Here is the total list of civics and their categories that I have planned for the next few months.

Government: Anarchism, Chiefdom, Despotism, Monarchy, Republic, Theocracy, Democracy, Totalitarianism, Technocracy, ?Corporatocracy?
Power: Leaderless, Council, Sovereignty, Clergy, Senate, Divine Right, Parliament, Separation of Powers, Single Party
Rule: Obedience, City States, Magistrates, Vassalage, Confederacy, Federal, Martial Law, Mind Control
Officials: Strongman, Elders, Patronage, Nobility, Meritocracy, Election, Artificial Intelligence
Society: Primitive, Tribalism, Caste, Bourgeois, Feudal, Egalitarian, Nationalist, Marxist, Digital Society, Corpor-Nation
Economy: Communualism, Barter, Subsistence, Trade, Guilds, Mercantilism, Free Market, Corporatist, Planned, Regulated, Green
Religion: Irreligious, Folklore, Prophets, State Church, Divine Cult, Organized Church, Intolerant, Free Religion, Secular, State Atheism
Military: Militia, Banditry, Tribal Warfare, Conscription, Mercenaries, Pacifism, Servitude, Volunteer Army, Unmanned Warfare, Cloning, Time Drafting
Energy: No Power, Private Energy, Public Energy, Green Energy, Wireless Energy
Education: Ignorance, Oral Tradition, Written Tradition, Military Tradition, Religious Training, Apprenticeship, Corporate Education, Compulsory Education, Socialized Education, Propaganda, E-Education, Instant Knowledge. Restricted Knowledge
Immigration: No Borders, Open Borders, Closed Borders, Skilled Workers Only, Secure Borders, Wealthy People Only
Agriculture: No Agriculture, Subsistence Agriculture, Agriculture Guilds, Private Agriculture, Subsidized Agriculture, Corporate Agriculture, State-Run Agriculture, Green Agriculture
Garbage: Garbage Anywhere, Waste to Sea, Landfills, Waste Importation, Waste Exportation, Waste to Power, Waste to Space, Waste De-compilation
Currency: No Currency, Metals, Coinage, Banknote, Paper Money, Gold Standard, FIAT Currency, Credit, Digital
Labor: Unorganized Labor, Community labor, Professional Labor, Serf Labor, Organized Labor, Centralized Labor, Socialized Labor, Post-Labor
Language: No Language, Native Language, State Language, Bilingualism, Universal Translator (If Languages ever get represneted by a "religion" type feature.
Justice: Vigilantism, Combat Trial, Common Law, Religious Law, Inquisitorial Law, Adversarial Law, Fascistic Law
Health-Care: No Healthcare, Herbalism, Church Care, Private Health Care, Corporate Healthcare, Subsidized Healthcare, Socialized Healthcare, ?Body Transplant?
Housing: Communual Land, Fiefdom, Private Land, Subsidized Land, State Land, Paradise
Electricity: No Electricity, Private Electricity, Public Electricity, Green Electricity

Changes coming to Slaves:
Slave Specialist:
Pros:
•+2 production, +1 :mad:, -1 health (Base)
•+1 commerce (Caste)
•+1 food (Feudal)
•+1 XP (Combat Trial)
•+3 production, +1 gold (Mind Control)
•+1 :hammers: (Martial Law)
•+1 :yuck:, +3 commerce (Free Market)
•+1 gold/:hammers: (Centralized Labor)
Cons:
•+2 :mad:, -1 :hammers: (Egalitarian)
•+1 :mad:, -1 :hammers:/:gold: (Post-Labor)
•+1 :mad: (Democracy or Republic)
•+3 :mad:, -1 :hammers: (Socialized Labor)

And at Emancipation, two buildings would be unlocked. One is Local Emancipation, which makes slaves give +5:mad: and - 5 :hammers:/:gold:, and gives +1 :) and +5 :culture:, effectively making the slave specialist "useless" in that city, so they are no longer used. The other building is "Nationwide Emancipation", a National Wonder, which gives + 10 :culture:, and a free "Local Emancipation" in all cities.

The planned new Labor Civics:
Individualism:
-Pros: Less Maintenance
-Cons: More food to grow, less :hammers:

Community:
-Pros: More :hammers:, workers created faster
-Cons: More maintenance

Skilled:
-Pros: More commerce, less maintenance
-Corporation buildings give +1 mad

Serfdom:
-Pros: More food, High Wealth houses give +1 gold, slaves get bonus
-Cons: Instability, mad,:yuck:

Capitalist:
-Pros: Much commerce, + :gold:, corporations cheaper
-Cons: Most :yuck:, Low Wealth buildings give 0.5 mad/instability

Socialized:
-Pros: Most :)/:health:, some buildings give + :hammers:
-Cons: Less :hammers:/:gold:, rushing things with gold costs 30% more,

Centralized:
-Pros: Most :hammers:, rushing things with gold is 50% cheaper, some buildings give + :hammers:/commerce
-Cons: + mad, - commerce

Post-Labor:
-Pros: High production/commerce, infinite Android specialist
-Cons: + Anger/pollution/Fire

I've started this thread to open up discussion on Civics in C2C. What do you think of current Civics? What should be changed/added?

Generally speaking, I'd say that all Civics should have pros and cons with late-game Civics having less cons to reflect a more enlightened and technologically advanced civilization.

The current Governments are very general and I think can be made more specific (at least conceptually). For example, Democracy is more of a category of Government, with specific forms being Direct Democracy, Representative Democracy, Democratic Socialism, etc.

How about the DEFCON Civic? Is it overpowered? Do you use it? Does the AI use it effectively?

Let us know your thoughts. :scan:

I've started this thread to open up discussion on Civics in C2C. What do you think of current Civics? What should be changed/added?

Generally speaking, I'd say that all Civics should have pros and cons with late-game Civics having less cons to reflect a more enlightened and technologically advanced civilization.

The current Governments are very general and I think can be made more specific (at least conceptually). For example, Democracy is more of a category of Government, with specific forms being Direct Democracy, Representative Democracy, Democratic Socialism, etc.

How about the DEFCON Civic? Is it overpowered? Do you use it? Does the AI use it effectively?

Let us know your thoughts. :scan:

I don't like GST. It's too close to what the tax rate does and IMO is just a way for people to keep reseach at 100% when they SHOULD have to make choices about research vs income via the normal tax slider.

I don't like GST. It's too close to what the tax rate does and IMO is just a way for people to keep reseach at 100% when they SHOULD have to make choices about research vs income via the normal tax slider.

Is GST from AND? (I don't recall it being there, but it's been awhile since I played that one) Or was it more recently added? If so, I'd be curious to hear the reason why it was included. As you said Koshling, it does just seem like just more tax.

that is one of VineFynn civics he worked on, nobody has said anything before now? If it doesnt work, maybe re-tuning or just take it out?

Remember now guys that WE are working with a whole new ballgame from the SVN copy from what the other players are using.

Is GST from AND? (I don't recall it being there, but it's been awhile since I played that one) Or was it more recently added? If so, I'd be curious to hear the reason why it was included. As you said Koshling, it does just seem like just more tax.

It has been there since v14 iirc.

The current Governments are very general and I think can be made more specific (at least conceptually). For example, Democracy is more of a category of Government, with specific forms being Direct Democracy, Representative Democracy, Democratic Socialism, etc.

IMHO, government civics are fine as they are. No need to complicate it.

IMHO, government civics are fine as they are. No need to complicate it.

I do agree, cant make it too complicated, there are ALOT of noobs:joke: out there, remember.

Personally I don't like the DEFCON or GST either. I just don't think they fit well as a Civic. However I have not said anything until now since I was afraid if i spoke up you guys would want to take out my civics like the Garbage or Language civics.

Personally I don't like the DEFCON or GST either. I just don't think they fit well as a Civic. However I have not said anything until now since I was afraid if i spoke up you guys would want to take out my civics like the Garbage or Language civics.

Or the borders one - I have yet to use it!

On a side topic I would like to add some civics from Afforess' Civic Ideas (https://docs.google.com/View?docID=0AXB3BRZXK9JSZGQ3d2todDdfMTA3ZjZjcGszZn c&revision=_latest).

Specifically ...
- Agriculture
- Energy
- Housing

And maybe some of the others. We already have some like Garbage, Education and Immigration.

Or the borders one - I have yet to use it!

The Border ones are nice especially when you can get up to "Skilled Workers Only" civic. I think Afforess did a good job with them.

Or the borders one - I have yet to use it!

The only ones worth using are Open Borders if you can pay for it, or Skilled Workers only.

On a side topic I would like to add some civics from Afforess' Civic Ideas (https://docs.google.com/View?docID=0AXB3BRZXK9JSZGQ3d2todDdfMTA3ZjZjcGszZn c&revision=_latest).

Specifically ...
- Agriculture
- Energy
- Housing

And maybe some of the others. We already have some like Garbage, Education and Immigration.



The Border ones are nice especially when you can get up to "Skilled Workers Only" civic. I think Afforess did a good job with them.

Agriculture I suppose could be interesting but Housing and Energy seem like they need to be fleshed out a bit more.

Do you use open border civic? Personally, I always go for closed border because I play with revolution. It is the only civic which increases national stability in early era.

Do you use open border civic? Personally, I always go for closed border because I play with revolution. It is the only civic which increases national stability in early era.

I play with revolution on too, but I generally use open borders - it's perfectly usable (dpending what else you have). I like this civic in general (it belongs as a civic IMO). I also like the language one. Not wild about DEFCON.

I do agree, cant make it too complicated, there are ALOT of noobs:joke: out there, remember.

Actually, I'm hoping to simplify them as a whole. Changing the gov't names won't over-complicate things imho

There are a lot of Civics. And if there are some people never use, then they should either be removed or improved. I'm glad this thread has started some discussion about it since that will help let us know what people are using. And thoughts in general. :D

I said "complicate" because of your examples.
I think it is not that necessary to divide democracy into direct and representative one and Democratic Socialism is a combination of democracy and other civic option (society, welfare, economy, power, anything) rather than a separate political system. I consider government civics fundamental types of political systems. So, Current government civics cover enough imo.

I usually don't use Coinage (it's not that useful than compared to Slavery), Patrician, Waste to Sea (it's weird, though. How can I dump trash to sea if I have no coastal city or tile?), Proletariat, Military Tradition, Vassalage, Conscription, and so on..

I can't help using Republic and Democracy "thanks to" civic city limits although its +25%/+50% war weariness really annoys me. :rolleyes: And Federal.. even more war weariness (+75%). I can't conduct war!

I said "complicate" because of your examples.
I think it is not that necessary to divide democracy into direct and representative one and Democratic Socialism is a combination of democracy and other civic option (society, welfare, economy, power, anything) rather than a separate political system. I consider government civics fundamental types of political systems. So, Current government civics cover enough imo.

That could be the case, but it isn't clear enough with the way it's laid out now. It just didn't seem that way to me. Also, I don't necessarily think we need to split each of them into a bunch of sub-branches. Democracy doesn't need to become 3 new forms. It might just be renamed to one of them.

Or... another Civic is renamed and updated to fit into the second wording: Federal, Constitutional, etc. I haven't thought it all out yet as I wanted to hear other opinions. And I think Hydro is in charge of it anyway? Maybe :)


I usually don't use Coinage (it's not that useful than compared to Slavery), Patrician, Waste to Sea (it's weird, though. How can I dump trash to sea if I have no coastal city or tile?), Proletariat, Military Tradition, Vassalage, Conscription, and so on..

I can't help using Republic and Democracy "thanks to" civic city limits although its +25%/+50% war weariness really annoys me. :rolleyes: And Federal.. even more war weariness (+75%). I can't conduct war!

I used to avoid Slavery like the plague because in other versions of the game it would cause a lot of unrest or slavery events. It may also cause instability using the REV mod.

I haven't been using REV lately because although I liked it, I felt it tilted things too much in my favor in AND, as the AI would almost all universally have problems with them, whereas I would not. Additionally, I would end up with 30+ Civs in the game as they kept spawning from revolutions, and I thought that slowed the game down (literal real time).

On a side topic I would like to add some civics from Afforess' Civic Ideas (https://docs.google.com/View?docID=0AXB3BRZXK9JSZGQ3d2todDdfMTA3ZjZjcGszZn c&revision=_latest).

Specifically ...
- Agriculture
- Energy
- Housing

And maybe some of the others. We already have some like Garbage, Education and Immigration.

The Border ones are nice especially when you can get up to "Skilled Workers Only" civic. I think Afforess did a good job with them.

I'm not sure I agree with all the effects of the border stuff though. It's a heated issue here in Cal. and the other SW US States, so I'm not certain that Open or Closed offer a Happiness bonus. It IS an interesting concept to have on the Civics though, so I'm not saying remove it. Just the effects should be re-evaluated.

Garbage: I think "Importation" needs to be removed. The category, to me, covers how your Civ deals with your own trash. Well, you can't solve your own trash problem by importing more! :) I would consider that like a Building that gives a lot of unhealth and maybe unhappiness in exchange for money.

That could be the case, but it isn't clear enough with the way it's laid out now. It just didn't seem that way to me. Also, I don't necessarily think we need to split each of them into a bunch of sub-branches. Democracy doesn't need to become 3 new forms. It might just be renamed to one of them.

Or... another Civic is renamed and updated to fit into the second wording: Federal, Constitutional, etc. I haven't thought it all out yet as I wanted to hear other opinions. And I think Hydro is in charge of it anyway? Maybe :)




I used to avoid Slavery like the plague because in other versions of the game it would cause a lot of unrest or slavery events. It may also cause instability using the REV mod.

I haven't been using REV lately because although I liked it, I felt it tilted things too much in my favor in AND, as the AI would almost all universally have problems with them, whereas I would not. Additionally, I would end up with 30+ Civs in the game as they kept spawning from revolutions, and I thought that slowed the game down (literal real time).

Apart from causing a crash I (which I fixed) I discovered in debugging someone's save game (for said crash) that civ splits are FANTASTICALLY expensive to process. Having the extra civs costs something, but it's not too bad really (total game wide city count is much more the driver), but processing a split cost about 5 times more than an entire turn end! Mostly this is down to transfer of city ownership (which is very inefficient and expensive), which happens for large numbers of cities at once in an empire split.

Republic, Democracy, and Federal are nerfed by the War Weariness factor. If you have to travel over the sea to wage a war with these 3 Gov't Civic choices it better be a Quick war! Else things get out of hand at home real quick. But I have to use them because of getting past the City Limits stranglehold for expansion since I play Big Maps with few AI (10 or less).

So far I've never made it to the Defcon usable era so I can't comment (well I can and did) ;P

I always go for Open Borders and Landfills. Of course I never use REV.

I use Coinage (cause I never use Slavery) and then Guilds. But if my Money/Gold holds up I wait to get past Guilds. Unless I really need Guild Halls (and what happened to Manors?).

I use Proletariat and then I would use Bureaucracy, but Bureaucracy isn't what it used to be. Something was removed from it and I can't recall what it was, but it diminished its usage for me.

Bourgeois has too many redface penalties and not enough boost to research or culture.

Survival is the only Civic that gives usage to mercenary camps. And these camps should be under a different Civic group like Military and have a longer timeframe for usage. Otherwise they are short lived and wasted.

That's some of my opinions about Civics off the top of my thinning gray head! :p More to follow.

JosEPh :)

Survival is the only Civic that gives usage to mercenary camps. And these camps should be under a different Civic group like Military and have a longer timeframe for usage. Otherwise they are short lived and wasted.

JosEPh :)

I have been saying that now for 6 months:p

I know and I agree. So how come nothing's been done boss? ;)

JosEPh :D

Garbage: I think "Importation" needs to be removed. The category, to me, covers how your Civ deals with your own trash. Well, you can't solve your own trash problem by importing more! :) I would consider that like a Building that gives a lot of unhealth and maybe unhappiness in exchange for money.

Importation needs to be there if we are having Exportation. Plus you do get some income for importing other empires trash. At the moment Money is not much of a problem but if things get rebalanced then some income you might look good.

Importation needs to be there if we are having Exportation. Plus you do get some income for importing other empires trash. At the moment Money is not much of a problem but if things get rebalanced then some income you might look good.

I don't think that's true: you don't need the opposite. The issue is how to deal with your (the player's) society's waste, not the additional business of importing additional trash. Just seems to make more sense to me as a building. Because you could technically import trash, but then dump it into the sea, or send it into space, etc.

I don't think that's true: you don't need the opposite. The issue is how to deal with your (the player's) society's waste, not the additional business of importing additional trash. Just seems to make more sense to me as a building. Because you could technically import trash, but then dump it into the sea, or send it into space, etc.

Hmm i see what you mean. Too bad trash is not a good you can buy or sell. It a weird mechanic that I don't think civ 4 deals with well.

I have been saying that now for 6 months:p

This is the first time I have understood what it was that you were saying.:mischief: Oh and you need to be more persistant, like Joseph.:p

This is the first time I have understood what it was that you were saying.:mischief: Oh and you need to be more persistant, like Joseph.:p

@DH,
Here in the USA we have sayings for each State as to a person's temperament coming from that State. Since I was born in the State of Missouri the saying is, " As stubborn as a Missouri Mule!" The wife says that fits me to the Nth degree. :lol: :rolleyes:

JosEPh;)

I hate GST for 2 reasons:

1.) Anything past 5% and you start incurring penalties if memory serves me correctly

2.) The options do not fit on my civics screen, I don't even know what 100% does, but I can imagine.

Hmm i see what you mean. Too bad trash is not a good you can buy or sell. It a weird mechanic that I don't think civ 4 deals with well.

:lol: For some reason the idea of seeing "Good (Trash)" gave me a chuckle. It's like the Good no one wants. Hah! What if Trash were a spawning unit that can't be deleted within Cultural boundaries without causing temporary +1 Unhealthiness to the nearest city?! :lol::lol: Imagine the look on your opponent's face when THAT Stack of Doom showed up at their borders!! :eek:

I hate GST for 2 reasons:

1.) Anything past 5% and you start incurring penalties if memory serves me correctly

2.) The options do not fit on my civics screen, I don't even know what 100% does, but I can imagine.

I am now testing things out to see if we really do need a GST or a DEFCON civics.

I've never used GST, my cities growth is usually limited by happiness, and as no GST provides +2 happy, I can't bring myself to change it.

Anyway, the tax rate already performs the purpose of this civic, even without GST you can pretty much always run at 100% science for a huge gold surplus. On the harder difficulties it is an extra punishment to the player, in my most recent game on deity (without flexible difficulty) the AI has no problem with happiness and has immense cities (some 80+ compared to my 30s) and most of the time run at 70% GST (7 unhappy, -5% hammers, +70% gold) as happiness is not an issue for them they lose a tiny bit of production for a huge amount of gold.

I do use waste importation though, there are so many more things that provide health compared to happiness so it isn't really an issue having an extra 5 unhealthy in every city!

