[CHALLENGE] (v4.3-ish 6/7/18) Refugee to Regent Kingdom Building Challenge

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What do you think of the Serf to Supreme Challenge?

  • City Construction Challenge was better!

    Votes: 9 7.0%
  • It's okay, but there's definitely room for improvement

    Votes: 35 27.1%
  • Give me my Electrics sooner!

    Votes: 14 10.9%
  • I enjoy the slow introduction of mods.

    Votes: 43 33.3%
  • I wish Element Animation would hurry up with the next episode.

    Votes: 24 18.6%
  • I love it!

    Votes: 51 39.5%

  • Total voters
    129

Capt Gates

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
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Finally! It might have taken me a while but I have the pack working on curse! If you play it let me know what you think and any issues you run into. Just search for Road to Rule on the curse launcher and should be good to go.
 

Jinotad

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
30
-11
1
New to the challenge, but it sounds fun. I'll give your pack a spin Capt, and let you know how it goes.

~Ok, so I downloaded the zipped folder, but I have no idea how I'm supposed to use it. I have the curse client running, but it does not have anything to do with launched a modded mine craft. Any pointing to the right direction would be appreciated. Curse launcher doesn't bring anything up in the search engine.


~~ Ok, looks like I needed the curse voice. . . not the other curse that I got.
 
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Capt Gates

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
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Yea, my bad. Need curse voice, browse for mod packs, then search for Road to Rule. After that its easy though ;)

Edit ~ Have version A0.03 out now with about 20 quests to do!
 
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Senseidragon

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May 26, 2013
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Yea, my bad. Need curse voice, browse for mod packs, then search for Road to Rule. After that its easy though ;)

Edit ~ Have version A0.03 out now with about 20 quests to do!

I'm definitely watching how you do with this modpack - The last effort from @tooncool64 was a major disappointment in just about every aspect. I'm hopeful however, that you can do better.

I'm not personally fond of Enviromine and Mo Creatures in my packs these days, but I notice you've turned off a lot of the Enviromine stuff, leaving pretty much just the Physics and Air Quality active. That has potential to work.

Other than adding to the ambiance, I don't see the point of Mo Creatures - for me, all I see is a lot more entities to suck up server time. For single-player instances on decent machines, this is probably not a significant issue. But for people playing on a server where several players may be trying the challenge, the extra overhead might not be worth it. Assuming that many players of these challenges are playing Single player, I'll put aside my concerns for now. For me though, I'd have to disable it. Don't get me wrong, I like things for just aesthetic purposes. I frequently add Decocraft and Plant Mega Pack into my packs just because they add neat things. I also Like Carpenter's Blocks and Chisel 2 for similar reasons, though Chisel 2 seems to give me problems (not so much the mod itself, but other authors seemingly implementing the API incorrectly or something in their mods).

Iguana Tinker Tweaks. It certainly offers a lot of 'neat' features, and the default config is generally balanced in most cases. However, I noticed that you changed the tool leveling to provide a fairly significant bump to the number of bonuses and modifications the tools can get. In my opinion, this can seriously unbalance the TiCo tools/weapons. As I said, the features are neat, but allowing that many bonuses/modifiers to me feels like old D&D DMs that would allow their players to have +10 dual wielding Vorpal Astral Luckblades of Speed and Wounding, Girdles of Storm Giant Strength, and +5 Elven Armor of Etherealness or something. Way too Monty Haul for my tastes.

Yes, you still have to acquire materials to get those bonuses, but that has never been particularly difficult for people. Several I've seen can get Cobalt Hammers within a couple hours of a fresh server startup, and fully modded a couple of hours later. The limit to how many bonuses/mods a tool could have was pretty much all that curbed this playstyle. With what you allow here, the tools/weapons would be ... insane.

That reference probably dates me, but so be it. I'm a Grumpy Old Man half the time anyway. :)
 
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Monarch_of_Gold

Well-Known Member
Jul 1, 2015
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BTW dragon, since I'm not sure whether or not you've been on the M-FCB forum lately, were you going to continue your attempts on making the mod pack? If so, I've PM'd you a general list of all the things I've got going at the moment (on the Minecraft Forum, not here).

