This is a challenge that relies on a specific set of mods being installed. My setup is based on Direwolf20's mod setup, found on the thread for his Let's Play series here:
The Runic Dust Mod and the Green Stone Wire Mod will have some block id conflicts with Direwolf20's set up, so before you add them, load a minecraft world using Direwolf's setup, open your inventory and go to the options screen for NEI. There you will find an option for block/item id settings. Toggle "ignore block ids", "ignore item ids", "ignore unused item ids", and "dump unused block ids". Then choose "dump id map now". This will give you a list of the unused block ids that are available. There should be seven of the them. Currently Runic Dust uses 3 and Green Stone Wire uses 4, so that is just enough. Install the new mods, try to run minecraft (it will crash), then modify the config files for the mods that were created, changing the block ids to the ones you determined were available.
The Green Stone Wire Mod needs to be installed into the jar. The forum post for that mod also has a custom emc add-on that fixes equivalent exchange emc values for the blocks and items of the Green Stone Wire mod. That add-on includes more stuff that needs to go into the jar, and also a couple of config files that go in the config folder. The Runic Dust mod, Extra Bees mod, and Vis Bees mods just go into the mods folder.
In this challenge you will be establishing a city with five districts:
- a "central" district which should located in the geographic center of your city and where you will initially use the following mods: Doggy Talents, Equivalent Exchange, and Forestry.
- an "industrial" district where you will use IndustrialCraft and Buildcraft.
- a "magical" district where you will use Runic Dusts and Thaumcraft.
- a "rails" district where you will use RailCraft, Steve's Carts, and Portal Gun.
- a "technological" district where you will use RedPower and Green Stone Wire.
You will create a stable Mystcraft Age for each district so that you can have separate mining operations for each one.
When you are working on each of the districts you can only use mod items from the mods for that district, and cannot enter any of your buildings from the other districts, use any of the resources from those districts (including farms, etc) -- until you have completed the specifed goals for that district.
Each time you complete the goals for one of your districts, you will return to the central district to integrate technologies and resources from the completed district into the central district and vice versa. When you do this you will be able to use all of the mods you have unlocked so far.
The features of Equivalent Exchange will be unlocked a bit at a time throughout the challenge.
General Rules
- Ender Storage, Iron Chests, Wireless Redstone, Mystcraft and Inventory Tweaks can be used in all five districts. NEI can be used in recipe mode only, of course.
- Do not do any mining or cave exploration in your main world while you are working on districts other than the central district. You will have a separate stable Mystcraft Age for each district to use for mining operations. Even when you are working on your central district consider using the central district's Mystcraft Age for mining if you are wanting to mine using destructive means that would deface the surface of your world.
The central district - Doggy Talents, Equivalent Exchange, Forestry + add-ons
Your starting district will use the Doggy Talents, Equivalent Exchange, and Forestry Mods. The use of Equivalent Exchange, however, is restricted at the beginning, and is progressively unlocked as you go through the challenge. The only EE items you can use right from the beginning are the covalence dusts and the diving rods. Your initial tasks will include building a house for yourself, some kind of a home for your DTDoggy, some kind of a facility for getting starting on beekeeping, a warehouse for storage, a building for Mystcraft linking books, a simple manually harvested wheat farm and sugarcane farm, and some simple animal pens. You will also want to do some planning as to where you want each of the other districts of your city to be given the landscape and terrain of your world.
Next you need to start building Forestry machines and automated Forestry farms, but remember, you don't have access to buildcraft engines yet, so you will probably want to create some peat by hand to get your peat engines started. Mod items from other mods, such as thaumcraft crystals, redpower gems, nikolite, etc cannot be used yet. You can collect them, but they should just be stored in your warehouse until later. You can breed Vis bees and the bees from Extra Bees, but store the products related to Industrialcraft/Buildcraft/Thaumcraft, etc in your warehouse as well. Keep going until you feel you have "mastered" Forestry.
Then you will focus on exploring mystcraft ages until you get to the point where you can build some stable ages. Don't forget to create and take linking books with you every time you travel so you can get back! Due to some possible conflicts between RedPower and Mystcraft it might not be a bad idea to make an exception to the NEI recipe mode only rule to make a save of your items. That way, if you get an age with out of control marble generation or something that lags your computer you can restore your inventory. Write at least 5 stable single biome Mystcraft ages with different biomes, so that you can have a dedicated age for each district.
The industrial district - Industrialcraft, Buildcraft + add-ons
Create a small building in the middle of the area where you are planning to put your industrial district and install in that building the descriptive book for the Mystcraft age you are assigning to this district. (You can only use this building for traveling to your Mystcraft Age). Now it's time to empty your inventory (including armor), stay out of your central district and away from its resources, to establish your new district using Industrialcraft, Buildcraft, and the add-ons for those mods: teleport pipes, sneaky pipes, advanced machines, additional buildcraft objects, logistics pipes. You can't use anything from Forestry or Equivalent Exchange while you are working on this district! There is no mining or cave exploration in the main world while you are working on your goals for this district, so you will need to set up buildcraft quarries, IC2 mining operations, etc in your Mystcraft age. Don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back! Build as many of your buildings as possible in the main world. Don't forget that you can use Ender Storage to make delivery of items between your main world and your Mystcraft age easier.
Some top-tier IC2 Technologies (Specifically UU-Matter, Nano and Quantum Armor, Nano Saber, Electric Jetpack, Mining Laser, and Nuclear Power) will be prohibited until later. Try to use as much of the the other stuff that is available in IC2 and Buildcraft as you can before moving on.
Return to the central district
Once you've accomplished the goals for the industrial district, you will return to the central district, this time bringing with you whatever resources you want from the industrial district. It is now ok to combine all the mods we've used so far, so the objectives will include automating your bees and farms with buildcraft and logistics pipes, automating your warehouse and connecting to the logistics system in the industrial district, and connecting the central district and the industrial district with roads.
Also, you can now create the Philosopher's Stone, Alchemical Chests, Alchemical Bags, the Talisman of Repair, alchemical coal, mobius fuel, and the destruction catalyst from Equivalent Exchange.
The magical district - Runic Dusts, Thaumcraft
Create a building in the middle of the area you are planning to use for your magical district to house the descriptive book for this districts Mystcraft age, then empty your inventory completely, and get starting on your magical district. The only mods you can use while working on this district are Runic Dusts and Thaumcraft. Use your mystcraft age for mining and if you want, for Vis production, to avoid tainting your main world. Try to build as much of your magical stuff as you can into your main world, however. Keep going until you feel you have "mastered" Thaumcraft.
Return to the central district (again)
You can use all of the mods you have learned so far, which now includes Runic Dusts and Thaumcraft. Add some magic oriented buildings to your central district, make use of your Vis bees, use Buildcraft to automate some of your magical contraptions, deal with any tainted areas anywhere in or around your city, etc.
You can now create Nano armor, the Nano saber, the mining laser, and the electric jetpack from IC2.
You can also now create the transmutation tablet, interdiction torches, nova catalysts, mark 1 and 2 energy collectors and relays, energy condensers, dark matter, dark matter armor, dark matter tools, Ein, Zwei, and Drei Klein stars, the volcanite and evertide amulets, the hyperkinetic lens, the gem of eternal density, and the watch of flowing time from Equivalent Exchange, so spend some time getting your EMC production going.
The rails district - Railcraft, Steve's Carts, Portal Gun
Set up another Mystcraft building in a convenient location, then empty your inventory and start your new, train themed district using the Railcraft, Steve's Carts, and Portal Gun mods. Set up your Railcraft industry and progress through the levels of Steve's Carts technology. Mining needs to be done in the dedicated Mystcraft age, and should include setting up and using Tunnel Bores and Steve's Carts mining carts, as well as mining by hand. Also, don't forget that you can use wireless redstone to set up remote controlled Portal Spawners - helpful for popping back up to the surface after mining underground for a while. Also, minecarts can go through portals, so Portal Spawners can also be used to transport minecarts from one place to another. As always, you can use Ender Storage to facilitate transport of items across dimensions. Keep going until you feel you have "mastered" Railcraft and Steve's Carts.
Return to the central district (again)
Build a rail system to connect all of your districts thus far. Expand on the roads connecting all of the districts as well. Add some more buildings to your central district. Feel free to work on your bees, any missing Thaumcraft research, etc.
Now the final tiers of IC2 are now unlocked, so start producing UU-Matter, build a nuclear power plant somewhere, and get your quantum armor.
You can also now create mark 3 collectors and relays, the rest of the klein stars up to omega, red matter, dark matter blocks, dark matter furnace, red matter armor, red matter tools except for the Katar and Morningstar, nova cataclysm, catalytic lens, mercurial eye, any of the rings except the void ring and the ring of arcana, body, mind, and soul stones (not the life stone yet), the pedestal, and the alchemical tome from Equivalent Exchange.
The technological district - RedPower, Green Stone Wire, The Laser Mod
Set up another Mystcraft building with the descriptive book for the this district, empty your inventory, and get ready to use RedPower, Green Stone Wire, and The Laser Mod. You will want to set up a frame quarry in your Mystcraft age, and build other cool automated stuff in your main world. Make some houses with thin interior walls (covers or panels), and other microblock decoration. Do something cool with Green Stone logic. Make use of different types of Lasers, etc. When you feel like you've done something with most of the available features of these mods, get ready to put it all together.
Final return to the central district
Use RedPower and Green Stone Wire technologies to re-wire your existing redstone contraptions throughout your city. Build new automation using RedPower tubes to enhance your IC2, Forestry, Thaumcraft, and Railcraft operations.
You can now make the rest of the power items from Equivalent Exchange: Void Ring, Ring of Arcana, Life Stone, Red Matter Blocks, Red Matter Furnance, Katar, Morningstar, and the Gem Armor. See if you can build some EMC production in your main world that is not based on Energy Collectors (milk, mushroom, vis, etc). Use your new toys and powers to expand and connect your provinces to the point where together they make a truly epic city. Profit.
Earlier versions of the challenge
A Tale of Five Districts Version 2.0.1
A Tale of Five Cities Challenge - a modded single player minecraft challenge. Version 2.0.1
This challenge is based on CSieg's The Modern City challenge, which is here:
This is a challenge that relies on a specific set of mods being installed. My setup is based on Direwolf20's mod setup, found on the thread for his Let's Play series here:
The Runic Dust Mod and the Green Stone Wire Mod will have some block id conflicts with Direwolf20's set up, so before you add them, load a minecraft world using Direwolf's setup, open your inventory and go to the options screen for NEI. There you will find an option for block/item id settings. Toggle "ignore block ids", "ignore item ids", "ignore unused item ids", and "dump unused block ids". Then choose "dump id map now". This will give you a list of the unused block ids that are available. There should be seven of the them. Currently Runic Dust uses 3 and Green Stone Wire uses 4, so that is just enough. Install the new mods, try to run minecraft (it will crash), then modify the config files for the mods that were created, changing the block ids to the ones you determined were available.
The Green Stone Wire Mod needs to be installed into the jar. The forum post for that mod also has a custom emc add-on that fixes equivalent exchange emc values for the blocks and items of the Green Stone Wire mod. That add-on includes more stuff that needs to go into the jar, and also a couple of config files that go in the config folder. The Runic Dust mod, Extra Bees mod, and Vis Bees mods just go into the mods folder.
Overview
In this challenge you will be establishing five cities:
- a "central" city (give it the name you want) which should located in the geographic center of your empire and where you will initially use the following mods: Doggy Talents, Equivalent Exchange, and Forestry.
- an "industrial" city where you will use IndustrialCraft and Buildcraft.
- a "magical" city where you will use Runic Dusts and Thaumcraft.
- an "age of steam" city where you will use RailCraft, Steve's Carts, and Portal Gun.
- a "technological" city where you will use the RedPower and Green Stone Wire mods.
You will create a stable Mystcraft Age for each city so that you can have separate mining operations for each one, and so that you can keep your main world unspoiled.
When you leave your central city to establish one of the other four cities you will leave your possesions behind except for the descriptive book for that cities Mystcraft age so that you can work through the goals for that city without help from other mods or from your established resources.
After you finish the goals for each of the satellite cities, you will return to your central city and integrate technologies and resources from the satellite city into your main city. Also, a bit more of the functionality of Equivalent Exchange will be unlocked each time. Eventually, your five cities will merge and become a single epic city.
General Rules
- Ender Storage, Iron Chests, Wireless Redstone, Mystcraft and of course Inventory Tweaks can be used in all five cities. NEI can be used in recipe mode only, of course.
- Do not do any mining or cave exploration in your main world. You can harvest exposed stone and whatever other resources you need, but stay where you can see the sky, and don't dig up the dirt in an area to do so. In other words, no strip mining. Keep your main world pretty - do your mining in your Mystcraft Ages.
- You can check out unstable Mystcraft ages to research age symbols, but may not harvest any resources in those ages. Once you have the Mystcraft research to write some stable ages, you will write 5 stable single-biome ages with a different biome for each, one for each of your five cities. Consider carefully what biomes and characteristics you want to use for each city. These 5 ages is where you will do your mining.
- Each city will only allow you to use specific mods while you are working on that city until you have accomplished the set goals for that city.
Getting Started
The first thing you need to do besides establish the fundamentals of survival and get started on setting up your central city is to do some planning as to where you want each of your cities to be given the landscape and terrain of your world. Each of your cities should occupy an area no larger than 200 x 200 blocks, with the central city in the geographic center and the planned center of each of the four satellite cities no further than 200 blocks away from the middle of the central city. This way, the cities will be able to eventually merge, without cramping the space you have to build while you are working on each one.