GST feels... awkward. There's nothing it does that tax policy doesn't, and wealth growth is already ludicrously high as it is (at least for me). Defcon is effectively redundant due to the MAD military civic, and otherwise is just a civic-ization of what the player should be doing with military spending and preparations. I say, let's thin the civic screen out a bit with these two.

GST feels... awkward. There's nothing it does that tax policy doesn't, and wealth growth is already ludicrously high as it is (at least for me). Defcon is effectively redundant due to the MAD military civic, and otherwise is just a civic-ization of what the player should be doing with military spending and preparations. I say, let's thin the civic screen out a bit with these two.

I agree and second this. No offense to VineFynn.

:lol: For some reason the idea of seeing "Good (Trash)" gave me a chuckle. It's like the Good no one wants. Hah! What if Trash were a spawning unit that can't be deleted within Cultural boundaries without causing temporary +1 Unhealthiness to the nearest city?! :lol::lol: Imagine the look on your opponent's face when THAT Stack of Doom showed up at their borders!! :eek:

I do have a rat unit (not animated) which I was thinking of using to represent plague spread. However I could not figure out how to have it only attacked by health care units.

I agree and second this. No offense to VineFynn.

Sometimes ideas work out and sometimes they don't. I think as long as they are discussed and analyzed critically, without derogatory comment, no offense should be perceived. Plus, a lot has changed and been added to the mod since then, so it's just a different situation now.

I do have a rat unit (not animated) which I was thinking of using to represent plague spread. However I could not figure out how to have it only attacked by health care units.

The idea of trash as a unit is hilarious to me and would certainly create a new challenge to deal with in a NEW way, BUT having said that, it could turn out to be a headache and although initially funny, end up as more of an annoyance.

Random and occasional spawning of rat units could be interesting though. They are almost like barbarian units spawning INSIDE cultural borders, with the additional effect of creating plagues in your cities if they reach it and successfully carry out that "mission." I would see them like spies kind of, where they go to the city square and then have a command to Spread Plague, which would have a certain % chance to be created. Or cause temporary unhealthiness like Poisoning a Water Source.

But allowing Healers or similar units only to kill them.. hmm... I suspect they would need a special flag (Vermin) and then we'd need a Unit Type or Promotion that allows attacking them. Not something we've seen in the mod before.

I could see GST being used more and be more important if gold rate was reduced from start, only increasing towards 100% through the use of GST. -25% with each step of GST (5 steps would be enough) giving +5% each. Like people say; gold income is easy enough to come by anyway. I also think most of the buildings that give gold or %gold don't really give the government all the money. Merchants, shop-owners, craftsmen, workers, and businessmen need their income too, and part of the gold from those buildings would be for them. Need to tax services and goods for the government to get some of that.

The Civic for GST could even be twofold, including percentage of government owned services/facilities. State owning more could increase maintenance while adding a little happy and health (healthcare/police/fire-brigades/a.s.o being more readily available to all when state owned) vs. privatized decreasing maintenance costs (or driving them down towards the standard) while increasing unhappy and unhealthy due to catering more to wealthy clients.
This happy/unhappy/healthy/unhealthy could be in % instead so that bigger cities get hit harder with the negative effect but also gain more from the positive effects.

Defcon I don't really see much need for though on that note I think Pacifism should incur an unhappy penalty for every military unit the civilization owns, like 1% (or less on bigger maps).
Defcon is really already included in how many military units one trains.

About Borders; I like having it but agree that the choice is rather limited. Open Borders, for me, wins hands down in the early game. Closed borders basically only has negative effects and should have some more positive effects to be even considered.

I miss Recycling as a late game Garbage option.
Edit Maybe give +1 :hammers: to Citizen and Engineer? (To simulate the "Garbage" colectors and the more resources aviable)

I always feel bad using a civic that I don't agree with morally. It always bothers me when I wind up with Atheist as opposed to Secular. Nothing kills me more than using slavery but it sometimes gets the job done. Does anyone else dislike civics regardless of the effects in-game?

Changed Civics Limitations and some war weariness:

Anarchism (5) - Chiefdom (8) - Despotism (11) - Monarchy (17) - Republic (20) - the rest (Unlimited)

War weariness decreased in Democracy/Federal to: +50%/+75%

I always feel bad using a civic that I don't agree with morally. It always bothers me when I wind up with Atheist as opposed to Secular. Nothing kills me more than using slavery but it sometimes gets the job done. Does anyone else dislike civics regardless of the effects in-game?

I know I do, so yes.

I always feel bad using a civic that I don't agree with morally. It always bothers me when I wind up with Atheist as opposed to Secular. Nothing kills me more than using slavery but it sometimes gets the job done. Does anyone else dislike civics regardless of the effects in-game?

I'm with you on that. Slavery and Mind Control I tend to avoid, though I've taken to slavery more recently out of necessity. Mind Control needs to be worked on though.

All this talk of mind control just reminded me. I was thinking that in the galactic era, with man-machine interface type techs, direct mind->mind communication should be possible (and the concept of individual become blurred). This could feature into the language civic (binary telepathy), education (mind-accessed databases), or a totally different government model (technological collective - aka the Borg).

With the remove of Defcon how about give Closed Border also the effect Foreign Corperation have no effect (at last it would be a realistic effect of Closed Border).

With the remove of Defcon how about give Closed Border also the effect Foreign Corperation have no effect (at last it would be a realistic effect of Closed Border).

That seems reasonable.

The idea of trash as a unit is hilarious to me and would certainly create a new challenge to deal with in a NEW way, BUT having said that, it could turn out to be a headache and although initially funny, end up as more of an annoyance.

Random and occasional spawning of rat units could be interesting though. They are almost like barbarian units spawning INSIDE cultural borders, with the additional effect of creating plagues in your cities if they reach it and successfully carry out that "mission." I would see them like spies kind of, where they go to the city square and then have a command to Spread Plague, which would have a certain % chance to be created. Or cause temporary unhealthiness like Poisoning a Water Source.

But allowing Healers or similar units only to kill them.. hmm... I suspect they would need a special flag (Vermin) and then we'd need a Unit Type or Promotion that allows attacking them. Not something we've seen in the mod before.

This will require a rewriting of the Great Wall. Which I have a plan for even designed the code.:D If a player has The Great Wall it throws out any barbarian units within the cultural borders. This is the reason why we don't have the slave revolt giving rampaging slaves.

This will require a rewriting of the Great Wall. Which I have a plan for even designed the code.:D If a player has The Great Wall it throws out any barbarian units within the cultural borders. This is the reason why we don't have the slave revolt giving rampaging slaves.

The Vermin would be almost the reverse of Barbarians because I am guessing you didn't want them to leave the cultural borders?

I wonder if this could make use of the Cat Breeder more? Use them in some way to assist in getting rid of the vermin, just as they actually DID.

Anyway, the tax rate already performs the purpose...<snip>... you can pretty much always run at 100% science for a huge gold surplus.

This is so situational and is not true in all cases. It just gets posted too much and is not a 100% all the time thing.

I too will not use certain civics. Even if they provide big bonuses like Slavery. And some others I totally disagree as to why they get some science bonus among other bonuses over another series aka Atheist and Secular vs Free Church and even State Church. And don't give me that old tired history lesson cause the whole world did not live thru the Spanish Inquisition. :rolleyes:

Then we have Gov't Civics that get happiness bonuses when history has shown that those type Gov'ts do not produce happy citizenry, Fascist and Communism. But they've been given outlandish bonuses in areas that are they do not in real life excel in.

But I realize even with these points of view we all play differently and need to compare the different ways to come up with a consensus so as to not favor one style over another.

JosEPh :)

Right now we have ...

- Anarchism (Req None)
- Chiefdom (Req Chiefdom)
- Despotism (Req Bronze Working)
- Monarchy (Req Monarchy)
- Republic (Req Democracy)
- Democracy (Req Representative Democracy)
- Federal (Req Refiling)
- Fascist (Req Fascism)

Using Afforess' Rewritten Civics (https://docs.google.com/View?docID=0AXB3BRZXK9JSZGQ3d2todDdfMTA3ZjZjcGszZn c&revision=_latest) I propose we convert some of them such as ...

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Oligarchy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy) (Req Aristocracy)

Medium Upkeep
Longer Anarchy length
+25% City Maintenance costs
+10% distance costs
+10% Commerce in capital
+15% Science in capital
Population is somewhat rebellious


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Plutocracy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy) (Req Currency)

Low Upkeep
Longer Anarchy Length
+15% Distance Costs
+15% Commerce in Capital
+15% Production in Capital
+5% Science output
-50% Corporations Maintenance
+2 unhappiness in largest cities
Population is rebellious


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Theocracy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theocracy) (Req Theology)

Medium Upkeep
Requires "State Church" or "Divine Right"
+1 Happiness in all cities
Cities grow 20% Slower
+10% Culture
+10% City Defense
Non-state Religions are much more rebellious
State Religions are much less rebellious
-2 diplomacy with all other nations, "You are no God!"


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What ya think of these? I think they may have merit with some tweaking. it also would give us some variety to the same old choices.

Od as it seems, my only beef is literally with the last item on the list. I can see Divine Cult giving that penalty, but a theocracy rarely has it's Earthly leader as a literal deity. Nobody actually worshipped the Caliph, Ayatollah or Pope, for instance.

Od as it seems, my only beef is literally with the last item on the list. I can see Divine Cult giving that penalty, but a theocracy rarely has it's Earthly leader as a literal deity. Nobody actually worshipped the Caliph, Ayatollah or Pope, for instance.

That could easily be taken off. Note these are what Afforess had listed.

I think perhaps Plutocracy could have some bonus to Banks or something.

Theocracy: the slower growth is not right. The opposite is true, Families are encouraged. Should have growth bonus not penalty.
Agree also with Praetyre on last item.

Plutocracy: Why 5% Science bonus? Commerce should be for Empire not just Capital.

Oligarchy: City Maintenance Costs a bit high at 25%. And Science bonus should be for Empire not just Capital.

JosEPh

Theocracy: the slower growth is not right. The opposite is true, Families are encouraged.
Agree also with Praetyre on last item.

Plutocracy: Why 5% Science bonus? Commerce should be for Empire not just Capital.

Oligarchy: City Maintenance Costs a bit high at 25%. And Science bonus should be for Empire not just Capital.

JosEPh

I totally agree with both of them, on certain items that is.

Theocracy isn't just a religious leader, it's also when a leader is believed to be appointed by God, or even be a God him or herself.
Prime examples would be Egypt and their Pharaohs, and China with a God appointed Emperor, even believed to be son of one.


Oligarchy for me would indicate a more stable economy so the increased Maintenance costs don't feel right. Doesn't have to be a single family either, a bunch of wealthy merchants or several aristocratic families could be the ones ruling. Thus slightly Decreased National rebelliousness but higher increased Local Rebelliousness. Same reason for +Commerce in all cities. I'd take away the bonus to science though, setting it as +15% gold in all cities instead.

Plutocracy, isn't that merely a version of Olgarchy where the wealthy and powerful rule?

Plutocracy, isn't that merely a version of Olgarchy where the wealthy and powerful rule?

One could say a Monarchy is similar to an Olgarchy too.

Monarchy is more a ruling family that rules via hereditary right. Oligarchy CAN have families/aristocracy that rule but with a greater chance of others taking over said rule as their position more based on power and/or wealth.

2 other Civics that seem out of place and OP: Pacifism under Military and Secular under Religion.

Pacifism should be under Society and not Military imho. The 100% :culture: is way too OP.

In most games since it's inclusion into Civics the AI has an affinity that negates most leader's traits. Warlike leaders will embrace it as soon as they can get it. Now couple this with Secular the 2 Civics combined give a 133% bonus to Culture! 6 of the 8 Ai in my current game use Pacifism and of those 6, 4 also use Secular. And this is a common occurrence in all the games I've started.

Secular is not a Religion but a Society state of mind. It should also be under Society.

Secular also has a huge Production bonus. It also carries no negative value of any consequence. A Secular society is also a hedonistic society and the members are generally more concerned with self gratification than community, community service, and patriotism. If anything it should suffer a production reduction. And along this same theme a Secular society has never been proven to be an advanced Scientific community. It doesn't deserve the added research bonus.

In actuality both these Civics could be absorbed into some of the other Society Civics. Or outright eliminated.

The main point though is that Pacifism with 100% Culture has warped the AI's gameplay and add in Secular's bonuses one would think that you had enabled the Start up Game Option of "Always Peace". It's time to prune the Civics tree, it's gotten top heavy.

JosEPh

2 other Civics that seem out of place and OP: Pacifism under Military and Secular under Religion.

Pacifism should be under Society and not Military imho. The 100% :culture: is way too OP.

In most games since it's inclusion into Civics the AI has an affinity that negates most leader's traits. Warlike leaders will embrace it as soon as they can get it. Now couple this with Secular the 2 Civics combined give a 133% bonus to Culture! 6 of the 8 Ai in my current game use Pacifism and of those 6, 4 also use Secular. And this is a common occurrence in all the games I've started.

Secular is not a Religion but a Society state of mind. It should also be under Society.

Secular also has a huge Production bonus. It also carries no negative value of any consequence. A Secular society is also a hedonistic society and the members are generally more concerned with self gratification than community, community service, and patriotism. If anything it should suffer a production reduction. And along this same theme a Secular society has never been proven to be an advanced Scientific community. It doesn't deserve the added research bonus.

In actuality both these Civics could be absorbed into some of the other Society Civics. Or outright eliminated.

The main point though is that Pacifism with 100% Culture has warped the AI's gameplay and add in Secular's bonuses one would think that you had enabled the Start up Game Option of "Always Peace". It's time to prune the Civics tree, it's gotten top heavy.

JosEPh

I started this thread because I knew the civics needed attention. It's taking time, but I've been putting them onto a spreadsheet. Going through them with a fine tooth comb, I've noticed many have some kind of gray text description at the top that mentions bonuses NOT listed in the bullet points. I'm unsure if those ARE included in the actual mechanics of the civics or are part of some description and not included at all.

I understand your point about Secular being a "state of mind" but I think the categories represent how your nation deals with those aspects-- or policies in regards to those aspects. So Secular would imply that religion is intended to be separate from the controlling government. With that in mind, I think there are some Civics that are dependent on others, and some that are so opposite they shouldn't be allowed to be active at once. I'd even go so far to say that some traits should allow/disallow some civics, but that's a whole nuther issue ;)

A lot of changes are being made to this very fluid mod and two civics (DEFCON & GST) have already been removed. It will be interesting to see how that affects gameplay and consider those new changes as we look at larger changes to the remaining Civics.

Keep the input coming! :goodjob:

One thing that occurs to me in regard to the ai is that I could very easily tweak the ai civic choices to put much greater weight on the leader traits. That would give more variation and more 'personality'. The downside that makes me slightly hesitant is that it would also leave the ai playing a less optimal game. We could balance this up maybe by actively attaching trait-dependent modifications to each civic (or civic dependent to each trait). For example a militaristic leader adopting pacifism would get a negative modifier that reduced the effectiveness of that civic, and so on. This would apply to the human player too, which also has the benefit (IMO) of making you think a bit more about the traits you choose.

One thing that occurs to me in regard to the ai is that I could very easily tweak the ai civic choices to put much greater weight on the leader traits. That would give more variation and more 'personality'. The downside that makes me slightly hesitant is that it would also leave the ai playing a less optimal game. We could balance this up maybe by actively attaching trait-dependent modifications to each civic (or civic dependent to each trait). For example a militaristic leader adopting pacifism would get a negative modifier that reduced the effectiveness of that civic, and so on. This would apply to the human player too, which also has the benefit (IMO) of making you think a bit more about the traits you choose.

I'm not sure an "optimal" game means every AI using the same strategy or path to victory though. Especially since it would also mean the player can treat them all the same (for the most part). Also, I think if Peaceful-type leaders choose peaceful routes, it may be an option for players to consider their opponents. A player may want a very peaceful game where war is uncommon, so he could choose AIs that tend towards peace. A player who wants to go for utter domination could choose all war-type AIs.

Modifying civics based on Leader traits would be interesting and I think add a bit of extra flavor that would make Leaders more distinct, and as you said, make choosing a Leader a bit more thought-provoking.

Other opinions would also be welcomed.

That would be interesting. Balancing it would be difficult, though.

I agree with Joseph that pacifism is overpowered, but disagree about secular.
Just lower culture boost of two civics and that would be fine.
Also, it is not necessary to move them into society option imo.

While you have interesting points about secular and using leader traits more aggressively, the point is that Both these Civics are too strong/enticing for the AI Not to use.

If it was only Gandhi using Pacifism I wouldn't be kicking about it being OP (in fact Gandhi in my current game is Not using Pacifism, go figure!). But when Gilgamesh and Hannibal are using Pacifism and Not engaging in War, as they would normally, this is One Powerful Civic. That 100% Culture boost has to go down.

And Secular with No negatives outweighs Free or State Church when this mod has put so much effort into developing religions. It's another reason ppl keep posting about Civs not founding or using a religion. If they are attracted/sucked in by the Bonuses Secular gives then the other Religion Civics choices become stultified and of no consequence. Secular in it's current State is too OP and destroys the Ideology behind having a set of Religion Civics. Another reason it should be a Society Civic not a Religion Civic.

Cut the Culture bonus For Pacifism in half to start, and eliminate the Culture bonus for Secular for starts. Then the AI may finally start using the other Civics in those categories.

JosEPh

The main point though is that Pacifism with 100% Culture has warped the AI's gameplay and add in Secular's bonuses one would think that you had enabled the Start up Game Option of "Always Peace". It's time to prune the Civics tree, it's gotten top heavy.


Hopefully not pruned too much. Remember we are the "more as more" type of mod. So tweaking, balancing and re-organizing is surely in order, but civics like Pacifism should always be there under some civic.

However I think some weird civic choices are cool such as Pacifism + Military Tradition comes out to like some Buddhist Monks where they are pacifists but still practice martial arts for defense.

One thing that occurs to me in regard to the ai is that I could very easily tweak the ai civic choices to put much greater weight on the leader traits. That would give more variation and more 'personality'. The downside that makes me slightly hesitant is that it would also leave the ai playing a less optimal game. We could balance this up maybe by actively attaching trait-dependent modifications to each civic (or civic dependent to each trait). For example a militaristic leader adopting pacifism would get a negative modifier that reduced the effectiveness of that civic, and so on. This would apply to the human player too, which also has the benefit (IMO) of making you think a bit more about the traits you choose.

I like this idea. Especially since it can be used to many other civics and different traits.


I agree with Joseph that pacifism is overpowered, but disagree about secular.
Just lower culture boost of two civics and that would be fine.
Also, it is not necessary to move them into society option imo.

Lets say Pacifism was moved. Then we could have Volunteer Army Pacifistics? Or Bandit Pacifistics? I think it needs to stay in this category since it make little sense to combine with the other military civic options. I think if anything Pacifism represent anti-military and needs to be there to counter all the pro-military civics.

