Weekly Gaming Diary

Each year, from October to October I record what my impressions are in my weekly gaming group. Gone are the days of the 8 guys packed into my house playing D&D, but I still manage to have a couple of friends over almost every week. We almost always play computer games, as the diary reads below. Every now and then we have a ready great night — something very special. We have had some good nights with some fantastic adventures. Where appropriate I have highlighted interesting events.

10-03-12 Over the weekend I amended the game a bit changing Slavery and harbors. The big change I made was giving a new Unique Unit to every civilization. We started a new game at a slight accelerated pace with me playing the Greeks, Joe playing Kongo, and Wade playing the Iroquois. Wade played exemplary and won a great amount of credibility. I floundered like always. Joe seemed content on being off by himself. Good game overall.

09-26-12 Another fantastic night playing Civ IV. We all had so much fun. If this can continue for another couple of weeks, it will be great.

09-18-12 Had one of the best nights playing CIVILIZATION IV in memory. We all did well and we all had fun exchanging tactics and barbs. Good battles and great fighting. We are looking forward next week to continue this fun game.

09-12-12 Played the same game and am slowing pulling myself up, though in last place we are having fun.

09-05-12 Joe, Wade, and I played a fantastic but frustrating match of History Rewritten, a Civilization IV mod. I ended up in a swath of jungle and had a tough time throughout the night. We will play next week which for me will be better. Fun but aggravating at times.

08-29-12 Trying out my new Civ4 mod, Age of Discovery2. No doubt it will be an utter failure.

08-14-12 Playing Civilization 4 with the Multivwerse mod. Joe, Wade, and I all did quite well but we were playing on easy level. Next week we will be on our standard of Noble and Marathon.

08-08-12 Still playing World of Warcraft with Joe – running dungeons with our top level guys. Wade expressed interest in coming over again and so we may alter our playing a bit? May eventually settle on Civ4 again?

07-24-12 Continued playing WoW this week. Wade did not get over because he is still feeling poorly but also because he doesn’t play World of Warcraft. Joe and I found several interesting secrets last night – coming and going out of dungeons and velium sheets (so I can use my enchanter on my other toons.

07-17-12 Played WoW.

07-10-12 Great fun again playing World of Warcraft.

07-03-12 Great fun playing City of Heroes. May play WoW next week.

06-26-12 (last game of June) Played City of Heroes, but it was a difficult night with many deaths!!!

06-18-12 Sara’s birthday so we are pushing it to Wednesday, if it happens.

06-11-12 No game this week because I am up at the cottage. Next week we hope to try Civ4 again!

06-04-12 Started out playing Civ IV but it kept going OOS. So we moved back to CoH and I played Cloudstuff for great fun.

05-29-12 Great fun once again – I played two healers. Dr. Cloudstuff and Atomic Soul

05-22-12 Everyone has fun. We played heroes last night. I made a new guy called Atomic Soul.

05-15-12 Fun times.

05-08-12 Both guys came over and we played City of Heroes with “good” aligned characters.

05-01-12 Confronted WADE on being overweight.

04-24-12 City of heroes.

04-16-12 More City of Heroes fun. We all went up a couple of levels. Wade is still silly!

04-09-12 Another week with Joe, Wade, and I playing City of Heroes. Joe and I had a great time – made fun of Wade. He is such a tard.

04-02-12 First time that Joe, Wade, and I got together in so many months. This time to play City of Heroes. We had a good time, if not some awkward moments when Wade tried to show how much he knows about the game. Overall, we had a great night with some interesting battles. Looking forward to next week.

03-20-12 Tried to play Civilization IV but the game kept crashing. So now we are playing City of Heroes again. Probably something we will try and play since it seems Joe is more interactive with that. I got a new power supply.

03-13-12 Still playing Civilization IV – my mod called Conquest – Still crashing on my other machine. Need to get a power supply for it.

03-05-12 Played Civilization IV: Conquest. Had a good time but crashed a few times.

02-28-12 Played CoH but not really enjoying it as much as I thought I would. I think Joe is much more hooked on it then he says – he is making a dozen toons. He is a cheap son of a bitch though, so he wont spend any money on it – nor will he do so for EQ in the future.

02-21-12 Still playing City of Heroes and have settled on two guys (me: The Oak King; Joe: Fusilier). Deleted other guys.