The central city - Doggy Talents, Equivalent Exchange, Forestry + add-ons
Your starting city will use the Doggy Talents, Equivalent Exchange, and Forestry Mods. The use of Equivalent Exchange, however, is restricted at the beginning, and is progressively unlocked as you go through the challenge. The only EE items you can use right from the beginning is low covalence dust and the level one diving rod. Also, at the start you can only use wooden tools. You can go foraging above ground wherever you want in your main world, but there is no mining or cave exploring allowed, and buildings for the starting city must all be within 100 blocks of where you decided to make the center. Your initial tasks will include building a house for yourself, some kind of a home for your DTDoggy, some kind of a facility for getting starting on beekeeping, a warehouse for storage, a building for Mystcraft linking books, a simple manually harvested wheat farm and sugarcane farm, and some simple animal pens. Then you will focus on exploring mystcraft ages until you get to the point where you can build your first stable age. Don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back!
Once you have a stable single biome Mystcraft age, you can advance to using stone and iron Vanilla tools, medium covalence dust and the level 2 diving rod, and begin mining in your stable age to start getting more advanced resources. Back in your main world, you can start building automated Forestry farms - remember, no buildcraft engines yet, so you will probably want to create some peat by hand to get your peat engines started. All this stuff needs to be built in your main world, within 100 blocks of spawn. Mod items from other mods, such as thaumcraft crystals, redpower gems, nikolite, etc cannot be used yet, so they should just be stored in your warehouse. Don't forget to keep working on your bees. You can breed Vis bees and the bees from Extra Bees, but store the products related to Industrialcraft/Buildcraft/Thaumcraft, etc in your warehouse.
Once you have any four different Forestry farms up and running, and at least eight different breeds of bees, you can advance to diamond Vanilla tools, high covalence dust, and the level 3 diving rod. Make the rest of the Forestry Farms you want to have, visit the nether and to collect some resources and get started on infernal type bees, and make any other Forestry machines and items you want to have.
Finally, write 5 more stable single biome Mystcraft ages with different biomes than your first one. You can visit the ages to make sure everything is ok, but don't build in them or do anything else with them yet. These ages will be used by your other cities.
The industrial city - Industrialcraft, Buildcraft + add-ons
Now it's time to leave your DTDoggy and all of your possessions, except for a single mystcraft descriptive book (one of the untouched stable ages you created) behind and travel about 200 blocks away from the middle of your central city to establish a city using Industrialcraft, Buildcraft, and the add-ons for those mods: teleport pipes, sneaky pipes, advanced machines, additional buildcraft objects, logistics pipes. Once again, there is no mining or cave exploration in the main world, so you will need to set up buildcraft quarries, IC2 mining operations, etc in your Mystcraft age. Don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back! Build as many of your buildings as possible in the main world. Don't forget that you can use Ender Storage to make delivery of items between your main world and your Mystcraft age easier.
Top-tier IC2 Technologies (UU-Matter, Nano and Quantum Armor, Nano Saber, Electric Jetpack, Mining Laser, and Nuclear Power) will be prohibited until later.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Return to the central city
Once you've accomplished the goals for the industrial city, you will return to the central city, this time bringing with you whatever resources you want from the industrial city. The central city is now ok to combine all the mods we've used so far, so the objectives will include automating your bees and farms with buildcraft and logistics pipes, automating your warehouse and connecting to the logistics system in the industrial city using teleport pipes, and connecting the central city and industrial city with roads.
Also, you can now create the Philosopher's Stone, Alchemical Chests, Alchemical Bags, the Talisman of Repair, alchemical coal, mobius fuel, and the destruction catalyst from Equivalent Exchange.
The magical city - Runic Dusts, Thaumcraft
Once again, grab a descriptive book for one of the stable ages you haven't used yet, otherwise empty your inventory completely, and head out to the area you have planned for your magical city . This time the goal is to establish a city using magic. Use your mystcraft age for mining and if you want, for Vis production, to avoid tainting your main world. Don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back! Try to build as much of your magical stuff as you can into your main age, however.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Return to the central city (again)
Now you can travel back to the central city, bringing with you whatever you want. Add some magic oriented buildings to your central city, make use of your Vis bees, use Buildcraft to automate some of your magical contraptions, deal with any tainted areas anywhere in your extended metropolis, etc.
You can now create Nano armor, the Nano saber, the mining laser, and the electric jetpack from IC2.
You can also now create the transmutation tablet, interdiction torches, nova catalysts, mark 1 and 2 energy collectors and relays, energy condensers, dark matter, dark matter armor, dark matter tools, Ein, Zwei, and Drei Klein stars, the volcanite and evertide amulets, the hyperkinetic lens, the gem of eternal density, and the watch of flowing time from Equivalent Exchange.
The age of steam - Railcraft, Steve's Carts, Portal Gun
Once again, grab a descriptive book for a fresh Mystcraft age and travel with an empty inventory, this time to the lands set aside for the age of steam. You will be building a train themed city. The stages will walk you through the process of setting up the Railcraft industry and progressing through the levels of Steve's Carts technology. Mining needs to be done in your fresh Mystcraft age, and should include setting up and using Tunnel Bores and Steve's Carts mining carts, as well as mining by hand. Don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back! Also, don't forget that you can use wireless redstone to set up remote controlled Portal Spawners - helpful for popping back up to the surface after mining underground for a while. Also, minecarts can go through portals, so Portal Spawners can also be used to transport minecarts from one place to another. As always, you can use Ender Storage to facilitate transport of items across dimensions.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Return to the central city (again)
Build a rail system to connect all of your cities thus far. Expand on the roads connecting all of the cities as well. Add buildings to your central city. Feel free to work on your bees, missing Thaumcraft research, etc. Once you are happy with the railcraft integration throughout your empire, get ready to travel again.
Now the final tiers of IC2 are now unlocked, so start producing UU-Matter, build a nuclear power plant somewhere, and get your quantum armor.
You can also now create mark 3 collectors and relays, the rest of the klein stars up to omega, red matter, dark matter blocks, dark matter furnace, red matter armor, red matter tools except for the Katar and Morningstar, nova cataclysm, catalytic lens, mercurial eye, any of the rings except the void ring and the ring of arcana, body, mind, and soul stones (not the life stone yet), the pedestal, and the alchemical tome from Equivalent Exchange.
The technological city - RedPower, Green Stone Wire, The Laser Mod
Grab a fresh descriptive book, empty your inventory, and head to the last plot you had set aside for a satellite city. This new city is going to use RedPower, Green Stone Wire, and The Laser Mod. You will want to set up a frame quarry in your Mystcraft age (don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back!), and build cool automated stuff in your main world. Make some decently large houses with thinner interior walls (covers or panels), and other microblock decoration. Do something cool with Green Stone logic. Make use of different types of Lasers, etc.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Final return to the central city
Use RedPower and Green Stone Wire technologies to re-wire your existing redstone contraptions throughout your empire. Build new automation using RedPower tubes to enhance your IC2, Forestry, Thaumcraft, and Railcraft operations.
You can now make the rest of the power items from Equivalent Exchange: Void Ring, Ring of Arcana, Life Stone, Red Matter Blocks, Red Matter Furnance, Katar, Morningstar, and the Gem Armor. See if you can build some EMC production in your main world that is not based on Energy Collectors (milk, mushroom, vis, etc). Use your new toys and powers to expand and connect your cities to the point where they are really one big epic city. Profit.
Earlier versions of the challenge
A Tale of Five Cities Version 2.0
A Tale of Five Cities Challenge - a modded single player minecraft challenge. Version 2.0.0
This challenge is based on CSieg's The Modern City challenge, which is here:
This is a challenge that relies on a specific set of mods being installed. My setup is based on Direwolf20's mod setup, found on the thread for his Let's Play series here:
So start by following his instructions to get those mods set up, then add the following additional mods:
Extra Bees by Binnie (link)
Vis Bees by Punknium (link)
Runic Dust by billythegoat101 (link)
Green Stone Wire by Przezuwacz (link)
The Runic Dust Mod and the Green Stone Wire Mod will have some block id conflicts with Direwolf20's set up, so before you add them, load a minecraft world using Direwolf's setup, open your inventory and go to the options screen for NEI. There you will find an option for block/item id settings. Toggle "ignore block ids", "ignore item ids", "ignore unused item ids", and "dump unused block ids". Then choose "dump id map now". This will give you a list of the unused block ids that are available. There should be seven of the them. Currently Runic Dust uses 3 and Green Stone Wire uses 4, so that is just enough. Install the new mods, try to run minecraft (it will crash), then modify the config files for the mods that were created, changing the block ids to the ones you determined were available.
The Green Stone Wire Mod needs to be installed into the jar. The forum post for that mod also has a custom emc add-on that fixes equivalent exchange emc values for the blocks and items of the Green Stone Wire mod. That add-on includes more stuff that needs to go into the jar, and also a couple of config files that go in the config folder. The Runic Dust mod, Extra Bees mod, and Vis Bees mods just go into the mods folder.
I'm still working on the specifications for version 2 of my challenge, but I thought I would share what my thoughts are so far. I'll flesh out the stages and requirements more as I get feedback from you guys. Ender Storage, Iron Chests, Wireless Redstone, Mystcraft and of course Inventory Tweaks can be used in all five cities. NEI can be used in recipe mode only, of course. Each city will otherwise only allow you to use specific mods until you have accomplished the set goals for that city.
Central City - Doggy Talents, Mystcraft, and Forestry + add-ons (all buildings within 100 blocks of spawn)
Your starting city will use the Doggy Talents, Mystcraft, and Forestry Mods with wooden tools only at first. You can go foraging above ground wherever you want in your main world, but there is no mining or cave exploring allowed in the main world, and buildings for the starting city must all be within 100 blocks of spawn. So your initial tasks will include building a house for yourself, some kind of a home for your DTDoggy, some kind of a facility for getting starting on beekeeping, a warehouse for storage, a building for Mystcraft linking books, a simple manually harvested wheat farm and sugarcane farm, and some simple animal pens. Then you will focus on exploring mystcraft ages until you get to the point where you can build your first stable age. Don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back!
Once you have a stable single biome Mystcraft age, you can advance to using any and all Vanilla tools, including diamond, and begin mining in your stable age to start getting more advanced resources. Back in your main world, you can start building automated farms - remember, no buildcraft engines yet, so you will probably want to create some peat by hand to get your peat engines started. All this stuff needs to be built in your main world, within 100 blocks of spawn. Mod items from other mods, such as thaumcraft crystals, redpower gems, nikolite, etc cannot be used yet, so they should just be stored in your warehouse. Don't forget to keep working on your bees. You can breed Vis bees and the Industrialcraft/Buildcraft related bees from extra bees, just store the products from these bees in your warehouse.
Finally, write 5 more stable single biome Mystcraft ages with different biomes than your first one. You can visit the ages to make sure everything is ok, but don't build in them or do anything else with them yet. These ages will be used by your other cities.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Southern City - Industrialcraft, Buildcraft + add-ons (buildings from 100 to 300 blocks south of spawn)
Now it's time to leave your DTDoggy and all of your possessions, except for a single mystcraft descriptive book (one of the untouched stable ages you created) behind and travel 100-300 blocks south of spawn to establish a city using Industrialcraft, Buildcraft, and the add-ons for those mods: teleport pipes, sneaky pipes, advanced machines, additional buildcraft objects, logistics pipes. Once again, there is no mining or cave exploration in the main world, so you will need to set up buildcraft quarries, IC2 mining operations, etc in your Mystcraft age. Don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back! Build as many of your buildings as possible in the main world. Don't forget that you can use Ender Storage to make delivery of items between your main world and your Mystcraft age easier.
