd have pulled something like the Final Frontier or Star Trek mods for Civ IV for their space stage, but I guess not. I'm disappointed but I understand. quote:Unless you’ve let moon barbarians show up by not letting them have any space on Earth, nothing spawns in space. Moon barbarians. I love this so much.
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Apr 26, 2020 21:37
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Love the sex work=crime and all other sorts of ordinances. As we all know, these legal enterprises and things just magic up the crime. Do laundromats produce crime?
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Apr 26, 2020 21:40
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DelilahFlowers posted:Love the sex work=crime and all other sorts of ordinances. As we all know, these legal enterprises and things just magic up the crime. Do laundromats produce crime?  They don't directly, but you can't build a Dry Cleaner without a Shopping District for it to exist in, which does produce crime. So sort of? Jossar’s Playthrough – Atomic 5  Huh, that was fast. Guess 50 turns is a lot less than I thought. The other Space Shuttle doesn’t seem to be able to build a second space station in the immediate vicinity of the first, so let’s turn it into a reward unit.  What this gives us access to is a number of minor World Wonders that will make later settlement of space slightly easier by speeding up the construction time of necessary facilities.  Oh neat, free tech wonder.  Behold, the power of the personal computer! Most of this is sensible, but the Programmer that heals tech units gets a laugh out of me, even if it’s sensible that there should be some kind of repair unit for the time period.   Modern Seismology serves to improve a lot of our mines, and reveals a few resources on the map that will be moderately helpful next era, as well as coming with the first of many superfacilities that combine a whole lot of others into a single building.  There are a lot of sports techs. A lot. Most of what they do is add a few buildings which vaguely improve health/happiness, maybe culture. I could’ve picked any of them to show off really, but Lawn Sports has enough buildings to make it kind of relevant.  This tech is awful and with our tech supremacy only really helps you if you want to build biological weapons. Or even if you don’t but want to advance further through the era. Of course the city governor AI goes haring after the buildings relating to it at top speed.   For that reason I go out of my way to research some biology and genetics techs which will reverse the trend before getting back to actually necessary ones for the Information Era transition.  I can’t deny Urban Culture’s meaningfulness from a gameplay perspective, even if that’s entirely about making the player’s life a living hell. As for its informative value…  Yeah, I’m not going through all this. There’s another scroll bar on this one unit alone, and I think you get the point on how the devs feel. At the very least, couldn't they have called this tech Gang Warfare or something? Not used the graffiti art?  A viral outbreak destroys half of this city’s population. That is a real nasty disaster for the game to pull, even if it’s because the city management AI decided it thought building Bio Warfare Labs was a good idea. It takes something like a nuke to cause this much damage normally.  Computer Networks has an extremely powerful science building, so much so that it’s worth mentioning even though that’s all it significantly provides.  I remember Battlebots, that was a good show. I should be rewatching something like that instead of playing this.  What follow is a series of 4-5 military upgrades culminating in Composites, mostly being shown off for various heat resistant and tough materials that will find their place in the factories of the Information Era. This marks the end of the Atomic Era, and boy did it feel more harrowing than the last two even if it came with our first proper look at space. Let’s try to build on the positives and not the negatives for the present/future, huh? (Techs not mentioned: Minority Rights, Lead Glass, Deep Sea Exploration, New Urbanism, Motor Sports, Water Sports, Modern Sports, Radio Astronomy, Astrobiology, Astrogeology, Volcanology, Extreme Sports, Microprocessor, Amphibious Warfare, Supersonic Flight, Modern Warfare, Guided Weapons) Jossar fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Apr 26, 2020 |
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Apr 26, 2020 22:44
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Oh my god the CIA canonically runs the Panthers in this game's universe?
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Apr 26, 2020 22:55
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Well hey we're on the cusp of Cool poo poo though! We can do this guys let's go
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Apr 27, 2020 01:41
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Bold of you to assume this game isn't gonna have more horrible stuff just cause we're beyond the past.