02-14-12 Played City of Heroes. Made 2 sets of guys: H1 and Mithril Mage. Joe made Uuo-118 and Mr. Blackboard. Had a ton of fun

02-06-12 Played another couple of games of Civilization IV but had continuing issues of OOS errors. Worked through some but still had issues.

01-30-12 Playing Civ4 but in the end, we decided to restart again and added some new rules.

01-24-12 Still playing Civ4 and having some fun.

01-16-12 Got Civ4 running again. Had a fun night.

01-10-12 Tried to play Civilization 4 but the game kept crashing. So we played EQ2 instead and had fun.

01-02-12 Played a bit of History Rewritten but my secondary computer has been crashing lately. First game went well, but then half way through the night it crashed constantly. Played EQ2 and went into a new dungeon and had some fun. Computer crashed once during that episode. Thinking it may be the power supply going bad, as it was always a bit under powered to start. Found a PSU for 40 bucks that should work.

12-21-11 Joe finally got his new computer. I set it up for him last night and he is so loving the graphics in EQ2 and in Civ4. Really great!

Changing the game night to MONDAY as classes schedules have changed.

12-14-11 Started playing on Monday nights because school is essentially over. Gives us an extra 30 minutes of game time – although unsure why, but that is what Joe says?!? We are still playing Civilization IV with the new mod and having fun; History Rewritten.

12-05-11 Tried a new mod called History Rewritten and it was fun, but I want to make some changes to it. Joe and I played on a Earth map, me being the Polynesians and him playing England. Fun so far.

11-30-11 Maybe a game tonight. Last night Joe called it off because his truck broke down and he couldn’t get it fixed. Undecided as to what to play, if we do get together – EQ2 or Civ 4?

11-23-11 Played a new mod called Rewritting History and had an absolute ball. Great mod with all new graphics. We are well pleased with it.

11-16-11 Played two games of Civ 4 – both on the Thomas War Extended Mod. Joe stunk at both of them. Both games I was doing well.

11-08-11 Played Civilization IV again and had a ton of fun playing in the original mod, Thomas’ War with a huge earth map and 10 opponents. Joe played Brazil and I played Mexico. We are both doing well.

11-01-11 Had great fun in Everquest II last night. Played some low level guys and took down three dungeons – last minute, we loaded our big guys into the game and took out several epic mobs.

10-26-11 Continued to play Everquest II. We journeyed to two new dungeons and had many hours of fun. Made some decent loot that we will probably just sacrifice to the gods or perhaps mute.

10-19-11 Joe and I continued to play Everquest II, playing our 90th level guys first for 2 hours then going on to play some tertiary characters for about an hour. Had some great BBQ chicken pizza as well. Thoughts of inviting Wade over circulated since we miss our good friend – perhaps soon I will have a new computer allowing him to play on my 2nd computer.

10-11-11 Great night playing Everquest II

10-05-11 No game because of studying for a test. Next week we are going to try and play Multiverse.

My Gaming History

I knew I was hooked on gaming ever since my brother came home from the store with an Avalon Hill board game called Starship Troopers. I am not sure what year that would be, but I would have to think it was the late 70s. It wasn’t until high school that I came across D&D; I remember pointedly each time I bought a brand new copy of the 1st edition set of AD&D — still to this day can I remember the smell of the binding, cracking open the Dungeon Master guide. It was only a few years later that I started constantly DMing and then writing my own adventures. During those formative years we use to play a different RPG every month, trying out dozens of games — Sadly after three moves I own only a small percentage of my original core rules booklets.

In 1980 I home published a little book called Phantasm Adventures. I typed all the pages up on a typewriter and photocopied and bound them. Perhaps 100 copies of this game exists, yet only recently I had people from Canada and England asked me if they could buy a copy for their RPG collections. I own one original copy of the game — the where about of the other 99 are a mystery to me.

It was during this time that Jeff Dee (the creator of many of the original art found in the 1st and 2nd edition D&D rules, and also the writer of Villains & Vigilantes), and later Jack Herman (co-author of V&V), both moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan. I am unsure of the reasons he moved here, but I think it was a comic-drawing gig. The funny thing is I remember asking my mother if I could go down to this guy’s house and do some gaming, and my mom, always the worrisome type said no because it was in a rather unruly side of town (for Grand Rapids). So it wasn’t during the first alignment of the planets that I met Jeff Dee and started my game design career.