Top-tier IC2 Technologies (UU-Matter, Nuclear Power, etc) will be prohibited until later.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Return to Central City
Once you've accomplished the Southern City goals, you will return to the central city, this time bringing with you whatever resources you want from the Southern City. The central city is now ok to combine all the mods we've used so far, so the objectives will include automating your bees and farms with buildcraft and logistics pipes, automating your warehouse and connecting to the logistics system in the southern city using teleport pipes, and connecting the central city and southern city with roads.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Eastern City - Runic Dusts, Thaumcraft (buildings from 100 to 300 blocks east of spawn)
Once again, grab a descriptive book for one of the stable ages you haven't used yet, otherwise empty your inventory completely, and head out, this time to the east. This time the goal is to establish a city using magic. Use your mystcraft age for mining (arcane bore!) and if you want, for Vis production, to avoid tainting your main world. Don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back! Try to build as much of your magical stuff as you can into your main age, however.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Return to Central City (again)
Now you can travel back to the central city, bringing with you whatever you want. Add some magic oriented buildings to your central city, make use of your Vis bees, use Buildcraft to automate some of your magical contraptions, deal with any tainted areas anywhere in your extended metropolis, etc.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Western City - Railcraft, Steve's Carts, Portal Gun (buildings from 100 to 300 blocks west of spawn)
Once again, grab a descriptive book for a fresh Mystcraft age and travel with an empty inventory, this time west of spawn. This time you will be building a train themed city. The stages will walk you through the process of setting up the Railcraft industry and progressing through the levels of Steve's Carts technology. Mining needs to be done in your fresh Mystcraft age, and should include setting up and using Tunnel Bores and Steve's Carts mining carts, as well as mining by hand. Don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back! Also, don't forget that you can use wireless redstone to set up remote controlled Portal Spawners - helpful for popping back up to the surface after mining underground for a while. Also, minecarts can go through portals, so Portal Spawners can also be used to transport minecarts from one place to another. Also, you can use Ender Storage to facilitate transport of items across dimensions.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Return to Central City
Build a rail system to connect all of your cities thus far. Expand on the roads connecting all of the cities as well. Add buildings to your Central City. Feel free to work on your bees, missing Thaumcraft research, etc. Once you are happy with the railcraft integration throughout your empire, get ready to travel again.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
The Northern City - RedPower, Green Stone Wire, The Laser Mod (buildings from 100 to 300 blocks north of spawn)
Grab a fresh descriptive book, empty your inventory, and head north. This new city is going to use RedPower, Green Stone Wire, and The Laser Mod. You will want to set up a frame quarry in your Mystcraft age (don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back!), and build cool automated stuff in your main world. Make some decently large houses with thinner interior walls (covers or panels), and other microblock decoration. Do something cool with Green Stone logic. Make use of different types of Lasers, etc.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Return to Central City
Now the final tiers of IC2 are unlocked, so start producing UU-Matter and build a nuclear power plant somewhere. Use RedPower and Green Stone Wire technologies to re-wire your existing redstone contraptions throughout your empire. Build new automation using RedPower tubes to enhance your IC2, Forestry, Thaumcraft, and Railcraft operations.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
New Discoveries - Equivalent Exchange (takes place in a Mystcraft age)
For your final extended stay away from your empire, create a couple of linking books, and head to the last of the stable ages you made in the beginning. This time you will stay in the Mystcraft age working up the Equivalent Exchange tech tree. Go mining with divining rods and destruction catalysts, get your philosophers stone and transmutation tablet, start making collectors, relays, and condensers, and build up your emc production to the point where you are finally able to get Omega Klein Stars, various endgame toys, and finally the full set of gem armor.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Final return to Central City
Now all restrictions are lifted. See if you can build some EMC production in your main world that is not based on Energy Collectors (milk, mushroom, vis, etc). Use your new toys and powers to expand and connect your cities to where they are really one big epic city. Profit.
A Tale of Four Cities Version 1.0
The basic idea of this challenge is that you will be building four distinct cities using technologies, magics, blocks, and items from different mods in each city. Your starting city will be in the geographic center of your empire, with each other city located about 500-600 blocks away from the central city, in different directions. Once you reach the highest level of civilization in each city separately, you be allowed to start combining the technologies and linking up the cities to form a truly epic empire.
There will be a Vanilla City, an IndustrialCraft/Buildcraft city, a Thaumcraft/Equivalent Exchange city, and a Railcraft/Forestry/RedPower city. While you are working on one of the cities you may not use any mod items or blocks from mods belonging to one of the other cities. You also may not transport any resources or items from one city to another. Get everything out of your inventory, including armor, before traveling to a different city to resume work on that city. Feel free to take inventory with you if you just going to visit one of your other cities (for example, if you want to use Thaumcraft items to beat back taint from your other two cities) but don't leave any mod items in the wrong city, and don't work on building a city while carrying the wrong cities mod items.
Follow Iamchris27's steps and rules while working on your Vanilla city, and CSieg's steps and rules while working on your Industrialcraft/Buildcraft city. I don't have specific stages for the other two cities yet, but I welcome your ideas, and will update this post when I have time to break those down.
If you have the PortalGun mod installed you may not use it in any city until you reach the endgame stage, as it is overpowered. If you have the Ender Storage mod installed, you may only use it in the Thaumcraft/Equivalent Exchange city. Steve's Carts goes along with Railcraft of course. If you have The Laser Mod installed, you may only use it in the IC2/BC city. Mods like Iron Chests and Doggy Talents are ok anywhere, in fact if you have Doggy Talents your dog is the one thing you would be allowed to keep with you when you travel from one city to the next (keeping the command emblem in your inventory is ok : a special exception to the rules). Visiting the nether is fine as long as you are able to fire up a portal with tools that are available to use at the time.
The main rule to follow as far as maintaining progress on all four cities is that no one city should ever have more than four buildings more than any other city. So, if you are starting with Iamchris27's rules for the vanilla city you might have 2 residential houses, a town hall, and one more community building by the end of stage 3. At this point, you would need to travel to one of your other mod city locations (you can pick the order in which you want to work on them). Assuming you follow CSieg's instructions for the IC2/BC city next, you'll have a house, a high school, a foundry, and a mill by the end of that stage 3.
Let me know what you think of the challenge, and give me feedback about the build order for the Thaumcraft/Equivalent Exchange and Railcraft/Forestry/RedPower cities, so I can update this post with some suggestions about that. For example, at what point in your Thaumcraft progress should you be allowed to start using the Transmutation Tablet from EE? Should use of the Tablet be restricted at first, say to getting only raw materials, or to getting only Equivalent Exchange items? In the Railcraft/Forestry/RedPower city, what goals should the player have with regards to advancing bee breeding? Mining with a tunnel bore? Building frame loader machines?
Don't forget that you can and should start building projects that integrate all of the mods in new ways once you have achieved mastery in all of the mods separately. Use your now god-like powers to turn four separate cities into an interconnected, epic masterpiece!
A Tale of Five Cities Version 2.0
A Tale of Five Cities Challenge - a modded single player minecraft challenge. Version 2.0.0
This challenge is based on CSieg's The Modern City challenge, which is here:
This is a challenge that relies on a specific set of mods being installed. My setup is based on Direwolf20's mod setup, found on the thread for his Let's Play series here:
So start by following his instructions to get those mods set up, then add the following additional mods:
Extra Bees by Binnie (link)
Vis Bees by Punknium (link)
Runic Dust by billythegoat101 (link)
Green Stone Wire by Przezuwacz (link)
The Runic Dust Mod and the Green Stone Wire Mod will have some block id conflicts with Direwolf20's set up, so before you add them, load a minecraft world using Direwolf's setup, open your inventory and go to the options screen for NEI. There you will find an option for block/item id settings. Toggle "ignore block ids", "ignore item ids", "ignore unused item ids", and "dump unused block ids". Then choose "dump id map now". This will give you a list of the unused block ids that are available. There should be seven of the them. Currently Runic Dust uses 3 and Green Stone Wire uses 4, so that is just enough. Install the new mods, try to run minecraft (it will crash), then modify the config files for the mods that were created, changing the block ids to the ones you determined were available.
The Green Stone Wire Mod needs to be installed into the jar. The forum post for that mod also has a custom emc add-on that fixes equivalent exchange emc values for the blocks and items of the Green Stone Wire mod. That add-on includes more stuff that needs to go into the jar, and also a couple of config files that go in the config folder. The Runic Dust mod, Extra Bees mod, and Vis Bees mods just go into the mods folder.
I'm still working on the specifications for version 2 of my challenge, but I thought I would share what my thoughts are so far. I'll flesh out the stages and requirements more as I get feedback from you guys. Ender Storage, Iron Chests, Wireless Redstone, Mystcraft and of course Inventory Tweaks can be used in all five cities. NEI can be used in recipe mode only, of course. Each city will otherwise only allow you to use specific mods until you have accomplished the set goals for that city.
Central City - Doggy Talents, Mystcraft, and Forestry + add-ons (all buildings within 100 blocks of spawn)
Your starting city will use the Doggy Talents, Mystcraft, and Forestry Mods with wooden tools only at first. You can go foraging above ground wherever you want in your main world, but there is no mining or cave exploring allowed in the main world, and buildings for the starting city must all be within 100 blocks of spawn. So your initial tasks will include building a house for yourself, some kind of a home for your DTDoggy, some kind of a facility for getting starting on beekeeping, a warehouse for storage, a building for Mystcraft linking books, a simple manually harvested wheat farm and sugarcane farm, and some simple animal pens. Then you will focus on exploring mystcraft ages until you get to the point where you can build your first stable age. Don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back!
Once you have a stable single biome Mystcraft age, you can advance to using any and all Vanilla tools, including diamond, and begin mining in your stable age to start getting more advanced resources. Back in your main world, you can start building automated farms - remember, no buildcraft engines yet, so you will probably want to create some peat by hand to get your peat engines started. All this stuff needs to be built in your main world, within 100 blocks of spawn. Mod items from other mods, such as thaumcraft crystals, redpower gems, nikolite, etc cannot be used yet, so they should just be stored in your warehouse. Don't forget to keep working on your bees. You can breed Vis bees and the Industrialcraft/Buildcraft related bees from extra bees, just store the products from these bees in your warehouse.
Finally, write 5 more stable single biome Mystcraft ages with different biomes than your first one. You can visit the ages to make sure everything is ok, but don't build in them or do anything else with them yet. These ages will be used by your other cities.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Southern City - Industrialcraft, Buildcraft + add-ons (buildings from 100 to 300 blocks south of spawn)
Now it's time to leave your DTDoggy and all of your possessions, except for a single mystcraft descriptive book (one of the untouched stable ages you created) behind and travel 100-300 blocks south of spawn to establish a city using Industrialcraft, Buildcraft, and the add-ons for those mods: teleport pipes, sneaky pipes, advanced machines, additional buildcraft objects, logistics pipes. Once again, there is no mining or cave exploration in the main world, so you will need to set up buildcraft quarries, IC2 mining operations, etc in your Mystcraft age. Don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back! Build as many of your buildings as possible in the main world. Don't forget that you can use Ender Storage to make delivery of items between your main world and your Mystcraft age easier.
Top-tier IC2 Technologies (UU-Matter, Nuclear Power, etc) will be prohibited until later.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Return to Central City
Once you've accomplished the Southern City goals, you will return to the central city, this time bringing with you whatever resources you want from the Southern City. The central city is now ok to combine all the mods we've used so far, so the objectives will include automating your bees and farms with buildcraft and logistics pipes, automating your warehouse and connecting to the logistics system in the southern city using teleport pipes, and connecting the central city and southern city with roads.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Eastern City - Runic Dusts, Thaumcraft (buildings from 100 to 300 blocks east of spawn)
Once again, grab a descriptive book for one of the stable ages you haven't used yet, otherwise empty your inventory completely, and head out, this time to the east. This time the goal is to establish a city using magic. Use your mystcraft age for mining (arcane bore!) and if you want, for Vis production, to avoid tainting your main world. Don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back! Try to build as much of your magical stuff as you can into your main age, however.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Return to Central City (again)
Now you can travel back to the central city, bringing with you whatever you want. Add some magic oriented buildings to your central city, make use of your Vis bees, use Buildcraft to automate some of your magical contraptions, deal with any tainted areas anywhere in your extended metropolis, etc.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Western City - Railcraft, Steve's Carts, Portal Gun (buildings from 100 to 300 blocks west of spawn)
Once again, grab a descriptive book for a fresh Mystcraft age and travel with an empty inventory, this time west of spawn. This time you will be building a train themed city. The stages will walk you through the process of setting up the Railcraft industry and progressing through the levels of Steve's Carts technology. Mining needs to be done in your fresh Mystcraft age, and should include setting up and using Tunnel Bores and Steve's Carts mining carts, as well as mining by hand. Don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back! Also, don't forget that you can use wireless redstone to set up remote controlled Portal Spawners - helpful for popping back up to the surface after mining underground for a while. Also, minecarts can go through portals, so Portal Spawners can also be used to transport minecarts from one place to another. Also, you can use Ender Storage to facilitate transport of items across dimensions.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Return to Central City
Build a rail system to connect all of your cities thus far. Expand on the roads connecting all of the cities as well. Add buildings to your Central City. Feel free to work on your bees, missing Thaumcraft research, etc. Once you are happy with the railcraft integration throughout your empire, get ready to travel again.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
The Northern City - RedPower, Green Stone Wire, The Laser Mod (buildings from 100 to 300 blocks north of spawn)
Grab a fresh descriptive book, empty your inventory, and head north. This new city is going to use RedPower, Green Stone Wire, and The Laser Mod. You will want to set up a frame quarry in your Mystcraft age (don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back!), and build cool automated stuff in your main world. Make some decently large houses with thinner interior walls (covers or panels), and other microblock decoration. Do something cool with Green Stone logic. Make use of different types of Lasers, etc.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Return to Central City
Now the final tiers of IC2 are unlocked, so start producing UU-Matter and build a nuclear power plant somewhere. Use RedPower and Green Stone Wire technologies to re-wire your existing redstone contraptions throughout your empire. Build new automation using RedPower tubes to enhance your IC2, Forestry, Thaumcraft, and Railcraft operations.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
New Discoveries - Equivalent Exchange (takes place in a Mystcraft age)
For your final extended stay away from your empire, create a couple of linking books, and head to the last of the stable ages you made in the beginning. This time you will stay in the Mystcraft age working up the Equivalent Exchange tech tree. Go mining with divining rods and destruction catalysts, get your philosophers stone and transmutation tablet, start making collectors, relays, and condensers, and build up your emc production to the point where you are finally able to get Omega Klein Stars, various endgame toys, and finally the full set of gem armor.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Final return to Central City
Now all restrictions are lifted. See if you can build some EMC production in your main world that is not based on Energy Collectors (milk, mushroom, vis, etc). Use your new toys and powers to expand and connect your cities to where they are really one big epic city. Profit.
A Tale of Four Cities Version 1.0
The basic idea of this challenge is that you will be building four distinct cities using technologies, magics, blocks, and items from different mods in each city. Your starting city will be in the geographic center of your empire, with each other city located about 500-600 blocks away from the central city, in different directions. Once you reach the highest level of civilization in each city separately, you be allowed to start combining the technologies and linking up the cities to form a truly epic empire.