However I think some weird civic choices are cool such as Pacifism + Military Tradition comes out to like some Buddhist Monks where they are pacifists but still practice martial arts for defense.

Certain Civs should/could use this IF Pacifism was not in the Military Civic choices. And Military Tradition what Civic group is it in? Or would a new Civic with the Military tradition theme be needed?

You already have some religions that lean in that direction like Shinto.

I like "more is more" it's just that it's also tweakin' time to make all the choices viable for Ai and player alike. ;)

JosEPh :)

Certain Civs should/could use this IF Pacifism was not in the Military Civic choices. And Military Tradition what Civic group is it in? Or would a new Civic with the Military tradition theme be needed?

You already have some religions that lean in that direction like Shinto.

I like "more is more" it's just that it's also tweakin' time to make all the choices viable for Ai and player alike. ;)

JosEPh :)

Military Tradition is an Education Civic. Basically your people are trained in a militaristic style of education. Think the Spartans or Hitler Youth.

There is a down side to secular, not having a state religion. There are things that you can only make while you have a particular state religion and you might not want to lose a big relations bonus with someone powerful if you share the same religion. But sure if you have a ton of religions the benefits far outweigh the penalty, as there are so many extra ones than vanilla there are so many happy faces to be had.

I actually always use a state religion and tend towards Free Religion, getting as many as I can in my cities for all the multitude of buildings and units I can make, on top of the bonuses from having multiple religions there.

I actually considered "Military Tradition" as trained/educated by the military, and not as having some kind of defense martial art as part of the culture. I would consider Buddhist Monks as "Religious Tradition" (or educated, I forget the exact wording of that Civic). Spartans yes. North Korea as well.

Victory via Culture isn't easy. I've done it once, but I've never seen an AI pull it off. However, any time a Civic is ALWAYS chosen by ALL the AIs and player, something isn't right. (Other than governments with the set city limits atm.. not much choice there).

I'm actually leery about the ease of flip-flopping civics so easily. A nation spending 100 years at war, then suddenly become Pacifists is dodgy at best :rolleyes:

UPDATED Version 16, 23 Aug 3:00 am



List of changes here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7175010&postcount=2

@SO you have Monotheism listed twice. Did you use what we discussed? Or did you change your mind?

Also did any of the Civics, especially Pacifism get adjusted?

JosEPh :)

Edit: 2 hours and 10 minutes till D/L finished, If me Sat. dsl holds up! :p
Edit 2: Thrreee Hoouurs Laateeeeerrrr....72% D/l'd. 2 hours 3 minutes remaining........:p Man I really dislike my Sat dsl! But there is nothing better available in the Corn fields. :(
Edit 3: 5 hours later....at 87% and a whopping D/L speed of 17KB/sec, it still has 119MB to go and another 1 hour and 58 minutes. :cry: No version 16 tonight for me.

I have been thinking about building settlers and conquest lately. I would like to propose two extra civics categories, expansion and war goals. Short explanation: expansion determines how you deal with building more cities, war goals determines how you deal with enemies. I'm afraid that bothwould require quit a lot of high level coding but here it goes anyway.

Expansion (dealing mostly with what settler units you can build)

-One tribe: no settlers, 'your civ lacks the concept of holding togetter a group that is not at the same location'

-Split population (at tribalism): tribe settler unit, building a tribe costs you 1 population point and/or destroys some buildings, 'as the tribe grows too big to support at one location the tribe has to split. The people that leave take with them their posessions'

-Colonialism (somewhere in late ancient, early classical, think roman style colonies): colonist unit with large support cost, this unit can defend itself and upun founding it creates a defensive unit, high capital distance cost modifier, 'new colonies have very often taken a long time to be profitable, as did setting up a colonization attempt'

-Manifest destiny (with a renaissance political or philosophical tech): I forgot the name for those small bands of colonists, they should be easy to build, maybe even spawn automatically. Distance cost modifiers are rather small as these new settlements are supposed to be self-relieant, however there is a huge diplomatic penalty with your nearest neighbours as they see this agressive expansion policy as a way to seize land that they find is rightfully theirs.

-Forced mass expansion (some authoritarian type technology in the industrial age): I dont know how to call this settler unit but building it should be something like conscription, reducing the city size, adding a lot of unhappyness and instability, but city founding should give a city with a rather large population, maybe some workers to quickly develop the surrounding area. I think this civic should also provide a huge nationwide instability malus.

-Planned Cities (a civil engineering atleast an early modern tech): Engineers, new cities start with 1 population point but a lot of infrastructure allready present, the engineer should be very costly to build, maybe take a few turns to settle, and if possible should be supplied by/merged with merchant type units during settlement creation.

I will proceed with war goals in my next post

I have been thinking about building settlers and conquest lately. I would like to propose two extra civics categories, expansion and war goals. Short explanation: expansion determines how you deal with building more cities, war goals determines how you deal with enemies. I'm afraid that bothwould require quit a lot of high level coding but here it goes anyway.

Expansion (dealing mostly with what settler units you can build)

-One tribe: no settlers, 'your civ lacks the concept of holding togetter a group that is not at the same location'

-Split population (at tribalism): tribe settler unit, building a tribe costs you 1 population point and/or destroys some buildings, 'as the tribe grows too big to support at one location the tribe has to split. The people that leave take with them their posessions'

-Colonialism (somewhere in late ancient, early classical, think roman style colonies): colonist unit with large support cost, this unit can defend itself and upun founding it creates a defensive unit, high capital distance cost modifier, 'new colonies have very often taken a long time to be profitable, as did setting up a colonization attempt'

-Manifest destiny (with a renaissance political or philosophical tech): I forgot the name for those small bands of colonists, they should be easy to build, maybe even spawn automatically. Distance cost modifiers are rather small as these new settlements are supposed to be self-relieant, however there is a huge diplomatic penalty with your nearest neighbours as they see this agressive expansion policy as a way to seize land that they find is rightfully theirs.

-Forced mass expansion (some authoritarian type technology in the industrial age): I dont know how to call this settler unit but building it should be something like conscription, reducing the city size, adding a lot of unhappyness and instability, but city founding should give a city with a rather large population, maybe some workers to quickly develop the surrounding area. I think this civic should also provide a huge nationwide instability malus.

-Planned Cities (a civil engineering atleast an early modern tech): Engineers, new cities start with 1 population point but a lot of infrastructure allready present, the engineer should be very costly to build, maybe take a few turns to settle, and if possible should be supplied by/merged with merchant type units during settlement creation.

I will proceed with war goals in my next post

This is doable. It can be mostly achieved in XML and Python however there would need to be AI written for the the non-humans.

If we have the building of a unit costs a population point then the unit should not be built with food. We would need to make a min population requirement of two also.

We already have different settler units providing free buildings when they build a city. This was inherited from RoM and is still not in the pedia. ;)

(The Great Bath wonder automatically increases the initial size of a city by one.)

War goals (which deals with how your civ acquires more territory trough war and mostly what possibilities you have when you conquer a city). Early on, in prehistoric era your civ isnt advanced enough to grasp the idea of integrating non-native people into your own civ so no city conquest in the early game:

-force enemy from land, basic civic: upon conquest the city is razed, the enemy gets a refugee settler unit with defence value and must try to escape to settle elsewhere

-raiding, with a banditry related tech: upon conquest you dont acquire the city (dont know if this is possible) but you loot some gold and tech. The raided city loses some buildings and a population point, maybe with slavery civic 1 or 2 slaves are created

-conquer and expell, with warfare: upon conquest the city drops down to pop 1 but some buildings are retained, some foreign refugees are created, low city anarchy time

-subjugation, with slavery: upon conquest the majority of foreign pop are turned into slave units that can be used elsewhere, the city is kept

-impose own culture (sorry found no good name), ancient military tech: long anarchy length, more unrest and/or unhappiness in conquered territory, should be pretty costly

-integrate, classical cultural tech: 'your own people try to learn and retain the best parts of the conquered people', shorter anarchy period, less unrest and/or unhappiness in conquered territory, more unhappiness in domestic territory

-the 'your civ adjective' way (like the roman way), late classical cultural: depending on some factors like culture, wonders and tech some neighbouring city populations might long to be part of your empire. The only thing you need to do is remove the neighboring civs military units, no anarchy (this looks a lot like converting a city by cultural means which is almost removed)

-i have no idea what to do with later conquest civics, I feel that at least one of the should give conquered cities to a puppet state/vasal, lets call it goverment change. Maybe also a colonialism inspired conquest type used to get easy access to a distant empires resources.

Now that I think about it most of this could possibly be a choice you are able to make when you destroy the last city defender, and could be totally dependent on other civics and current technology Banditry civic enables the choice of raiding, more advanced military civics disable the choice of looting, slavery civic enables enslaving and subjugation, the warfare tech enables the choice to keep a city and so on. I think this would make the whole process of conquest more interesting as now your only choice is to keep it or to destroy it.

This is doable. It can be mostly achieved in XML and Python however there would need to be AI written for the the non-humans.

If we have the building of a unit costs a population point then the unit should not be built with food. We would need to make a min population requirement of two also.

We already have different settler units providing free buildings when they build a city. This was inherited from RoM and is still not in the pedia. ;)

(The Great Bath wonder automatically increases the initial size of a city by one.)
Yes I know this, I think changing the expansion process might make this part of the game more interesting and less of a no-brainer, but I agree that the hardest part would be the AI. I havent tried modding before, but I do have some programming experience so soon maybe I will try to mod myself. I geuss the hardest part is just getting yourself to start modding. Anyway, I am also just curious if these ideas are good for a start. I tend to have a verygood imagination but bad apraisal skills.

@Expansion Civic
I am not sure if this even needs to be done via civic. Seems like this could be done though techs and units and still achieve a similar result.

@War Goals Civic
Again this seems more like it could be done better though technological unlocking of abilities. Mainly because as you go they seem to progress to better things.

Overall I wonder if some could just be added to existing civics such as the Military Civics or Power Civics or Government Civics.

For instance why would anyone want to pick the ciic with forced razing unless they had to. Seems like that could be done through a tech that allows you to keep the cities you take over. Or if you did link it to a civic then link it to Ancarhism or something. Likewise "Raiding" civic seems like it would fit well under Banditry Civic.

In short it may be better to give existing civics new abilities or even adding new civics to existing civic categories.

I havent tried modding before, but I do have some programming experience so soon maybe I will try to mod myself. I geuss the hardest part is just getting yourself to start modding.

If you have the time I can help you get set up. Some help on the programmin side would be appreciated since the list of things to do is always way longer than the amount of time to do them (espeically AI related).

I don't think I'm particularly fond of these ideas. War Goals force a decision on city-taking ahead of time-- a choice that is typically based on the particular city the player or AI is attacking. During a war, I raze some cities, and others I occupy. And those that were captured from a 3rd civ I *might* return to them if the city is far from my borders or otherwise unimportant. Having a Civic lock the player into a choice ahead of time just seems too artificial and restrictive.

Also, the last civic idea you had is already implemented with the fact that cities can convert to your empire if the cultural influence is high enough (if you have the setting on). And then there is the REV mod.


As for the Expansion Civic...

1) The no settler idea is already in place. In C2C you can't make them until Tribalism.

2) Removing a population was something done in earlier versions of Civilization. Though I haven't played vanilla Civ 4 in such a long time it may have originally been there too!!:crazyeye: Don't recall. But I'm glad it isn't now. I think if you DRAFTED a Settler unit then it could make sense, but if you're spending the time/production/food/years/turns to make a Settler unit, then I think that accounts for "making" those extra people. You could conceivably argue that any unit draws population if using that method. I also wouldn't think that people leaving a village are going to tear down buildings to bring those materials with them.

3) Auto-spawning settlers is an interesting idea, but I don't think a whole civic is needed for it. Better to be a Wonder of some kind like the King Arthur one that spawns those knights. Or Team Project "Manifest Destiny" something like that.

Founding new towns near other civs already raises an eyebrow with that civ.

4) Settlers in the later game in C2C already build with a higher population and some buildings. Wonders can make that number higher as DH mentioned. I like this feature quite a bit.

I don't think I'm particularly fond of these ideas. War Goals force a decision on city-taking ahead of time-- a choice that is typically based on the particular city the player or AI is attacking. During a war, I raze some cities, and others I occupy. And those that were captured from a 3rd civ I *might* return to them if the city is far from my borders or otherwise unimportant. Having a Civic lock the player into a choice ahead of time just seems too artificial and restrictive.

Also, the last civic idea you had is already implemented with the fact that cities can convert to your empire if the cultural influence is high enough (if you have the setting on). And then there is the REV mod.


Culture flipping is pretty rare as I remember. And I dont know how realistic it is to enter a city with military and expect that the populacy would just welcome you. But i'd like some mechanism in which groups of people want to be a part of your culture like in roman times. I've also contemplated the spawning of villages in neutral territories along important trade routes and fertile lands (or spots that have many resources in their immediate surroundings). These could be lightly defended and after a certain time grow into neutral cities or convert to the nation which is nearest and contributes the most to the trade route they sit on. However I dont think right now trade routes are physical entities.


2) Removing a population was something done in earlier versions of Civilization. Though I haven't played vanilla Civ 4 in such a long time it may have originally been there too!!:crazyeye: Don't recall. But I'm glad it isn't now. I think if you DRAFTED a Settler unit then it could make sense, but if you're spending the time/production/food/years/turns to make a Settler unit, then I think that accounts for "making" those extra people. You could conceivably argue that any unit draws population if using that method. I also wouldn't think that people leaving a village are going to tear down buildings to bring those materials with them.


It could make sense if it happens in a nomadic society, where people are supposed to bring their trade materials with them. An idea could be that certain buildings are demolished when making the settler and automatically built when settling the new city. How we could implement this, with some modding, is making the settler unit only rushable (for a fixed population amount) or only conscriptable, when certain building requirements are met. When rushed these buildings are removed and when the settler builds the city, it starts with the buildings prebuilt. A certain city population could be required for building the settler unit.


3) Auto-spawning settlers is an interesting idea, but I don't think a whole civic is needed for it. Better to be a Wonder of some kind like the King Arthur one that spawns those knights. Or Team Project "Manifest Destiny" something like that.

Founding new towns near other civs already raises an eyebrow with that civ.


Yes, a nice idea. Maybe we could make this a national wonder for certain civics. The tradeoffs can be discussed later.


4) Settlers in the later game in C2C already build with a higher population and some buildings. Wonders can make that number higher as DH mentioned. I like this feature quite a bit.


I havent gone far enough in the game. You are talking about wonders that give each city certain buildings I guess.

Culture flipping is pretty rare as I remember. And I dont know how realistic it is to enter a city with military and expect that the populacy would just welcome you. But i'd like some mechanism in which groups of people want to be a part of your culture like in roman times. I've also contemplated the spawning of villages in neutral territories along important trade routes and fertile lands (or spots that have many resources in their immediate surroundings). These could be lightly defended and after a certain time grow into neutral cities or convert to the nation which is nearest and contributes the most to the trade route they sit on. However I dont think right now trade routes are physical entities.

They don't. Which is why there are several turns of anarchy in that city, which is quite a few years depending on the era you're in. If you use the REV mod, I believe dominant cultures play a larger role and can trigger cities wanting to join your empire.

Spawning villages that belong to your empire already? Or are neutral? There has been recent changes to C2C to help reduce the city spawn tactic, so I'm not sure how that would mesh.

Try out the REV mod if you aren't using it. That might provide some of the things you're interested in already. :)


It could make sense if it happens in a nomadic society, where people are supposed to bring their trade materials with them. An idea could be that certain buildings are demolished when making the settler and automatically built when settling the new city. How we could implement this, with some modding, is making the settler unit only rushable (for a fixed population amount) or only conscriptable, when certain building requirements are met. When rushed these buildings are removed and when the settler builds the city, it starts with the buildings prebuilt. A certain city population could be required for building the settler unit.

But then a nomadic people wouldn't leave anything behind would they? :) Buildings, people, etc. They would also probably not build certain buildings. I think you can create a unit that does that if you made special "buildings" for that purpose; where you create the requisite buildings and then your "final" settler unit requires those to be built, but when you build the settler, it destroys those certain buildings.

According to the tech tree though I think Sedentary Lifestyle would essentially make that obsolete (by definition) and that's a fairly early tech.



I havent gone far enough in the game. You are talking about wonders that give each city certain buildings I guess.

Don't worry. A lot of people haven't gotten to the end game. C2C takes a long time to play and with all the changes and new versions, we're all just restarting again and again before getting to the later game. :cool:

I havent gone far enough in the game. You are talking about wonders that give each city certain buildings I guess.

I think he is referring to The Great Bath of Mohjen-Daro: New cities are settled with +1 Pop.

The Colonist settles with 3 pop base and some buildings already built.

But you are right about other wonders that give free buildings in every city. Both National and World ones. Those you'd get anyway regardless of pop start in a city.

Cheers

Spawning villages that belong to your empire already? Or are neutral? There has been recent changes to C2C to help reduce the city spawn tactic, so I'm not sure how that would mesh.

Try out the REV mod if you aren't using it. That might provide some of the things you're interested in already. :)



It could be a more natural way to acquire new territories, would make foreign trade and internal trade more important (people have settled on important trade routes all the time, like the silk route). The early game would be more about trying to enlarge your influence and trying to peacefully or militaristically control checkpoints. For example the neutral villages could spawn on a resource, connecting them to your capital and getting them to switch to your culture would give you access to it. It would take a long time for them to turn into a real city, if you havent put your own city next to them. I would envision things like this: colonizing with a self-built city is very costly but pretty quick, turn a neutral vilage into a city is very slow but a lot less costly as it grows naturally.

Just as RoM had Modmods made for it, C2C could have some too. That way if you liked the Modmods premise you could install it and use it. If you didn't you simply don't include the Modmod.

I think the whole City Limits and Fixed Borders implementations would've been better if handled this way. And I really don't know why I didn't mention this earlier. Could've maybe saved some arguements and tons of posts. :p


JosEPh :)

Just as RoM had Modmods made for it, C2C could have some too. That way if you liked the Modmods premise you could install it and use it. If you didn't you simply don't include the Modmod.

I think the whole City Limits and Fixed Borders implementations would've been better if handled this way. And I really don't know why I didn't mention this earlier. Could've maybe saved some arguements and tons of posts. :p
JosEPh :)

In another post Koshling mentioned that making things optional is doable but the problem is that the AI can't (or can't without difficulty) be programmed to account for BOTH options. Therefore one would be the standard, which the AI can account for, and the other option would not, meaning the AI wouldn't know how to deal with it properly, which may result in a very bad AI.

But it seems like he is willing to implement some options, as he stated in the other thread, so hopefully this should work for you :)

Just as RoM had Modmods made for it, C2C could have some too. That way if you liked the Modmods premise you could install it and use it. If you didn't you simply don't include the Modmod.

