Civilization - A Post-Mortem

Discussion in 'Community Talk' started by The_Icy_One, Sep 27, 2017.

  1. The_Icy_One

    The_Icy_One Procrastinates by doing work

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    Civilization was a unique, MyM-Original Kitchen sink-style PvP pack, the likes of which has never been fully replicated. It was designed with PvP play in mind, but not based around it, and included a plethora of mods, some well-known and frequently used in large packs, and others not. It had a longer stable lifetime than some other MyM-Originals, beating even Revenge of the C-Team, a pack from the creator of such behemoths as Journey to the Core and Invasion whose original playthroughs reached viewer counts in the hundreds of thousands. Certainly, Civilization was not a failure, but it still had problems which eventually led to its demise.

    The Story of Civilization

    Civilization released as a beta at the start of December of 2015, a pack custom-built for MyM by @Krhymez and designed with PvP in mind. The pack was released fully, along with a server, at the very end of December 2015. Unfortunately, its first release server was plagued with roll-backs, timeouts and crashes, leading to a reset a little over a month later, in February 2016. The replacement world lasted for the rest of the lifetime of the server, through several large updates, changes of authorship and mod additions. Teams grew and alliances were forged on the server, and massive projects were built and fell into disuse. But as all things die, so too did Civilizations. The announcement of servers that were to be retired was made on the 12th of July, 2016, and Civilization, after months of issues and dwindling player counts, was in the firing line. On the 26th of July, 2016, the Civilization server was shut down for the last time.

    The bugs

    Civilization's mod selection was incredibly diverse. From bees to trains, and villagers to witches, the mods in the pack were of the likes not seen in other servers. It remains the only MyM pack to use Ancient Warfare, and was the only non-challenge MyM pack with Ars Magica 2's 1.7.10 version. Unfortunately, this use of relatively obscure selection of mods caused difficulties with server usage. A major issue plaguing the server all the way from launch was the "Thaumcraft Bug", which caused random crashes and disconnects when using Thaumcraft at several points in the server's life, apparently as a result of some unknown mod combination. KCauldron, the server software used for 1.7.10 packs, also caused issues with some of the mods used, most notably with Ars Magica 2's soulbound issues and the occasional randomly invisible mobs. As the pack was released a little after forge for 1.8+ was becoming semi-popular, these bugs were very rarely fixed by the mod authors, as they were (in my opinion rightly) considered non-major issues which would not warrant a fix for old codebases. The timing of the pack was also unfortunate in that some major 1.7.10 mod-interaction glitches were not yet known, so could not be avoided through careful mod selections.

    The rules

    Civilization had a custom rule-set, separate from standard MyM rules. This caused confusion at times, especially around the early changes to PvP and grave robbing rules. While these were clarified within a few days of the issues being reported, I can remember at least one case of players quitting the pack, possibly forever, over these rules. Other than this, I personally felt that the rules used were the perfect balance between general freedom and restriction for security, although others may disagree on that one.

    The combat

    Civilization had, on the whole, pretty well balanced PvP combat. There were some issues with it, for example an invulnerability "glitch" when one mod's item gave a heal upon going below 3 hearts, and another mod's items reduced damage from all sources to below 3 hearts (I think). Outside of cross-mod exploits, the mid-lategame combat was very well balanced, with every trick having a feasible counterplay. Your opponent has powerful armour that you can't breach? Use a Tinkers' Construct rapier to bypass it or a witchery potion to remove the armour. Opponent using tools to remove your armour? Use baubles and potion buffs creatively to become tanky or agile enough to fight without it, or make use of an invisibility ring to sneak around them and get potshots in.

    I fondly remember a day when somebody had attempted to assassinate my poorly equipped self at home, but could not find me due to my use of a mariculture ring to become completely invisible, so left after swinging wildly for a while. They came back a little later with a helmet enchanted to make invisible players give off particles in short range, so an hour-long standoff ensued as they attempted to find and kill me with their more powerful armour and weapons, while I made use of my high mobility to stay out of their range. After a while, I managed to make some blocks which gave off enough particles to hide me effectively, and slowly placed them around my base as the siege continued, at which point I believe they gave up and went home, but it is possible they killed me. Either way, it was a fun aspect of the pack that players at differing levels of progression could feasibly enter into combat without massive imbalances.

    The updates

    While Civilization was maintained well early on as well as later in its life, there was a large lull in the middle after the original maintainer left. The period of unsolved issues this led to caused some players to leave, and some of the changes made by the new maintainer caused others to leave, although they likely caused similar numbers to remain as well.