But the second time when again he posted a sign at a local hobby store looking for gamers a year later, I did finally get to meet him. It was here that I was introduced to V&V (the first super hero role-playing game). If I had to put a date, It was probably around 1984. Jeff Dee was the best GM I have ever played with — his campaigns were so imaginative, the stories were intricate, and best of all the battles were engaging. I remember always wanting to go to his house and game.

During this time, I also met up with Scott Bizzar (president of Fantasy Games Unlimited) and I pitched him a number of ideas on different full length gaming system including my little brown book called Phantasm Adventures. This was before the time of true word processing or very early on. If my memory serves me in 1984 the Lisa computer came out for Apple and that was the start of what I would call personal computing — although it would be another 15 years before I owned a Mac for a brief period of time. Alas, during this “Stone Age” everything had to be typed on either a typewriter or a bit later on my archaic Commodore-64 word processor.

It was in 1984 the I wrote my first adventure module for V&V called The Devil’s Domain. The adventure centered around a demonic figure trapped in another dimension trying to escape to Earth and a group of stalwart heroes trying to stop him. To this day I still get small royalty checks from the company every year.

In 1985 I released a compendium of super villains for V&V called Most Wanted III, having the prior two Most Wanted written by Jeff Dee and Jack Herman. This was another great production value module with artwork predominately done by Jeff Dee.

In 1986 I released my third and last V&V adventure called Return to the Devil’s Domain. By this time the franchise was seeing great growth but the overall production standards having slipped with shoddy artwork and poor editing.

In 1987 through 1988 I moved to Japan for a year. It was during the early part of my stay that I visited a bookstore and bought a Japanese game magazine called Game Graphix. On the back they put their address in English, I suppose because they thought it looked fantastical — as if a game’s magazine here would put their return address in elven, I guess. I wrote to the company and within a week I was sitting in their offices talking about games. The rest of the year saw the formulations of a dozen game books — I would write them in English, then present them to the editorial staff that would translate them into Japanese. It was during this time that I wrote and published Phantasm Adventures, Bloodbath, Bloodchant, and Multiverse.
in 1990 I was nearly considered for the producers position at Interplay, the maker of games like Fallout and Bard’s Tale. I was to work on a game called Castles. I flew out there and had serious talks with the president, but in the end I did not take the position.

When I returned to the states I continued to work on RPG designs for 10 years, working with every major publisher including TSR, Steve Jackson Games, Iron Crown Enterprises, and Different World Magazines. I still banged out expansions, modules, and map sets for the Japanese.
It was between 1987 and 1997 that I wrote such works as The Castle Guide and the Equipment Guide for 2nd edition AD&D. I also wrote a huge compendium for RoleMaster under the name of Heroes & Rogues. I also took a hand at editing for Hero Games, working on several super hero adventures for Champions. the Japanese continued to buy my creations including Advanced Phantasm Adventures. You can see more about this English version here:

http://emeraldtablet.wordpress.com/phantasm-adventures/

It was during this period that I was on fire on creating home-brewed game systems, just as desktop publishing was taking off. I created a dozen RPG systems all seeing a very limited print but I became a center of gaming fury in Grand Rapids. At one point, I remember, I had 12 guys in my house playing one of the games. I created such systems as TED&D (pronounced Teddy like the bear) which stood for Troy’s Enhanced Doom & Death; Realms of Ardaan; and Star Traders.

I finally got to work at a computer game company when I accepted a position at Bethesda Softworks, the maker of Skyrim among other computer games. I was to work in the offices and also collaborate on Dagger Fall. My stay at the company was short lived as I discovered that working in the industry was not as glorious as it sounded.

After returning from Bethesda, I entered the “Dark Ages” of design, not producing anything of real quality for 10 years. It was a time of placid existence, without thought of worlds beyond ours — even my gaming dried up and I became lost in the world of gaming.

In 2007 I returned with several community mods for Civilization IV, a computer game of conquest from Firaxis. Although not a programmer, I did figure out how to make large modification to the rules. To this day, I still get people from all over the world emailing about how much they enjoyed my mod.

in 2010 I was contacted by Jeff Dee and Jack Herman about writing a new module for V&V; This project is in the works. It was during this year that I was also contacted by some of the original editorial staff of Game Graphix in Japan and they sought to release a new version of Advanced Phantasm Adventures. Sadly, this project keeps lapsing because of many outside factors.