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Apr 27, 2020 01:52
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... alien racism?
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Apr 27, 2020 01:55
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Guessing to do with genetic engineering.
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Apr 27, 2020 02:19
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It would have to be a pretty big heaping bowl of  to do be worse than the minority rights tech leading directly to the inner city gangs tech
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Apr 27, 2020 02:24
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It's really a shame that the AI just collapses as early as it does. It makes such a huge swathe of the game just pointless. Although I suppose realistically there's just no way for the game to go for this many turns without somebody winning out, AI problems or no.
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Apr 27, 2020 04:46
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overmind2000 posted:It would have to be a pretty big heaping bowl of Oh ye of little faith, there is plenty of to be had in scifi hard and soft. The only question is how many made it in.The Lord of Hats posted:It's really a shame that the AI just collapses as early as it does. It makes such a huge swathe of the game just pointless. Civ IV games played for keeps tend to end by the medieval era. I suspect if C2C was played multiplayer it'd be all over but the clean up by the time of triremes sailing the ocean. Any games that have a snowball effect involving percentages end the moment the curve turns exponential in the favor of whoever then tips the mountain over on their enemies, and while C2C puts off that point in terms of turn count there's only so much they can do if they want techs to have any effect at all.
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Apr 27, 2020 05:00
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sincx fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Mar 23, 2021 |
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Apr 27, 2020 05:22
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I am mildly surprised that there is no Industrial age National wonder that obsoletes few cultures...
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Apr 27, 2020 06:08
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On the one hand that would be very collar-tuggy, on the other hand the gall of it and the possibility for it to be an indictment of the related events... On the third hand, the rest of the mod doesn't really let one entertain that possibility.
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Apr 27, 2020 06:15
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I think I spied "genetic casts" as a Civic so I'm sure there's more horrible dumb crap to come.
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Apr 27, 2020 15:33
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 But for now the universe looks bright and shiny, so onwards we go. Jossar's Playthrough - Information 1   The Information Era starts in the late 1990s, hits approximately now-ish in the middle, and afterwards starts our journey towards the future – projecting several decades onwards.  For the era’s free tech I pick Planetary Exploration, to start us on the path towards improving the space economy. It grants us access to a new unit, the Interstellar Probe. This is the first unit that can properly leave the Earth/Moon and explore the rest of the Solar System. Not every planet gives a unique reward wonder but many do and this would serve as your first proper introduction to the rest of the first half of the map if everything hadn’t been revealed by Satellites. So as we pick up those wonders let me introduce you to…  Mercury  Mars  Jupiter  Saturn  and Neptune. We’ll get to Venus soon enough, though I could’ve swapped it for Mercury in exploration. Uranus might take a while, but I could’ve swapped it for Neptune.  Well that’s concerning. The barbarians have been destroying a bunch of minor civilizations off screen, but this is the first time they went after a major one. We should be safe but it’s annoying at how chaotic the world is outside the borders of Mongolia.  Superconductors is a tech that would be pretty boring if we didn’t have Atompunk researched, but as is provides a neat little boost of science and the next level of upgrade to our Clean Nuclear Reactors.   A Great Artist spawns and I found our final corporation, Civilized Jewelers. It’s more wealth being converted into culture, really.   Ion Propulsion lets our Satellites go up into Cislunar space and be converted into Geosynchronous Orbit reward units. There isn’t really much point to them for now, but they will eventually provide satellite buildings later so it’s nice to keep that function in mind. We also get the ability to explore Asteroids and Kuiper Belt Objects… except you can’t actually send probes out to Trans-Neptunian Space yet. So utterly useless, right?   