Please make the Curse the Lands ritual feature an option; it is absolutely ruining this mod for me.

Playing as Ljiolsofar on Immortal difficulty, I am dogpiled by all the evil AIs continuously - Flauros even vassalised two of the others, and they're going to start forming permanent alliances soon.
They continually cast Curse the Lands making me have no luxury resources or health resources. I have no idea how they cast it so fast - a 1000 hammer ritual should be taking them 50 turns + to build in a single city in the early-mid game, but they are all able to build it much much faster than that.

So I am constantly at war with 2-4 AIs, and each of them manages to cast a Curse the Lands on me every ~25 turns or so. There is no way that with only 6-7 cities that I can manage to get uncursed, even constantly building the ritual in all of my cities - which also leaves me without any units to prosecute an offensive war.
They won't make peace with me without demanding one of my best cities (mostly the one with the FoL shrine in it), and they won't invade me to let me kill their units so I can build up enough war weariness to reduce their unreasonable peace demands.

In fact, its lucky I'm Ljiolsofar; if I had been any other faction I would have died long ago, because I would have been unable to use Guardians of Nature to still get some happiness and have cities above size ~7 or so, and been unable to spam forests for health.

At the very least, reduce the cost of the Appease the gods ritual down to 100 hammers or so. I understand the intention behind wanting to make the total appeasement costs equal to the total production costs, but this is based on a false idea; when you are cursed, your cities are MUCH MUCH less productive because you have to divert all your workers to farms to stop from starving to death, particularly on high difficulty level when your base city happiness and health is so low,
Plus, at high difficulty, there is no way the human player can match multiple AI hammers on a 1:1 basis.

Or make it so that you can only build the Curse the Lands ritual while at war; and that you have to STOP building it when peace is made. So the AI can't start building it, then make peace, then declare war a few turns before its finished and screw you.

Or make it so the number of Appeasement rituals you need can never go above 5 (its regularly getting up to 12 or more for me - they curse me faster than I can appease it).

But I find this Ritual not fun at all.

I concur, this ritual is very annoying. The first time it happened, I had it used on me again 1 turn after completing all five rituals. With only 2 cities, it took a long time to recover.


I'm thinking that Curse the Lands should have an AC prereq, and that you should need fewer/cheaper rituals to get rid of it. Also, "Appease Divinity" doesn't seem right for the Grigori.

It was written to cost 1800, with a 200 per cure. During transition it got changed to 1000 somehow, but should have been fixed last patch.


The ritual was designed knowing that balancing would be needed after initial launch, but keep in mind that you can only use it 3 times (now, used to be 5), and the main point of it was to encourage players to maintain good diplomacy, and make their wars short, quick affairs.


The Curse ritual does require that you are at war to work on it, and to continue work on it. Anytime you are not at war with anybody, a city working on the ritual is forced to change build orders. The "stored" production decays slowly from that point on. So if nobody declares war anytime soon, you will start from scratch next time. If you get into another war really soon, then you get a bit of a compensation from being "kicked while you are down."



But do keep in mind while you are complaining about it what the 2 design considerations were:

1 (minor): Make Magic have a large-scale effect on the Wars in the world, as is fitting thematically.

2 (Major): Force players to remember that there is Diplomacy in the game, and it is important. If you get into a war, it should be a quick war with a specific target, and you should have more buddies to back you up than the other guy does. Get in, get done, get out. As such, the Curse is meant to require enough :hammers: that you can capture a city or 2 before they get a chance to complete the ritual. And until VERY late in the game, should be impossible to complete in the 10 turns after declaration of war when the AI will refuse any attempts to negotiate peace.



So yes, if the cost is 1000 in the latest release, that is quite wrong, and it is intended that the cure costs FAR less than the Curse, but about the same as a discounted curse (Celestial Compass is a valuable World Wonder now).



For feedback though, I am mostly interested in hearing Multi-Player feedback, as most complaints in regards to the AI will be taken in light of "Hey, the AI is finally using a new FfH Toy properly and I might have to return to the difficulty I used to play BtS at!" Work will continue on making the AI play smart, and a big part of that work is inventing new mechanics since it is easier to write completely new AI than to figure out what the old AI was intended to do and how that doesn't work anymore.