In 2011, I started another design project called Iron Age. It was built off from my game rules system called Bloodbath, but a bit more complicated. It was also backed up by historical research, hoping to put players into a relatively real world environment of history. My hopes is that playing the game will spur the players to learn more about the culture and history during the Iron Age. The development continues, but slowly.

Conquest

My new mod for Civilization IV is available for download and testing. I gave it a .1 version number because it will require several rounds of editing, programming, and enhancing to truly stand on its own legs.

You can download the mod at Fanatics and learn about its ongoing development: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=460483

Monday Night Games

This week my friends Joe and Wade came back over for another round of Monday night gaming goodness. As it happens Joe showed up first and we talked about what sort of games we wanted to play last night. The problem is that we have only about 4 and half hours, a bit less if we plan on having some food. In weeks past, we would all get a big pizza and sit around and talk about the next “big” game. For the last several, however, we decided in advance to eat quick and get on to more dedicated playing of a game.

We talked about playing some Civilization IV, with either a mod that I designed such as Multiverse or Extreme II or perhaps one of the many fine other mods out there. Those interested in a bunch of really great stuff, I urge you to go here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=171

Extreme II can be located here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=415468

And my mod that encapsulates magic, steam punk, and a ton of what if technologies can be found here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=440184

In the end of our conversation, we decided that we would allow Civilization to rest for another week and continue on playing our characters in the MMO (Multi-Massive Online) game City of Heroes. This is a free to play game, that has a very low entry point but delivers up great mounts of fun. So cool and exciting to create a hero or villain of your own design and then play it through scenarios and missions, collecting secret tips and plans. As you play the game, you gain levels with which you can select new powers or increase the strength of old powers.

You can find more reference here: http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/my_account/download_game_client/download_city_of_heroes.php

If you decide to try the game, you will notice that you need to select a server — basically a copy of the game spread over many computers. Your character will be locked to that server until you can transfer him, so make a choice. My friends and I are on Defiant, if you want to join us sometimes.

 

Wade eventually showed up and he told us he had transferred some of his higher level guys to the Defiant server, which makes missions a bit easier.

In the game, any level character can join up with any other level character through a mentoring program. The leader of the group decides the level cap. So if a low level guy adds high level, those more powerful characters become his level until the group breaks up, alternately a high level guy who adds lower level characters the new additions will be 1 level less than the leader.

Joe played his character Master Jailer throughout the night, while Wade and I switched through a couple of toons. I started out with my super villain called The Butternut Kid, a young cowboy with a fancy set of pistols, but later I moved to my other guy called Doctor Cloudstuff. Cloudstuff is a steampunk character with magical and technological powers to heal and also a crazy gun that is rather powerful.

Our adventures took us all over the map and we completed many missions that night.

 

Some did not end well and several times our guys had to be rushed to the hospital. Going to the hospital happens when the team is beat up and knocked out — it is a time penalty for not successfully managing the fights in a mission.

With a bit of luck and with some arguing amongst ourselves, we ultimately won the day and succeeded in our missions.

 

Each of my guys went up a couple of levels and I added some new powers.

It was a great night of camaraderie that I hope will continue next week.

Patch to MULTIVERSE

A new version of Multiverse is available for download at AtomicGamer. It is not what I would call an official upgrade, but more of a patch to the original mod.

Changes:
Civic Screen is now vertical to help out computers with small screens or resolution
Commander and Slave Ships now capture Barbarian units correctly
Stone should be more available
Oil should be more prevalent
Minor typographical changes

Multiverse Download: Patch 101

 

Extreme2 Grows

This week ended the first playtest of Extreme2, my Civilization IV mod. We concentrated on the latter half of the game, making sure the balances of cavalry, infantry, armored vehicles, ships, and planes were appropriate and worked well together. We ran into some graphic bugs, but got those fixed.

I am happy to say that I have added many new models including several new ships, three new buildings, and reworked civics.

I have added many Unique Units too, including a couple for the French, British, and Americans.

Here is a picture of an added Walrus/Seal Resource added to the game:

 

Civilization IV & Extreme Mod 3

I have just released a new version of my mod for Civilization IV and its a continuation of the game I have been working on since the beginning of July.