There will be a Vanilla City, an IndustrialCraft/Buildcraft city, a Thaumcraft/Equivalent Exchange city, and a Railcraft/Forestry/RedPower city. While you are working on one of the cities you may not use any mod items or blocks from mods belonging to one of the other cities. You also may not transport any resources or items from one city to another. Get everything out of your inventory, including armor, before traveling to a different city to resume work on that city. Feel free to take inventory with you if you just going to visit one of your other cities (for example, if you want to use Thaumcraft items to beat back taint from your other two cities) but don't leave any mod items in the wrong city, and don't work on building a city while carrying the wrong cities mod items.
Follow Iamchris27's steps and rules while working on your Vanilla city, and CSieg's steps and rules while working on your Industrialcraft/Buildcraft city. I don't have specific stages for the other two cities yet, but I welcome your ideas, and will update this post when I have time to break those down.
If you have the PortalGun mod installed you may not use it in any city until you reach the endgame stage, as it is overpowered. If you have the Ender Storage mod installed, you may only use it in the Thaumcraft/Equivalent Exchange city. Steve's Carts goes along with Railcraft of course. If you have The Laser Mod installed, you may only use it in the IC2/BC city. Mods like Iron Chests and Doggy Talents are ok anywhere, in fact if you have Doggy Talents your dog is the one thing you would be allowed to keep with you when you travel from one city to the next (keeping the command emblem in your inventory is ok : a special exception to the rules). Visiting the nether is fine as long as you are able to fire up a portal with tools that are available to use at the time.
The main rule to follow as far as maintaining progress on all four cities is that no one city should ever have more than four buildings more than any other city. So, if you are starting with Iamchris27's rules for the vanilla city you might have 2 residential houses, a town hall, and one more community building by the end of stage 3. At this point, you would need to travel to one of your other mod city locations (you can pick the order in which you want to work on them). Assuming you follow CSieg's instructions for the IC2/BC city next, you'll have a house, a high school, a foundry, and a mill by the end of that stage 3.
Let me know what you think of the challenge, and give me feedback about the build order for the Thaumcraft/Equivalent Exchange and Railcraft/Forestry/RedPower cities, so I can update this post with some suggestions about that. For example, at what point in your Thaumcraft progress should you be allowed to start using the Transmutation Tablet from EE? Should use of the Tablet be restricted at first, say to getting only raw materials, or to getting only Equivalent Exchange items? In the Railcraft/Forestry/RedPower city, what goals should the player have with regards to advancing bee breeding? Mining with a tunnel bore? Building frame loader machines?
Don't forget that you can and should start building projects that integrate all of the mods in new ways once you have achieved mastery in all of the mods separately. Use your now god-like powers to turn four separate cities into an interconnected, epic masterpiece!
This is a challenge that relies on a large number of mods being installed at one time. I use and recommend Direwolf20's mod setup, found on the thread for his Let's Play series here:
If you want to use a different mod setup, such as the Technic or AMCO modpacks, that's fine. The following mods should all be installed as a minimum:
IndustrialCraft 2, Buildcraft, Thaumcraft, Equivalent Exchange, Railcraft, Forestry, RedPower2
The basic idea of this mod is that you will be building four distinct cities using technologies, magics, blocks, and items from different mods in each city. Your starting city will be in the geographic center of your empire, with each other city located about 500-600 blocks away from the central city, in different directions. Once you reach the highest level of civilization in each city separately, you be allowed to start combining the technologies and linking up the cities to form a truly epic empire.
There will be a Vanilla City, an IndustrialCraft/Buildcraft city, a Thaumcraft/Equivalent Exchange city, and a Railcraft/Forestry/RedPower city. While you are working on one of the cities you may not use any mod items or blocks from mods belonging to one of the other cities. You also may not transport any resources or items from one city to another. Get everything out of your inventory, including armor, before traveling to a different city to resume work on that city. Feel free to take inventory with you if you just going to visit one of your other cities (for example, if you want to use Thaumcraft items to beat back taint from your other two cities) but don't leave any mod items in the wrong city, and don't work on building a city while carrying the wrong cities mod items.
Follow Iamchris27's steps and rules while working on your Vanilla city, and CSieg's steps and rules while working on your Industrialcraft/Buildcraft city. I don't have specific stages for the other two cities yet, but I welcome your ideas, and will update this post when I have time to break those down.
If you have the PortalGun mod installed you may not use it in any city until you reach the endgame stage, as it is overpowered. If you have the Ender Storage mod installed, you may only use it in the Thaumcraft/Equivalent Exchange city. Steve's Carts goes along with Railcraft of course. If you have The Laser Mod installed, you may only use it in the IC2/BC city. Mods like Iron Chests and Doggy Talents are ok anywhere, in fact if you have Doggy Talents your dog is the one thing you would be allowed to keep with you when you travel from one city to the next (keeping the command emblem in your inventory is ok : a special exception to the rules). Visiting the nether is fine as long as you are able to fire up a portal with tools that are available to use at the time.
The main rule to follow as far as maintaining progress on all four cities is that no one city should ever have more than four buildings more than any other city. So, if you are starting with Iamchris27's rules for the vanilla city you might have 2 residential houses, a town hall, and one more community building by the end of stage 3. At this point, you would need to travel to one of your other mod city locations (you can pick the order in which you want to work on them). Assuming you follow CSieg's instructions for the IC2/BC city next, you'll have a house, a high school, a foundry, and a mill by the end of that stage 3.
Let me know what you think of the challenge, and give me feedback about the build order for the Thaumcraft/Equivalent Exchange and Railcraft/Forestry/RedPower cities, so I can update this post with some suggestions about that. For example, at what point in your Thaumcraft progress should you be allowed to start using the Transmutation Tablet from EE? Should use of the Tablet be restricted at first, say to getting only raw materials, or to getting only Equivalent Exchange items? In the Railcraft/Forestry/RedPower city, what goals should the player have with regards to advancing bee breeding? Mining with a tunnel bore? Building frame loader machines?
Don't forget that you can and should start building projects that integrate all of the mods in new ways once you have achieved mastery in all of the mods separately. Use your now god-like powers to turn four separate cities into an interconnected, epic masterpiece!
For EE, I would recommend putting it in one of the later stages for the THaumcraft/EE city, as once You have it, That city will become extremely easy to finish. As well, Once You have a collector/condensor/relay system setup, You will be constantly gaining EMC while working on the other Cities, which gives that city a distinct advantage IMO.
I Like how You incorporate the original (First) version of the challenge, as well as the second(First Modded) version of the challenge. It keeps the rules and setups similar, while also allowing for a new theme(the four cities turning into a megalopolis(That's what 3 or more cities that conjoin are called).
As for Redpower, I dont personally know much about it, but I would say make a redpower quarry(using frames or otherwise).
A thought on the TunnelBore: It isnt reallya functional mining system, as it takes a very long time to break blocks, and continues on in exceedingly long tunnels... I like the basic thought, but from experience, it isnt a very efficient method of mining.
I had another though in regards to how the cities should interact.. Perhaps the cities should be built closer to each other, and heres my reasoning why: If they're close together, You can eventually combine them together, rather than building a 5th final city. It would allow for easier combinations of the cities, and be (perhaps) more realistic to a real megalopolis?:)
A thought for anyone who gets to a point where Your beginining to either combine or build the 5th city: Railcraft has a MFSU cart
is there any specific level for the city construction to start it off with? classic, insane, etc?
I'll probably start this challenge in a bit once change my mod set up. But first to stop a taint invasion of my base and finish the modern city challenge to figure out how I like building these buildings I got a few great idea's to work on!
I had another though in regards to how the cities should interact.. Perhaps the cities should be built closer to each other, and heres my reasoning why: If they're close together, You can eventually combine them together, rather than building a 5th final city. It would allow for easier combinations of the cities, and be (perhaps) more realistic to a real megalopolis?
I don't have the player building a 5th final city. The original vanilla city is located in the middle of where the other three cities are located. So, once you reach the endgame god-like stage, you just start expanding the center city, which was Vanilla only, with mod-combining projects and buildings, and generally doing whatever you want. You can move the cities closer together if you want. I think I would prefer to make sure I have enough room for later, and don't mind the idea of still have four distinct cities in the end, connected by roads and rails.
is there any specific level for the city construction to start it off with? classic, insane, etc?
I'll probably start this challenge in a bit once change my mod set up. But first to stop a taint invasion of my base and finish the modern city challenge to figure out how I like building these buildings I got a few great idea's to work on!
Start with whatever city construction level you are comfortable with, after all, there is tons of stuff to do! Note that I did specify that once you get your Thaumcraft research to where you can actually do something about taint, it is ok to go around and beat back the taint from all of your other cities.
A thought on the TunnelBore: It isnt reallya functional mining system, as it takes a very long time to break blocks, and continues on in exceedingly long tunnels... I like the basic thought, but from experience, it isnt a very efficient method of mining.
True, even the more advanced mining carts from the Steve's Carts mod are not as efficient as a frame quarry. The point of the challenge is not neccesarily to do things in the most efficient way, however, but rather to experience more of each of the mods as they were intended to be experienced, without having to play each one as a separate world.
For EE, I would recommend putting it in one of the later stages for the THaumcraft/EE city, as once You have it, That city will become extremely easy to finish. As well, Once You have a collector/condensor/relay system setup, You will be constantly gaining EMC while working on the other Cities, which gives that city a distinct advantage IMO.
An equivalent exchange collector/condensor/relay system is quite expensive to set up when you don't have access to automated quarries, etc to give you extra stuff to burn, so I'm not too worried. Thaumcraft research takes a while to completely master however many resources you have, so access to the Transmutation Tablet won't instantly change that. Still, I agree that the Tablet is a fairly late stage item. Also, with chunkloader blocks of some kind, Buildcraft quarries and RedPower Frame quarries could potentially continue to operate while you work on other cities as well.
Start with whatever city construction level you are comfortable with, after all, there is tons of stuff to do! Note that I did specify that once you get your Thaumcraft research to where you can actually do something about taint, it is ok to go around and beat back the taint from all of your other cities.
True, even the more advanced mining carts from the Steve's Carts mod are not as efficient as a frame quarry. The point of the challenge is not neccesarily to do things in the most efficient way, however, but rather to experience more of each of the mods as they were intended to be experienced, without having to play each one as a separate world.
An equivalent exchange collector/condensor/relay system is quite expensive to set up when you don't have access to automated quarries, etc to give you extra stuff to burn, so I'm not too worried. Thaumcraft research takes a while to completely master however many resources you have, so access to the Transmutation Tablet won't instantly change that. Still, I agree that the Tablet is a fairly late stage item. Also, with chunkloader blocks of some kind, Buildcraft quarries and RedPower Frame quarries could potentially continue to operate while you work on other cities as well.
redpower's quarries may take a bit more time and resources but they will out run Buildcraft quarries really quickly, i feel that the buildcraft/industrial craft may have more hindrances till late game than other cites until massive uu-matter farming
on another note does anyone know if the carts from steves carts run on peat?
I don't have the player building a 5th final city. The original vanilla city is located in the middle of where the other three cities are located. So, once you reach the endgame god-like stage, you just start expanding the center city, which was Vanilla only, with mod-combining projects and buildings, and generally doing whatever you want. You can move the cities closer together if you want. I think I would prefer to make sure I have enough room for later, and don't mind the idea of still have four distinct cities in the end, connected by roads and rails.
I apologize, I misread that part of the city placement. Thats actually a quite brilliant way to have it set up, as it does allow You to give your empty vanilla buildings functions that work well with the buildings next to them.
True, even the more advanced mining carts from the Steve's Carts mod are not as efficient as a frame quarry. The point of the challenge is not neccesarily to do things in the most efficient way, however, but rather to experience more of each of the mods as they were intended to be experienced, without having to play each one as a separate world.
That is true. It truly is about the journey, and not the destintation.
An equivalent exchange collector/condensor/relay system is quite expensive to set up when you don't have access to automated quarries, etc to give you extra stuff to burn, so I'm not too worried. Thaumcraft research takes a while to completely master however many resources you have, so access to the Transmutation Tablet won't instantly change that. Still, I agree that the Tablet is a fairly late stage item. Also, with chunkloader blocks of some kind, Buildcraft quarries and RedPower Frame quarries could potentially continue to operate while you work on other cities as well.
It does require quite alot to get setup, and You do have a good point, it wont help too much with the Thaumcraft Research, which is a point I hadnt really considered.
The point about The quarries is true as well. The main counter I have is that eventually Buildcraft hits bedrock, and Redpower will eventually stop as well(I think?). A condensor setup will continue to run non-stop while loaded. I think that the quarry type machines and EMC type machines should be on similar stages in each city, so that each gains access to large quantities of materials around the same time. Otherwise It will be frustrating moving from one high material city to a low power one.
On a side note: I like the mod combinations for each city, It makes each city feel like it has its own type of research and theme going on, and the mods in each city seem to compliment each other without making things too easy on the player either.
redpower's quarries may take a bit more time and resources but they will out run Buildcraft quarries really quickly, i feel that the buildcraft/industrial craft may have more hindrances till late game than other cites until massive uu-matter farming
on another note does anyone know if the carts from steves carts run on peat?
There is no peat cart yet, sorry.
You are right about the buildcraft quarries being underpowered compared to red power frame quarries. I'm actually wondering if forestry should be moved to the ic2/buildcraft city. Forestry integrates very well with buildcraft. Eloraam is a genius: redpower can do everything you can imagine.
I apologize, I misread that part of the city placement. Thats actually a quite brilliant way to have it set up, as it does allow You to give your empty vanilla buildings functions that work well with the buildings next to them.
That is true. It truly is about the journey, and not the destintation.