Episode 3 has been recorded, but it's going to be a doozy to put together because it was interrupted so many times I'm not sure how it's going to go.
 

Senseidragon

Well-Known Member
May 26, 2013
703
319
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BTW dragon, since I'm not sure whether or not you've been on the M-FCB forum lately, were you going to continue your attempts on making the mod pack? If so, I've PM'd you a general list of all the things I've got going at the moment (on the Minecraft Forum, not here).

Episode 3 has been recorded, but it's going to be a doozy to put together because it was interrupted so many times I'm not sure how it's going to go.

Yes, I did get your PM and took notes! :) I'm looking forward to seeing your Episode 3 to get a feel for how you tend to progress. For example, I don't see you in any particular rush to get this or that done, you seem more focused on making it a story/adventure than a shopping list of things to do before you rush to the next stage. That's pretty refreshing. Many people get caught up in the rush to complete quests or checklists and don't stop to have a little fun along the way. @The Mobius Archives being a significant exception. @VaalDeth is also pretty laid back, but I think he's been almost entirely (on-camera, at least) focused on the building aspect, which is cool in itself - just a different playstyle. @The Mobius Archives mixes a little of this and a little of that, with a few humorous escapades scattered through everything.

What you (@Monarch_of_Gold) are bringing thus far is a little different than either of them, and so far, it's not bad. They're both great people to talk to as well. Very approachable.

@TomeWyrm is a very visible presence here on the forums and is a veritable trove of good ideas and obscure facts. Generally, if he suggests something, it is because he has personally looked into it, probably quite meticulously, and knows what he's talking about. Also a great person to talk to, don't let the dragon avatar fool you. :)

There are loads of other people that show up here with greater or lesser frequency, but those three are on my list of "Usual Suspects" when I want to bounce ideas around, or sanity-check something I'm thinking of.

Edit: Not to diminish @Maul_Junior's significant contributions at all - he's our resident mad-genius. He'll pop up every now and then with pages and pages of new notes and ideas, then just as rapidly as he appears, he's off again for a spell, nowhere to be seen.
 

Capt Gates

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
14
0
0
...I'm a Grumpy Old Man half the time anyway. :)

Lots of good points, I'll start at the beginning. Enviromine is only being used for the Physics and Air Quality, as a way to force supports for building/mining and making mining a little more dangerous. The sanity/hydration/temperatures always seem to be more micromanaging then what I enjoy, also definitely turned off earthquakes...

Mo' Creatures was added for the ambiance, for now I turned it to not required. I'll go through and turn off some of the creatures it adds and try to cut down its overhead. I will be added Decocraft too, just didn't get around to that yet. I'm more focused on getting early game and quests working right now.

Iguana Tinker Tweaks has already been fixed. I was just playing around with that and never changed it back..

I do want to try to limit the 'rush' though and I'm playing around with Progression and HQM to come up with something.
 

Senseidragon

Well-Known Member
May 26, 2013
703
319
88
It sounds like you're doing well with it. Using HQM to monitor resource gathering and then letting players redeem for workers should work if you set the quest to repeatable and then limit it to maybe once per (minecraft) day. As long as the player still has to maintain enough food for their workers, this should balance things out, and lets the player manage the pace at which they expand. If they want more workers, they do that quest more. If they want less, they don't.

I'm not sure if you can Minetweaker out the recipe for workers, but you can definitely minetweaker out the research and engineering tables, so that the only way to get AW2 'stuff' is via HQM quest completion. This would potentially allow you to more effectively gate when certain features become available to the player. Just set certain repeatable, time-limited quests to unlock at certain stages that then allow players to gain things like work orders, archers, couriers, warehouse controllers, whatever you want.
 
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Senseidragon

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May 26, 2013
703
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I'm still working with the Progression mod itself to learn how I can best utilize it, but it seems so far to be easiest to just set it to disallow the crafting or harvesting of key components to a mod rather than trying to blanket-disable an entire mod until you're ready to unlock it. For example, disabling the Machine Frame would effectively cut significantly into any progression with Ender IO if that mod were in the pack. Similar common components can usually be found in most tech/magic mods. You just find those few things and selectively disable them when a player first logs into the game, then unlock them at appropriate times.