Personally, I absolutely despise this ritual.... Which is why it's awesome. The AI needed some method it could cripple you with, and this is a very intriguing one. Needs some balancing, sure, but if the AI can actually piss you off again, something wonderful happened lol.

Personally, I absolutely despise this ritual.... Which is why it's awesome. The AI needed some method it could cripple you with, and this is a very intriguing one. Needs some balancing, sure, but if the AI can actually piss you off again, something wonderful happened lol.

Aye - a big part of the difference is that the AI doesn't mind sticking a city on constructing the ritual for a large number of turns. It a human player sees any number above 20 turns that doesn't provide a tangible benefit to his own empire, he's somewhat disinclined to use it. The AI has proven though that it can be an effective tool to use against an enemy.

It's actually *most* valuable when multiple enemies are dogpiling you too, as for the same price you get to inflict some economic pain on *every* enemy you have.

===

One thing we've already discussed was to have a timer between uses of the ritual rather than a team-limit - which means it'd be usable once every 100 or so turns (should be rare for a single opponent to be able to use it more than once per war in that case).

Another idea was to set the amount of appeasement required to be capped at either the number of cities you currently have or at 5 (whichever is lower) - that way a small empire can clear the block at the cost of a couple of rituals, and the effects of multiple castings are reduced (having it cast again whilst you are part way to appeasement could only increase it back to 5, not stacking up to 10 or more).

Bumping up the cost of the ritual would definitely help, as would a cap on the number of appeasement rituals needed. These two together would probably solve all issues I have with the ritual. Its not having it cast once that is so bad, it is when 3, 4, 5 AIs are constantly recasting it on you keeping your appeasement rituals around 10+.

Its important to realise how much lower is your production when under the effect of the ritual; typically casting the Appease ritual will take 15 turns + in all your cities.

So, an AI can spend say 30 turns in one of its cities to make you take 15 turns production in 5 of your cities.

If you get into a war, it should be a quick war with a specific target

All when and good if you're on the offensive; when you're on a defensive war its rather more difficult to make it quick; the AI doesn't give up so easily.

I like the design decision, I just think its too much atm.

Other potential balancing factors which maintain most of the intent:

1: Curse hits you for 15 instead of 5, Appeasement cleanses 3 instead of 1. Counter decreases automatically by 1 per turn.

2: Appeasement can be built any time, so you can stock up appeasement points (which will decay at about 1 per 3 turns) if you fear war is approaching, or just have spare production to waste. This favors the humans and leads to micromanagement though as a human will build it in each city and stop immediately before completion, allowing them to rush complete it when afflicted later.



Could also be fun to make it possible for a Great Prophet to be sacrificed to instantly clear your Curse Counter, and allow Great Commanders to rush completion of Curse the Lands.

All when and good if you're on the offensive; when you're on a defensive war its rather more difficult to make it quick; the AI doesn't give up so easily.

Valid point, but staying out of defensive wars is what diplomacy is all about :) And the main reason I never made it above the 3rd difficulty level in basic BtS (only with BtS did I finally start to move comfortably up from Chieftan as I finally started to understand waging Offensive Wars pre-Modern Era) ;)

staying out of defensive wars is what diplomacy is all about

On high difficulty levels, it is not possible to stop AIs declaring war on you, even if you submit to their ridiculous tribute demands (and giving them iron working is really not a good idea...).
Which is good! I like being dogpiled by all the evil civs, thats fun to try to survive.
But having to do so without any resources (bronze, no iron!) and no hope of ever getting any is no fun.

I think an automatic degradation so that the curse goes away by itself eventually is also a good idea.
I worry that AI civs affected by the Curse will suffer too much as it stands.

