The Blitz Mod v.21

Overview

This Mod introduces significant changes to Civ 4's combat balance. Those changes intend to dramatically increase the gap between advanced and obsolete units, increase the power of nuclear weapons, and encourage even greater use of combined arms tactics. Eventually this mod will progress beyond just simple changes in unit stats, and should encompass every area of the game. After I have finished this round of unit changes I am going to start tweaking the buildings, especially the cultural buildings. I'm going to encourage an even greater amount of specialization. However, I want to continue focusing on unit balance for now.

This is the third release, and I think I'm slowly finding most of the problems in the xml files, but I'm sure more still exist. If you spot something unusual or undocumented please report it. Also if civ 4 suddenly starts crashing after running this mod please tell me immediately. So far it seems fairly stable for me. Though in v.20 I had the promotions completely messed up, and i fixed that in this version. Also I greatly appreciate feedback, and I will certainly take all suggestions into consideration. I might not implement your suggestions, but I will always try to explain my reasoning if I don't.

This is still an early release, and lacks polish. I will continue to focus on adding new game play elements, polishing the rough edges, and playtesting it for balance. Keep checking back for new releases as this mod evolves.

Installation

Extract the contents of this zip file to your Civ4 mods folder. If you have an old version of the Blitz Mod delete that first. To play the mod, start civ4 as normal, select advanced options, then select load a mod. Civ4 will restart and load the mod. Everything should work like normal then. If you're running other mods, it's possible that it could cause problems with the Blitz mod.

Special Thanks
I would like to thank Zuul for allowing me to incorporate his Promotions and Traits mod into the Blitz mod.

To do list - 12/22/05
*finish changing the stats for the remaining unique units (I'm still thinking about this that's why it's not done yet)
*edit ICBM's stats
*start tweaking buildings/wonder stats (I'm going to start with the culture buildings)
*continue play testing for balance
*continue checking the change log to make sure it's correct against the xml files, and to ensure that it reflects all of the changes made to the units
*fix any bugs as they arise

Attention!

I have changed Praetorians so that they can now build roads and forts at half the speed of normal workers. I didn't add in worker AI, because I feared that this might make them too workerish (instead of a combat unit with a few nice perks). So please tell me if you notice the AI using them to build roads or not. Also if you notice the AI building anything besides roads or forts or if you can use them to build anything besides roads and forts please tell me that as well. I anticipate that this could cause problems so I wanted to give you a head's up.

Change Log

______________________________________
Units

Ancient Era
*Warrior 3.1 15 +20 Melee +10 CD
*Archer 5.1 25 +25 Melee, +20 CD 1 FS
*Spearman 5.1 25 +50 Mounted,
*Axeman 6.1 30 +35 Melee, +15 CA
*Chariot 6.2 35 +20 Archer, +20 Siege, 10% WD, FS Immune
*Horse Archer 7.2 40 50% WD 0-1 FS
*Galley 4.3 40/2

Ancient Era Unique Units
*Quechua 3.1 15 +20 Melee, +75 Archer, +10 City Defense, Guerilla1
*Immortal 6.2 25 +20 Archer, +20 Siege, 10% WD, Flanking1
*War Chariot 7.2 35 +20 Archer, +20 Siege, 10% WD, FS Immune, Combat1
*Keshik 7.3 40 50% WD 1 FS, March

Classic Era
*Catapult 9.1 50 +25 Melee, +25 CA 60.4 Collateral 15 BR {Mathematics}
*Swordsman 10.1 45 +40 Melee, +20 CA {Iron Working, Hunting}
*War Elephant 15.1 80 +30 Melee, +30 Mounted

Classic Era Unique Units
*Jaguar 10.1 45 +40 Melee +20 CA {Iron Working, Hunting} Doesn't Require resources, Woodsman1
*Praetorian 11.1 45 +40 Melee +20 CA {Iron Working, Hunting} City Raider1, Can builds roads and forts at half speed