You can read more about it here: Civilization IV Mod

I will soon be updating the site here with the information and a link to download the mod (although you can follow the link above and download it from a faster site probably).

In this version of the mod I tackle Atlantean Technology which basically takes the form of high fantasy. Think of Orcs fighting Musketmen, or Jets doing battle with Flying Carpets — its that sort of thing. I have added so many new things, it is often hard to know where to start.

Another main reason I am posting the update information here is for other new friends to find information about Civilization IV and my mod — I hope even in years to come, people will be able to google Civilization IV Mods and find my link to download it.

The empire has discovered Unholy Ground

A Year of Civilization IV — A Reflection.

I have kept a simple little diary over the last year of my Monday night game group and what we have been doing. Mostly it has been Civilization IV, and the latter half playing my mod.  the mod still boggles my mind that I could actually write (things aren’t ever as complicated as they seem) something so cool and complicated.

My friend Wade comes and goes throughout the year as we tire of his shenanigans then having him over for a riotous round of gaming. Throughout the year, Joe and I almost always get together for a fun night of gaming, in one form or another.  What will next year hold?

So without further discussion, and for whatever use it may offer, I offer this simple little commentary of three guys and a gaming night:

10-13-10 Wade, Joe, and I got together and played Civilization IV: ExtremeMod. First two hours were plagued with errors, but we figured out Wade’s computer did not get updated correctly. After that the night went without a hitch – in the end Joe and I were in the middle of the pact, but Wade was at the bottom again. He still has not learned how to play the game.

10-05-10 New Month! Just Joe and I played. Wade needn’t come over for awhile. Had a tough night with multiple restarts. Learned allot about the game and made some good notes.

09-27-10 Just Joe and I – play a mean game of V2.0 – made some changes after we played but it may be getting mean. Gave up on Wade – he is just too difficult.

09-21-10 Joe, Wade, and I started a new game using V1.55 in an Immense Earth map. Joe played the Hawaiians, I played the Australians, and wade played the Ethiopians. I actually was doing the best at the end of the night, followed by Joe. Wade was dead last – he stinks. Fun game all around – AI still seems a bit sluggish.

09-13-10 Joe and I finished what we could of a two week game – we lost, which is good because that means the game is a challenge. Tweaking the mod to version 1.5 for another release on Sept 18th.

09-06-10 Wade could not get over so Joe and I played a new game with the heightened AI. Real fun. Great night. Always fun.

08-30-10 Stopping developing for the mod and just going to play for a while and think of what changes to come—hopefully will not do any sort of changes for a couple of months. Going to play on a Immense world.

08-10-10 Modding is going well. Great fun with just Joe and I last night. We didn’t want to quit. So much fun !!

07-27-10 Great fun last night, even though we had problems with the mod and the balance. Later I was so excited to correct some mistakes – fixed the Chinampas.

07-20-10 Still having a blast modding the game. So tired of Wade and his crying and whining – not going to pursue him coming over any more. It isn’t worth it.

07-05-10 GREAT JOY IN MODDING THE GAME. NEED TO START MY OWN MEGA MOD AT SOME POINT.

06-28-10 Played around with a mod of Civ 4 that I am calling TroysAncient. Needs allot of work.

06-22-10 Since last time, Joe and I started looking into making our own Mods for this venerable game. Joe keeps saying he is going to buy a new computer but never does. The game went well – a continuation from the week before. Wade destroyed the Mayans, and Joe and I are whacking away on Rome and the Egyptians.

06-15-10 Wade, Joe, and I played another rousing game. First game, Joe got slaughtered playing Simon Bolivar. The next game I played the Vikings and Joe played England. Wade played Sitting Bull. Great night, full of laughs.

06-08-10 Wade, Joe, and I played a rousing game of Civ – Joe did very well as the Japanese. Wade did horrible as the Inuit (but the culture is very difficult to play). I tried to play Yagan of the Australians but the land mass was not developed correctly. I have corrected some features of the map for better balance for next week.

06-01-10 Joe has got the game so we are playing not on Mondays so much.

05-24-10 Wade couldn’t get over, so Joe and I played a mod called Final Frontier. Cool but not as fun as the regular game.