The curse drives me crazy, but I agree with your reasons for having it in there. Could we please have a way to turn it off in the custom game settings though?

agreed with the custom option, I like Curse the Land but I think it's always best to let people choose for themselves ;)

No need to fear about the AI floundering under the ritual. The only real balancing that was done before implementation was all based on numerous AI AutoPlay games. Tweaking my code for how they handle each ritual to ensure that they would cast it in a manner that benefits them, and that they would place emphasis on cleansing themselves. The only time I have seen the AI stuck with a longterm Curse was when they got knocked down to 1 city and then allowed to live. But now that Peace clears the ritual, the AI is very capable of keeping themselves in the war, and cleaning the curse rapidly.

Of course, humans might find a way to smack the AI such that it cannot handle it, but in general when the ritual is overcoming them the AI will become desperate for peace.

All when and good if you're on the offensive; when you're on a defensive war its rather more difficult to make it quick

No, I'd say it isn't hard at all to make defensive wars quick, so long as you don't plan to win them. :p ;)

Well yeah, if you're willing to gift your best 2-3 cities to the enemy....

Good to hear that the AI understands the Ritual well.

Since you guys are working on the AI, why not add some new routines that cause smaller civilizations to gain bonuses and friendships against nations that start to become powerful. That way, nations that start to gain the runaway effect would have to deal with the entire world realizing they're a threat. It's pretty realistic that a nation with an aggressive expansion policy and a history of declaring war would cause alliances to be formed against them.

If you've ever played Crusader Kings it's like reputation, and keeps the AI and humans from exploding in power too fast or too early. It also protects smaller nations from being wiped out in a short period of time instead of slowly assimilated.

Or like in SMAC, I once ran to a point where only a single other faction did not go to permanent war with me. And a plain peace with them was all I could get. So if you give more than lip service to esus (aka backstabbing everybody), you are going to feel it. Sure I did win that game but I could have gone transcendant earlier if I did not have to pump out units. Although they helped a lot in the "Amagawd defiler! Die!" phase of being swarmed by dozens of mind worms every turn.

"You declared a war on our friend!" does the job though.

I second Mailbox's idea, that would definitely make the game more interesting :)

Ah yes, badboy wars for world conquest are always entertaining! ;)

Well, sortof...
I would say make it alignment related. The good civs you have excellent relations with aren't going to be intimidated by you going on a conquest-rampage by purging the evil from the world.

But yeah, tons of games, particularly Paradox's Europa Universalis/Victoria/etc. games have a badboy rating acquired by starting wars and annexing land not within your nation's pre-defined "area of influence". So the 1830s US wouldn't get badboy for annexing Texas and California, but other factions would start getting afraid if they started taking Mexican provinces.

speaking of rituals, I think the AI is still dowsing too much, even after patch L. I've seen some of them built it like 4 or 5 times each in my current game.

Gekko;7283276']speaking of rituals, I think the AI is still dowsing too much, even after patch L. I've seen some of them built it like 4 or 5 times each in my current game.

Scions game?

They're obsessed with finding the Patrian Artifacts...

Probably needs to have BONUS_SC1 changed to require "The Gift" as a "TechCityTrade" prereq...

it is a scions game, but the scions are not in this game. the guys that seemed to love the dowsing the most are Dain of the Amurites and Daracaat , and a couple others but it was less noticeable for them ( alexis, hannah the irin ) . 8 civs on the map. the others were mazatl ( me ) , charadon, arendel phaedra and the Cualli.

Gekko;7283294']it is a scions game, but the scions are not in this game. the guys that seemed to love the dowsing the most are Dain of the Amurites and Daracaat , and a couple others but it was less noticeable for them ( alexis, hannah the irin ) . 8 civs on the map. the others were mazatl ( me ) , charadon, arendel phaedra and the Cualli.

Aye - even if the Scions aren't in-game, the artifacts are still spawned (same as the Pearls when Lanun aren't around). The AI knows that there's a resource it can use that it can't see, so it keeps hunting for it (they think that they can actually use the Patrian Artifacts for 5 turns at a time because there's no prereq for "CityTrade" just for "Reveal".