It does require quite alot to get setup, and You do have a good point, it wont help too much with the Thaumcraft Research, which is a point I hadnt really considered.
The point about The quarries is true as well. The main counter I have is that eventually Buildcraft hits bedrock, and Redpower will eventually stop as well(I think?). A condensor setup will continue to run non-stop while loaded. I think that the quarry type machines and EMC type machines should be on similar stages in each city, so that each gains access to large quantities of materials around the same time. Otherwise It will be frustrating moving from one high material city to a low power one.
On a side note: I like the mod combinations for each city, It makes each city feel like it has its own type of research and theme going on, and the mods in each city seem to compliment each other without making things too easy on the player either.
Great Challenge
Thanks!
It is true that a buildcraft quarry will hit bedrock. A redpower frame quarry doesn't have to, however. Once you get computers, you can program sustainable behaviors. Of course, computers would be one of the last things to be allowed to get. Actually, if you have Steve's carts, the assembly carts can be programmed as well. All very complicated stuff, but they can do sustainable mining too. Both of which are contributing to my thought that the railcraft/redpower city maybe doesn't need forestry as much as the IC2/BC city does. I still have to think about it a bit more before changing the original post.
Well for the challenge you could have the player fallow the tiers that come in the auto-crafting bench of Steve's carts since the upgrades to the bench highlight more options for building and you don't have to really think to hard. At least to the cart portion anyway, i don't know much about railcraft in general, but in red power it could be divided up into anything built with villina items, red alloy, brass with logic gates, blue alloy, doped wafers and diamond drawplate, Last being the computers.
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Finally, I wonder if this mod could be incorporated somehow, when it's forge compatible. It's a very well balanced mod which allows an alternative, renewable way of getting all resources, including mod ones. It should probably be allowed in all cities, as it doesn't really just gives other options, rather than increasing the player's power.
That is a very cool looking mod! I'll keep an eye out for it to become forge compatible. I like many of your other suggestions, and will take them into consideration when I update this challenge, which I've been trying to make time to do.
where do animal mods and stuff like the fossils mod and mo creatuers go?
This particular set of mods uses all available block ids so you would have to change things around to get those mods included. Feel free to author a new version of this challenge with different mods.
By the way, have you considered integrating the runic dusts mod into this? It'd probably fit into the TC2/EE2 city quite well, and help to fill some of the shorter stages.
I have a new version of the challenge up. There is still some fleshing out to do, but I like the new flow better. I did incorporate Runic Dusts. I also decided to leave EE to be it's own separate activity at the end of the challenge. Let me know what you think.
I wouldn't advise limiting which directions cities can be in. After all, some locations are just better suited to some types of city than others, either mechanically or simply due to the terrain.
You are absolutely right. I started to play through my own challenge to get a feel for it and to start thinking about the details. Of course I spawned right next to a huge ocean. I'm reworking that part of the challenge now.
I'm afraid I won't really have time to take a better look at this until Friday, but it looks fairly good (though it could use fleshing out, obviously). One thing that I'd hesitate over is saying 'you can't touch EE until you've done everything else, and then you can only do EE'. It could be ok, but it could also end up with lots of the game being just 'wait to get enough emc'. Mind you, that'll probably be quicker now that direwolf is doing his age of alchemy
I think you're right about this. Originally there was going to be a Thuamcraft/EE city but I decided I liked the idea of a Thaumcraft/Runic Dust city better. Then I couldn't figure out where else I wanted to fit EE in. My new idea, which I will work into the OP shortly is to have Central City be DoggyTalents/Forestry/Equivalent Exchange, but to unlock a little bit more of EE each time you revisit Central City.
This challenge is based on CSieg's The Modern City challenge, which is here:
http://www.minecraft...he-modern-city/
That challenge was itself based on Iamchris27's City Construction challenge, which is here:
http://www.minecraft...tion-challenge/
This is a challenge that relies on a specific set of mods being installed. My setup is based on Direwolf20's mod setup, found on the thread for his Let's Play series here:
http://www.minecraft...-v125-season-4/
So start by following his instructions to get those mods set up, then add the following additional mods:
Extra Bees by Binnie (link)
Vis Bees by Punknium (link)
Runic Dust by billythegoat101 (link)
Green Stone Wire by Przezuwacz (link)
The Runic Dust Mod and the Green Stone Wire Mod will have some block id conflicts with Direwolf20's set up, so before you add them, load a minecraft world using Direwolf's setup, open your inventory and go to the options screen for NEI. There you will find an option for block/item id settings. Toggle "ignore block ids", "ignore item ids", "ignore unused item ids", and "dump unused block ids". Then choose "dump id map now". This will give you a list of the unused block ids that are available. There should be seven of the them. Currently Runic Dust uses 3 and Green Stone Wire uses 4, so that is just enough. Install the new mods, try to run minecraft (it will crash), then modify the config files for the mods that were created, changing the block ids to the ones you determined were available.
The Green Stone Wire Mod needs to be installed into the jar. The forum post for that mod also has a custom emc add-on that fixes equivalent exchange emc values for the blocks and items of the Green Stone Wire mod. That add-on includes more stuff that needs to go into the jar, and also a couple of config files that go in the config folder. The Runic Dust mod, Extra Bees mod, and Vis Bees mods just go into the mods folder.
In this challenge you will be establishing a city with five districts:
- a "central" district which should located in the geographic center of your city and where you will initially use the following mods: Doggy Talents, Equivalent Exchange, and Forestry.
- an "industrial" district where you will use IndustrialCraft and Buildcraft.
- a "magical" district where you will use Runic Dusts and Thaumcraft.
- a "rails" district where you will use RailCraft, Steve's Carts, and Portal Gun.
- a "technological" district where you will use RedPower and Green Stone Wire.
You will create a stable Mystcraft Age for each district so that you can have separate mining operations for each one.
When you are working on each of the districts you can only use mod items from the mods for that district, and cannot enter any of your buildings from the other districts, use any of the resources from those districts (including farms, etc) -- until you have completed the specifed goals for that district.
Each time you complete the goals for one of your districts, you will return to the central district to integrate technologies and resources from the completed district into the central district and vice versa. When you do this you will be able to use all of the mods you have unlocked so far.
The features of Equivalent Exchange will be unlocked a bit at a time throughout the challenge.
General Rules
- Ender Storage, Iron Chests, Wireless Redstone, Mystcraft and Inventory Tweaks can be used in all five districts. NEI can be used in recipe mode only, of course.
- Do not do any mining or cave exploration in your main world while you are working on districts other than the central district. You will have a separate stable Mystcraft Age for each district to use for mining operations. Even when you are working on your central district consider using the central district's Mystcraft Age for mining if you are wanting to mine using destructive means that would deface the surface of your world.
The central district - Doggy Talents, Equivalent Exchange, Forestry + add-ons
Your starting district will use the Doggy Talents, Equivalent Exchange, and Forestry Mods. The use of Equivalent Exchange, however, is restricted at the beginning, and is progressively unlocked as you go through the challenge. The only EE items you can use right from the beginning are the covalence dusts and the diving rods. Your initial tasks will include building a house for yourself, some kind of a home for your DTDoggy, some kind of a facility for getting starting on beekeeping, a warehouse for storage, a building for Mystcraft linking books, a simple manually harvested wheat farm and sugarcane farm, and some simple animal pens. You will also want to do some planning as to where you want each of the other districts of your city to be given the landscape and terrain of your world.
Next you need to start building Forestry machines and automated Forestry farms, but remember, you don't have access to buildcraft engines yet, so you will probably want to create some peat by hand to get your peat engines started. Mod items from other mods, such as thaumcraft crystals, redpower gems, nikolite, etc cannot be used yet. You can collect them, but they should just be stored in your warehouse until later. You can breed Vis bees and the bees from Extra Bees, but store the products related to Industrialcraft/Buildcraft/Thaumcraft, etc in your warehouse as well. Keep going until you feel you have "mastered" Forestry.
Then you will focus on exploring mystcraft ages until you get to the point where you can build some stable ages. Don't forget to create and take linking books with you every time you travel so you can get back! Due to some possible conflicts between RedPower and Mystcraft it might not be a bad idea to make an exception to the NEI recipe mode only rule to make a save of your items. That way, if you get an age with out of control marble generation or something that lags your computer you can restore your inventory. Write at least 5 stable single biome Mystcraft ages with different biomes, so that you can have a dedicated age for each district.
The industrial district - Industrialcraft, Buildcraft + add-ons
Create a small building in the middle of the area where you are planning to put your industrial district and install in that building the descriptive book for the Mystcraft age you are assigning to this district. (You can only use this building for traveling to your Mystcraft Age). Now it's time to empty your inventory (including armor), stay out of your central district and away from its resources, to establish your new district using Industrialcraft, Buildcraft, and the add-ons for those mods: teleport pipes, sneaky pipes, advanced machines, additional buildcraft objects, logistics pipes. You can't use anything from Forestry or Equivalent Exchange while you are working on this district! There is no mining or cave exploration in the main world while you are working on your goals for this district, so you will need to set up buildcraft quarries, IC2 mining operations, etc in your Mystcraft age. Don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back! Build as many of your buildings as possible in the main world. Don't forget that you can use Ender Storage to make delivery of items between your main world and your Mystcraft age easier.
Some top-tier IC2 Technologies (Specifically UU-Matter, Nano and Quantum Armor, Nano Saber, Electric Jetpack, Mining Laser, and Nuclear Power) will be prohibited until later. Try to use as much of the the other stuff that is available in IC2 and Buildcraft as you can before moving on.
Return to the central district
Once you've accomplished the goals for the industrial district, you will return to the central district, this time bringing with you whatever resources you want from the industrial district. It is now ok to combine all the mods we've used so far, so the objectives will include automating your bees and farms with buildcraft and logistics pipes, automating your warehouse and connecting to the logistics system in the industrial district, and connecting the central district and the industrial district with roads.
Also, you can now create the Philosopher's Stone, Alchemical Chests, Alchemical Bags, the Talisman of Repair, alchemical coal, mobius fuel, and the destruction catalyst from Equivalent Exchange.
The magical district - Runic Dusts, Thaumcraft
Create a building in the middle of the area you are planning to use for your magical district to house the descriptive book for this districts Mystcraft age, then empty your inventory completely, and get starting on your magical district. The only mods you can use while working on this district are Runic Dusts and Thaumcraft. Use your mystcraft age for mining and if you want, for Vis production, to avoid tainting your main world. Try to build as much of your magical stuff as you can into your main world, however. Keep going until you feel you have "mastered" Thaumcraft.
Return to the central district (again)
You can use all of the mods you have learned so far, which now includes Runic Dusts and Thaumcraft. Add some magic oriented buildings to your central district, make use of your Vis bees, use Buildcraft to automate some of your magical contraptions, deal with any tainted areas anywhere in or around your city, etc.
You can now create Nano armor, the Nano saber, the mining laser, and the electric jetpack from IC2.
You can also now create the transmutation tablet, interdiction torches, nova catalysts, mark 1 and 2 energy collectors and relays, energy condensers, dark matter, dark matter armor, dark matter tools, Ein, Zwei, and Drei Klein stars, the volcanite and evertide amulets, the hyperkinetic lens, the gem of eternal density, and the watch of flowing time from Equivalent Exchange, so spend some time getting your EMC production going.
The rails district - Railcraft, Steve's Carts, Portal Gun
Set up another Mystcraft building in a convenient location, then empty your inventory and start your new, train themed district using the Railcraft, Steve's Carts, and Portal Gun mods. Set up your Railcraft industry and progress through the levels of Steve's Carts technology. Mining needs to be done in the dedicated Mystcraft age, and should include setting up and using Tunnel Bores and Steve's Carts mining carts, as well as mining by hand. Also, don't forget that you can use wireless redstone to set up remote controlled Portal Spawners - helpful for popping back up to the surface after mining underground for a while. Also, minecarts can go through portals, so Portal Spawners can also be used to transport minecarts from one place to another. As always, you can use Ender Storage to facilitate transport of items across dimensions. Keep going until you feel you have "mastered" Railcraft and Steve's Carts.
Return to the central district (again)
Build a rail system to connect all of your districts thus far. Expand on the roads connecting all of the districts as well. Add some more buildings to your central district. Feel free to work on your bees, any missing Thaumcraft research, etc.
Now the final tiers of IC2 are now unlocked, so start producing UU-Matter, build a nuclear power plant somewhere, and get your quantum armor.
You can also now create mark 3 collectors and relays, the rest of the klein stars up to omega, red matter, dark matter blocks, dark matter furnace, red matter armor, red matter tools except for the Katar and Morningstar, nova cataclysm, catalytic lens, mercurial eye, any of the rings except the void ring and the ring of arcana, body, mind, and soul stones (not the life stone yet), the pedestal, and the alchemical tome from Equivalent Exchange.
The technological district - RedPower, Green Stone Wire, The Laser Mod
Set up another Mystcraft building with the descriptive book for the this district, empty your inventory, and get ready to use RedPower, Green Stone Wire, and The Laser Mod. You will want to set up a frame quarry in your Mystcraft age, and build other cool automated stuff in your main world. Make some houses with thin interior walls (covers or panels), and other microblock decoration. Do something cool with Green Stone logic. Make use of different types of Lasers, etc. When you feel like you've done something with most of the available features of these mods, get ready to put it all together.
Final return to the central district
Use RedPower and Green Stone Wire technologies to re-wire your existing redstone contraptions throughout your city. Build new automation using RedPower tubes to enhance your IC2, Forestry, Thaumcraft, and Railcraft operations.