Feudal Era
*Pikemen 12.1 45 +70 Mounted
*Crossbowmen 15.1 60 +30 Archer, +30 CD, 1-2 FS
*Macemen 16.1 65 +45 Melee, +25 CA
*Longbowman 18.1 75 +35 Melee, +25 CD, 1-2 FS
*Knight 20.2 90 +30 Archers, +25 Siege, 20% WD, FS immune
*Caravel 8.4 60/1 (Any unit and not just specials)

Gunpowder Era
*Musketman 24.1 80 +35 Mounted, +30 CD 1 FS
*Grenadier 28.1 90 +20 Gun, +60 CA
*Rifleman 32.1 100 +40 Mounted, +30 CD 2 FS
*Cavalry 35.2 120 +20 Gun, +35 Siege, 25% WD, FS Immune
*Cannon 34.1 120 +60 Gun, 40.5 Collateral {Gunpowder} 20 BR {iron or copper}
*Galleon 14.5 90/3
*Frigate 25.6 100 10 BR
*Ironclad 38.6 120 20 BR

Industrial Era
*Machine Gun 58.1 140 +50 Gun, +20 Mounted, 4 FS
*Infantry 60.2 140 +20 Gun, +20 CA, +40 CD 2 FS
*Marine 74.2 180 +40 Gun, +25 Armor, +20 CA Amphibious, FS Immune
*Tank 80.3 200 +25 Gun, +50 Siege, -25 CA, 25% WD, Blitz, FS Immune
*Artillery 78.2 200 +60 Gun +20 Siege, 75.6 Collateral 25 BR
*Transport 26.7 130/5
*Destroyer 72.10 150 See Submarines, +100 Attack Submarines, 35% Intercept, 15 BR
*Battleship 120.8 250, 35.3 Collateral, 25 BR +1 upkeep
*Carrier 65.8 220/5 +1 upkeep
*Submarine 80.7 175 Invisible, +100 Attack Carriers, +100 Attack Transports, 65% WD
*Fighter 72.[8.2] 180 +75 Air, +20 Armor, 90% Intercept, 10 BR
*Bomber 82.[12.1] 210 75.4 Collateral, 25 BR

Modern Era
*SAM Infantry 95.2 180 +100 Helicopter, 40% Intercept
*Mech Infantry 120.3 240 +25 Gun, +25 CA, +50 CD, 15% WD, Blitz/March FS immune +1 upkeep {oil}
*Modern Armor 125.4 250 +35 Gun, +60 Siege, -20 CA, 30% WD, Blitz, FS Immune +1 upkeep
*Gunship 110.5 220 +100 Armor, 30% WD +1 upkeep
*Jet Fighter 115.[12.3] 225 +35 Armor, 90% Intercept, 10 BR +1 upkeep
*Stealth Bomber 145.[20.1] 300 75.6 Collateral, Evasion 80% 30 BR +1 upkeep
*ICBM (cost reduced to 300) +1 upkeep
______________________________________

Global Changes

*Reduced upgrade cost. New formula is (10 + [2*hammer cost]) instead of (25 + [3*hammer cost]).
*Increased chance of fallout to 60% (it was 50%).
*Increased negative health modifer from fallout to -1 (it was -.5)
______________________________________

Promotions

*Combat IV: +45%
*Combat V: +60%

*Cover I: +20% Archers
*CoverII: +15% Archers (35% total)
*Formation I: +20% Mounted {Combat I}
*Formation II: +15% Mounted (35% total)
*Shock I: +20% Melee
*Shock II: +15% Melee (35% total)
*Ambush I: +20% Armored
*Ambush II: +15% Armored (35% total)
*Charge I: +20% Siege
*Charge II: +15% Siege (35% total)
*Pinch I: +20% Gunpowder {Combat II}
*Pinch II: +15% Gunpowder (35% total)

*Artic Combat I: +25% Snow/Tundra
*Artic Combat II: +25% Snow/Tundra, Double Movement Snow/Tundra {Artic Combat I} (50% total)
*Desert Combat I: +25% Desert
*Desert Combat II: +25% Desert, Double Movement Desert {Desert Combat I}
*Guerilla I: +25% Hills
*Guerilla II: +25% Hills, Double Movement Hills
*Woodsman I: +25% Forest/Jungle
*Woodsman II: +25% Forest/Jungle, Double Movement Forests/Jungle