Surprisingly enough, no: all KBOs are unreachable at this point in time except for this single slightly larger than usual one which is just on the Uranus/Neptune/Kuiper Belt border. Because it exists as object terrain rather than Trans-Neptunian Space terrain, you can land probes on it. At first you might think it’s one of the mod’s many exploits, but this is in fact intentional. This unmarked KBO is Pluto, although the only way to tell this is from the image on the KBO conversion button and the name of the reward that you get from exploring it, New Horizons.  Magnetic Levitation lets us build Maglev Rails, our next road equivalent. Frankly, roads are only really useful at this point for connecting cities to resources since everyone else can fly, but it’s nice that workers can do their jobs even faster.  Stealth represents high tech modern military equipment. There are kind of a lot of modern military techs at this point but these ones are included in the Stealth category so I guess it’s kind of a big deal?   Solar Propulsion leads to the creation of the Solar Sail Worker. Unlike the Space Shuttle which does all of its work right at the edge of Earth and is used for Space Station related functions, this one does work in space proper and is more akin to a traditional worker. I send it off to the far side of the moon to start building solar arrays since we have nothing else for it to do right now.  It also unlocks the Inner Solar System exploration reward unit. This one comes from your probes being in Inner Solar System space tiles, but I also decided that this was a good opportunity to show off Venus.    Space Tourism allows you to construct Level 2 Space Stations. Thankfully, the upgrade is instantaneous. I then send a second Space Shuttle into the Level 2 Space Station to get a Level 2 Space Station Mission Reward. It's used to construct an Orbital Hotel in Tartaryn, but this tech also comes with a building that I think is the first generic one that needs to be built by converting mission rewards, so I’d better start feeding the Space Station more Space Shuttles. This marks the end of the first phase of Information Era space stuff. The next update (or two) will be me consolidating the rest of Earth based technology now that I feel comfortable in knowing that it won’t take forever to upgrade the Space Station. (Techs not mentioned: Fuel Cells, Exoplanet Discovery, Unmanned Air Vehicles, Renewable Energy) Jossar fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Apr 27, 2020 |
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Apr 27, 2020 18:34
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What are the unique planetary rewards you mentioned?
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Apr 27, 2020 19:39
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A series of minor world wonders some of which involve making later space habitat buildings easier to build, but mostly provide some small science boosts. They revolve around probes sent to observe planets or similar missions (Galileo, Cassini-Huygens, Voyager, Dawn, Mariner, etc.). New Horizons is listed in the update as a sample one and several were displayed in previous updates, but now that the idea's been established it's kind of a waste to post screenshots of each individual indistinguishable wonder, unless people really want me to.
Jossar fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Apr 27, 2020 |
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Apr 27, 2020 20:00
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sincx fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Mar 23, 2021 |
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Apr 27, 2020 20:34
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I actually love Pluto just being there and unmarked. Huge burn on Pluto.
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Apr 27, 2020 22:59
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sincx fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Mar 23, 2021 |
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Apr 27, 2020 23:03
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 Jossar's Playthrough - Information 2  Climate Models comes with science-producing weather satellites. Unfortunately I am either too early to build them directly via cities or there’s something wrong. So I have to go and manually build satellite units, send them up to Cislunar space, convert them from Geosynchronous orbit, and then move the reward unit back to a city for construction. This problem doesn’t pop up again, but it’s very annoying.  Laser is a generalist tech providing everything from laser-sight guided troops, to eye surgery, to particle accelerators, to laser tag.   The tech is called Fiber Optics, but really it deals with anything relating to the technological underpinnings of the Internet. The Internet itself is a very powerful wonder, granting 10% science, culture, and wealth in all cities along with the extra trade route.  Communication Networks has a lot of buildings that are Learning and GPP focused. We’ll be seeing more of those this era, especially Learning. Note that I actually can’t build the satellites here because these ones are tied up with Commercial Spaceflight further down the line. It also brings with it the Digital civic, which I’m not adopting because yes, Gold Standard is still better. This sets up a punchline that I’ll get to in some future Infomation Era update. Around this point I finally update Trade offscreen when I recognize that it’s so outdated that even its comparatively better science bonus isn’t helping out compared to more hammers.  