05-17-10 Didn’t play last night because Cherry was leaving on vacation.

05-10-10 Wade arrived a bit late. He decided to come over, rather than playing from his house. He did much better than the last couple of games, but I still pulled out in front. Joe took up the rear, but towards the end of the night he started to shine – he still needs to make up a lot of ground.

05-03-10 Wade typically fouled the night up by not being able to get his skype to work then having to leave to help his mom (cant blame him for that). Will try next week.

04-27-10 HAD A GREAT TIME last night. Found out in the end that we were at a constant PEACE with all nations – so that spoiled it for us. Started a new game with that off.

04-19-10 I had JOE on a new Computer (dual core AMD with 2 gigs RAM and a 7900GS video card). Great fun all around eventhough my empire fumbled throughout the night with bad luck, barbarians, and horrible financial problems.

04-12-10 Getting a little old again. May give it a rest for a bit.

04-06-10 New month and same fun. WADE did not show this week because of his leg. Tried to show Joe Runes of Magic but he was not interested as he is always with everything new you want to play.

03-30-10 New game with same results, but still fun. Wade is such a dick!

03-29-10 Looking forward to our game tonight! Must destroy WADE!!!

03-16-10 New game and having fun. No game next week because of our anniversary.

03-09-10 New game without raging barbarians but with 9 opponents. Great fun. I am winning!

03-02-10 Wade came back again. First game Joe lost, second game I lost, third game I won.

02-23-10 WADE HAS RETURNED

02-16-10 we played a bit of Monster Fandango and found some issues. We then played Civ. Today is the release of the new expansion for EQ2.

02-01-10 Didn’t play test BB II—must force myself to play it next week to test. Joe got his ass beat twice in Civ – he sucks.

01-25-10 Showed Joe – BLOODBATH II – then played Civilization IV the rest of the night. Next week I want to create characters. And play through a couple of rooms.

01-18-10 Probably will skip this week – Diablo though fun is just too much clicking. Might just end up playing Civ again next week or the week after – no sense getting together if we are not looking forward to it.

01-12-10 Played another night of Diablo II – killed Diablo and now on to the real expansion.

01-04-10 Played Diablo II again. Joe does not return to work until the 18th, which I am sure will postpone our game for a couple of weeks.  Got to Act III of the game. Maybe Next week we will play test my new game engine.

12-28-09 Played Diablo II – jow starts work next week and I fear the game night will be over . . .

12-21-09 Still fighting Hitler – Mussolini is in the mix as well. Still a tough fight.

12-14-09 Tonight we finish up Hitler and destroy him?

12-07-09 Going to hopefully play tonight with Jow – Huge world, Raging barbarians, and 1 AI aggressive (Hitler). Will report tomorrow for what happened. [[Great game = Hitler is on the run]]

11-23-09 We played a game with Wade over the internet – Wade got mad when Joe attacked him he said without provocation. Joe had warned Wade a number of times about his encroachment, but Wade said he never saw them.

11-16-09 Wade never showed. Joe and I are in another pitch battle and its going to be tough. Fun as always.

11-09-09 Going to try and bring Wade and Joe over to play. Not sure if I can get this third machine working correctly.

11-02-09 Played and had great fun until the game cheated

10-19-09 Going to play tonight but the war is almost one – mop up is going to be tough.

10-12-09 Last week we had fun. Going to try and continue the game this week.

10-05-09 Going to try and start playing again – this time a new era in civilization where it is King of the Hill. No AI just us three, fighting it out for supremacy.

Version 2 of ExtremeMod for Civilization IV

ROADS!! I was tired of not having roads mean anything in the game other than to move troops around, so I added several instances where roads or sealanes give a bonus to either food, production, or gold. Continue testing will need to be done to make sure this does not cause other issues!?!

Sound Files: Removed 227 megabytes of extraneous sound files; mostly soundtracks and diplomatic exchange. Makes the game allot easier to push around and we never used the music anyway. We have not found an issue with removing them, but will provide a path to adding the music back into the game.

Tropical Culture increased — made several improvements to the benefits of Tropical Culture. Chopping Jungle: Changed it so that it isn’t easier to chop jungle down with Tropical Culture I than it is with Iron.

Desert Life Increased — made several improvements to the benefits of Desert Life technology.

Handicap: Once again re-adjusted all levels of handicap in the game. I would still recommend playing on Noble or higher.