*Medic II: +5% Healing, (15% total) +5% Healing adjacent tile
*Medic III: +10% Healing adjacent tile (15% total)

City Raider I: +20% CA
City Raider II: +15% CA (35% total)
City Raider III: +15% CA (50% total)

City Garrison I: +20% CD
City Garrison II: +15% CD (35% total)
City Garrison III: +15% CD (50% total)

Barrage I: +20% Collateral
Barrage II: +15% Collateral (35% total)
Barrage III: +15% Collateral (50% total)

*Drill I: 1 First Strikes
*Drill II: 1 First Strikes (2 total)
*Drill III: 1 First Strikes (2 total)
*Drill IV: removed

*Flanking I 15% Withal Chance
*Flanking II 10% Withdrawl Chance (25% total)

*March: changed to require either Combat IV or Medic III
______________________________________

Notes

*Unless otherwise noted unit resource requirements haven't changed.
*Air units can now damage units up to 75%.
*The change log should reflect all changes made to the Blitz mod with the exception of some undocumented modifications to unit class requirements for promotions. Please report any other undocumented changes because they are most likely bugs.
*I used the following abbreviations: FS-first strike, wd-withdrawal, br-bombard rate
*I used the following unit stat notation: strength.movement/transport capacity, cost, attack bonuses, withdrawl bonuses, special promotions, first strikes or first strike immunity,{changes to technology}, extra upkeep, {changes to resource requirements}
______________________________________


Enjoy!

Interesting, in my last game I used cavalry yo fight gunships & won the day... now it will be impossible.
However, this modification will require lots of money to convert all units, because you can't stay with the old one...
:-)

mamimo

I'm hoping to figure out how to decrease upgrade costs. I would like to make it so that it costs about 60-75 gold to take a unit from era era to the next (like upgrading knights to cavalry). Have you played it yet? If so what do you think?

mamimo

I'm hoping to figure out how to decrease upgrade costs. I would like to make it so that it costs about 60-75 gold to take a unit from era era to the next (like upgrading knights to cavalry). Have you played it yet? If so what do you think?

.../Asset/XML/GlobalDefines.xml

<Define>
<DefineName>BASE_UNIT_UPGRADE_COST</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>25</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>
<Define>
<DefineName>UNIT_UPGRADE_COST_PER_PRODUCTION</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>3</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>


I have per production set to 1 and upgrades cost about ~55 gold per era upgrade.

Kindness,

Tell me if I understand the global defines correctly. Currently if you have a 50 shield unit and you want to upgrade it to a 100 shield unit it will cost you 175 gold per unit (25 + [3*50]). So if I changed the values to 100 base/0 production, it cost cost a flat 100 gold to upgrade per unit, or if I changed it to 50 base/2 production it would cost 150 gold per unit.

hmmm, after a few strange combat results, i did some more into combat calculations. I need help determining the odds if two units with 4 strength engage in battle and the attacker has a +50% bonus. Are the odd 6 vs. 4 or are they 6 vs. 2?

the odds shown (ie 6 vs 4) are strictly based on strength of unit. they do not reflect the actual probabilities of victory (nor do they account for things like unit damage or first strike(s))

a great thread on odds from arathorn here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=137615

ew

I'm pretty sure that's how it works - I would turn it on to check for sure but I need to go to bed, and if I start up Civ that isn't going to happen anytime soon.

When I was checking this mod out, the special units weren't upgraded at all. They were the exact same power wise, and in some cases, they had the same special abilities. Is this how it's supposed to be, or is this a mistake?

fpstream

I intended it to work this way until I finalize the balance in the regular units. Once I have a solid play tested balance I will implement unique units, and I'm open for suggestions on unique unit stats.

Nice work on it though. I like the fact that the changes make it so you don't have crappy units killing good units. The one thing that would be great would be to add more unit promotions, like you said. You don't have to create a lot of new ones. Just add more to the existing ones. Why the stop some of the upgrades after just two or three times is beyond me...

fpstream

This mod in still deep in beta, because I'm trying to figure out the exact mechanics behind the combat engine. Once I do that it will make modding much easier. I'm glad that you're enjoying it so far.