You can now make the rest of the power items from Equivalent Exchange: Void Ring, Ring of Arcana, Life Stone, Red Matter Blocks, Red Matter Furnance, Katar, Morningstar, and the Gem Armor. See if you can build some EMC production in your main world that is not based on Energy Collectors (milk, mushroom, vis, etc). Use your new toys and powers to expand and connect your provinces to the point where together they make a truly epic city. Profit.
Earlier versions of the challenge
A Tale of Five Districts Version 2.0.1
A Tale of Five Cities Challenge - a modded single player minecraft challenge. Version 2.0.1
This challenge is based on CSieg's The Modern City challenge, which is here:
http://www.minecraft...he-modern-city/
That challenge was itself based on Iamchris27's City Construction challenge, which is here:
http://www.minecraft...tion-challenge/
This is a challenge that relies on a specific set of mods being installed. My setup is based on Direwolf20's mod setup, found on the thread for his Let's Play series here:
http://www.minecraft...-v125-season-4/
So start by following his instructions to get those mods set up, then add the following additional mods:
Extra Bees by Binnie (link)
Vis Bees by Punknium (link)
Runic Dust by billythegoat101 (link)
Green Stone Wire by Przezuwacz (link)
The Runic Dust Mod and the Green Stone Wire Mod will have some block id conflicts with Direwolf20's set up, so before you add them, load a minecraft world using Direwolf's setup, open your inventory and go to the options screen for NEI. There you will find an option for block/item id settings. Toggle "ignore block ids", "ignore item ids", "ignore unused item ids", and "dump unused block ids". Then choose "dump id map now". This will give you a list of the unused block ids that are available. There should be seven of the them. Currently Runic Dust uses 3 and Green Stone Wire uses 4, so that is just enough. Install the new mods, try to run minecraft (it will crash), then modify the config files for the mods that were created, changing the block ids to the ones you determined were available.
The Green Stone Wire Mod needs to be installed into the jar. The forum post for that mod also has a custom emc add-on that fixes equivalent exchange emc values for the blocks and items of the Green Stone Wire mod. That add-on includes more stuff that needs to go into the jar, and also a couple of config files that go in the config folder. The Runic Dust mod, Extra Bees mod, and Vis Bees mods just go into the mods folder.
Overview
In this challenge you will be establishing five cities:
- a "central" city (give it the name you want) which should located in the geographic center of your empire and where you will initially use the following mods: Doggy Talents, Equivalent Exchange, and Forestry.
- an "industrial" city where you will use IndustrialCraft and Buildcraft.
- a "magical" city where you will use Runic Dusts and Thaumcraft.
- an "age of steam" city where you will use RailCraft, Steve's Carts, and Portal Gun.
- a "technological" city where you will use the RedPower and Green Stone Wire mods.
You will create a stable Mystcraft Age for each city so that you can have separate mining operations for each one, and so that you can keep your main world unspoiled.
When you leave your central city to establish one of the other four cities you will leave your possesions behind except for the descriptive book for that cities Mystcraft age so that you can work through the goals for that city without help from other mods or from your established resources.
After you finish the goals for each of the satellite cities, you will return to your central city and integrate technologies and resources from the satellite city into your main city. Also, a bit more of the functionality of Equivalent Exchange will be unlocked each time. Eventually, your five cities will merge and become a single epic city.
General Rules
- Ender Storage, Iron Chests, Wireless Redstone, Mystcraft and of course Inventory Tweaks can be used in all five cities. NEI can be used in recipe mode only, of course.
- Do not do any mining or cave exploration in your main world. You can harvest exposed stone and whatever other resources you need, but stay where you can see the sky, and don't dig up the dirt in an area to do so. In other words, no strip mining. Keep your main world pretty - do your mining in your Mystcraft Ages.
- You can check out unstable Mystcraft ages to research age symbols, but may not harvest any resources in those ages. Once you have the Mystcraft research to write some stable ages, you will write 5 stable single-biome ages with a different biome for each, one for each of your five cities. Consider carefully what biomes and characteristics you want to use for each city. These 5 ages is where you will do your mining.
- Each city will only allow you to use specific mods while you are working on that city until you have accomplished the set goals for that city.
Getting Started
The first thing you need to do besides establish the fundamentals of survival and get started on setting up your central city is to do some planning as to where you want each of your cities to be given the landscape and terrain of your world. Each of your cities should occupy an area no larger than 200 x 200 blocks, with the central city in the geographic center and the planned center of each of the four satellite cities no further than 200 blocks away from the middle of the central city. This way, the cities will be able to eventually merge, without cramping the space you have to build while you are working on each one.
The central city - Doggy Talents, Equivalent Exchange, Forestry + add-ons
Your starting city will use the Doggy Talents, Equivalent Exchange, and Forestry Mods. The use of Equivalent Exchange, however, is restricted at the beginning, and is progressively unlocked as you go through the challenge. The only EE items you can use right from the beginning is low covalence dust and the level one diving rod. Also, at the start you can only use wooden tools. You can go foraging above ground wherever you want in your main world, but there is no mining or cave exploring allowed, and buildings for the starting city must all be within 100 blocks of where you decided to make the center. Your initial tasks will include building a house for yourself, some kind of a home for your DTDoggy, some kind of a facility for getting starting on beekeeping, a warehouse for storage, a building for Mystcraft linking books, a simple manually harvested wheat farm and sugarcane farm, and some simple animal pens. Then you will focus on exploring mystcraft ages until you get to the point where you can build your first stable age. Don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back!
Once you have a stable single biome Mystcraft age, you can advance to using stone and iron Vanilla tools, medium covalence dust and the level 2 diving rod, and begin mining in your stable age to start getting more advanced resources. Back in your main world, you can start building automated Forestry farms - remember, no buildcraft engines yet, so you will probably want to create some peat by hand to get your peat engines started. All this stuff needs to be built in your main world, within 100 blocks of spawn. Mod items from other mods, such as thaumcraft crystals, redpower gems, nikolite, etc cannot be used yet, so they should just be stored in your warehouse. Don't forget to keep working on your bees. You can breed Vis bees and the bees from Extra Bees, but store the products related to Industrialcraft/Buildcraft/Thaumcraft, etc in your warehouse.
Once you have any four different Forestry farms up and running, and at least eight different breeds of bees, you can advance to diamond Vanilla tools, high covalence dust, and the level 3 diving rod. Make the rest of the Forestry Farms you want to have, visit the nether and to collect some resources and get started on infernal type bees, and make any other Forestry machines and items you want to have.
Finally, write 5 more stable single biome Mystcraft ages with different biomes than your first one. You can visit the ages to make sure everything is ok, but don't build in them or do anything else with them yet. These ages will be used by your other cities.
The industrial city - Industrialcraft, Buildcraft + add-ons
Now it's time to leave your DTDoggy and all of your possessions, except for a single mystcraft descriptive book (one of the untouched stable ages you created) behind and travel about 200 blocks away from the middle of your central city to establish a city using Industrialcraft, Buildcraft, and the add-ons for those mods: teleport pipes, sneaky pipes, advanced machines, additional buildcraft objects, logistics pipes. Once again, there is no mining or cave exploration in the main world, so you will need to set up buildcraft quarries, IC2 mining operations, etc in your Mystcraft age. Don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back! Build as many of your buildings as possible in the main world. Don't forget that you can use Ender Storage to make delivery of items between your main world and your Mystcraft age easier.
Top-tier IC2 Technologies (UU-Matter, Nano and Quantum Armor, Nano Saber, Electric Jetpack, Mining Laser, and Nuclear Power) will be prohibited until later.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Return to the central city
Once you've accomplished the goals for the industrial city, you will return to the central city, this time bringing with you whatever resources you want from the industrial city. The central city is now ok to combine all the mods we've used so far, so the objectives will include automating your bees and farms with buildcraft and logistics pipes, automating your warehouse and connecting to the logistics system in the industrial city using teleport pipes, and connecting the central city and industrial city with roads.
Also, you can now create the Philosopher's Stone, Alchemical Chests, Alchemical Bags, the Talisman of Repair, alchemical coal, mobius fuel, and the destruction catalyst from Equivalent Exchange.
The magical city - Runic Dusts, Thaumcraft
Once again, grab a descriptive book for one of the stable ages you haven't used yet, otherwise empty your inventory completely, and head out to the area you have planned for your magical city . This time the goal is to establish a city using magic. Use your mystcraft age for mining and if you want, for Vis production, to avoid tainting your main world. Don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back! Try to build as much of your magical stuff as you can into your main age, however.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Return to the central city (again)
Now you can travel back to the central city, bringing with you whatever you want. Add some magic oriented buildings to your central city, make use of your Vis bees, use Buildcraft to automate some of your magical contraptions, deal with any tainted areas anywhere in your extended metropolis, etc.
You can now create Nano armor, the Nano saber, the mining laser, and the electric jetpack from IC2.
You can also now create the transmutation tablet, interdiction torches, nova catalysts, mark 1 and 2 energy collectors and relays, energy condensers, dark matter, dark matter armor, dark matter tools, Ein, Zwei, and Drei Klein stars, the volcanite and evertide amulets, the hyperkinetic lens, the gem of eternal density, and the watch of flowing time from Equivalent Exchange.
The age of steam - Railcraft, Steve's Carts, Portal Gun
Once again, grab a descriptive book for a fresh Mystcraft age and travel with an empty inventory, this time to the lands set aside for the age of steam. You will be building a train themed city. The stages will walk you through the process of setting up the Railcraft industry and progressing through the levels of Steve's Carts technology. Mining needs to be done in your fresh Mystcraft age, and should include setting up and using Tunnel Bores and Steve's Carts mining carts, as well as mining by hand. Don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back! Also, don't forget that you can use wireless redstone to set up remote controlled Portal Spawners - helpful for popping back up to the surface after mining underground for a while. Also, minecarts can go through portals, so Portal Spawners can also be used to transport minecarts from one place to another. As always, you can use Ender Storage to facilitate transport of items across dimensions.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Return to the central city (again)
Build a rail system to connect all of your cities thus far. Expand on the roads connecting all of the cities as well. Add buildings to your central city. Feel free to work on your bees, missing Thaumcraft research, etc. Once you are happy with the railcraft integration throughout your empire, get ready to travel again.
Now the final tiers of IC2 are now unlocked, so start producing UU-Matter, build a nuclear power plant somewhere, and get your quantum armor.
You can also now create mark 3 collectors and relays, the rest of the klein stars up to omega, red matter, dark matter blocks, dark matter furnace, red matter armor, red matter tools except for the Katar and Morningstar, nova cataclysm, catalytic lens, mercurial eye, any of the rings except the void ring and the ring of arcana, body, mind, and soul stones (not the life stone yet), the pedestal, and the alchemical tome from Equivalent Exchange.
The technological city - RedPower, Green Stone Wire, The Laser Mod
Grab a fresh descriptive book, empty your inventory, and head to the last plot you had set aside for a satellite city. This new city is going to use RedPower, Green Stone Wire, and The Laser Mod. You will want to set up a frame quarry in your Mystcraft age (don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back!), and build cool automated stuff in your main world. Make some decently large houses with thinner interior walls (covers or panels), and other microblock decoration. Do something cool with Green Stone logic. Make use of different types of Lasers, etc.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Final return to the central city
Use RedPower and Green Stone Wire technologies to re-wire your existing redstone contraptions throughout your empire. Build new automation using RedPower tubes to enhance your IC2, Forestry, Thaumcraft, and Railcraft operations.
You can now make the rest of the power items from Equivalent Exchange: Void Ring, Ring of Arcana, Life Stone, Red Matter Blocks, Red Matter Furnance, Katar, Morningstar, and the Gem Armor. See if you can build some EMC production in your main world that is not based on Energy Collectors (milk, mushroom, vis, etc). Use your new toys and powers to expand and connect your cities to the point where they are really one big epic city. Profit.
Earlier versions of the challenge
A Tale of Five Cities Version 2.0
A Tale of Five Cities Challenge - a modded single player minecraft challenge. Version 2.0.0
This challenge is based on CSieg's The Modern City challenge, which is here:
http://www.minecraft...he-modern-city/
That challenge was itself based on Iamchris27's City Construction challenge, which is here:
http://www.minecraft...tion-challenge/
This is a challenge that relies on a specific set of mods being installed. My setup is based on Direwolf20's mod setup, found on the thread for his Let's Play series here:
http://www.minecraft...-v125-season-4/
So start by following his instructions to get those mods set up, then add the following additional mods:
Extra Bees by Binnie (link)
Vis Bees by Punknium (link)
Runic Dust by billythegoat101 (link)
Green Stone Wire by Przezuwacz (link)
The Runic Dust Mod and the Green Stone Wire Mod will have some block id conflicts with Direwolf20's set up, so before you add them, load a minecraft world using Direwolf's setup, open your inventory and go to the options screen for NEI. There you will find an option for block/item id settings. Toggle "ignore block ids", "ignore item ids", "ignore unused item ids", and "dump unused block ids". Then choose "dump id map now". This will give you a list of the unused block ids that are available. There should be seven of the them. Currently Runic Dust uses 3 and Green Stone Wire uses 4, so that is just enough. Install the new mods, try to run minecraft (it will crash), then modify the config files for the mods that were created, changing the block ids to the ones you determined were available.
The Green Stone Wire Mod needs to be installed into the jar. The forum post for that mod also has a custom emc add-on that fixes equivalent exchange emc values for the blocks and items of the Green Stone Wire mod. That add-on includes more stuff that needs to go into the jar, and also a couple of config files that go in the config folder. The Runic Dust mod, Extra Bees mod, and Vis Bees mods just go into the mods folder.