I think the whole City Limits and Fixed Borders implementations would've been better if handled this way. And I really don't know why I didn't mention this earlier. Could've maybe saved some arguements and tons of posts. :p

JosEPh :)

Or even just as an optional setting. I think limited cities would be a good candidate or a custom game option.

If you have the time I can help you get set up. Some help on the programmin side would be appreciated since the list of things to do is always way longer than the amount of time to do them (espeically AI related).I do have some time in the short term but I will have a job interview next week so I cant promise much.

@StrategyOnly : Are you still the main mod handling Civics? Or is it Hydro?

@StrategyOnly : Are you still the main mod handling Civics? Or is it Hydro?

OK i have the CORE, he has what is in his modules folders, hows that for an answer?:crazyeye:

OK i have the CORE, he has what is in his modules folders, hows that for an answer?:crazyeye:

hah! :lol: Well I meant from a "management" standpoint.

hah! :lol: Well I meant from a "management" standpoint.

Again same answer :lol: No really, if its adding new stuff to an OLD file, then its me, if its adding NEW stuff to new files or adding more civics, its better to talk to Hydro.

Finally completed this. The document is in open office format .ods

The first sheet has all of the Civics in C2C (as of this date). I broke them out into their own sheets as well for easier reference and also to tinker a bit.

The non-labeled row at the top represents the gray text you see in the Civics screen in the game itself, that is NOT included in the bullet points. So sometimes it will say "Grants +10% Science, +10% Gold to All Cities", but if the +10% Science is listed properly, I left it out of that text. So I'm uncertain if those are SUPPOSED to be included in the mechanics and aren't, or they ARE included, and just listed oddly.

Please let me know if you see any mistakes or need clarification on categories/entries.

@EldrinFal

You should put this up on Google docs (https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=writely&passive=1209600&continue=http://docs.google.com/&followup=http://docs.google.com/&ltmpl=homepage) in spreadsheet form so people can see it online. I have the tech tree and culture buildings (https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?hl=en_US&hl=en_US&key=0AsdBtytHP7lodDl2a2tIYkVQSjBIRjRSb29YLW9NZ2c&output=html) done this way already. You should be able to copy and paste what you already have online.

@EldrinFal

You should put this up on Google docs (https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=writely&passive=1209600&continue=http://docs.google.com/&followup=http://docs.google.com/&ltmpl=homepage) in spreadsheet form so people can see it online. I have the tech tree and culture buildings (https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?hl=en_US&hl=en_US&key=0AsdBtytHP7lodDl2a2tIYkVQSjBIRjRSb29YLW9NZ2c&output=html) done this way already. You should be able to copy and paste what you already have online.

Done! Link here (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AnuhEEeiwR1EdGhmb2tsYTJUUERjeW13Y0Y0eC12c FE&hl=en_US).

Also added it to my sig. :)

Done! Link here (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AnuhEEeiwR1EdGhmb2tsYTJUUERjeW13Y0Y0eC12c FE&hl=en_US).

Also added it to my sig. :)

Nice! Now you can always have an updated version online. :D

@strategyonly

Could you add his link next to the Tech Tree link on the 1st post of the download threads?

Ex. Here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7175010&postcount=2) (bottom of the post)

EDIT: Added to my Sig too.

Done! Link here (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AnuhEEeiwR1EdGhmb2tsYTJUUERjeW13Y0Y0eC12c FE&hl=en_US).

Also added it to my sig. :)

Nice! Now you can always have an updated version online. :D

@strategyonly

Could you add his link next to the Tech Tree link on the 1st post of the download threads?

Ex. Here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7175010&postcount=2) (bottom of the post)

EDIT: Added to my Sig too.


Updated the post, thx alot EldrinFal.

Hey guys,

Not sure where to post this but do you know where the config setting is for "Religion Decay" ?
Also- when a religion does decay in one of your cities do the affiliated buildings of that religion disappear ?

Cheers
Colonleflag

@EldrinFal

I think there is a slight error in your spreadsheet, although someone with more knowledge than me can double check.
I believe that row 23 (buildings disallowed) tells you what buildings get disallowed from your current civic. So I suspect that in your case you were on Republic civic when you collected the data. If for instance you were on Chieftain civic all of row 23 would show as 'chieftains hut'

Can anyone confirm that is the case?

@sharinel, yeah buildings disallowed shouldn't really be an included field. It only disallows things that your current civic allows, so buildings allowed is all the information you need.

Row 23 should be deleted imo, and rows 87, 118, 177, 317 as they are all 'buildings disallowed'.
There are some empty rows that don't really need to be there (like most of them for the language civics) but i guess they aren't doing any harm and may possibly be used at a later date.

Row 59 however is '# of cities' located in the power set of civics, but it is only relevant for government.

@sharinel, yeah buildings disallowed shouldn't really be an included field. It only disallows things that your current civic allows, so buildings allowed is all the information you need.

Row 23 should be deleted imo, and rows 87, 118, 177, 317 as they are all 'buildings disallowed'.
There are some empty rows that don't really need to be there (like most of them for the language civics) but i guess they aren't doing any harm and may possibly be used at a later date.

Row 59 however is '# of cities' located in the power set of civics, but it is only relevant for government.

I had included Buildings Disallowed because that was listed in-game under that Civic. But more recently I looked at the XML file and it does not have a specific list of buildings under the Civic XML that are disallowed. The Building XML actually has a Civic Required field. So for the moment it is listed just because it appears under the Civic info as a bullet-point in-game.

Hydro or StrategyOnly, do either of you know why those show up in-game as "Buildings Disallowed" ? Is there a text file the game is referencing for that information?

Edit : That's the trouble with working on documents without Civ available to reference. I will remove the Buildings Disallowed row as they indeed appear according to currently selected Civic. Time to reference the Sevopedia only!

Edit2 : Changes made as suggested above. Thanks for checking guys!

"Buildings Disallowed" are other civic-specific buildings that are disabled because you're switching out of that civic. So for example switching out of Banditry will cause every other civic in that category to show the Bandit's Hideout as a disallowed building.

I had included Buildings Disallowed because that was listed in-game under that Civic. But more recently I looked at the XML file and it does not have a specific list of buildings under the Civic XML that are disallowed. The Building XML actually has a Civic Required field. So for the moment it is listed just because it appears under the Civic info as a bullet-point in-game.

Hydro or StrategyOnly, do either of you know why those show up in-game as "Buildings Disallowed" ? Is there a text file the game is referencing for that information?

Edit : That's the trouble with working on documents without Civ available to reference. I will remove the Buildings Disallowed row as they indeed appear according to currently selected Civic. Time to reference the Sevopedia only!

Edit2 : Changes made as suggested above. Thanks for checking guys!

"Buildings Disallowed" are other civic-specific buildings that are disabled because you're switching out of that civic. So for example switching out of Banditry will cause every other civic in that category to show the Bandit's Hideout as a disallowed building.

Correct, here is the example of the Bandits Hideout for which ONLY a civic determines when it is disallowed or not and when:

<bRequiresActiveCivics>1</bRequiresActiveCivics>
<PrereqAndCivics>
<PrereqCivic>
<CivicOption>CIVIC_BANDITS</CivicOption>
<bPrereqCivic>1</bPrereqCivic>
</PrereqCivic>
</PrereqAndCivics>

Correct, here is the example of the Bandits Hideout for which ONLY a civic determines when it is disallowed or not and when:

<bRequiresActiveCivics>1</bRequiresActiveCivics>
<PrereqAndCivics>
<PrereqCivic>
<CivicOption>CIVIC_BANDITS</CivicOption>
<bPrereqCivic>1</bPrereqCivic>
</PrereqCivic>
</PrereqAndCivics>

Is this a boolean variable to turn it on or off?

<bPrereqCivic>1</bPrereqCivic>

I *think* that the CivicOption is the enabling tech, and that bPrereqCivic means it deactivates if you switch out of that civic. Don't hold me to that.

Is this a boolean variable to turn it on or off?

<bPrereqCivic>1</bPrereqCivic>

No, its actually in the XML of the BuildingInfo itself, its in each separate building if "we" had to make it a civic related topic.

No, its actually in the XML of the BuildingInfo itself, its in each separate building if "we" had to make it a civic related topic.

I understand it's in the Building XML, but what is the value of 1 for?

I understand it's in the Building XML, but what is the value of 1 for?

I believe its for active, as 0 is inactive, but i dont see anything else that explains it further:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=344522

I believe its for active, as 0 is inactive, but i dont see anything else that explains it further:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=344522

Thanks for that! Excellent link to have. And my suspicion is confirmed that lowercase "b" = boolean and "i" = integer

- Updated Spreadsheet with more accurate values for number of free units (% of Pop.)

<iAnarchyLength> of Democracy and Federal should be changed to 2.

An idea to nerf pacifism.
100% GP modifiers -> 25%
100% Culture modifiers -> 35%

<iAnarchyLength> of Democracy and Federal should be changed to 2.

An idea to nerf pacifism.
100% GP modifiers -> 25%
100% Culture modifiers -> 35%

Probably too much, but along the right lines

I think that's not too much. Actually, I thought 25%/35% would be still too powerful.

As soon as the excess gold problem is solved the GP and Culture of +100% won't be too much. Having extra cost per military unit is supposed to stop all but the ones with few military units from having it.

Besides, the +100% fools you as in effect it won't be what one would think, i.e. doubled, GP especially not if having a Philosophical Leader. All other +% modifiers significantly reduce the ratio those +100% give in actual boost, and it's easy to get loads of +%, especially Culture with a few religions in your domain.

GP rate; When being Philosophical and having other modifiers give, let's say +50% total, to GP rate you'd end up with, from base of 20 GP rate, with 70 GP rate. From that only 20 comes from Pacifism, or +28.5% actual boost from it.

Culture; With other modifiers giving, say, +200%, a base rate of 200 Culture would give 800 Culture. From that only 200 comes from Pacifism, or 25% actual boost from it.

I'm not at all sure it IS overpowered. Sorry.

Cheers

GP rate; When being Philosophical and having other modifiers give, let's say +50% total, to GP rate you'd end up with, from base of 20 GP rate, with 70 GP rate. From that only 20 comes from Pacifism, or +28.5% actual boost from it.

Actually 40%: from 50GP to 70GP, but 28.5% of total GP comes from pacifism

Culture; With other modifiers giving, say, +200%, a base rate of 200 Culture would give 800 Culture. From that only 200 comes from Pacifism, or 25% actual boost from it.
Actually 33.3% from 600 to 800 culture. Pacifism accounts for 25% of total culture.

Just nitpicking but true, modifiers are additive so the more +% multipliers for something, the less each multiplier adds as a fraction of the total.

I'll blame being rushed to answer for my incorrect calculation, was in a hurry when I wrote it. ;)

Do you guys find yourselves on the STRONGER end of the culture race? Or the weaker side? In my recent games I tend to outpace the AIs and my culture spreads like mad, leading to either wars, or AI cities near by borders going into disarray.

Usually the stronger side after a certain amount of turns have passed. In the start I'm outpaced by the AI, but that never matters as cities aren't that close then anyway.

Do you guys find yourselves on the STRONGER end of the culture race? Or the weaker side? In my recent games I tend to outpace the AIs and my culture spreads like mad, leading to either wars, or AI cities near by borders going into disarray.

Not usually top, but generally in the top quartile

Not usually top, but generally in the top quartile

So is a reduction of cultural benefits better overall? Or tuning the AI to favorite it a bit more than it does?

So is a reduction of cultural benefits better overall? Or tuning the AI to favorite it a bit more than it does?

Personally I haven't seen issues in my games that indicate it's too far off at the moment. I'd say cultural victory happens too early probably, but frankly that's because a c2c game is that much longer than a civ game used to be. The problem is that if you lower the ability to generate culture to solve the time to cultural victory issue, you wind up with it taking too long to get to influential, and therefore unlock large cities.

Maybe we need a new category beyond legendary, and move cultural victory accordingly?

Maybe we need a new category beyond legendary, and move cultural victory accordingly?
I would appreciate this, as in my major cities I usually go beyond legendary in the later game. Culture then becomes negativ which fortunately didn´t show too bad side effects until now. But it still would be great if this did work better...

Personally I haven't seen issues in my games that indicate it's too far off at the moment. I'd say cultural victory happens too early probably, but frankly that's because a c2c game is that much longer than a civ game used to be. The problem is that if you lower the ability to generate culture to solve the time to cultural victory issue, you wind up with it taking too long to get to influential, and therefore unlock large cities.

Maybe we need a new category beyond legendary, and move cultural victory accordingly?

I'm more concerned with the AI's use of whatever culture is available, whether the available culture modifiers/buildings are kept the same, reduced, or increased. In my last few games, once I get rolling, my culture tends to expand greater than the AI. With the various AI improvements, I've down-leveled myself from Monarchy to Noble, so maybe that has something to do with it?

But if more people report culture victories happening too quickly, then certainly that would warrant a closer look.

I'm more concerned with the AI's use of whatever culture is available, whether the available culture modifiers/buildings are kept the same, reduced, or increased. In my last few games, once I get rolling, my culture tends to expand greater than the AI. With the various AI improvements, I've down-leveled myself from Monarchy to Noble, so maybe that has something to do with it?

But if more people report culture victories happening too quickly, then certainly that would warrant a closer look.

Yes that would make a significant difference. I'm still using flexible difficulty, and the above was based on that pushing me to deity still

One could simply add new levels in between Influential and Legendary, and thus make Influential reachable without compromising on the challenge of cultural victory.

Just resumed playing a game with the new agriculture civics. My capital was already ridiculous at size 141 but this is insanity.

Just resumed playing a game with the new agriculture civics. My capital was already ridiculous at size 141 but this is insanity.

I agree that this is over the top, but having looked at the detail I can't put my finger on any single element that seems wrong. Its just that taken holistically it gets a bit crazy.

To address this I'd like to propose a new concept (which would be very easy to implement). This is food waste (which happens a lot in modern society, so it's not even an artificial concept). I suggest that it would work something like this:

At subsistence levels (no spare food or less) there is no wastage.

As you add extra spare food, a proportion of it goes to 'waste'.

Waste increases as you get more excess - the first point of excess food you get in full. The next point you only get 90% of, the next only 90% of what you got for the previous point (so 90% of 90% = 81%) and so on. The result is that adding more always makes SOME extra contribution but it diminishes the more excess you have. After the first 6 excess each extra food is only adding about half, after 12 only about a quarter...

Net result is very little effect when you are only marginally growing, but severe curtailing of really outrageous excesses like those pictured here.

Opinions...?

I agree that this is over the top, but having looked at the detail I can't put my finger on any single element that seems wrong. Its just that taken holistically it gets a bit crazy.

To address this I'd like to propose a new concept (which would be very easy to implement). This is food waste (which happens a lot in modern society, so it's not even an artificial concept). I suggest that it would work something like this:

At subsistence levels (no spare food or less) there is no wastage.

As you add extra spare food, a proportion of it goes to 'waste'.

Waste increases as you get more excess - the first point of excess food you get in full. The next point you only get 90% of, the next only 90% of what you got for the previous point (so 90% of 90% = 81%) and so on. The result is that adding more always makes SOME extra contribution but it diminishes the more excess you have. After the first 6 excess each extra food is only adding about half, after 12 only about a quarter...

Net result is very little effect when you are only marginally growing, but severe curtailing of really outrageous excesses like those pictured here.

Opinions...?

I don't disagree with that method as a stop gap, but first I think the correct response would be to scale back what caused the problem.

@ThoricFrame what are your Civics settings?

I don't disagree with that method as a stop gap, but first I think the correct response would be to scale back what caused the problem.

@ThoricFrame what are your Civics settings?

I would probably agree if I could put my finger on what caused the problem, but if you look at the screenshots you'll see it's an aggregate of lots and lots of smaller factors that just get out of control in aggregate. The beauty of the wastage mechanism is that it preserves the ability to design civics and buildings and so on without having to keep in mind detailed knowledge of every other food providing civic and building in existence and the worst case effect of combine them all. If you adjust the individual factors down enough t address the aggregate without such a mechanism you'll have a hard time not crippling earlier game development (unless you see something in the screen shots that is obviously wrong which I missed)

I would probably agree if I could put my finger on what caused the problem, but if you look at the screenshots you'll see it's an aggregate of lots and lots of smaller factors that just get out of control in aggregate. The beauty of the wastage mechanism is that it preserves the ability to design civics and buildings and so on without having to keep in mind detailed knowledge of every other food providing civic and building in existence and the worst case effect of combine them all. If you adjust the individual factors down enough t address the aggregate without such a mechanism you'll have a hard time not crippling earlier game development (unless you see something in the screen shots that is obviously wrong which I missed)

Well I was looking at his trade, which was gaining him +10 food for each route listed. And in the first pic it shows that total to be +119, which nearly equals the food he makes from working tiles in the area.

Then he gets a whopping 80% boost from Resources alone! Along with the Capital and Building boost, that puts him over 100%, doubling his food to the 700+ mark.

Is a % boost from local resources a C2C feature? Or something from a building?

Just resumed playing a game with the new agriculture civics. My capital was already ridiculous at size 141 but this is insanity.

How in the HECK are you'll getting games like this, i NEVER get a GP Doctor let alone more than three GP's at a time? Infact i have never even gotten over 300 :science:
are you playing with Rev On by any chance?

Well I was looking at his trade, which was gaining him +10 food for each route listed. And in the first pic it shows that total to be +119, which nearly equals the food he makes from working tiles in the area.

Then he gets a whopping 80% boost from Resources alone! Along with the Capital and Building boost, that puts him over 100%, doubling his food to the 700+ mark.

Is a % boost from local resources a C2C feature? Or something from a building?

Trade (whether s gold or food, which depends on civics) is proportional to population, so at 140 pop this isn't really wrong (or else it would near useless at more normal populations)

The 80% from bonuses is. Total of loads and loads of small mods (such as butchery etc.) I think.

What specific factor would you change?

Trade (whether s gold or food, which depends on civics) is proportional to population, so at 140 pop this isn't really wrong (or else it would near useless at more normal populations)

The 80% from bonuses is. Total of loads and loads of small mods (such as butchery etc.) I think.

What specific factor would you change?

Did you make the food bonus for resources multiplicative? 80% seems a bit much. (And I just noticed that city isn't even working the full 3 tile radius in all directions.. wow)

His city is also unhealthy by 30 :yuck: and that should be causing more problems than it probably is. I would suspect a higher mortality rate with living conditions like that. Maybe once the :yuck: count goes above a certain number or % it would consume 2 or even 3 food each.

Your food waste is a good idea too, I was just saying that the other factors leading up to it should be addressed too. :)

Another option would be that in a "decadent" city where everyone is happy and food is plenty, maybe people start consuming more. Instead of 3 food, maybe they consume 4? Or a % of them consumes more.