Btw is anyone else getting the following message:

XLM Error
Tag UNITCOMBAT_AIR in info class was incorrect
Current XLM file is Units/Civ4 Units Infos.xml

I get it twice when I load the mod. I think fighters allowing fighters to have 2 moves and jet fighters having 3 moves causes it. I will continue to investigate.

it is because there is no "UNITCOMBAT_AIR". if you check your air units near the top of their heading, they have no COMBAT listing. You'll have to manually enter in all the UNITCLASS mods of each air unit unless you can classify them all as UNITCOMBAT_AIR yourself, but I imagine you'll have to add entries in other XML files to get the tag accepted. Even then, I don't really know how air to air combat is handled. It might not apply to them even if you could pass the tag.

Agraza

Ah, thanks for the explanation. I'll remove the bonus from fighters and get fighters then.

I'm hoping to figure out how to decrease upgrade costs. I would like to make it so that it costs about 60-75 gold to take a unit from era era to the next (like upgrading knights to cavalry).Maybe make it so that units upgrade automatically after the upgrade has been available for a specified period of time. You should never have any Archers hanging around when you're already up to Machine Guns. Musketmen, maybe, but not Archers, Longbowmen, or the like. The rationale for this would be that unit maintenance (whether free or actually paid) has to cover replacements for worn-out weaponry, and it would cost no more to replace the worn-out weapons with more modern ones. There should still be incentive to upgrade, of course, so this would have to be tweaked for balance, but seeing as this appears to be something of a "remove ridiculous and counterintuitive stuff" mod, I figured this would be a good thought.

I would also suggest that both Armor units, as well as Mechanized Infantry, should get large bonuses against all Melee, Mounted, and Archery units, in addition to their substantial strength advantage—with the current figures, a limited number of Knights could take down a Tank without too much trouble. This should be technically possible, but at least an order of magnitude more difficult than with the current numbers. Indeed, early gunpowder units should face similar penalties. It just makes no sense for a few Musketmen to blow up a Tank. (Of course, there would have to be some kind of penalty to compensate for this; I'm thinking the Gunships' current inability to take cities would be a good fit, for starters.)

Gunships should, if possible, be entirely immune to Melee, Mounted, and Archery units, for obvious reasons.

By the way, would you mind spelling out the abbreviations and stuff in your changelog, in the manner of the Civilopedia? Some of the stuff is rather hard to understand, at least to me. I figured out the x.y strength/movement notation fairly quickly, and CD wasn't too tough either, but I'm still not quite sure what you mean by BR or WD, for example, and some people who might want to consider downloading your mod may have played the game less than I have and/or be denser than I am.

barrage and chance to withdraw is what I think he meant, but the exact amount of barrage I assume is being left as standard except the battleship, so I'm not sure why it's listed. I guess it could mean something else.

Sorry about the confusion over notation, I'll fix that in the next release. Agraza guessed correctly about BR (bombard rate) and WD (withdraw). Here's a few examples of changes in unit stats.

*Catapult 8.1 45 +30 CA, 60.4 Collateral {Mathematics}

It has eight strength, one movement, it costs 45 hammers, a 30% bonus when attacking cities, it can do collateral damage of up to 60% on four units, and I moved it's required technology to mathematics.

*Caravel 8.4 60/1 (Any unit and not just specials)

The Caravel has eight strength, four movement, it costs sixty hammers, and can carry one land units (a settler, a conquistador, etc. and not just missonaries or great people).

I just listed the changes I made. So if a unit required oil, and I didn't change that requirement I wouldn't list the resource. Assume that any undocumented changes (except to unit AI) are glitches, which I will fix by either updating the change log or correcting the value in XML.

BTW I'm trying to shoot for a new release on Sunday or Monday.

korn469 : is it possible to add new stats (like attack,defense,strength,endurance)without the SDK ?

Mirrored this at http://civilization4.filefront.com/ for you korn469 :)

You can at least have attack and defence in a way, if you look at my promotion mod you can see how to do it easy (but maybe not that pretty).