I'm still working on the specifications for version 2 of my challenge, but I thought I would share what my thoughts are so far. I'll flesh out the stages and requirements more as I get feedback from you guys. Ender Storage, Iron Chests, Wireless Redstone, Mystcraft and of course Inventory Tweaks can be used in all five cities. NEI can be used in recipe mode only, of course. Each city will otherwise only allow you to use specific mods until you have accomplished the set goals for that city.
Central City - Doggy Talents, Mystcraft, and Forestry + add-ons (all buildings within 100 blocks of spawn)
Your starting city will use the Doggy Talents, Mystcraft, and Forestry Mods with wooden tools only at first. You can go foraging above ground wherever you want in your main world, but there is no mining or cave exploring allowed in the main world, and buildings for the starting city must all be within 100 blocks of spawn. So your initial tasks will include building a house for yourself, some kind of a home for your DTDoggy, some kind of a facility for getting starting on beekeeping, a warehouse for storage, a building for Mystcraft linking books, a simple manually harvested wheat farm and sugarcane farm, and some simple animal pens. Then you will focus on exploring mystcraft ages until you get to the point where you can build your first stable age. Don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back!
Once you have a stable single biome Mystcraft age, you can advance to using any and all Vanilla tools, including diamond, and begin mining in your stable age to start getting more advanced resources. Back in your main world, you can start building automated farms - remember, no buildcraft engines yet, so you will probably want to create some peat by hand to get your peat engines started. All this stuff needs to be built in your main world, within 100 blocks of spawn. Mod items from other mods, such as thaumcraft crystals, redpower gems, nikolite, etc cannot be used yet, so they should just be stored in your warehouse. Don't forget to keep working on your bees. You can breed Vis bees and the Industrialcraft/Buildcraft related bees from extra bees, just store the products from these bees in your warehouse.
Finally, write 5 more stable single biome Mystcraft ages with different biomes than your first one. You can visit the ages to make sure everything is ok, but don't build in them or do anything else with them yet. These ages will be used by your other cities.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Southern City - Industrialcraft, Buildcraft + add-ons (buildings from 100 to 300 blocks south of spawn)
Now it's time to leave your DTDoggy and all of your possessions, except for a single mystcraft descriptive book (one of the untouched stable ages you created) behind and travel 100-300 blocks south of spawn to establish a city using Industrialcraft, Buildcraft, and the add-ons for those mods: teleport pipes, sneaky pipes, advanced machines, additional buildcraft objects, logistics pipes. Once again, there is no mining or cave exploration in the main world, so you will need to set up buildcraft quarries, IC2 mining operations, etc in your Mystcraft age. Don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back! Build as many of your buildings as possible in the main world. Don't forget that you can use Ender Storage to make delivery of items between your main world and your Mystcraft age easier.
Top-tier IC2 Technologies (UU-Matter, Nuclear Power, etc) will be prohibited until later.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Return to Central City
Once you've accomplished the Southern City goals, you will return to the central city, this time bringing with you whatever resources you want from the Southern City. The central city is now ok to combine all the mods we've used so far, so the objectives will include automating your bees and farms with buildcraft and logistics pipes, automating your warehouse and connecting to the logistics system in the southern city using teleport pipes, and connecting the central city and southern city with roads.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Eastern City - Runic Dusts, Thaumcraft (buildings from 100 to 300 blocks east of spawn)
Once again, grab a descriptive book for one of the stable ages you haven't used yet, otherwise empty your inventory completely, and head out, this time to the east. This time the goal is to establish a city using magic. Use your mystcraft age for mining (arcane bore!) and if you want, for Vis production, to avoid tainting your main world. Don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back! Try to build as much of your magical stuff as you can into your main age, however.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Return to Central City (again)
Now you can travel back to the central city, bringing with you whatever you want. Add some magic oriented buildings to your central city, make use of your Vis bees, use Buildcraft to automate some of your magical contraptions, deal with any tainted areas anywhere in your extended metropolis, etc.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Western City - Railcraft, Steve's Carts, Portal Gun (buildings from 100 to 300 blocks west of spawn)
Once again, grab a descriptive book for a fresh Mystcraft age and travel with an empty inventory, this time west of spawn. This time you will be building a train themed city. The stages will walk you through the process of setting up the Railcraft industry and progressing through the levels of Steve's Carts technology. Mining needs to be done in your fresh Mystcraft age, and should include setting up and using Tunnel Bores and Steve's Carts mining carts, as well as mining by hand. Don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back! Also, don't forget that you can use wireless redstone to set up remote controlled Portal Spawners - helpful for popping back up to the surface after mining underground for a while. Also, minecarts can go through portals, so Portal Spawners can also be used to transport minecarts from one place to another. Also, you can use Ender Storage to facilitate transport of items across dimensions.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Return to Central City
Build a rail system to connect all of your cities thus far. Expand on the roads connecting all of the cities as well. Add buildings to your Central City. Feel free to work on your bees, missing Thaumcraft research, etc. Once you are happy with the railcraft integration throughout your empire, get ready to travel again.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
The Northern City - RedPower, Green Stone Wire, The Laser Mod (buildings from 100 to 300 blocks north of spawn)
Grab a fresh descriptive book, empty your inventory, and head north. This new city is going to use RedPower, Green Stone Wire, and The Laser Mod. You will want to set up a frame quarry in your Mystcraft age (don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back!), and build cool automated stuff in your main world. Make some decently large houses with thinner interior walls (covers or panels), and other microblock decoration. Do something cool with Green Stone logic. Make use of different types of Lasers, etc.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Return to Central City
Now the final tiers of IC2 are unlocked, so start producing UU-Matter and build a nuclear power plant somewhere. Use RedPower and Green Stone Wire technologies to re-wire your existing redstone contraptions throughout your empire. Build new automation using RedPower tubes to enhance your IC2, Forestry, Thaumcraft, and Railcraft operations.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
New Discoveries - Equivalent Exchange (takes place in a Mystcraft age)
For your final extended stay away from your empire, create a couple of linking books, and head to the last of the stable ages you made in the beginning. This time you will stay in the Mystcraft age working up the Equivalent Exchange tech tree. Go mining with divining rods and destruction catalysts, get your philosophers stone and transmutation tablet, start making collectors, relays, and condensers, and build up your emc production to the point where you are finally able to get Omega Klein Stars, various endgame toys, and finally the full set of gem armor.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Final return to Central City
Now all restrictions are lifted. See if you can build some EMC production in your main world that is not based on Energy Collectors (milk, mushroom, vis, etc). Use your new toys and powers to expand and connect your cities to where they are really one big epic city. Profit.
A Tale of Four Cities Version 1.0
The basic idea of this challenge is that you will be building four distinct cities using technologies, magics, blocks, and items from different mods in each city. Your starting city will be in the geographic center of your empire, with each other city located about 500-600 blocks away from the central city, in different directions. Once you reach the highest level of civilization in each city separately, you be allowed to start combining the technologies and linking up the cities to form a truly epic empire.
There will be a Vanilla City, an IndustrialCraft/Buildcraft city, a Thaumcraft/Equivalent Exchange city, and a Railcraft/Forestry/RedPower city. While you are working on one of the cities you may not use any mod items or blocks from mods belonging to one of the other cities. You also may not transport any resources or items from one city to another. Get everything out of your inventory, including armor, before traveling to a different city to resume work on that city. Feel free to take inventory with you if you just going to visit one of your other cities (for example, if you want to use Thaumcraft items to beat back taint from your other two cities) but don't leave any mod items in the wrong city, and don't work on building a city while carrying the wrong cities mod items.
Follow Iamchris27's steps and rules while working on your Vanilla city, and CSieg's steps and rules while working on your Industrialcraft/Buildcraft city. I don't have specific stages for the other two cities yet, but I welcome your ideas, and will update this post when I have time to break those down.
If you have the PortalGun mod installed you may not use it in any city until you reach the endgame stage, as it is overpowered. If you have the Ender Storage mod installed, you may only use it in the Thaumcraft/Equivalent Exchange city. Steve's Carts goes along with Railcraft of course. If you have The Laser Mod installed, you may only use it in the IC2/BC city. Mods like Iron Chests and Doggy Talents are ok anywhere, in fact if you have Doggy Talents your dog is the one thing you would be allowed to keep with you when you travel from one city to the next (keeping the command emblem in your inventory is ok : a special exception to the rules). Visiting the nether is fine as long as you are able to fire up a portal with tools that are available to use at the time.
The main rule to follow as far as maintaining progress on all four cities is that no one city should ever have more than four buildings more than any other city. So, if you are starting with Iamchris27's rules for the vanilla city you might have 2 residential houses, a town hall, and one more community building by the end of stage 3. At this point, you would need to travel to one of your other mod city locations (you can pick the order in which you want to work on them). Assuming you follow CSieg's instructions for the IC2/BC city next, you'll have a house, a high school, a foundry, and a mill by the end of that stage 3.
Let me know what you think of the challenge, and give me feedback about the build order for the Thaumcraft/Equivalent Exchange and Railcraft/Forestry/RedPower cities, so I can update this post with some suggestions about that. For example, at what point in your Thaumcraft progress should you be allowed to start using the Transmutation Tablet from EE? Should use of the Tablet be restricted at first, say to getting only raw materials, or to getting only Equivalent Exchange items? In the Railcraft/Forestry/RedPower city, what goals should the player have with regards to advancing bee breeding? Mining with a tunnel bore? Building frame loader machines?
Don't forget that you can and should start building projects that integrate all of the mods in new ways once you have achieved mastery in all of the mods separately. Use your now god-like powers to turn four separate cities into an interconnected, epic masterpiece!
A Tale of Five Cities Version 2.0
A Tale of Five Cities Challenge - a modded single player minecraft challenge. Version 2.0.0
This challenge is based on CSieg's The Modern City challenge, which is here:
http://www.minecraft...he-modern-city/
That challenge was itself based on Iamchris27's City Construction challenge, which is here:
http://www.minecraft...tion-challenge/
This is a challenge that relies on a specific set of mods being installed. My setup is based on Direwolf20's mod setup, found on the thread for his Let's Play series here:
http://www.minecraft...-v125-season-4/
So start by following his instructions to get those mods set up, then add the following additional mods:
Extra Bees by Binnie (link)
Vis Bees by Punknium (link)
Runic Dust by billythegoat101 (link)
Green Stone Wire by Przezuwacz (link)
The Runic Dust Mod and the Green Stone Wire Mod will have some block id conflicts with Direwolf20's set up, so before you add them, load a minecraft world using Direwolf's setup, open your inventory and go to the options screen for NEI. There you will find an option for block/item id settings. Toggle "ignore block ids", "ignore item ids", "ignore unused item ids", and "dump unused block ids". Then choose "dump id map now". This will give you a list of the unused block ids that are available. There should be seven of the them. Currently Runic Dust uses 3 and Green Stone Wire uses 4, so that is just enough. Install the new mods, try to run minecraft (it will crash), then modify the config files for the mods that were created, changing the block ids to the ones you determined were available.
The Green Stone Wire Mod needs to be installed into the jar. The forum post for that mod also has a custom emc add-on that fixes equivalent exchange emc values for the blocks and items of the Green Stone Wire mod. That add-on includes more stuff that needs to go into the jar, and also a couple of config files that go in the config folder. The Runic Dust mod, Extra Bees mod, and Vis Bees mods just go into the mods folder.
I'm still working on the specifications for version 2 of my challenge, but I thought I would share what my thoughts are so far. I'll flesh out the stages and requirements more as I get feedback from you guys. Ender Storage, Iron Chests, Wireless Redstone, Mystcraft and of course Inventory Tweaks can be used in all five cities. NEI can be used in recipe mode only, of course. Each city will otherwise only allow you to use specific mods until you have accomplished the set goals for that city.
Central City - Doggy Talents, Mystcraft, and Forestry + add-ons (all buildings within 100 blocks of spawn)
Your starting city will use the Doggy Talents, Mystcraft, and Forestry Mods with wooden tools only at first. You can go foraging above ground wherever you want in your main world, but there is no mining or cave exploring allowed in the main world, and buildings for the starting city must all be within 100 blocks of spawn. So your initial tasks will include building a house for yourself, some kind of a home for your DTDoggy, some kind of a facility for getting starting on beekeeping, a warehouse for storage, a building for Mystcraft linking books, a simple manually harvested wheat farm and sugarcane farm, and some simple animal pens. Then you will focus on exploring mystcraft ages until you get to the point where you can build your first stable age. Don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back!
Once you have a stable single biome Mystcraft age, you can advance to using any and all Vanilla tools, including diamond, and begin mining in your stable age to start getting more advanced resources. Back in your main world, you can start building automated farms - remember, no buildcraft engines yet, so you will probably want to create some peat by hand to get your peat engines started. All this stuff needs to be built in your main world, within 100 blocks of spawn. Mod items from other mods, such as thaumcraft crystals, redpower gems, nikolite, etc cannot be used yet, so they should just be stored in your warehouse. Don't forget to keep working on your bees. You can breed Vis bees and the Industrialcraft/Buildcraft related bees from extra bees, just store the products from these bees in your warehouse.