Missile Cruiser: Changed the pre-req to Laser to push it further down the Tech path, giving the Gunboat a reason to be there.

Giraffe Archer: Added a new unit called a Camel Archer. You will need Ivory and Equestian Oddities to use. It is a shock and awe unit.

Druid: Added a early unit with respectable movement and a real cool model.

Ethernaut: similar to the jetpack knight, but more lethal. Has a gun that fires pure ether!

Ash Bowman: an archer that can be built with the new resource Hardwood.

Tin Man: An early footman which requires tin for its production.

Fixed the ability of workers to do damage — some worker units can defend and even attack

New Tech Line: A whole line of new techs with accompanying units called the Animal Mastery line. Tiger Master, Lion Master, Panther Master, Bear Master, Polar Bear Master, Ape Master, Kong (!), Kraken Master.

New Tech Line: A whole series of techs for carts, wagons, and chariots. Also added several new units — more to follow. Many new chariots including Fast and Heavy Chariots.

New Bonus Resources:
Tin: New metal bonus
Barley: New bonus for the deserts
Shrimp: New bonus for the oceans
Pearl: New bonus for the oceans
Coffee: New bonus for the land
Tea: New bonus for the land
Orange: New bonus for tropical jungles
Apple: New bonus for cooler climates
Camel: New bonus that will be required for all camel units in the game
Ruin: New bonus that grants +2 gold

Fixed the spawn of Unobtainium. This rare metal should be far less rare and more common!

Buildings

Air Defense Tower: New unit to increased air superiority.
Munitions Factory: A new type of factory dedicated to making better ammunitions.

Version 1.35 of ExtremeMod

Version 1.35: http://www.atomicgamer.com/file.php?id=87772

Alternate site with v1.36: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=SB5T9JXD

There is a slight error with the Jetpack Knights that needs to be corrected. Thanks to Vukovlad for pointing out the error.

This is a very simple little fix.

Go into my mod
Go into Assets
Go into XML
Go into Art
Open CIV4ArtDefines_Unit.xml with WordPad (or Notepad)
Edit–>Find
Type: Jetpack
This will jump to the part of the XML pretaining to the JETPACK_KNIGHT
Second line: <Button>,Art/Interface/Buttons/Units/jetpack_knight.dds</Button>
Remove the ‘,”
so it is: <Button>Art/Interface/Buttons/Units/jetpack_knight.dds</Button>

—-Version 1.35—-
—-Date: August 27, 2010—

+++++Alterations & Adjustments++++++++

Animals:  Creatures no longer concern themselves with cultural barriers and will wander around hunting anything that moves.  They may also be inclined to attack villages.

Barbarians:  Tweaked a number of values making them a bit more numerous at specific times.  Reset them back to being just plain old non-descript barbarains.

Scoring System:  Adjusted the scoring system of the game to emphasize a bit more of Land grabbing and population.

Towers have been made more expensive to build and takes about 10 percent more labor to construct

Villages, Hamlets, and Towns all perform a bit better

Workshops are bit more effecient.

Trireme:  The ship’s combat strength is increased to 3 (from 2 points).

Rangers: Adjusted their combat to +300% vs. animal units.

Hunters: Adjusted their combat to +200% vs. animal units.

Imperialism Civic now has the capital gaining +25% in all areas.

Paratroopers:  Requires Early Flight.

Mount Rushmore:  Needs High Explosives now.

Starting Worker: Fixed the errant starting worker.  Starting civilizations now start with 1 settler and 1 Ranger.

Several technologies now offer hints or glimpses at units that can be produced — a sort of a teaser for the empire.

+++++NEW UNIT++++++++
Apemen
Cyber-Cowboys
Dinosaur
Kobukson
Scallywag
Witch Doctor
Light Steamtank
Heavy Steamtank
Meganaught
Jetpack Knight

+++++NEW TECH+++++
Quantum Computers
Scutage
Condotta System
Genetic Engineering
Gene Therapy
Genomics
Music changed to Musical Rhythm
Musical Notation
Musical Instrument
Steampunk
Ether
Steampunk Weapons

++++NEW WONDERS+++++
Jurassic Park
WestWorld
Planet of the Apes

++++NEW CIVICS+++++
Condotta has replaced Technocracy