I added all your values to my game, though I tinkered with UUs a little to preserve their original advantage over the vanilla unit. This is pretty fun. Playing on noble, you really know to be threatened or not when you know who has what techs/resources. When I had the first swordsmen for nearly 20 turns I was rocking.

But the computer was not properly aware of my magnificence. Catherine declared war on me at that point, and my swordsmen tore her axe and archers to shreds. I think someone mentioned in the general creation/customization forum that <iPower></iPower> is that units weighted value/threat level to the AI. If that is true, I think these values ought to be re-balanced in accordance with the actual combat values they now have so that the AI is more aware of your strength. Cathy remained pissed at me and declared war about 40 turns after the end of this one, she had a few sword which I took down, but then more worthless axe and archer. Her problem was that she was buddhist and the rest of the continent was hindu/jewish, but she still oughta know who has the great swordsmen.

Agraza

I will update unit power in the upcoming version. I also noticed that rushing for swordsmen is a great (maybe the best) tactic if you have iron. I still don't have all of the balance worked out right, but it's getting there. Playtesting over the past few days has given me some new insights, and I'm going to make changes. Eventually, I'd like to add a new level one tech called "Warrior Code" or something like that. It would cost 60 research points and enable barracks, plus you would need it in order to build swordsmen. For an interim fix I will probably make swordsmen require hunting, or possibly Archery if swordsmen rushing is still too strong.

I'm curious, but did you keep Civ4's original bonuses for the unique units or did you invent your own bonuses? If you used your own bonuses what were they? Anyone who has ideas for UU stats please feel free to share them. As of now I'm thinking of making UU's around 20% stronger if they get an across the board increase, and stronger than 20% if they get a more specialized bonus.

I pretty much just gave them the same advantage over the normal unit as they had before, as far as I could guess anyway. I still don't know the order of operations, so first strike is a mystery to me. If the UU had first strikes and so did your new vanilla version, I gave the new one a few more :P. My samurai absolutely rape though, so I don't know how wise it is to be handing first strike and withdraw out like I was. For the persians and egyptians I made their UUs really cheap since the tech advantage more dramatically kills the shelf life of their UU and they aren't even guaranteed to have horse as quickly as they need to. Really motivates you to get horsemen and find something to kill before they're obsolete :).

I agree, the sword rush is godlike. Another thing, my warriors absolutely cannot hold a primitive city from barbarian archers, not without a cultural defense modifier or a wall. It forces me to go archery or bronze working unnecessarily quickly, in my opinion. Archers on the other hand, handle waves of barbarian axemen really well for the same reason they decimate warriors.

I'm adding the 25 CD they had in vanilla back to my files because while I love picking fights, I don't so much love having to ramp up my military that quick. Things like that are probably why the vanilla military have such a gradual increase in strength over the length of the game, but I like that your values are more dramatic, and once the game gets rolling I've got reinforcements.

Agraza

I hadn't even realized just how bad warriors performed against barbarian archers until you mentioned it since I've always rushed to get better combat units. I changed their stats to make them somewhat better, but anyone who only uses warriors will fall to players who have better units. Thanks for the feedback!

Ok I just released v.2 of the Blitz Mod. Read the original post for all the details. I also weakened the swordmen rush by having swordsmen require hunting in addition to Iron working.

so has anybody played the new version? what do you think?

ok I just posted v.21

hightlights...

*Fixed the mess I made of the promotions modifiers
*Also fixed an xml bug (typo on my part sorry!)
*Edited horse archers slightly
*Added in six unique units: quechuas, immortals, war chariots, keshiks, jaguars, and praetorians. The rest will appear in the next version or two. For now those other UUs have standard stats but their normal unique artwork and names.

try it out and see what you think. as always check the original post for more details...

I'm out of town, but it's highly possible that since I created v.21 with civ4 1.09 that it isn't compatible with the new patch. I'll get back on wednesday so by the end of the week I'll do an update for the new patch, and I'll add some new uu's as well. Please just bare with me. thanks! :)