If you go to Assets\XML\Terrain\Civ4BonusInfos.xml and find "BONUS_SC1", there's an entry for "<TechCityTrade>" which is currently "NONE". If you change that to be the same as "<TechReveal>" (currently "TECH_SC1"), the AI will realize that it can't realistically use the resource and will stop trying to reveal it constantly.

I see, thanx for the suggestion Vehem, I'll change it right away. :goodjob:
Tarquelne should be told about this so he can fix it in his next release I guess ;)
is this gonna work with an already-started game btw?

is this gonna work with an already-started game btw?

*should* work. If not, you can always change it back to NONE and that definitely should.

it works nice - just checked ;)

My knowledge of modification / customization of the game could fit into a thimble, so I ask what may be a silly question: is there a simple way for an end user like myself to go into any file and edit the costs of one or both of Curse the Land and Appease Divinity, just to playtest different options?

Example: jack up the Curse cost, reduce the Appease cost, if finding this just too hard a hump to get over?

I've felt the sting of getting dogpiled with everyone managing to Curse me, and every time I've almost dug out with all these Appeasements, get another 5 turns added by another Curse. Basically it becomes a curse management game, not awfully fun. Sure makes me spiteful though, just roll my army through offender territory and raze every city I find, with the hopes of destroying what amounts to Curse production centres.

It is very easy to modify the costs.

The file you want to change is Assets\XML\Gameinfo\CIV4ProjectInfo.xml

Perfect, thank you. Based on what I'm seeing in that file, I have the strong sense I could fool around and tie anything I wanted to different techs. Example, if "Appeasement" had something really low and accessible required for it, like Mysticism, or if the "Curse" itself required something higher like Priesthood, or even something really quite high (but thematically appropriate) like Malevolent Designs OR Righteousness. Dabbling with curses seems kind of evil, though I guess if it was a good leader laying a smackdown on an evil civ, I guess orcs having their wells dry up, their crops wither, their mines collapsing, all dandy under a D&D-ish alignment system.

Again though if there were tech prereqs you'd at least want to know that it was easier to dig yourself out of one of these, than to create a curse.... otherwise weak enemies would always be stuck in a curse.

Anyhow, thanks for IDing the file.

Would it be feasible to make the curse have a smaller effect, say 2 or 3 health and unhappiness to each city, and each curse be cumulative. And the appeasements would only negate a similar proportion. You could adjust the cost of the curse to be lower to compensate.

I was also thinking rather than the curse removing access to resources altogether, it would simply be an added effect - similar to the way blight was changed from removing resources from the map to just adding (a lot of) unhealthiness.

The ritual was designed knowing that balancing would be needed after initial launch, but keep in mind that you can only use it 3 times (now, used to be 5), and the main point of it was to encourage players to maintain good diplomacy, and make their wars short, quick affairs.


2 (Major): Force players to remember that there is Diplomacy in the game, and it is important. If you get into a war, it should be a quick war with a specific target, and you should have more buddies to back you up than the other guy does. Get in, get done, get out.


In principle, I´m not against this ritual. Rituals in generals are nice, since they give new options without requiring micromanaging. However there´s something that doesn´t convince me in the way it is thought out - can´t say anything specific about the way it works in-game, since lately I haven´t been playing.
The problem is, why would you force players to fight short wars? Why should a war be a quick affair at all? War weariness should already somehow take into account the fact that prolonged wars cripple your empire.
Also, question: can it be cast only when on the defensive? I think it´d be appropriate.

Would it be feasible to make the curse have a smaller effect, say 2 or 3 health and unhappiness to each city, and each curse be cumulative. And the appeasements would only negate a similar proportion. You could adjust the cost of the curse to be lower to compensate.

I was also thinking rather than the curse removing access to resources altogether, it would simply be an added effect - similar to the way blight was changed from removing resources from the map to just adding (a lot of) unhealthiness.

I like this idea - don't want it to replace the current Curse the Lands, but a blight-like ritual would be kinda cool ;)

I would definitely support having the ritual's effect be a happiness penalty and health penalty, that slowly reduced in effect every turn (like the health penalty from blight).
I hate how it makes it so it doesn't matter how many resources I've got, my cities are still plunged into mass starvation and uselessness.
Its even worse because most happy/health building infrastructure actually boosts gains from resources (like granary, smokehouse, harbor, temples with +1 happy from incense, etc.).