Did you make the food bonus for resources multiplicative? 80% seems a bit much. (And I just noticed that city isn't even working the full 3 tile radius in all directions.. wow)

His city is also unhealthy by 30 :yuck: and that should be causing more problems than it probably is. I would suspect a higher mortality rate with living conditions like that. Maybe once the :yuck: count goes above a certain number or % it would consume 2 or even 3 food each.

Your food waste is a good idea too, I was just saying that the other factors leading up to it should be addressed too. :)

Another option would be that in a "decadent" city where everyone is happy and food is plenty, maybe people start consuming more. Instead of 3 food, maybe they consume 4? Or a % of them consumes more.

Food (supply side) mods are still additive, so it's not that.

Food (supply side) mods are still additive, so it's not that.

Then it may be worthwhile to consider changing +% boosting systems to straight +:food: So as the city grows, the output doesn't increase and it's a diminishing return.

There we are, no unhealthy... for a turn.

But yeah it's a combination of many things! Unlimited wonders so I have crazy bonuses to trade routes, although I think I was getting +660% from population?
Rev is OFF, it slows the game down and the AI doesn't seem to handle it well...

It is getting 25% from a religion national wonder, kemetism? I don't remember how to spell it, I think that bonus comes from having wheat so it is bundled under resources. I think the rest of the food mainly comes from corporations, I have both mobby's meats and cereal mills in that city which both have buildings that provide food multipliers.

As for the great doctors I got them for getting medical techs first, that's the only way I've got them.

I can post the save for you tomorrow if you're interested? I can't convert it to maximum compatibility right now.

There we are, no unhealthy... for a turn.

But yeah it's a combination of many things! Unlimited wonders so I have crazy bonuses to trade routes, although I think I was getting +660% from population?
Rev is OFF, it slows the game down and the AI doesn't seem to handle it well...

It is getting 25% from a religion national wonder, kemetism? I don't remember how to spell it, I think that bonus comes from having wheat so it is bundled under resources. I think the rest of the food mainly comes from corporations, I have both mobby's meats and cereal mills in that city which both have buildings that provide food multipliers.


I can post the save for you tomorrow if you're interested? I can't convert it to maximum compatibility right now.

Wow, now your food from trade SURPASSES your food from tiles worked! :eek:

Yeah, post the Max Compat save. It will be good to see the breakdown to figure out what all needs to be addressed.

Updated 9/12/11

- Agriculture Civic included
- Appearance improved (easier to read)

Updated 9/12/11

- Agriculture Civic included
- Appearance improved (easier to read)

Should say Communism not Utopia. The tag for Communism is Utopia but the name is called Communism.

Should say Communism not Utopia. The tag for Communism is Utopia but the name is called Communism.

Ok, thanks. As you probably figured, I was using the xml file to generate that section. :D

There we are, no unhealthy... for a turn.

But yeah it's a combination of many things! Unlimited wonders so I have crazy bonuses to trade routes, although I think I was getting +660% from population?
Rev is OFF, it slows the game down and the AI doesn't seem to handle it well...

It is getting 25% from a religion national wonder, kemetism? I don't remember how to spell it, I think that bonus comes from having wheat so it is bundled under resources. I think the rest of the food mainly comes from corporations, I have both mobby's meats and cereal mills in that city which both have buildings that provide food multipliers.

As for the great doctors I got them for getting medical techs first, that's the only way I've got them.

I can post the save for you tomorrow if you're interested? I can't convert it to maximum compatibility right now.

So, ok to go ahead and add a simple wastage system as a back-stop against these excesses, or would people prefer to try to fiddle with the individual components?

Hokely dokely! Save included. Looking through what's there for all the multipliers.
Capital +20% from feudalism
Building bonus: Victuallers guild hall: +25%
Resources bonus (80%)
Cereal mills: +6% each for corn, wheat, rice (no potatoes). +18%
Mobby meats: +4% each for cow, pig, deer (no whale or sheep). +12%
Druidism: Nature altar wheat and corn, +5% each. +10%
Shamanism: Shaman temple cow, pig +5% each. +10%
Kemetism: Temple of Osiris, +25% with wheat
Ngai Narok Bless: +5% from pig

Building Ngai Narok Bless requires your state religion to be Ngaiism, which it was at one point. I guess it isn't disabled on switching because I'm still getting a bonus, but I'm not able to build the cow version.

I placed the cow and wheat bonuses using great farmers, and am in the process of planting a rice which will give me another +5% food in that city from druidism.

IMO the bonuses from the religions should probably be flat, because they aren't that useful as 5% when your city is a reasonable size, but when you get corporations that percentage stacks up quickly!

Hokely dokely! Save included. Looking through what's there for all the multipliers.
Capital +20% from feudalism
Building bonus: Victuallers guild hall: +25%
Resources bonus (80%)
Cereal mills: +6% each for corn, wheat, rice (no potatoes). +18%
Mobby meats: +4% each for cow, pig, deer (no whale or sheep). +12%
Druidism: Nature altar wheat and corn, +5% each. +10%
Shamanism: Shaman temple cow, pig +5% each. +10%
Kemetism: Temple of Osiris, +25% with wheat
Ngai Narok Bless: +5% from pig

Building Ngai Narok Bless requires your state religion to be Ngaiism, which it was at one point. I guess it isn't disabled on switching because I'm still getting a bonus, but I'm not able to build the cow version.

I placed the cow and wheat bonuses using great farmers, and am in the process of planting a rice which will give me another +5% food in that city from druidism.

IMO the bonuses from the religions should probably be flat, because they aren't that useful as 5% when your city is a reasonable size, but when you get corporations that percentage stacks up quickly!

Thanks for posting that breakdown. It really clarifies things. What other Civics are you using? Any that effect food?

I wonder if it might be better for those buildings to provide their % bonus for only a single resource in the vicinity? So instead of Cereal Mills giving the 18%, it would only be 6%. Or a set number as you mentioned. The %s DO add up though when you get so many like this.

The corporation ones aren't vicinity bonuses at all. IIRC nothing else effects food, except for small bonuses to farms and extra trade routes (more food from the agriculture food from trade routes)

The corporation ones aren't vicinity bonuses at all. IIRC nothing else effects food, except for small bonuses to farms and extra trade routes (more food from the agriculture food from trade routes)

Ah yeah, I picked the wrong one to use as an example. The corp bonuses are civ wide IIRC and additional resources of the same time also add up, don't they? However, I think that is a stock BTS feature. I've seen +40 food from the early C2C guilds in my games, which is an awful lot when also combined with the other % increases. That and the trade food bonus.

Capitals obviously have the potential to be the strongest city in your empire, but a pop of 141 by the time period you're in is obviously overboard. I still think those bonuses should be scaled back a bit and then Koshling's Food Waste or some other measure to slow growth beyond a certain point implemented on top of that.

Bringing discussion of buildings and changes to Buildings Thread.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=437557&page=4

Well I can see Pacifism is still OP and imho breaking the games play. It's 100% Culture is over the top and causes the AIs to adopt it Universally. It's just like Slavery was when it was 1st introduced back in RoM days. Every AI used it and wouldn't change from it. It unbalanced the whole game. And Pacifism is doing the same thing.

I'm seriously considering trying to figure out how to eliminate it as a Civic. So the AI acts normal again. The Only good thing it does is give the AI a Cultural win. But in doing so it destroys the Leader Traits, basically rendering them useless/ignored.

I could probably live with a 10% Culture boost from it but Not 100%.

JosEPh :(

Well I can see Pacifism is still OP and imho breaking the games play. It's 100% Culture is over the top and causes the AIs to adopt it Universally. It's just like Slavery was when it was 1st introduced back in RoM days. Every AI used it and wouldn't change from it. It unbalanced the whole game. And Pacifism is doing the same thing.

I'm seriously considering trying to figure out how to eliminate it as a Civic. So the AI acts normal again. The Only good thing it does is give the AI a Cultural win. But in doing so it destroys the Leader Traits, basically rendering them useless/ignored.

I could probably live with a 10% Culture boost from it but Not 100%.

JosEPh :(

Joseph, can you test out a tweak to Pacifism then? Edit the XML file and reduce
<iCommerce>100</iCommerce> to 10, as you suggested above, and see how that plays out. Interestingly enough, in the XML file I am looking at, the AI Weight shows -50 for that Civic :confused: By the definition of that tag, I thought that would have made the AI favor it less. Maybe tweak that one too and see what kind of results you get.

That would be in the Civ4CivicsInfo xml file right? If I can find it I'll try it.

JosEPh

Joseph, can you test out a tweak to Pacifism then? Edit the XML file and reduce
<iCommerce>100</iCommerce> to 10, as you suggested above, and see how that plays out. Interestingly enough, in the XML file I am looking at, the AI Weight shows -50 for that Civic :confused: By the definition of that tag, I thought that would have made the AI favor it less. Maybe tweak that one too and see what kind of results you get.

I thought so. If AIs behave as Joseph said, that's weird.
Pacifism should be a fill-in players use when they don't have any war plan at that time.

That would be in the Civ4CivicsInfo xml file right? If I can find it I'll try it.

JosEPh

Correct. It will under Assets -> XML -> GameInfo.

I thought so. If AIs behave as Joseph said, that's weird.
Pacifism should be a fill-in players use when they don't have any war plan at that time.

I don't think it should always be the defacto Civic though between wars, which seems to be Joseph's experience. I've been wondering if Pacifism should actually be a Trait, but I guess it's possible for a leader to be pacifistic even when the people are not.

For the purposes of testing a big, loooooong scenario I'm developing, is there any way to reactivate the hard city limits? Like, is it one of those DLL things or some setting in the XML?

For the purposes of testing a big, loooooong scenario I'm developing, is there any way to reactivate the hard city limits? Like, is it one of those DLL things or some setting in the XML?

It's a DLL thing. I can promote it back to a full game option with a small amount of work though if you need me to (so that there would be 2 game options, the new one being 'city limits are absolute' or some such wording)

If it's not too big a change, I'd be very happy. Partly, I'm asking because I can see a number of potential applications in, say, a Rome Total War esque-setting where you don't want the players or AI expanding out beyond the already-settled areas until the Age of Discovery.

@Thoric (et al),

I have just pushed the food wastage system to SVN. Please let me know how that plays out in your game (if you don't have SVN access let me know). I checked it against your massive food save that you posted a while ago, and also against my own games, and it seems to give much more reasonable results in both your extreme case and in more normal case (and has almost no effect in normal development).

I've been trying to figure out why my new civic evaluator seems to like changing from Irreligious to Folklore even when tribalism is close (rather than holding off and doing both as I expected it to). Turns out its because Irreligious has an AIWeight of -100 attached to it - why is that there? Anyone know?

In fact on checking I see several of the newer civcs have AIWeights attached. In general these tend to screw up the AI assessment routines unless they are individually tuned, so anyone iobject if I remove them all for now until we see what tuning is actually needed?

I've been trying to figure out why my new civic evaluator seems to like changing from Irreligious to Folklore even when tribalism is close (rather than holding off and doing both as I expected it to). Turns out its because Irreligious has an AIWeight of -100 attached to it - why is that there? Anyone know?

In fact on checking I see several of the newer civcs have AIWeights attached. In general these tend to screw up the AI assessment routines unless they are individually tuned, so anyone iobject if I remove them all for now until we see what tuning is actually needed?

If the AI can evaluate the bonuses/negatives of Civics on its own, is the weight needed at all?

If the AI can evaluate the bonuses/negatives of Civics on its own, is the weight needed at all?

Usually no. It should only be used when the AI is making specific errors we can't easily and generically correct in the civic evaluation code.

Just pushed to SVN:

Improved algorithm that chooses when to change civics
Improved civic evaluation
Removed AI weights form civic defs
Fixed bug in city extra happiness calculation
Improved evaluation of buildings with growth threshold modifiers
Inhibited founding of cities that would cause additional unhappiness when we already have happiness issues

Should address both the inappropriate civic switching, and the issue where the AI spams cities until it's so unhappy it's utterly crippled

Joseph, can you test out a tweak to Pacifism then? Edit the XML file and reduce
<iCommerce>100</iCommerce> to 10, as you suggested above, and see how that plays out. Interestingly enough, in the XML file I am looking at, the AI Weight shows -50 for that Civic :confused: By the definition of that tag, I thought that would have made the AI favor it less. Maybe tweak that one too and see what kind of results you get.

The AI Weight even at -50 is doing Nothing to stop ALL but 1 AI in my game from using Pacifist. So I've reset it to 0. I've also reduced Culture by 2/3 to 33 from 100. And even that maybe too strong. With the unaltered settings (not these) Shaka is still a Pacifist but Annoyed with everyone and at war with the only AI not using Pacifist (Siam) but he won't go to war against me.

I had let this slip my mind.

I'll have to look to see if I changed the iCommerce value. And I'm not sure if I need to start a new game or just plug these new values in and see what shakes. Any suggestions on that?

Is this the block for the iCommerce change:

<CommerceModifiers>
<iCommerce>0</iCommerce>
<iCommerce>0</iCommerce>
<iCommerce>10</iCommerce>
<iCommerce>0</iCommerce>
</CommerceModifiers>


JosEPh :)

The AI Weight even at -50 is doing Nothing to stop ALL but 1 AI in my game from using Pacifist. So I've reset it to 0. I've also reduced Culture by 2/3 to 33 from 100. And even that maybe too strong. With the unaltered settings (not these) Shaka is still a Pacifist but Annoyed with everyone and at war with the only AI not using Pacifist (Siam) but he won't go to war against me.

I had let this slip my mind.

I'll have to look to see if I changed the iCommerce value. And I'm not sure if I need to start a new game or just plug these new values in and see what shakes. Any suggestions on that?

Is this the block for the iCommerce change:

<CommerceModifiers>
<iCommerce>0</iCommerce>
<iCommerce>0</iCommerce>
<iCommerce>10</iCommerce>
<iCommerce>0</iCommerce>
</CommerceModifiers>


JosEPh :)

Just plug in the changes. However in the v17 DLL the ai will normally only consider civic switches about every 25 turns, so you may see no effect in terms of ai behavior for about this long. If you have the version I pushed today then the ai will react to changes in the definitions faster in most cases (they now make a check a least every time they get a new tech)

The AI Weight even at -50 is doing Nothing to stop ALL but 1 AI in my game from using Pacifist. So I've reset it to 0. I've also reduced Culture by 2/3 to 33 from 100. And even that maybe too strong. With the unaltered settings (not these) Shaka is still a Pacifist but Annoyed with everyone and at war with the only AI not using Pacifist (Siam) but he won't go to war against me.

I had let this slip my mind.

I'll have to look to see if I changed the iCommerce value. And I'm not sure if I need to start a new game or just plug these new values in and see what shakes. Any suggestions on that?

Is this the block for the iCommerce change:

<CommerceModifiers>
<iCommerce>0</iCommerce>
<iCommerce>0</iCommerce>
<iCommerce>10</iCommerce>
<iCommerce>0</iCommerce>
</CommerceModifiers>


JosEPh :)

The Modiki on this forum has all the definitions for the XML files. I have to refer to it myself. Looks like this is the reference:

CommerceModifiers Modifies the commerce output in all your cities (+n%) (respectively, for gold, research, culture, espionage)


So that looks like the Culture tag.

Regarding the Civic changes, Koshling implemented some new code today to help with that, including setting the weight to 0. It is in the SVN though, which I know you don't use.

But take heart that these issues ARE being looked it. Sometimes it just takes a little time to implement, test, discuss, adjust, test more, and so on. :)

Flavor>
<FlavorType>FLAVOR_CULTURE</FlavorType>
<iFlavor>10</iFlavor>
</Flavor>


What does this do to Culture for Pacifist? Make the AI "want" it more?

I've D/l'd tortiose but just not sure what to do with it yet. What programming skills I had from College was back when Cobol, Fortran, and Basic were all New and Shiney! :p Cobol destroyed my 4.0 grade avg.. :cry:

JosEPh :)

Flavor>
<FlavorType>FLAVOR_CULTURE</FlavorType>
<iFlavor>10</iFlavor>
</Flavor>


What does this do to Culture for Pacifist? Make the AI "want" it more?

I've D/l'd tortiose but just not sure what to do with it yet. What programming skills I had from College was back when Cobol, Fortran, and Basic were all New and Shiney! :p Cobol destroyed my 4.0 grade avg.. :cry:

JosEPh :)

No, just makes the cultural advisor like it more when suggesting things. Doesn't have any effect on the AI

I've D/l'd tortiose but just not sure what to do with it yet. What programming skills I had from College was back when Cobol, Fortran, and Basic were all New and Shiney! :p Cobol destroyed my 4.0 grade avg.. :cry:


:eek: :w00t:

I would follow the instructions here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10651778&postcount=1). Basically you will be wanting to make a folder to put all the stuff inside. I personally made a new folder in "My Documents" called "C2C SVN". That way I knew exactly where it was. Once made you will want to use that as the destination and the stuff you are downloading. Which means right click on the new folder and selecting "SVN Checkout". Once selected you will have the "URL of Repository", which is 'https://caveman2cosmos.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/caveman2cosmos/trunk' and "Checkout Directory" should be the folder you just made. Then you click ok and wait for the very LONG download. This is the longest download you will ever need to do for the SVN. But once its done you should be set. Let us know if you have any problems. This should at least get you started.

I just noticed that despotism is plus 30% food required to grow, yet the two more basic civics (anarchism and chiefdom) have no penalties to growth. Is this correct? I'm not sure I'll use despotism in the current setup - just skip it and wait for monarchy I think...

I just noticed that despotism is plus 30% food required to grow, yet the two more basic civics (anarchism and chiefdom) have no penalties to growth. Is this correct? I'm not sure I'll use despotism in the current setup - just skip it and wait for monarchy I think...

Maybe whoever set that thought of it like the Despot taking food from the cities regularly?

I have started to go over the CIV4CivicInfos file and am making changes that I think have been long overdue. I'm testing the changes in my current game. Some of the things I've mentioned and protested over in this and other threads have been adjusted to those arguments.

Currently the Gov't and Power Civics have received the most "tweaks", with others to a lesser degree.

The 2 Civics with the biggest changes are 2 that have been my pet peeves, Pacifism and Slavery. These 2 are ( imho ) so out of kilter that it "hurts" to see the AI use them almost exclusively for an entire game to their detriment.

The Civics should be that you should see a variety being used by the AI. Especially with the Leader's Traits being diversified, so too should their Civic usage. But instead I've seen for many C2C versions and even back to AND and RoM days that the AI will use several Civics eXclusively for entire games. Slavery was the 1st Culprit and now Pacifist is another.

Players too get into the habit of having "favorite" Civics, I'm as guilty as anyone on this. Why? Not because of different play styles but because the "negatives" of some of the Civics so outweigh the "positives" that we just don't want to use them or even give them a try or look see if you will.

With that said I'm still learning what different bits of xml does in this file so I've made so mistakes, like learning that the # I entered between <ixxx>#</ixxx> turns out to be a per cent instead of an integer. So that merchant specialist gives 10 espionage and not 0.10 espionage and vice versa like I thought it would.