I think you can tie it together with HQM by having HQM reward the player with a particular non-craftable item that is then detected by Progression (which consumes that detected item) and unlocks the appropriate things.

Of course I could just be overthinking all of it, and there's a much easier way to do it that you've already worked out. :)
 

Capt Gates

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
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I'm debating right now on which way I want to go with it. Currently I have the engineering and research table given in a quest. I open up the trading research through a note early to be able to use the warehouse and if I use Progression to lock mining metals out until later I can allow users to research at their own rate to a point. Which is my initial plan with using research notes to allow items I think should be available earlier, however only allowing workers to be awarded through quests would allow a higher cost then what there is now which would push to having larger farms.... Ugh so many choices haha

That's how I'm planning on using it and I've only tested it on a few things so far but it seems to work for the most part. Once I get quests for dirt/wooden stages complete I'll focus on the Progression side more.

On a bad side it seems CurseVoice isn't downloading configs for files that were uploading the last day.. so that kind of sucks..
 

Capt Gates

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
14
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Ah I just had a good idea! I'm using two reputation systems, 'Right to Rule' and 'Utilitarian Rule.' Utilitarian isn't guaranteed yet but what I'm doing with it right now is making some quests that are more functional vs others that are just decorational, making a bed vs making a carpet. I'll have to see what I can do with it before I decide if I want to keep it yet. However 'Right to Rule' goes up with the quests you complete and are based loosely off Monarchical society, Peasant to Emperor, with that said I think I can make a repeatable quest only while you're a peasant for immigrants then a move expensive one for when you're a Village Chief the whole way to Emperor.

Edit: missed a word...
 

TomeWyrm

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
898
1
1
I'm definitely watching how you do with this modpack - The last effort from @tooncool64 was a major disappointment in just about every aspect. I'm hopeful however, that you can do better.

I'm not personally fond of Enviromine and Mo Creatures in my packs these days, but I notice you've turned off a lot of the Enviromine stuff, leaving pretty much just the Physics and Air Quality active. That has potential to work.

Other than adding to the ambiance, I don't see the point of Mo Creatures - for me, all I see is a lot more entities to suck up server time. For single-player instances on decent machines, this is probably not a significant issue. But for people playing on a server where several players may be trying the challenge, the extra overhead might not be worth it. Assuming that many players of these challenges are playing Single player, I'll put aside my concerns for now. For me though, I'd have to disable it. Don't get me wrong, I like things for just aesthetic purposes. I frequently add Decocraft and Plant Mega Pack into my packs just because they add neat things. I also Like Carpenter's Blocks and Chisel 2 for similar reasons, though Chisel 2 seems to give me problems (not so much the mod itself, but other authors seemingly implementing the API incorrectly or something in their mods).

Iguana Tinker Tweaks. It certainly offers a lot of 'neat' features, and the default config is generally balanced in most cases. However, I noticed that you changed the tool leveling to provide a fairly significant bump to the number of bonuses and modifications the tools can get. In my opinion, this can seriously unbalance the TiCo tools/weapons. As I said, the features are neat, but allowing that many bonuses/modifiers to me feels like old D&D DMs that would allow their players to have +10 dual wielding Vorpal Astral Luckblades of Speed and Wounding, Girdles of Storm Giant Strength, and +5 Elven Armor of Etherealness or something. Way too Monty Haul for my tastes.

Yes, you still have to acquire materials to get those bonuses, but that has never been particularly difficult for people. Several I've seen can get Cobalt Hammers within a couple hours of a fresh server startup, and fully modded a couple of hours later. The limit to how many bonuses/mods a tool could have was pretty much all that curbed this playstyle. With what you allow here, the tools/weapons would be ... insane.

That reference probably dates me, but so be it. I'm a Grumpy Old Man half the time anyway. :)
Mo Creatures, for a lot of people is a way to add difficulty to the outdoor world. I class it like Roguelike Dungeons or Infernal Creatures, personally. I much prefer more entity variation (though Mo Creatures reliance on another spawn mod makes more bugs than I personally think it solves). I've had more problems with Carpenter's Blocks than I ever have with a mob-adder like Lycanites or Mo.