Finally, write 5 more stable single biome Mystcraft ages with different biomes than your first one. You can visit the ages to make sure everything is ok, but don't build in them or do anything else with them yet. These ages will be used by your other cities.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Southern City - Industrialcraft, Buildcraft + add-ons (buildings from 100 to 300 blocks south of spawn)
Now it's time to leave your DTDoggy and all of your possessions, except for a single mystcraft descriptive book (one of the untouched stable ages you created) behind and travel 100-300 blocks south of spawn to establish a city using Industrialcraft, Buildcraft, and the add-ons for those mods: teleport pipes, sneaky pipes, advanced machines, additional buildcraft objects, logistics pipes. Once again, there is no mining or cave exploration in the main world, so you will need to set up buildcraft quarries, IC2 mining operations, etc in your Mystcraft age. Don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back! Build as many of your buildings as possible in the main world. Don't forget that you can use Ender Storage to make delivery of items between your main world and your Mystcraft age easier.
Top-tier IC2 Technologies (UU-Matter, Nuclear Power, etc) will be prohibited until later.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Return to Central City
Once you've accomplished the Southern City goals, you will return to the central city, this time bringing with you whatever resources you want from the Southern City. The central city is now ok to combine all the mods we've used so far, so the objectives will include automating your bees and farms with buildcraft and logistics pipes, automating your warehouse and connecting to the logistics system in the southern city using teleport pipes, and connecting the central city and southern city with roads.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Eastern City - Runic Dusts, Thaumcraft (buildings from 100 to 300 blocks east of spawn)
Once again, grab a descriptive book for one of the stable ages you haven't used yet, otherwise empty your inventory completely, and head out, this time to the east. This time the goal is to establish a city using magic. Use your mystcraft age for mining (arcane bore!) and if you want, for Vis production, to avoid tainting your main world. Don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back! Try to build as much of your magical stuff as you can into your main age, however.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Return to Central City (again)
Now you can travel back to the central city, bringing with you whatever you want. Add some magic oriented buildings to your central city, make use of your Vis bees, use Buildcraft to automate some of your magical contraptions, deal with any tainted areas anywhere in your extended metropolis, etc.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Western City - Railcraft, Steve's Carts, Portal Gun (buildings from 100 to 300 blocks west of spawn)
Once again, grab a descriptive book for a fresh Mystcraft age and travel with an empty inventory, this time west of spawn. This time you will be building a train themed city. The stages will walk you through the process of setting up the Railcraft industry and progressing through the levels of Steve's Carts technology. Mining needs to be done in your fresh Mystcraft age, and should include setting up and using Tunnel Bores and Steve's Carts mining carts, as well as mining by hand. Don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back! Also, don't forget that you can use wireless redstone to set up remote controlled Portal Spawners - helpful for popping back up to the surface after mining underground for a while. Also, minecarts can go through portals, so Portal Spawners can also be used to transport minecarts from one place to another. Also, you can use Ender Storage to facilitate transport of items across dimensions.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Return to Central City
Build a rail system to connect all of your cities thus far. Expand on the roads connecting all of the cities as well. Add buildings to your Central City. Feel free to work on your bees, missing Thaumcraft research, etc. Once you are happy with the railcraft integration throughout your empire, get ready to travel again.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
The Northern City - RedPower, Green Stone Wire, The Laser Mod (buildings from 100 to 300 blocks north of spawn)
Grab a fresh descriptive book, empty your inventory, and head north. This new city is going to use RedPower, Green Stone Wire, and The Laser Mod. You will want to set up a frame quarry in your Mystcraft age (don't forget to create and take linking books with you so you can get back!), and build cool automated stuff in your main world. Make some decently large houses with thinner interior walls (covers or panels), and other microblock decoration. Do something cool with Green Stone logic. Make use of different types of Lasers, etc.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Return to Central City
Now the final tiers of IC2 are unlocked, so start producing UU-Matter and build a nuclear power plant somewhere. Use RedPower and Green Stone Wire technologies to re-wire your existing redstone contraptions throughout your empire. Build new automation using RedPower tubes to enhance your IC2, Forestry, Thaumcraft, and Railcraft operations.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
New Discoveries - Equivalent Exchange (takes place in a Mystcraft age)
For your final extended stay away from your empire, create a couple of linking books, and head to the last of the stable ages you made in the beginning. This time you will stay in the Mystcraft age working up the Equivalent Exchange tech tree. Go mining with divining rods and destruction catalysts, get your philosophers stone and transmutation tablet, start making collectors, relays, and condensers, and build up your emc production to the point where you are finally able to get Omega Klein Stars, various endgame toys, and finally the full set of gem armor.
Further specific stages and requirements for this city are coming.
Final return to Central City
Now all restrictions are lifted. See if you can build some EMC production in your main world that is not based on Energy Collectors (milk, mushroom, vis, etc). Use your new toys and powers to expand and connect your cities to where they are really one big epic city. Profit.
A Tale of Four Cities Version 1.0
The basic idea of this challenge is that you will be building four distinct cities using technologies, magics, blocks, and items from different mods in each city. Your starting city will be in the geographic center of your empire, with each other city located about 500-600 blocks away from the central city, in different directions. Once you reach the highest level of civilization in each city separately, you be allowed to start combining the technologies and linking up the cities to form a truly epic empire.
There will be a Vanilla City, an IndustrialCraft/Buildcraft city, a Thaumcraft/Equivalent Exchange city, and a Railcraft/Forestry/RedPower city. While you are working on one of the cities you may not use any mod items or blocks from mods belonging to one of the other cities. You also may not transport any resources or items from one city to another. Get everything out of your inventory, including armor, before traveling to a different city to resume work on that city. Feel free to take inventory with you if you just going to visit one of your other cities (for example, if you want to use Thaumcraft items to beat back taint from your other two cities) but don't leave any mod items in the wrong city, and don't work on building a city while carrying the wrong cities mod items.
Follow Iamchris27's steps and rules while working on your Vanilla city, and CSieg's steps and rules while working on your Industrialcraft/Buildcraft city. I don't have specific stages for the other two cities yet, but I welcome your ideas, and will update this post when I have time to break those down.
If you have the PortalGun mod installed you may not use it in any city until you reach the endgame stage, as it is overpowered. If you have the Ender Storage mod installed, you may only use it in the Thaumcraft/Equivalent Exchange city. Steve's Carts goes along with Railcraft of course. If you have The Laser Mod installed, you may only use it in the IC2/BC city. Mods like Iron Chests and Doggy Talents are ok anywhere, in fact if you have Doggy Talents your dog is the one thing you would be allowed to keep with you when you travel from one city to the next (keeping the command emblem in your inventory is ok : a special exception to the rules). Visiting the nether is fine as long as you are able to fire up a portal with tools that are available to use at the time.
The main rule to follow as far as maintaining progress on all four cities is that no one city should ever have more than four buildings more than any other city. So, if you are starting with Iamchris27's rules for the vanilla city you might have 2 residential houses, a town hall, and one more community building by the end of stage 3. At this point, you would need to travel to one of your other mod city locations (you can pick the order in which you want to work on them). Assuming you follow CSieg's instructions for the IC2/BC city next, you'll have a house, a high school, a foundry, and a mill by the end of that stage 3.
Let me know what you think of the challenge, and give me feedback about the build order for the Thaumcraft/Equivalent Exchange and Railcraft/Forestry/RedPower cities, so I can update this post with some suggestions about that. For example, at what point in your Thaumcraft progress should you be allowed to start using the Transmutation Tablet from EE? Should use of the Tablet be restricted at first, say to getting only raw materials, or to getting only Equivalent Exchange items? In the Railcraft/Forestry/RedPower city, what goals should the player have with regards to advancing bee breeding? Mining with a tunnel bore? Building frame loader machines?
Don't forget that you can and should start building projects that integrate all of the mods in new ways once you have achieved mastery in all of the mods separately. Use your now god-like powers to turn four separate cities into an interconnected, epic masterpiece!
http://www.minecraft...technical-mods/
For EE, I would recommend putting it in one of the later stages for the THaumcraft/EE city, as once You have it, That city will become extremely easy to finish. As well, Once You have a collector/condensor/relay system setup, You will be constantly gaining EMC while working on the other Cities, which gives that city a distinct advantage IMO.
I Like how You incorporate the original (First) version of the challenge, as well as the second(First Modded) version of the challenge. It keeps the rules and setups similar, while also allowing for a new theme(the four cities turning into a megalopolis(That's what 3 or more cities that conjoin are called).
As for Redpower, I dont personally know much about it, but I would say make a redpower quarry(using frames or otherwise).
A thought on the TunnelBore: It isnt reallya functional mining system, as it takes a very long time to break blocks, and continues on in exceedingly long tunnels... I like the basic thought, but from experience, it isnt a very efficient method of mining.
I had another though in regards to how the cities should interact.. Perhaps the cities should be built closer to each other, and heres my reasoning why: If they're close together, You can eventually combine them together, rather than building a 5th final city. It would allow for easier combinations of the cities, and be (perhaps) more realistic to a real megalopolis?:)
A thought for anyone who gets to a point where Your beginining to either combine or build the 5th city: Railcraft has a MFSU cart
I'll probably start this challenge in a bit once change my mod set up. But first to stop a taint invasion of my base and finish the modern city challenge to figure out how I like building these buildings I got a few great idea's to work on!
I don't have the player building a 5th final city. The original vanilla city is located in the middle of where the other three cities are located. So, once you reach the endgame god-like stage, you just start expanding the center city, which was Vanilla only, with mod-combining projects and buildings, and generally doing whatever you want. You can move the cities closer together if you want. I think I would prefer to make sure I have enough room for later, and don't mind the idea of still have four distinct cities in the end, connected by roads and rails.
http://www.minecraft...technical-mods/
Start with whatever city construction level you are comfortable with, after all, there is tons of stuff to do! Note that I did specify that once you get your Thaumcraft research to where you can actually do something about taint, it is ok to go around and beat back the taint from all of your other cities.
True, even the more advanced mining carts from the Steve's Carts mod are not as efficient as a frame quarry. The point of the challenge is not neccesarily to do things in the most efficient way, however, but rather to experience more of each of the mods as they were intended to be experienced, without having to play each one as a separate world.
An equivalent exchange collector/condensor/relay system is quite expensive to set up when you don't have access to automated quarries, etc to give you extra stuff to burn, so I'm not too worried. Thaumcraft research takes a while to completely master however many resources you have, so access to the Transmutation Tablet won't instantly change that. Still, I agree that the Tablet is a fairly late stage item. Also, with chunkloader blocks of some kind, Buildcraft quarries and RedPower Frame quarries could potentially continue to operate while you work on other cities as well.
http://www.minecraft...technical-mods/
redpower's quarries may take a bit more time and resources but they will out run Buildcraft quarries really quickly, i feel that the buildcraft/industrial craft may have more hindrances till late game than other cites until massive uu-matter farming
on another note does anyone know if the carts from steves carts run on peat?
I apologize, I misread that part of the city placement. Thats actually a quite brilliant way to have it set up, as it does allow You to give your empty vanilla buildings functions that work well with the buildings next to them.
That is true. It truly is about the journey, and not the destintation.
It does require quite alot to get setup, and You do have a good point, it wont help too much with the Thaumcraft Research, which is a point I hadnt really considered.
The point about The quarries is true as well. The main counter I have is that eventually Buildcraft hits bedrock, and Redpower will eventually stop as well(I think?). A condensor setup will continue to run non-stop while loaded. I think that the quarry type machines and EMC type machines should be on similar stages in each city, so that each gains access to large quantities of materials around the same time. Otherwise It will be frustrating moving from one high material city to a low power one.
On a side note: I like the mod combinations for each city, It makes each city feel like it has its own type of research and theme going on, and the mods in each city seem to compliment each other without making things too easy on the player either.
Great Challenge
There is no peat cart yet, sorry.
You are right about the buildcraft quarries being underpowered compared to red power frame quarries. I'm actually wondering if forestry should be moved to the ic2/buildcraft city. Forestry integrates very well with buildcraft. Eloraam is a genius: redpower can do everything you can imagine.
http://www.minecraft...technical-mods/
Thanks!
It is true that a buildcraft quarry will hit bedrock. A redpower frame quarry doesn't have to, however. Once you get computers, you can program sustainable behaviors. Of course, computers would be one of the last things to be allowed to get. Actually, if you have Steve's carts, the assembly carts can be programmed as well. All very complicated stuff, but they can do sustainable mining too. Both of which are contributing to my thought that the railcraft/redpower city maybe doesn't need forestry as much as the IC2/BC city does. I still have to think about it a bit more before changing the original post.
http://www.minecraft...technical-mods/
EDIT: i mean a cool challenge
That is a very cool looking mod! I'll keep an eye out for it to become forge compatible. I like many of your other suggestions, and will take them into consideration when I update this challenge, which I've been trying to make time to do.
http://www.minecraft...technical-mods/
Anything is possible.
Cool challenge though!
I make mod videos! Ask me and I'll make one for you!
This particular set of mods uses all available block ids so you would have to change things around to get those mods included. Feel free to author a new version of this challenge with different mods.
I have a new version of the challenge up. There is still some fleshing out to do, but I like the new flow better. I did incorporate Runic Dusts. I also decided to leave EE to be it's own separate activity at the end of the challenge. Let me know what you think.
http://www.minecraft...technical-mods/
You are absolutely right. I started to play through my own challenge to get a feel for it and to start thinking about the details. Of course I spawned right next to a huge ocean. I'm reworking that part of the challenge now.
I think you're right about this. Originally there was going to be a Thuamcraft/EE city but I decided I liked the idea of a Thaumcraft/Runic Dust city better. Then I couldn't figure out where else I wanted to fit EE in. My new idea, which I will work into the OP shortly is to have Central City be DoggyTalents/Forestry/Equivalent Exchange, but to unlock a little bit more of EE each time you revisit Central City.
http://www.minecraft...technical-mods/
http://www.minecraft...technical-mods/