I'll post a copy later on when I've worked more things out.

JosEPh :)

I have started to go over the CIV4CivicInfos file and am making changes that I think have been long overdue. I'm testing the changes in my current game. Some of the things I've mentioned and protested over in this and other threads have been adjusted to those arguments.

Currently the Gov't and Power Civics have received the most "tweaks", with others to a lesser degree.

The 2 Civics with the biggest changes are 2 that have been my pet peeves, Pacifism and Slavery. These 2 are ( imho ) so out of kilter that it "hurts" to see the AI use them almost exclusively for an entire game to their detriment.

The Civics should be that you should see a variety being used by the AI. Especially with the Leader's Traits being diversified, so too should their Civic usage. But instead I've seen for many C2C versions and even back to AND and RoM days that the AI will use several Civics eXclusively for entire games. Slavery was the 1st Culprit and now Pacifist is another.

Players too get into the habit of having "favorite" Civics, I'm as guilty as anyone on this. Why? Not because of different play styles but because the "negatives" of some of the Civics so outweigh the "positives" that we just don't want to use them or even give them a try or look see if you will.

With that said I'm still learning what different bits of xml does in this file so I've made so mistakes, like learning that the # I entered between <ixxx>#</ixxx> turns out to be a per cent instead of an integer. So that merchant specialist gives 10 espionage and not 0.10 espionage and vice versa like I thought it would.

I'll post a copy later on when I've worked more things out.

JosEPh :)

Sounds good, Joseph. Looking forward to hearing about your tests and proposed changes.

Speaking of Military civic in other thread, one question came up in my head.
Do you use Conscription? I've never used it. I hate "Units produced with :food:" part.

No I don't use it. I don't like that part either. And even moreso now with the recent adjustments to food production and city growth.

I'll wait till Volunteer is available and upon rare occasion I'll use Standing if I'm forced into war.

JosEPh

Speaking of Military civic in other thread, one question came up in my head.
Do you use Conscription? I've never used it. I hate "Units produced with :food:" part.

I've actually never understood the real benefit of using :food: to make troops vs using :hammers: I usually rather have my city growing AND making units than to halt city growth with unit production.

I suppose if you had very little :hammers: production in a city but a ton of :food: it might make sense? Like if you're cities are mostly in the plains and rivers and you have farms all over the place.

Speaking of Military civic in other thread, one question came up in my head.
Do you use Conscription? I've never used it. I hate "Units produced with :food:" part.

I usually switch to conscription asap, then pasifism, but prefer vol/standing army.

I usually switch to conscription asap, then pacifism, but prefer vol/standing army.

HUH really, i NEVER use conscription, pacifism or either vol/standing army:mischief:

I use conscription sometimes, but not pacifism, since I always seem to be at war.

I use conscription sometimes, but not pacifism, since I always seem to be at war.

I love pacifism if I can keep out of wars. I tend to try to oprate a very GP-oriented game so the large boost from pacifism is very helpful. Never used conscription though.

I usually switch to conscription asap, then pasifism, but prefer vol/standing army.

HUH really, i NEVER use conscription, pacifism or either vol/standing army:mischief:

I use conscription sometimes, but not pacifism, since I always seem to be at war.

I love pacifism if I can keep out of wars. I tend to try to oprate a very GP-oriented game so the large boost from pacifism is very helpful. Never used conscription though.

Again, i hate to keep saying it, but see the differences even between "US" modders, in this mod there are things that each one uses separately, not all of us BUT its in there.

I have started to go over the CIV4CivicInfos file and am making changes that I think have been long overdue. I'm testing the changes in my current game. Some of the things I've mentioned and protested over in this and other threads have been adjusted to those arguments.

Currently the Gov't and Power Civics have received the most "tweaks", with others to a lesser degree.

The 2 Civics with the biggest changes are 2 that have been my pet peeves, Pacifism and Slavery. These 2 are ( imho ) so out of kilter that it "hurts" to see the AI use them almost exclusively for an entire game to their detriment.

The Civics should be that you should see a variety being used by the AI. Especially with the Leader's Traits being diversified, so too should their Civic usage. But instead I've seen for many C2C versions and even back to AND and RoM days that the AI will use several Civics eXclusively for entire games. Slavery was the 1st Culprit and now Pacifist is another.

Players too get into the habit of having "favorite" Civics, I'm as guilty as anyone on this. Why? Not because of different play styles but because the "negatives" of some of the Civics so outweigh the "positives" that we just don't want to use them or even give them a try or look see if you will.

With that said I'm still learning what different bits of xml does in this file so I've made so mistakes, like learning that the # I entered between <ixxx>#</ixxx> turns out to be a per cent instead of an integer. So that merchant specialist gives 10 espionage and not 0.10 espionage and vice versa like I thought it would.

I'll post a copy later on when I've worked more things out.

JosEPh :)

@JosEPH

There will be a 1 week freeze on changes starting tomorrow, so if you have recommendations on a few Civic tweaks, please post them asap today. I think we're well aware of a few you think are broken, but some specific recommendations that you've tested would be great.

Offhand, I know you've mentioned the big culture boost in Pacifism and War Weariness across the board. What are your suggested numbers for these? (and any other area you think needs adjusting)

I'm hoping you can post early so others can comment before changes are made. Fortunately, tweaking is non-permanent and an ongoing process, so any of these changes that don't work out can always be adjusted again. :)

I've actually never understood the real benefit of using :food: to make troops vs using :hammers: I usually rather have my city growing AND making units than to halt city growth with unit production.

I suppose if you had very little :hammers: production in a city but a ton of :food: it might make sense? Like if you're cities are mostly in the plains and rivers and you have farms all over the place.

That reminds me of something I've been meaning to bring up: Whipping. Does anyone use this anymore? With how slow cities grow in the early game, losing any amount of population is a huge setback. I've seen AI cities that I've been sieging go from 8 pop down to 4 in order to build an extra few axeman. I think the AI is still working under the assumption that it's only losing 5-10 turns of growth when it loses a pop point, not 30+ turns. Maybe it should be disabled altogether, now that slavery lets you turn citizens into slave specialists you can boost your production that way.

Speaking of Military civic in other thread, one question came up in my head.
Do you use Conscription? I've never used it. I hate "Units produced with :food:" part.

I use Conscription till Volunteer Army is avail, sometimes I"ll use Standing Army for a bit, but I usually just stay with Conscription till Vol Army. I like using the food in addition in hammers to pump out troops that much quicker, since generally I only have one or two cities in a game thats geared towards producing troops. That and being able to draft troops is nice in the event I need one or two more cannon fodder, or I suddenly realize that a particular city has one or two more population then I really like ;) On occasion I'll found a city thats nothing but farms that can quickly recoup its population to do nothing but draft troops, and drop down a wonder building that nullifies the unhappines effect :)

I just noticed that despotism is plus 30% food required to grow, yet the two more basic civics (anarchism and chiefdom) have no penalties to growth. Is this correct? I'm not sure I'll use despotism in the current setup - just skip it and wait for monarchy I think...

Do you think the food growth penalty needs to be lowered/removed for Despotism?

Considering some changes to the Pacifism Civic. There have been comments about it being OP and overly used by the AI (and players). As the name implies, I'm gearing it towards being even LESS friendly to military related aspects, as well as reducing some of the benefits it gives. Comparing it to the other Military Civics, there really aren't any others than provide non-military / non-war benefits, which is why, I suspect, the AI always uses it.

I think if a nation is going to say they practice pacifism, and get benefits for it, then that should mean something than merely "not being at war." I encourage thoughts and opinions, as always. :)

Here is what I am considering (old values in parenthesis if present):


+50% Birthrate for GP (+100%)
-50% Great General rate
+50% :culture: in All Cities (+100%)
+3 :) in All Cities (+3 in Largest Cities)
+2 :mad: from Barracks, Garrison, Military Airbase, Warrior's Hut, Arena, Fighting Pit, Armourer, Gladiator School, Weapons Factory, Military Satellites, Biological Warfare Lab, Military Academy, Pentagon
+2 :) United Nations, Olympic Games
+1 :mad: all Towers -except very first-, all Batteries, Venetian Arsenal, Arc de Triomphe
-10% :espionage: in All Cities
-10% Maintenance for All Cities in the Nation
+3 Support Cost per Military Unit (+2 Support Cost per Military Unit)
Anarchy Length 3 (2)


Edit: Updated current proposed changes.

Considering some changes to the Pacifism Civic. There have been comments about it being OP and overly used by the AI (and players). As the name implies, I'm gearing it towards being even LESS friendly to military related aspects, as well as reducing some of the benefits it gives. Comparing it to the other Military Civics, there really aren't any others than provide non-military / non-war benefits, which is why, I suspect, the AI always uses it.

I think if a nation is going to say they practice pacifism, and get benefits for it, then that should mean something than merely "not being at war." I encourage thoughts and opinions, as always. :)

Here is what I am considering (old values in parenthesis):


+25% Birthrate for GP (+100%)
-50% Great General rate (no setting prior)
+50% :culture: in All Cities (+100%)
+3 :) in All Cities (+3 in Largest Cities)
+2 :mad: from Barracks, Garrison, Military Airbase, and other military related buildings
-10% :espionage: in All Cities (no setting prior)
+3 Support Cost per Military Unit (+2 Support Cost per Military Unit)
Anarchy Length 3 (2)


Is there any way to decrease military production in all cities as well? Say 10-25%'ish? To represent the lack of people willing to join the military in a pacifistic environment..

Is there any way to decrease military production in all cities as well? Say 10-25%'ish? To represent the lack of people willing to join the military in a pacifistic environment..

There already is a -75% Military Production for Pacifism. I didn't list the values I didn't plan to change. But here they are for reference:


Upkeep Low
Req Tech: Philosophy
-75% Military Unit Production
Unlimited Artists
War Weariness +100%


I've also added to the building happiness:


+2 :) United Nations
+2 :) Olympic Games
+1 :mad: Arena, Armourer, Warrior's Hut, Gladiator School, Weapons Factory, Military Satellites, Biological Warfare Lab, Military Academy, Pentagon
+1 :mad: all Towers & Batteries, Venetian Arsenal, Arc de Triomphe


Might be a tad strict atm, so thinking of some maintenance reduction to signify less money spent on military in cities abroad.

Edit: I know Joseph DOES NOT like WW that high, but Pacifism should give a SIGNIFICANT penalty to WW when at war. More than any other civic.

I suggest you leave the AI out of the arguments about the strength of a civic.
Either the civic is too strong then it is right that the AI is using it often but then the only thing that matters is that the civic is too strong and needs to be nerfed.
If the AI is using it too often despite that the civic is not overpowered then the code for the AI needs to be changed and not the civic.

In short: The AI should only impact balance decisions in cases where it is too difficult to get the AI to use a mechanic correctly.

I suggest you leave the AI out of the arguments about the strength of a civic.
Either the civic is too strong then it is right that the AI is using it often but then the only thing that matters is that the civic is too strong and needs to be nerfed.
If the AI is using it too often despite that the civic is not overpowered then the code for the AI needs to be changed and not the civic.

In short: The AI should only impact balance decisions in cases where it is too difficult to get the AI to use a mechanic correctly.

I 100% agree with (and more broadly than just for civics).

On the specifics of what you propose for pacifism. Ask yourself if you'd still use it. I wouldn't - I think you went too far. The driving reason for using pacifism (IMO) is the GP booster, and by nerfing from 100 to 25 it's past the point where the downsides are not much more significant. I would say 50. I also agree with you that WW should be extraoridinarily high with this civic.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=303605&d=1317861974

Eldrinfal,

This is the link to my latest Civ4CivicsInfos xml file. It's still rough but for the Gov't and Power civics the results have been good. Also Pacifism's changes are in there too. Ans so far the AI is not jumping on that Civic as soon as it's available. Instead they are using other Military Civics and as for Gov'ts they are now using a wider spread. Monarchy may be a bit strong but they are using Republic, Democracy and Federal now too. Currently Monarchy leads in % of AI's usage.

This may all be too late for you but my ISP was down all day yesterday. :p

This is the main section for Pacifism:

<Upkeep>UPKEEP_MEDIUM</Upkeep>
<iAIWeight>0</iAIWeight>
<iGreatPeopleRateModifier>20</iGreatPeopleRateModifier>
<iGreatGeneralRateModifier>0</iGreatGeneralRateModifier>
<iDomesticGreatGeneralRateModifier>0</iDomesticGreatGeneralRateModifier>
<iStateReligionGreatPeopleRateModifier>0</iStateReligionGreatPeopleRateModifier>
<iDistanceMaintenanceModifier>0</iDistanceMaintenanceModifier>
<iNumCitiesMaintenanceModifier>0</iNumCitiesMaintenanceModifier>
<iHomeAreaMaintenanceModifier>0</iHomeAreaMaintenanceModifier>
<iOtherAreaMaintenanceModifier>0</iOtherAreaMaintenanceModifier>
<iCorporationMaintenanceModifier>0</iCorporationMaintenanceModifier>
<iExtraHealth>0</iExtraHealth>
<iFreeExperience>0</iFreeExperience>
<iWorkerSpeedModifier>0</iWorkerSpeedModifier>
<iImprovementUpgradeRateModifier>0</iImprovementUpgradeRateModifier>
<iMilitaryProductionModifier>-50</iMilitaryProductionModifier>
<iBaseFreeUnits>0</iBaseFreeUnits>
<iBaseFreeMilitaryUnits>0</iBaseFreeMilitaryUnits>
<iFreeUnitsPopulationPercent>0</iFreeUnitsPopulationPercent>
<iFreeMilitaryUnitsPopulationPercent>0</iFreeMilitaryUnitsPopulationPercent>
<iGoldPerUnit>0</iGoldPerUnit>
<iGoldPerMilitaryUnit>2</iGoldPerMilitaryUnit>
<iHappyPerMilitaryUnit>-1</iHappyPerMilitaryUnit>
<bMilitaryFoodProduction>0</bMilitaryFoodProduction>
<iMaxConscript>0</iMaxConscript>
<bNoUnhealthyPopulation>0</bNoUnhealthyPopulation>
<iExpInBorderModifier>0</iExpInBorderModifier>
<bBuildingOnlyHealthy>0</bBuildingOnlyHealthy>
<iLargestCityHappiness>3</iLargestCityHappiness>
<iWarWearinessModifier>100</iWarWearinessModifier>
<iFreeSpecialist>0</iFreeSpecialist>
<iTradeRoutes>0</iTradeRoutes>
<bNoForeignTrade>0</bNoForeignTrade>
<bNoCorporations>0</bNoCorporations>
<bNoForeignCorporations>0</bNoForeignCorporations>
<iCivicPercentAnger>0</iCivicPercentAnger>
<bStateReligion>0</bStateReligion>
<bNoNonStateReligionSpread>0</bNoNonStateReligionSpread>
<iStateReligionHappiness>0</iStateReligionHappiness>
<iNonStateReligionHappiness>0</iNonStateReligionHappiness>
<iStateReligionUnitProductionModifier>0</iStateReligionUnitProductionModifier>
<iStateReligionBuildingProductionModifier>0</iStateReligionBuildingProductionModifier>
<iStateReligionFreeExperience>0</iStateReligionFreeExperience>
<YieldModifiers/>
<CapitalYieldModifiers/>
<TradeYieldModifiers/>
<CommerceModifiers>
<iCommerce>0</iCommerce>
<iCommerce>0</iCommerce>
<iCommerce>10</iCommerce>
<iCommerce>-20</iCommerce>
</CommerceModifiers>
<CapitalCommerceModifiers/>
<SpecialistExtraCommerces/>
<Hurrys/>
<SpecialBuildingNotRequireds/>
<SpecialistValids>
<SpecialistValid>
<SpecialistType>SPECIALIST_ARTIST</SpecialistType>
<bValid>1</bValid>
</SpecialistValid>
</SpecialistValids>
<BuildingHappinessChanges>
<BuildingHappinessChange>
<BuildingType>BUILDINGCLASS_BARRACKS</BuildingType>
<iHappinessChange>-2</iHappinessChange>
</BuildingHappinessChange>
<BuildingHappinessChange>
<BuildingType>BUILDINGCLASS_GARRISON</BuildingType>
<iHappinessChange>-2</iHappinessChange>
</BuildingHappinessChange>
<BuildingHappinessChange>
<BuildingType>BUILDINGCLASS_MILITARY_AIRBASE</BuildingType>
<iHappinessChange>-2</iHappinessChange>
</BuildingHappinessChange>
<BuildingHappinessChange>
<BuildingType>BUILDINGCLASS_INTELLIGENCE_AGENCY</BuildingType>
<iHappinessChange>-2</iHappinessChange>
</BuildingHappinessChange>


You will see that WW is still 100% for it's usage. It's the only Civic that I allow to have more than 25% +/- WW.

JosEPh

I 100% agree with (and more broadly than just for civics).

On the specifics of what you propose for pacifism. Ask yourself if you'd still use it. I wouldn't - I think you went too far. The driving reason for using pacifism (IMO) is the GP booster, and by nerfing from 100 to 25 it's past the point where the downsides are not much more significant. I would say 50. I also agree with you that WW should be extraoridinarily high with this civic.

There are a lot of Civics I wouldn't use. But if there is one called "Pacifism" then it should be VERY anti-military. Not just anti-war. Since I'm the type that DOES go aggressive when I see the opportunity to wipe out an AI, it is hardly the choice for me. It may be a matter of names though. If titled something else, I would approach the settings differently.

But like I wrote in my first posts about it, those are my initial thoughts and I'm very open to adjusting them and hearing what others have to say. It's the reason I didn't just make the changes and push to SVN.


I suggest you leave the AI out of the arguments about the strength of a civic.
Either the civic is too strong then it is right that the AI is using it often but then the only thing that matters is that the civic is too strong and needs to be nerfed.
If the AI is using it too often despite that the civic is not overpowered then the code for the AI needs to be changed and not the civic.

In short: The AI should only impact balance decisions in cases where it is too difficult to get the AI to use a mechanic correctly.

I think perhaps I didn't convey my thoughts on that exactly right. I'm not saying the AI is broken and THAT is why it is using Pacifism all the time. Nor merely because the AI uses it a lot, that means it must be gimped. But if the AI IS using it all the time, that supports other reports that it is valuable, and in this case, likely OP.

My comment about Pacifism compared to the other Civics in the Military Category is mostly stating the obvious, and the AI is used as a neutral party example, since it isn't subject to personal preferences or prejudices, as a Player might be (ie. someone doesn't want to use the Slavery or MAD Civics merely because of the ideologies they represent).