I'd also like so see you be able to buy/whip the appeasment spells.

1 (minor): Make Magic have a large-scale effect on the Wars in the world, as is fitting thematically.

I really, really like that. A lot.
I'd wanted to give some things like that to the Scions, for example - (thus Pelemoc, who's part way there) - but didn't want them to be the only ones. And didn't want to do all the work on adding such things for other civs, too. (Probably not up to the coding work, anyway.)

Anyway, "w00t!"


2 (Major): Force players to remember that there is Diplomacy in the game, and it is important.

"Diplomacy" is what happens when you set the difficulty level too high, right? :)

I was playing some BTS games and, after a disastrous first game - relearning this whole "Food" thing - lowered the difficulty level. The following two games had no need for diplomacy.... so I think trying to penalize warmongering's a good idea.

"Bad boy" is a useful concept, too.


Another idea was to set the amount of appeasement required to be capped at either the number of cities you currently have or at 5 (whichever is lower) - that way a small empire can clear the block at the cost of a couple of rituals,

An excellent idea.

Scions game?

They're obsessed with finding the Patrian Artifacts...

Heh heh heh.

It's been fixed now (and thanks, guys), but,
Heh heh heh.

I do believe that I see the crux of the issue finally. I created a weapon, and I created a cure. But I did NOT create a DEFENSE.

Next version out will have some hefty refinement to the rituals, one of which will be to introduce a defense against Rituals in general, initially balanced to ensure that it can be an effective tool for keeping your opponent from Cursing you.

That sounds amazing. Should help to balance it.

Another idea was to set the amount of appeasement required to be capped at either the number of cities you currently have or at 5 (whichever is lower)

This is probably a good idea, if only for the poor, poor people who play One City Challenge and have this cast on them. XD

so I think trying to penalize warmongering's a good idea.

I definitely agree with this.

I do believe that I see the crux of the issue finally. I created a weapon, and I created a cure. But I did NOT create a DEFENSE.

Next version out will have some hefty refinement to the rituals, one of which will be to introduce a defense against Rituals in general, initially balanced to ensure that it can be an effective tool for keeping your opponent from Cursing you.

Good call. That is one of the main problems with this mechanic.
If my opponent starts building the ritual, I should be able to start building something that will prevent the effect of it or at least severely blunt it.

I think the other problem with the ritual is that it punishes players relatively MORE who have made more effort to get resources.
If you've built just power cities and haven't used diplomacy to get resources, the ritual hits you relatively weakly. But if you've been building suboptimally placed cities to get better resource access, or have been using diplomacy heavily to trade for lots of resources, you are punshed relatively more, because you lose much more in terms of happiness and health.

So in this sense it *punishes* diplomacy. If I tell all my allies to go to hell when they demand things from me and so am unable to trade, I lose less than I do if I give my neighbors lots of goodies so that they are willing to trade resources with me.

Thread resurrection!

How can Bannor cope with this ritual? Their crusades are not quick and simple affairs. Rather, they last hundreds of turns if done correctly.

Thread resurrection!

How can Bannor cope with this ritual? Their crusades are not quick and simple affairs. Rather, they last hundreds of turns if done correctly.

They probably couldn't very well under the old system...

...which is why it's getting a major overhaul. Lets just say that if the Bannor are good little Order followers and build themselves plenty of temples and basilica's - they'll be less worried about rituals...

Please could you scale this for map size. On smaller maps with only a few industrial cities, this ritual is an absolute killer. I understand it could be valuable as a deterrent against multiple attackers but trying to recover from it when you only have 2/3 industry cities, each taking 5-10 turns to generate one cure point is almost a game over.

Being able to sacrifice a great person, or allow whipping, would be a nice compromise :)

Much more interesting things are in the works for this, you should hopefully be pleased when we re-instate it :)