    Ars Magica 2

    I personally think this is a big enough topic to deserve its own heading, as its addition was and is probably one of the more controversial changes made to the pack. I'm probably biased due to my own experience working on the mod, so feel free to point this out in any responses.
    AM2 was a mod which many players of Civilization, myself included, had wanted for a while. For those who don't know, Ars Magica 2 was a mod designed around creating and casting custom spells, with an endgame balanced to make the player "overpowered" with well-written spells and enough mana to use them. It also contained boss mobs, a full energy system with smelting, repairing and uncrafting capabilities, a sorting system, general purpose automation tools like tree choppers and item collectors, among other things.
    The mod has a massive scope, which I can personally tell you made hard-porting it a nightmare, and also led to a massive number of effectively unfixable bugs. While some of these could be and were worked around (i.e. disabling spells which impacted the world such as dig, and preventing spell use near claims) others, such as soulbound items not playing nicely with the server software and energy not being stored properly, could not be avoided. It was also generally much more powerful than other available mods in the pack, requiring players to either invest in strong magic resistance enchantments or play through the mod themselves in order to compete in PvP with an AM2 user.
    In hindsight, I think AM2's addition to the pack was probably a bad idea, as it was and still remains highly unstable, and was really not suited to a large PvP-enabled server environment in general, since very little could be done to properly limit its power without severely limiting the mod itself due to the lack of configurability provided.

    There's more to say on this, but I think this is definitely enough for a discussion for now anyway.
     
  2. Datsaltysnek

    Datsaltysnek lover of NCIS

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    ohh i completly forgot about ars magica i loved it
     
  3. chugga_fan

    chugga_fan ME 4M storage cell of knowledge, all the time

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    well considering he IS one of the main devs of ars magica... Commits · Growlith1223/ArsMagica2 · GitHub I'm not surprised he got john back then to add it.
     
  4. Lawmonark

    Lawmonark Well-Known Member

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    This pack was a brainchild of mine, but after a few months of development... i was called away for work.

    A lot was learned from this pack and the issues that happen when using "lesser known" mods.

    I am currently working on two packs.

    1- MYM- Testing Zone a basic kitchen sink pack similar to forgecraft but for this community. It is on the Curse Launcher.

    2- "Name Not Released" - This is a hard mod pack. And will be similar to Civilization but focus more on the early game. Think TerraFirmaCraft but using basic mods. It may have PvP war zones but that is not decided yet.
     
  5. The_Icy_One

    The_Icy_One Procrastinates by doing work

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    At the time, that fork didn't even exist, and I had only a single commit to my name on 1.7.10. How times change.

    Your Testing Zone pack is actually what led me to think about this, as it would be the first MyM-Original pack for a while.
     
  6. Nyehhehhehheh

    Nyehhehhehheh Well-Known Member

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    Nah, it was neither a glitch nor two items. It was literally just one enchanted item from Mariculture that did this. And there where actually several ways to bypass that invulnerability easily. Stacking several different damage sources on top of each other would tick faster than the healing of the enchant for example. @Andorial and I experimented around with it alot back then, in case someone would find out our little "secret" one day :D

    Oh I still miss Civilization to this day. It was the first Modpack I've ever tried and the whole open PvP aspect with all those different mods and the whole concept of bounties, you could put on people (or even yourself if you were cocky) was just incredibly fun. It was a modpack, where there was no need of a questbook to guide you. You just made your own story. And I liked it. It kinda felt like the Minecraft Version of Game of Thrones with all those battles, alliances, wars and betrayals that happened there.

    I will never forget all those epic battles I fought there with John. We were basically Rivals. Sometimes he did screw me up, sometimes I did it to him - just to become allies against a "greater foe" in the end. Heheh..
     
  7. Lawmonark

    Lawmonark Well-Known Member

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    Keep the this "secret".... but i am working on a more balanced pack like this. ;)
     
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  8. coolgi3000

    coolgi3000 Logician of the gods

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    Still pvp wilderness based?
     
  9. Lawmonark

    Lawmonark Well-Known Member

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    Yes, but pvp will be a night time.
    I am submitting a Beta today.

    It will be a little bit lighter of a pack, focusing on balance and survival.
    [doublepost=1506623318,1506621671][/doublepost]Overview - Primal - Modpacks - Projects - Minecraft CurseForge

    It is on the curse launcher.

    Be warned, this is a tougher pack and uses PrimalCore as the base

    [doublepost=1506623868][/doublepost]Primal (A Survival Modpack) | MineYourMind Community
     
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