Pacifism is the natural non-war Civic in this category because it provides actual benefits outside of warmonger and unit building. The entire category needs balancing imho but I was attempting to address the one commented on by one of our more vocal players prior to the freeze, so I didn't have time to do the others.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=303605&d=1317861974

Eldrinfal,

This is the link to my latest Civ4CivicsInfos xml file. It's still rough but for the Gov't and Power civics the results have been good. Also Pacifism's changes are in there too. Ans so far the AI is not jumping on that Civic as soon as it's available. Instead they are using other Military Civics and as for Gov'ts they are now using a wider spread. Monarchy may be a bit strong but they are using Republic, Democracy and Federal now too. Currently Monarchy leads in % of AI's usage.

This may all be too late for you but my ISP was down all day yesterday. :p


Ah, that's what happened. Yeah, I was waiting to hear back from you. I didn't push the SVN since there weren't a lot of comments at the time.


You will see that WW is still 100% for it's usage. It's the only Civic that I allow to have more than 25% +/- WW.

JosEPh

Glad you think so. Didn't want to fight you on it ;)

@Koshling or @AIAndy

On a separate note, this tag in the Civics XML doesn't seem to be working correctly, or works differently that described in the Modiki:

<iGoldPerMilitaryUnit>I</iGoldPerMilitaryUnit>

This is supposed to represent added support cost for each Military unit. However, even when I set it to 3, for example, it still only shows in the Cevopedia as +1 :gold: Support Cost per Military Unit.

@EldrinFal

If the Civics are getting changed by you, then I have a Big request. Please remove the Fixed Borders settings from the Civics. They are still wreaking havoc. The Game Option for Fixed Borders should be the Only way for FB to be instituted. This will eliminate many many problems. Will help restore Culture and it's spread.

JosEPh

@EldrinFal

If the Civics are getting changed by you, then I have a Big request. Please remove the Fixed Borders settings from the Civics. They are still wreaking havoc. The Game Option for Fixed Borders should be the Only way for FB to be instituted. This will eliminate many many problems. Will help restore Culture and it's spread.

JosEPh

Admittedly I don't have a complete grasp on the pros and cons of Fixed Cultural Borders. But it seems a significant aspect of some civics. But before removing such a thing completely (and it CAN be turned off per Civic with an XML change), it would be nice to hear other thoughts on it.

Have you experimented with turning it off, Joseph?

Admittedly I don't have a complete grasp on the pros and cons of Fixed Cultural Borders. But it seems a significant aspect of some civics. But before removing such a thing completely (and it CAN be turned off per Civic with an XML change), it would be nice to hear other thoughts on it.

Have you experimented with turning it off, Joseph?

Since there would then be no way to turn it on I am strongly against this. It certainly does need some work to mke it more balanced and not a 100% sure-fire defense against culture offensives, but the answer is not to just remove it from the game.

Sicne Joseph feels so strongly about it I propose two specific things:

1) (Under duress) I will add a game option to disable it globally. Default will be on. Civics should continue to specify it and it just won't show up if the game option is set to off.

2) In V19 (so as soon as V18 is out the door work can start) I solemnly do promise, swear, and hereby undertake to work on tweaking it to balance it.

Since there would then be no way to turn it on I am strongly against this. It certainly does need some work to mke it more balanced and not a 100% sure-fire defense against culture offensives, but the answer is not to just remove it from the game.

Sicne Joseph feels so strongly about it I propose two specific things:

1) (Under duress) I will add a game option to disable it globally. Default will be on. Civics should continue to specify it and it just won't show up if the game option is set to off.

2) In V19 (so as soon as V18 is out the door work can start) I solemnly do promise, swear, and hereby undertake to work on tweaking it to balance it.

yes i like fixed borders too

Since there would then be no way to turn it on I am strongly against this. It certainly does need some work to mke it more balanced and not a 100% sure-fire defense against culture offensives, but the answer is not to just remove it from the game.

Sicne Joseph feels so strongly about it I propose two specific things:

1) (Under duress) I will add a game option to disable it globally. Default will be on. Civics should continue to specify it and it just won't show up if the game option is set to off.

2) In V19 (so as soon as V18 is out the door work can start) I solemnly do promise, swear, and hereby undertake to work on tweaking it to balance it.

A wise and generous solution as always Koshling. Making it an option and offering to tweak and balance seems the best solution possible.

So for now I'll keep the Fixed Borders on the Civics that have it and in the future when I do the real overhaul, I'll look to those who understand it better to figure out WHICH Civics should really have it.

A wise and generous solution as always Koshling. Making it an option and offering to tweak and balance seems the best solution possible.

So for now I'll keep the Fixed Borders on the Civics that have it and in the future when I do the real overhaul, I'll look to those who understand it better to figure out WHICH Civics should really have it.

I trust those with strong opinions will also take interim releases with the tweaked version in while we are modifying it to help balance-test for me please...

@EldrinFal

If the Civics are getting changed by you, then I have a Big request. Please remove the Fixed Borders settings from the Civics. They are still wreaking havoc. The Game Option for Fixed Borders should be the Only way for FB to be instituted. This will eliminate many many problems. Will help restore Culture and it's spread.

JosEPh

Admittedly I don't have a complete grasp on the pros and cons of Fixed Cultural Borders. But it seems a significant aspect of some civics. But before removing such a thing completely (and it CAN be turned off per Civic with an XML change), it would be nice to hear other thoughts on it.

Have you experimented with turning it off, Joseph?

Since there would then be no way to turn it on I am strongly against this. It certainly does need some work to mke it more balanced and not a 100% sure-fire defense against culture offensives, but the answer is not to just remove it from the game.

Sicne Joseph feels so strongly about it I propose two specific things:

1) (Under duress) I will add a game option to disable it globally. Default will be on. Civics should continue to specify it and it just won't show up if the game option is set to off.

2) In V19 (so as soon as V18 is out the door work can start) I solemnly do promise, swear, and hereby undertake to work on tweaking it to balance it.

yes i like fixed borders too

I am with bill2505 on this one, i like fixed borders also, as long as it is ON by default, then if you want to do an option for it, have at it, but i really like FB, makes the game way more complex, at least for me that is.

If its OUT of the Civics, thats fine with me also, as long as its there, even the old way is fine with me.

Since there would then be no way to turn it on I am strongly against this. It certainly does need some work to mke it more balanced and not a 100% sure-fire defense against culture offensives, but the answer is not to just remove it from the game.

I didn't say remove FB from the Game, judt from the Civics. When Afforess 1st made FB it was a game Option and was Not intertwined with the Civics. Later as versions progressed it began to infiltrate the Civics. I opposed this back then and still do.

Sicne Joseph feels so strongly about it I propose two specific things:

1) (Under duress) I will add a game option to disable it globally. Default will be on. Civics should continue to specify it and it just won't show up if the game option is set to off.

2) In V19 (so as soon as V18 is out the door work can start) I solemnly do promise, swear, and hereby undertake to work on tweaking it to balance it.

I understand the amount of work to make new additions thru Mods as Options to the game. Zappara and Afforess both struggled with these but both actually succeeded too. Later for the sake of streamlining Afforess made it a Fixed Feature and no longer an Option.

I can learn to live with FB if it's fair to player and AI alike and Does Not destroy Culture and borders shifting from having better Culture than the neighbor. But as it is the AI hangs on to FB (just like Pacifism and Slavery) and this prevents it from progressing to a better Civic.

So this boils down to this;
1. do you want Civics to be a progression dependent upon Leader traits
or
2. A smorgasbord of choices were different combinations give different but usable combinations that the AI will readily use. Not a set pattern.

JosEPh

I prefer FB's myself as well. It definitely makes things more interesting. Personally I'm not partial as to how its in the game (civics or otherwise), so long as its there.

I didn't say remove FB from the Game, judt from the Civics. When Afforess 1st made FB it was a game Option and was Not intertwined with the Civics. Later as versions progressed it began to infiltrate the Civics. I opposed this back then and still do.

As far as I can tell, they are only activated by Civics right now. So to make them either universally on or off, then that would have to be coded, OR applied to ALL Civics, and then Koshling's game option would turn it on or off completely.


I can learn to live with FB if it's fair to player and AI alike and Does Not destroy Culture and borders shifting from having better Culture than the neighbor. But as it is the AI hangs on to FB (just like Pacifism and Slavery) and this prevents it from progressing to a better Civic.

I don't think the AI "hangs" on Pacifism just because of FB. I think it has to do with being the ONLY peace-time Military Civic. Although that would mean he is ALWAYS using FB. Maybe that is what you meant?



So this boils down to this;
1. do you want Civics to be a progression dependent upon Leader traits
or
2. A smorgasbord of choices were different combinations give different but usable combinations that the AI will readily use. Not a set pattern.

JosEPh

They have always been a combination of the two. Very early game Civics are naturally less beneficial. But once you reach a certain point, there should be several viable options in each category imho. At the end-game there may be some "uber" Civics due to advanced technology, which is fine, I think.

FB is Fubared if you play with a Gov't Civic at Republic and above. If you play with Monarchy and below it's not a problem for YOU or the AI. You Win cause your Borders can't be touched by Culture. And the AI (with FB on) will only go to a Gov't Civic above Monarchy IF it has certain LD Traits.

If you use Repub and above you Lose border tiles when you should not. And you can Not reclaim them thru Culture but Only thru Conquest. This problem 1st reared it's Ugly head back in version 14 iirc. And I posted about it then. Now couple this with Pacifism which gives a Whopping 100% Culture boost and the AI will sit with a FB Gov't Civic (when there are overall better civics available) and Pacifism and Build Legendary Cities exclusively. With City Limits in Place it gets even worse. The AI will hunker down with 6 cities (despot) and make them ALL legendary(FB and Pacifism combined), and will not use it's LH traits to wage war (ie Shaka, Monty, etc.) This is Good? This is Fun? This is challenging?I used to cringe every time Shaka would show up as an AI opponent cause I KNEW I'd have to fight him and fight for a long time. Now he's just an annoyed angry Pacifist who sits in 6 cities and demands Techs but never backs up his threats. I guess Turn Based Strategy has a whole different meaning for ppl my age than the current usage/age group. I don't know what else to attribute to this situation.

JosEPh

FB is Fubared if you play with a Gov't Civic at Republic and above. If you play with Monarchy and below it's not a problem for YOU or the AI. You Win cause your Borders can't be touched by Culture. And the AI (with FB on) will only go to a Gov't Civic above Monarchy IF it has certain LD Traits.

If you use Repub and above you Lose border tiles when you should not. And you can Not reclaim them thru Culture but Only thru Conquest. This problem 1st reared it's Ugly head back in version 14 iirc. And I posted about it then. Now couple this with Pacifism which gives a Whopping 100% Culture boost and the AI will sit with a FB Gov't Civic (when there are overall better civics available) and Pacifism and Build Legendary Cities exclusively. With City Limits in Place it gets even worse. The AI will hunker down with 6 cities (despot) and make them ALL legendary(FB and Pacifism combined), and will not use it's LH traits to wage war (ie Shaka, Monty, etc.) This is Good? This is Fun? This is challenging?I used to cringe every time Shaka would show up as an AI opponent cause I KNEW I'd have to fight him and fight for a long time. Now he's just an annoyed angry Pacifist who sits in 6 cities and demands Techs but never backs up his threats. I guess Turn Based Strategy has a whole different meaning for ppl my age than the current usage/age group. I don't know what else to attribute to this situation.

JosEPh

The AI's behaviour in terms of hunker-down vs attack has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with FB since the AI is totally unaware of it, except as an abstract something-Id-like-to-have concept. The city limits I can buy causing this behaviour but I thought you had them turned off? Anyway, it certainly isn't FB that causes Shaka et al not to attack you (as you'll be able to confirm when I add the game option for you to turn FB off)

<snip>



I don't think the AI "hangs" on Pacifism just because of FB. I think it has to do with being the ONLY peace-time Military Civic. Although that would mean he is ALWAYS using FB. Maybe that is what you meant?

Not what I said, but it is a factor. Check out an AI's Civic choices when they switch to Pacifism. Especially so in games that have both FB and City limits ON.

The AI holds on to Pacifism because it's OP'd. And the ironic part about it is that it's the Culture that is Op'd. :crazyeye:

The Military Civics are corrupted because of Pacifism. It should have been a Societal Civic in the 1st place. Being the "only Peace time Mil Civic" is an oxymoron. And illustrates the problem.



They have always been a combination of the two. Very early game Civics are naturally less beneficial. But once you reach a certain point, there should be several viable options in each category imho. At the end-game there may be some "uber" Civics due to advanced technology, which is fine, I think.

Maybe it's time to go back and revisit the basic Civ IV Civics and rethink on How and Why to expand them. Or maybe reduce the current set to more manageable levels till things become better defined and implemented.

JosEPh

The Military Civics are corrupted because of Pacifism. It should have been a Societal Civic in the 1st place. Being the "only Peace time Mil Civic" is an oxymoron. And illustrates the problem.

I agree with this.

Not what I said, but it is a factor. Check out an AI's Civic choices when they switch to Pacifism. Especially so in games that have both FB and City limits ON.

The AI holds on to Pacifism because it's OP'd. And the ironic part about it is that it's the Culture that is Op'd. :crazyeye:

The Military Civics are corrupted because of Pacifism. It should have been a Societal Civic in the 1st place. Being the "only Peace time Mil Civic" is an oxymoron. And illustrates the problem.

Maybe it's time to go back and revisit the basic Civ IV Civics and rethink on How and Why to expand them. Or maybe reduce the current set to more manageable levels till things become better defined and implemented.

JosEPh

Which is why I am in the process of revamping them all. But it takes time for me to conceptualize things correctly in a way that not only makes sense within a single category, but across several. Governments, politics, society... all that study is difficult to categorize even by the experts!

But this discourse is great for working out issues. And once I am satisfied with my ideas, I'm going to put them out here for feedback.

In the meantime, I just wanted to make some tweaks to improve things a bit. Especially since you are so vocal about some being OP/broken.


I agree with this.

I agree as well and likely it will be removed/moved in a future revision, barring any outpour of complaint. :)

I'm glad we are reaching an agreement on something. I was starting to get very discouraged. It seemed that I couldn't/wasn't making my arguments clear enough to be understood. It was beginning to feel like the AND forum and the Maintenance Wars all over again. (you would've had to be there, They wanted to "tar and feather" me because of what I saw as wrong and I voiced it.)

Maybe I should give more detail, but when someone posts a wordy post they usually get ignored.

I'm just trying to get ppl to think and look at more than one side of a subject.

But when I see a game feature that is contrary to the game principles I just have to speak up. It's a fault of mine. I see something not right/wrong I say something.

JosEPh

I'm glad we are reaching an agreement on something. I was starting to get very discouraged. It seemed that I couldn't/wasn't making my arguments clear enough to be understood. It was beginning to feel like the AND forum and the Maintenance Wars all over again. (you would've had to be there, They wanted to "tar and feather" me because of what I saw as wrong and I voiced it.)

Maybe I should give more detail, but when someone posts a wordy post they usually get ignored.

I'm just trying to get ppl to think and look at more than one side of a subject.

But when I see a game feature that is contrary to the game principles I just have to speak up. It's a fault of mine. I see something not right/wrong I say something.

JosEPh

YOU will definitely NEVER be ignored in these C2C forums threads, buddy.;) Say what you like and say what you mean, thats all thats to it. The more ideas/suggestions the better, things get done right, even if "we" do not agree, heck i have been wrong around 20 times lately and have been correctly here alot all to the better of the mod, so take it as you may.

I'm glad we are reaching an agreement on something. I was starting to get very discouraged. It seemed that I couldn't/wasn't making my arguments clear enough to be understood. It was beginning to feel like the AND forum and the Maintenance Wars all over again. (you would've had to be there, They wanted to "tar and feather" me because of what I saw as wrong and I voiced it.)

Maybe I should give more detail, but when someone posts a wordy post they usually get ignored.

I'm just trying to get ppl to think and look at more than one side of a subject.

But when I see a game feature that is contrary to the game principles I just have to speak up. It's a fault of mine. I see something not right/wrong I say something.

JosEPh

I try to be vocal as well. But I also realize I'm not always right either-- or sometimes it is a matter of preference. It's good to argue your points, but also be open to other ideas too :)

There will always be differing opinions on how to do things, so we just make adjustments as we go along until we find the best middle-ground we can. The more people who participate, the better choices the modders can make with C2C.

Just keep in mind that modders have a lot going on, so if something isn't changed right away, it doesn't mean you are ignored, it could just mean that they are busy :) Rest assured though that your input is welcome and changes are being implemented due to YOUR observations. :goodjob:

One of my main reasons for choosing any civic is what it does to my Great People production. In most games where I get to the modern era, I will have had 4 golden ages from great people and be working on my fifth (five different GP). This is much easier now with the Great Doctor.

I like fixed borders but do not like what happens when I give a city back to a vassal only to have all the forts near the city remain mine. I have to go back and destroy the forts so teh land returns to my vassal.

One of my main reasons for choosing any civic is what it does to my Great People production. In most games where I get to the modern era, I will have had 4 golden ages from great people and be working on my fifth (five different GP). This is much easier now with the Great Doctor.

I like fixed borders but do not like what happens when I give a city back to a vassal only to have all the forts near the city remain mine. I have to go back and destroy the forts so teh land returns to my vassal.

I like +GP too, but my reasoning for lowering it with Pacifism is that I didn't feel Pacifism alone meant DOUBLE the rate for generating GP.

I've re-adjusted the proposed values on my earlier post so GP is at +50% now for Pacifism.

Well, it seems the debate is adjourned? :yeah:
It's not important info, but Slavery and Pacifism don't trigger FB.

Well, it seems the debate is adjourned? :yeah:
It's not important info, but Slavery and Pacifism don't trigger FB.

Feel free to add any thoughts Climat. We're in a non-bug mod freeze at the moment so it appears I won't be adding the changes until the 13th or so.

Feel free to add any thoughts Climat. We're in a non-bug mod freeze at the moment so it appears I won't be adding the changes until the 13th or so.

I don't have any problem with tuning of existing values in the bug fix period. Just don't want us to be trying to add lots of new buildings or units or worse still mechanisms between now and v18 release. Moving entire civics around would be too risky, but value tweaks should be ok.

<snip>... but Slavery and Pacifism don't trigger FB.

No they don't. They are just additives to the overall problem of the AI sticking with less than ideal Civics and choices.

What I've been trying to point out is that the AI will get "set" in it's ways with these Civics and FB and CL (with this Option turned On)and will not come out of that set even when much better Civics and Non FB options/civics later becomes available to them. When an AI will Hunker down with 6 cities (CL effect) adopt Pacifism and then stick with FB for the entire game and Cultural Victory is Not a victory setting, but Conquest is, then something is terribly wrong. At least it seems that way to me.

Maybe I'm missing something if you all don't see it as a problem? I just really dislike it when every AI in my game converts to Pcfsm and never does anything else. Never attack me never attack each other. They will upon occasion declare war on another AI but they don't Do anything with that declaration because they are unable to "see" past Pcfsm to get a better Civic to aid in their expansion. I truly believe that if my longest v17 game hadn't crashed I could've played the whole game without ever having had to face an invasion. And Conquest is one of the Victory conditions set for that game.