Knowledge Management brings with it the Info Net, a generic but powerful science building. It also lets you build the Nuclear Powercomplex national wonder up there, an Atompunk wonder which costs 15k gold a turn but gives each city free power and 200 hammers at no pollution cost.  Gene Manipulation is mostly important for letting you clean things up if one of your opponents launches a biological warfare attack at you.  Forensics allows for the next level of policing, which is kind of important because some of those internet/communication techs have buildings which produce crime, mostly involving hacking.    41r!73 7#3r3 5(r!P7]{!|)|)!35 & 1337 #4X0rZ 1375 637 r34|)`/ 2… okay that’s enough of that. No, I don’t know why every form of criminal behavior in this mod is secretly sponsored by the government, unless it’s supposed to be a meta commentary on you building the hideouts. No, I don’t know why Black Hat Hacking gives you a ridiculous amount of crime relative to other things that came before it. No, I don’t know why totalitarian governments, in addition to the Great Firewall, get the ability to build Propaganda Satellites (the ones with red stars). It’s all very cyberpunk dystopian, but with none of the redeeming qualities of the heroes of such works present. Cyberpunk itself will show up eventually, but is pretty far off and isn’t really that great at capturing the theme.   Nanotechnology isn’t important in itself, but you need Carbon Nanotubes to build Commercial Spaceports. Commercial Spaceflight allows for the aforementioned spaceports which unlock a lot of smaller satellite related buildings which have been accumulating over the last few techs. Also Orbital Hotel is apparently a generic building unlocked here despite having a National Wonder icon earlier when we built it via reward unit? Sure fooled me. Heavy Rockets are an upgrade to the Space Shuttle in pretty much every possible way and you need them for the final stage of Space Stations and to actually build the settlers. You don’t get either of those yet, but you might as well accumulate your 5 Heavy Rockets now.   Rapid Prototyping and Aquaculture are pretty important. Rapid Prototyping provides the next set of upgrades for automatically built housing, but both of their main functions are to condense a large number of factories into smaller omni-factories. Some of my cities actually finally start escaping death cloud levels of smog from the rapid reduction in pollution due to this and we’re in a good position to start the next round of space techs next time. (Techs not mentioned: Long Range Forecasting, Chaos Theory, Gastronomy, 3D Modeling, Cloud Computing, Hydroponics, Virtual Reality, Derivatives, Flash Memory, Wearable Computers, 3D Printing) Jossar fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Apr 28, 2020 |
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Apr 28, 2020 05:01
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I see Lasers effecting Tattoo Parlor. Is that one of those buildings that has billion different modifiers from million different techs?
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Apr 28, 2020 05:42
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Fiber Optics obsoletes The Kremlin, because those dastardly Russkies could never tap fiber lines or something.
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Apr 28, 2020 12:02
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Banemaster posted:I see Lasers effecting Tattoo Parlor. Is that one of those buildings that has billion different modifiers from million different techs?  A little bit, but it's nowhere near the worst in terms of sheer numbers. Tattoos give units +5% strength. Somehow despite the unit category limitations this includes the Clockwork Golems, presumably they electroplate a design on instead. Jossar fucked around with this message at 12:36 on Apr 28, 2020 |
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Apr 28, 2020 12:29
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Tattoo Parlour adds Unhappiness with Guerilla Warfare? Eh? Why? What's the relation?
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Apr 28, 2020 13:46
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This is a mod that has included alt-history speculative fiction. All of them. Simultaneously at times. Logic and consistency beyond "including EVERYTHING!!!!!" doesn't exist.
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Apr 28, 2020 14:22
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Tattoos cause crime and instability (rebellions?)... Also, those +x% with y resource bonuses seem tad huge in certain situations. If that +x% effects whole production instead of just the +1 from the building?
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Apr 28, 2020 14:32
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lol is the image for the internet al gore, that's pretty good this update has some fantastic icons.
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Apr 28, 2020 14:59
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