Hey, I'm under 30 and I got the Monty Haul reference (surprisingly unintuitive proof for that "paradox"), you're not into "old" territory yet... though I only get it because Old Grognards Telling Tales is a core part of D&D, so it made it into the rulebooks for 3e :p

But more on topic? I'm firmly with Senseidragon here: Resource costs ARE NOT BALANCE. Ignore the ideas that a certain modder that makes a notorious IC2 addon puts forth. Minecraft gets away with it because it is gathering-limited. Mods break that assumption into a billion tiny pieces in the name of convenience and fun. It is difficult to find a mod that does not add some form of resource acquisition improvement. It's one of the things I like most about the mods by @Reika. He realizes that "I need 10 thousand iron" shouldn't be a balance point in any way... though his "main" mod is pretty iron hungry compared to most, RotaryCraft provides means of multiplying your iron yield and obtaining more of it easily through automatic mining.


@TomeWyrm is a very visible presence here on the forums and is a veritable trove of good ideas and obscure facts. Generally, if he suggests something, it is because he has personally looked into it, probably quite meticulously, and knows what he's talking about. Also a great person to talk to, don't let the dragon avatar fool you. :)
Dragons are cuddly and cute, no idea what you're talking about :p ;-)

I'm a researcher by talent, it's what I have always been good at. Don't take everything I say as though I've researched it from bottom-to-top though. I spout a lot of opinion (reasoned opinion, but still opinion) and make more assumptions than I should. If you think I'm off on something, call me on it or research yourself if you prefer.

Doesn't hurt that I practically live and breathe minecraft mods. I'm always on the lookout for new stuff to experience both in the mods I've played before and in new mods that I have yet to play. Plus I've been doing that basically since FTB was a thing... I'm glad I can't count my hours spent on MC (playing and related topics like mod/build research), it would be a number that is entirely too large for comfort :)
 
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Monarch_of_Gold

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Jul 1, 2015
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I'm looking forward to seeing your Episode 3 to get a feel for how you tend to progress. For example, I don't see you in any particular rush to get this or that done, you seem more focused on making it a story/adventure than a shopping list of things to do before you rush to the next stage. That's pretty refreshing. Many people get caught up in the rush to complete quests or checklists and don't stop to have a little fun along the way.

I'm mostly trying to make sure everything is spaced out like this because I've tried playing these challenges where you just rush to get things finished and built and done so you can move on to the next thing and that just burns you out. I'm hoping that by doing it this way I can have an easier time avoiding burnout. It's made more difficult to avoid when you can't go that far away from home, which means you now have to find what you can explore underground to appease your curiosity.
 
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Monarch_of_Gold

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Jul 1, 2015
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But more on topic? I'm firmly with Senseidragon here: Resource costs ARE NOT BALANCE.

After writing many stages for my challenge I realized this was true to some degree and that forcing people to gather resources before they could move on was boring and just wasted time. I don't want to waste people's time. I also want them to have fun. Because of that, I removed the item requirements and swore to never write them again because they were also seriously draining my creativity in writing the challenge stages. Now I don't really see the point in item requirements beyond the fact that they make it more like an RPG.
 

Capt Gates

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Jul 29, 2019
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I can agree with that, I'm trying to figure out the best way to balance progression with a reason to expand. So instead of just rushing a MFR harvester you would unlock an ancient warfare worker and crop farm, which isn't that efficient to start out with. That way it would incentive people to create a larger city instead of compact highly efficient builds. But then once you progress further your farms would become more efficient so you don't have sprawling lag inducing areas. So in the same sense I don't want people to be able to be able to get more workers without requiring say 10 wheat so they have a reason to have a wheat farm for something other then to feed themselves. Though the workers do require their own food and don't really create a surplus at first so I guess I should test that balancing more......
 

Reika

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Dragons are cuddly and cute, no idea what you're talking about :p ;-)
:D

But more on topic? I'm firmly with Senseidragon here: Resource costs ARE NOT BALANCE. Ignore the ideas that a certain modder that makes a notorious IC2 addon puts forth. Minecraft gets away with it because it is gathering-limited. Mods break that assumption into a billion tiny pieces in the name of convenience and fun. It is difficult to find a mod that does not add some form of resource acquisition improvement. It's one of the things I like most about the mods by @Reika. He realizes that "I need 10 thousand iron" shouldn't be a balance point in any way... though his "main" mod is pretty iron hungry compared to most, RotaryCraft provides means of multiplying your iron yield and obtaining more of it easily through automatic mining.
Honestly, even GT is not all that bad about this, more being gated behind either extremely slow machines or just incredibly long production chains (though those are not much better because they have the same ultimate effect). Mods I normally point to as the worst offenders for "more resource = more balance" are Gravisuite (ironically another IC2 addon), Applied Energistics (though that one is to some degree understandable), and (this one based on things I have heard, having never used it myself) BigReactors.
 
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TomeWyrm

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Jul 29, 2019
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GT fusion reactors=Rubies. You need (or needed. All GT knowledge I have is pre-worldgen update... v5? v6?) a boatload of them and they have to run through that centrifuge of his... that thing... just ugh. Tedium is the main "balance" mechanic for GT, with a secondary in resource cost. But yeah, the worst offender I've met is Gravisuite. Haven't heard about BR being a particular resource sink. There are a lot of large multi-blocks, that takes a lot of materials. Well I guess the coils for turbines can be a bit annoying if you use enderium... but by that point I would have the supply chain automated so I didn't notice :p

That being said, resource gates and upkeep costs aren't a bad thing for a challenge. Your population requires 9 wheat per person per day to sustain them. Your vault needs treasure. Fill your trophy room. All fine in my eyes. Just use them when they support the challenge, not simply because "more expensive is more difficult" (Because it isn't :p)
 
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Jinotad

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Jul 29, 2019
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Well, as one youtube video put it. "Whats the difference between moving onto the next screen, and killing mobs until you can unlock the gate to the next screen? 2 hours."

Being required to get resources to use, that's great and fine in my opinion. It the "collect 2 stacks of wood, and keep it in the supply chest" that kind of feels tedious, as I'm not allowed to use that material. Its just a requirement to waste time. Now, with the questing book requiring you to collect the 64 logs to unlock something, but doesn't consume the logs, I'm more than happy with that. As its a goal to get a bunch of resources, and then I'm expected to actually use them for something. Or for the optional unlocks I'm spending the wood to acquire something. Since it is optional I knew the cost, and wanted the reward.
 
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Senseidragon

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May 26, 2013
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I may have been reading way too much into it, but I always treated those "collect X and keep it in the supply chest" requirements as an abstract notion representing the infrastructure required at that point in the challenge to meet a certain goal. Putting a specific amount of food in chests for each refugee is an abstract showing what sort of food production you should have to support that level of population. X stacks of logs represented (to me) the capacity of the village at any point in time to maintain a reserve of X stacks of logs and replenish those reserves to that level after using them for a project.

Using that viewpoint, things more naturally fit into my play style, and as I started using mods that allowed me to more closely emulate those concepts (like AW2 or Helpful Villagers) it became more engaging as a challenge for me. Custom NPCs, while not helping much in the resource-gathering aspects, allowed me to 'spend' resources to flesh out my village. Rather than stockpile sets of armor and weapons in a chest, I enlisted a villager and made him a guard. I equipped him with stage-appropriate gear and gave him an area to defend/patrol.

With AW2, I get the "food cost" aspect modeled acceptably well, and resource generation tasks can now be offloaded onto the population rather than relying on me having to time-sink a lot of grinding maintenance work to maintain my village by myself. The amount of maintenance required to do all this myself eventually would get to the point that later stages of the challenge became more unlikely to achieve.

Mods that provide the ability for me to more closely model the progression envisioned in this challenge are what I really look for and want to see more of. Nobody is really clamoring for yet another mod to add a few blocks and a whole new variation of tools based on those blocks. We've got oodles of those now. We have precious few mods that assist a player in reasonably emulating a progression from a lone survivor to a leader rebuilding an empire.
 

Jinotad

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
30
-11
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Just had a thought, what if with the HQM you could combine it with something like the Millenare building patterns. You have builder "villagers" and threw HQM you would receive a "blueprint" block for a building. Then you place this block in the world, and if the space is sufficient, the builder comes over to build the building for you. In the beginning, you would be expected to make the buildings yourself, but as things progress, you would become more of a mayor/supervisor doing the city planning, and then leaving the grunt work to your villagers.