I'll stop now and you all can get on with your business. ;)

JosEPh (Stubborn Missouri born Mule) :D

Actually, I entirely agree with you in this matter, and I don't like FB, either. ;)

Never attack me never attack each other. They will upon occasion declare war on another AI but they don't Do anything with that declaration because they are unable to "see" past Pcfsm to get a better Civic to aid in their expansion. I truly believe that if my longest v17 game hadn't crashed I could've played the whole game without ever having had to face an invasion. And Conquest is one of the Victory conditions set for that game.
JosEPh (Stubborn Missouri born Mule) :D

Actually THIS is a good point, and it is TRUE.:):sad:

No they don't. They are just additives to the overall problem of the AI sticking with less than ideal Civics and choices.

What I've been trying to point out is that the AI will get "set" in it's ways with these Civics and FB and CL (with this Option turned On)and will not come out of that set even when much better Civics and Non FB options/civics later becomes available to them. When an AI will Hunker down with 6 cities (CL effect) adopt Pacifism and then stick with FB for the entire game and Cultural Victory is Not a victory setting, but Conquest is, then something is terribly wrong. At least it seems that way to me.

Maybe I'm missing something if you all don't see it as a problem? I just really dislike it when every AI in my game converts to Pcfsm and never does anything else. Never attack me never attack each other. They will upon occasion declare war on another AI but they don't Do anything with that declaration because they are unable to "see" past Pcfsm to get a better Civic to aid in their expansion. I truly believe that if my longest v17 game hadn't crashed I could've played the whole game without ever having had to face an invasion. And Conquest is one of the Victory conditions set for that game.

I'll stop now and you all can get on with your business. ;)

JosEPh (Stubborn Missouri born Mule) :D

I think we all agree that Pacifism and other Civics need tuning. And since Koshling has given his blessing, I will go ahead and do some tweaking with the values and that will get some changes into v18 so you have them in your game Joseph. They will likely still need more tweaking, but at least we're moving forward. :)

In regards to your post however, in my previous long game, the AI declared war on me on more than one occasion. That isn't to say he was using the best civic available for war, but I did have quite a number of conflicts.

Let's see how the new adjustments turn out. Maybe to save you the download of the whole C2C, if you're interested, I can post the Civics XML.

Next two Civics I think may need some changes are Chiefdom and Despotism. Below are the changes I am considering. Please comment if you have thoughts on the matter. Current values are in parenthesis when applicable.

Chiefdom


+2 :mad: in All Cities (+3 :mad: in All Cities)
Remove: +1 :) per Military Unit in City
Remove: No :mad: in Capital
+5% :food: required for Growth in each City
Free Military Units = 10% of Population (20% of Population)



Despotism


Upkeep Low (Medium)
No foreign trade
Foreign corporations have no effect
-10% Great Person
+25% Great General
+5% :gold: in Capital
-5% :science: in All Cities
-10% :culture: in All Cities
+5% :hammers: in All Cities
+2 :) per Military Unit in a City (+1 :))
+2 :mad: in All Cities (+1 :mad: in All Cities)
Remove: +1 :mad: for each 10% Foreign Culture in a City
+10% :food: required in each City to Grow (+30%)
+10% :food: bonus in Capital (+25%)
Free Military Units = 20% of Population (10%)
+25% Military Unit Production (+30%)
+50% to build Barracks, Garrison, Arena, Fighting Pit, Armourer, Monument of Dictator, Cryogenic Prison, Biological Warfare Lab, Weapon Factory, Military Satellites
-10% War Weariness (0%)


Civic Philosophies

Chiefdom : Fine for smaller armies and shorter wars, Chief collects some tribute or offerings from his people, but doesn't rule by tyranny (though presence of his soldiers enforces his rule)

Despotism : A better choice for a bit more warmongering, despot rules with an iron fist clamping down on dissent in his nation, especially capital. Despot collects tribute (:gold: and :food:) from his subjects, and forces them to work a bit harder at the expense of culture and science growth.

Based on Joseph's testing of war weariness, I'm going to lower the later gov't settings a bit.

Despotism -10% from 0%
Monarchy -5% from 0%
Republic +5% from +25%
Democracy +10% from +50%
Federal +10% from +75%
Fascist -25% from -50%

I encourage others to test with these new values and report any noticeable issues. Thanks.

YOU will definitely NEVER be ignored in these C2C forums threads, buddy.;) Say what you like and say what you mean, thats all thats to it. The more ideas/suggestions the better, things get done right, even if "we" do not agree, heck i have been wrong around 20 times lately and have been correctly here alot all to the better of the mod, so take it as you may.

Indeed we value your wisdom and opinions JosEPh. In fact you not only voice you opinion but typically explain why and how you want it changed. This is exactly what we like to hear. We may not always agree, but that's the point of a forum like this to discuss things and hear others views on topics.


Just keep in mind that modders have a lot going on, so if something isn't changed right away, it doesn't mean you are ignored, it could just mean that they are busy :) Rest assured though that your input is welcome and changes are being implemented due to YOUR observations. :goodjob:

That is very true. If you were around the AND forum before I learned how to mod, I would beg Afforess to make my stuff. And not only beg but practically lay it all out for him. He got tired of me fast and eventually taught me how to mod so I would stop bothering him with requests. This the best thing he ever did. As the old saying goes, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.". And I have been "fishing" ever since. http://fishingnetwork.net/forum4/images/smilies/239_fishing.gif

Based on Joseph's testing of war weariness, I'm going to lower the later gov't settings a bit.

Despotism -10% from 0%
Monarchy -5% from 0%
Republic +5% from +25%
Democracy +10% from +50%
Federal +10% from +75%
Fascist -25% from -50%

I encourage others to test with these new values and report any noticeable issues. Thanks.

I'm concerned you might be over-egging the WW chnages. Reason being we already chnaged the underlying mechanic to make it far less severe if you're not losing a ton of units (so well fought wars get less WW essentially than they used to), and since Joseph doesn't have the SVN all his experiences are without those changes. The direction of chnage seems right in all cases, I just think you're overdoign the magnitude until we have better experience with the modified WW system (when it may or may not turn out to still be needed)

It's true that I don't have access to the new way of generating WW thru units. And for a Non SVN version those levels that Eldrin posted do allow for War and Overseas War. WW will build but not shut you down unless you are losing badly. It's a slower degree of build up and not a wall hitting you in the face very rapidly.

For SVN version testing I would suggest that you double the New level Except for Fascist. It should not be allowed to have so large a Bonus.

Also in the file I posted there was some unfinished changes for Communism. Their Military and hammer production was unchanged but their Food production was as was the Cost of producing Mil Units, Upped (I grew up hearing and seeing in the news the food shortages that the Russian and Chinese ppl suffered thru while the Iron Curtain still stood. And how these Gov'ts were bankrupting their economies to field their huge Military budgets). So I started to make changes to reflect this. Lenin and Marx's Communistic Society dream Never was realized and in fact could not be sustained. In the Game I feel that Communism should be a War Mongers Gov't that suppresses the pop to field a large military BUT also have a Research bonus, It can't be denied that Russia's Science community was very inventive.

JosEPh

Wasn't Communism removed? It was Afforess's decision, so C2C doesn't have to follow that, but I agree with him.

Wasn't Communism removed? It was Afforess's decision, so C2C doesn't have to follow that, but I agree with him.

I think it was. I believe "Communism" is blocked out in the Civics file. But it could reappear in my overhaul later so Jo's thoughts are welcome. :)

I'm concerned you might be over-egging the WW chnages. Reason being we already chnaged the underlying mechanic to make it far less severe if you're not losing a ton of units (so well fought wars get less WW essentially than they used to), and since Joseph doesn't have the SVN all his experiences are without those changes. The direction of chnage seems right in all cases, I just think you're overdoign the magnitude until we have better experience with the modified WW system (when it may or may not turn out to still be needed)

I can bring the numbers up if you think they're reduced too much. I'm also wondering if in Joseph's game, if his enemies (or one person in general) had a bunch of the ones that cause other Civ's WW to double or triple.

I think it was. I believe "Communism" is blocked out in the Civics file. But it could reappear in my overhaul later so Jo's thoughts are welcome. :)



I can bring the numbers up if you think they're reduced too much. I'm also wondering if in Joseph's game, if his enemies (or one person in general) had a bunch of the ones that cause other Civ's WW to double or triple.

That's also possible I guess. Anyway - I'd go for half way between what they were and what you were propoing most recently or V18 and we'll see how that plays and adjust more after if we need to.

Remember too that Hydro's Market line of bldgs also generate WW. Couple these with the Gov't and other Civics that have WW in them and WW gets multiplied/added up rather quickly. Regardless whether an Enemy or you have the "thing" (Wonder, bldg, civic, I can't remember) that causes your opponent to eXperience WW at a faster rate. I did have it in one of those early v15 games when I 1st complained about WW.


This WW I've complained about was universal. It made having an over seas war almost impossible to carry out. So if you played on an Island or Archipelago or Custom Continents world map transporting your units to that other landmass was causing you WW even without having fired a shot. So at Home you had to try and build a WW reducing bldg or wonder and then try to build a fighting unit. This had to be repeated through out the whole War and you Will run out of WW reducing stuff. So the angry faces keep mounting until (even in my Non Rev games) you became so crippled that you literally had to let major cities lose pop to get back to a stalemate/even number of happy faces with the angry faces. I shudder to think what it would be like with Rev On.

Maybe this is a good thing? I just can't see it though. I like challenges like everyone else. But I Do want to win at least some of the time on Noble. (I can play at higher levels but I always play Noble for Mod testing, cause it's a level playing field for AI and Player.)

JosEPh

Remember too that Hydro's Market line of bldgs also generate WW.

Do you think WW for markets should be completely removed or reduced again? If reduced what type of numbers are we talking about?

Divine Cult and Intolerant also reduce WW (-25%, -50% respectively).
How about making Volunteer Army reduce WW? Currently it does not.

Do you think WW for markets should be completely removed or reduced again? If reduced what type of numbers are we talking about?

My initial reaction was to say remove the WW from them. And I have reasons for thinking that, But for right now, only the last 3 may need looked at. And that After the Civic changes and Koshling's Unit battle effects.

climat wrote:Divine Cult and Intolerant also reduce WW (-25%, -50% respectively).
How about making Volunteer Army reduce WW? Currently it does not.

I like the suggestion of Vol Army reducing WW. That would effect mid and late game WW.

Unfortunately DC and Intol are so Lame that I never consider them as useful so I don't get their WW reducing help because I see no point in using them at all. All their "other" bad points far outweigh the good they might do in reducing WW.

Another thing is that DC is so early in the game that generally while if it's an even remotely viable choice I'm generally not involved in any war. Just trying to keep the neanders and barbs at bay. And I go to Prophets asap any way.

Intolerant has too many negatives in it and it's whole perception that religion stifles research gives it a "bad taste" like Slavery does for many ppl. It too is generally a short term Civic and would only have limited usage before some other "better" Civic choice becomes available.

Maybe if somehow these 2 Civic choices could be made more game useful/lasting and palatable they would get more usage? And maybe other players use them all the time. All I can say is I don't and I don't see the AI using them as much either. %age wise they are kinda bottom dweller Civics for the AI in my games. Realize this too I'm talking Non REV and Non Vassal games.

JosEPh

I never consider Divine Cult either, it is available at the same time as Prophets but is just not as useful.

How about making Volunteer Army reduce WW? Currently it does not.

I disagree. Even tho only the people involved in the military are volunteers in this case, drawing from real life exposure the soldiers still have family members at home who do want their loved ones home and safe and sound in a reasonable amount of time. I'm ok with it not increasing WW, but I'd rather not see it reduce WW either.

I'd also like to see a reduction in military production for Vol Army to represent needing to constantly locate and train volunteers. It would make a decent balance for the extra +5xp for new troops.

I recall the Unmanned civic reduces WW to some extent, I could see that being increased, or the M.A.D. civic, seeing as how the rationale behind that is sheer deterrence, tho I supremely dislike the extra :mad: for not using M.A.D.

I don't use DC, either. It's certainly not useful to me, compared to its contemporary civic, Prophet.

Its advantages are unlimited Priests, lower military support cost, -25% WW, decreasing national unstability, increasing stability with State Religion, and happiness from state religion and many buildings.
1. Religion buildings enable Priests and there aren't room for specialists in early time since growth is more beneficial. So, unlimited Priests is not that useful. (1 free Priest in every city would be more useful than this. :rolleyes:)
2. How much it lowers support cost? I have no idea, and I usually don't go to war that early.
3. Regarding stability, I'm not sure it is helpful since I like to have multiple religions in my cities. (It makes cities more rebellious if non-State religion is in.) Not to mention it is irrelevant to players who don't use revolution.
4. Happiness is not an issue in that time.

On the other hand, its disadvantage is -50%:gp: in all cities, -25%:gold: and :culture: in cities except capital, and It is High-upkeep.

I never consider Divine Cult either, it is available at the same time as Prophets but is just not as useful.

It probby can be useful if combined with Slavery. However I have not tried it.

On the other hand, its disadvantage is -50%:gp: in all cities, -25%:gold: and :culture: in cities except capital, and It is High-upkeep.

Yeah i dont use it at all because of this either, thats too much of a cost to use.:(

How about removing all disadvantages of DC and lowering its upkeep to Medium? Is it too extreme? Not that useful, but not that bad civic.
But I assume people will still use Prophet although disadvantages are removed..

DC and Intolerant are 2 Civics I have not tried to adjust yet.

But if you look at the Civ4CivicsInfo file I posted I Have changed Slavery.

I look at Civic use this way for the AI. If 1/3 to 2/3 of the AI use a Civic it's a good Civic. But If the AI uses a Civic almost all the Time, 90% and Above, then I consider it to be OP. If it's used by less than 20% of the AI it probably is design for a specific type Leader Or it has too many negatives for the AI. And if the AI almost Never uses it, it needs some serious look see at what's wrong with the AI wanting to use it.

Is DC supposed to emulate a God Emperor mentality for Leaders like Pacal , Monty, or Ramses for ex.? Or was it intended for a Religiously lead society, or both?

JosEPh

DC and Intolerant are 2 Civics I have not tried to adjust yet.

But if you look at the Civ4CivicsInfo file I posted I Have changed Slavery.

I look at Civic use this way for the AI. If 1/3 to 2/3 of the AI use a Civic it's a good Civic. But If the AI uses a Civic almost all the Time, 90% and Above, then I consider it to be OP. If it's used by less than 20% of the AI it probably is design for a specific type Leader Or it has too many negatives for the AI. And if the AI almost Never uses it, it needs some serious look see at what's wrong with the AI wanting to use it.

Is DC supposed to emulate a God Emperor mentality for Leaders like Pacal , Monty, or Ramses for ex.? Or was it intended for a Religiously lead society, or both?

JosEPh

Part of the problem with AI invariance is that all of them are actually the same AI, so they use the same evaluation functions, and therefore tend to arrive at the same conclusions unless they have wildly skewed geographic conditions. It is slightly effected by leader/civ traits, but TBH they don't really influence things that much. Perhaps we need to give more weight to trait multipliers in civic evaluation in the AI code, in order to boost variance? (problem being that since the AIs all have the same stratgey/tactics code at the end of the day, one set really is liekly to be best for them, so artificially making them vary might just lead to more varied, but weaker opponents).

Part of the problem with AI invariance is that all of them are actually the same AI, so they use the same evaluation functions, and therefore tend to arrive at the same conclusions unless they have wildly skewed geographic conditions. It is slightly effected by leader/civ traits, but TBH they don't really influence things that much. Perhaps we need to give more weight to trait multipliers in civic evaluation in the AI code, in order to boost variance? (problem being that since the AIs all have the same stratgey/tactics code at the end of the day, one set really is liekly to be best for them, so artificially making them vary might just lead to more varied, but weaker opponents).

If the Leader Traits only have a minimal influence on how an AI "acts", then why in vanilla CIV IV and BtS are some Leaders More War like than others? And some down right passive?

Wasn't this achieved by LH Traits? How did Sid and Co. get the leaders to have different "agendas" if they all use the same end code?

JosEPh

If the Leader Traits only have a minimal influence on how an AI "acts", then why in vanilla CIV IV and BtS are some Leaders More War like than others? And some down right passive?

Wasn't this achieved by LH Traits? How did Sid and Co. get the leaders to have different "agendas" if they all use the same end code?

JosEPh

I think the vanilla BTS code is far less optimized in evaluating actual benefits than the code we now use, so traits played a larger part 'by default' so to speak. That's why they likly need bit of a boost now (should be easy to tweak)

Part of the problem with AI invariance is that all of them are actually the same AI, so they use the same evaluation functions, and therefore tend to arrive at the same conclusions unless they have wildly skewed geographic conditions. It is slightly effected by leader/civ traits, but TBH they don't really influence things that much. Perhaps we need to give more weight to trait multipliers in civic evaluation in the AI code, in order to boost variance? (problem being that since the AIs all have the same stratgey/tactics code at the end of the day, one set really is liekly to be best for them, so artificially making them vary might just lead to more varied, but weaker opponents).

IIRC this topic came up in another thread awhile back. I think the AI SHOULD have flavor depending on Traits, even if that ends up making one more passive or "easier." The player can always choose exactly who his opponents are if he wants to-- if he doesn't want the "weaker" AI. IMHO it would be nice to have one or two AI opponents that I know aren't going to war with me despite peace treaties and years of trade, and will try to seek victory by other options. Even if our borders are next to each other.

Also, there IS an Aggressive AI configuration, so already we have options to make them aggro if need be.


I look at Civic use this way for the AI. If 1/3 to 2/3 of the AI use a Civic it's a good Civic. But If the AI uses a Civic almost all the Time, 90% and Above, then I consider it to be OP. If it's used by less than 20% of the AI it probably is design for a specific type Leader Or it has too many negatives for the AI. And if the AI almost Never uses it, it needs some serious look see at what's wrong with the AI wanting to use it.
JosEPh

The only caveat is that sometimes there is an end-game type Civic which is better than the rest. I'm fine with that as long as it doesn't come too early in the game. For example Post-Scarcity or Paradise civics. There are only a few of these though.

Second... in my games, there are just some Civics I like more than others and tend to stick to them most of the game when available. So the AI may be doing the same thing.

Based on Joseph's testing of war weariness, I'm going to lower the later gov't settings a bit.

Despotism -10% from 0%
Monarchy -5% from 0%
Republic +5% from +25%
Democracy +10% from +50%
Federal +10% from +75%
Fascist -25% from -50%

I encourage others to test with these new values and report any noticeable issues. Thanks.

Ok, here are the new adjustments...

Despotism -10%
Monarchy 0%
Republic +10%
Democracy +25%
Federal +25%
Fascist -25%

I don't see why Federal would cause any additional WW over Democracy so I think those should be the same.

Since I didn't see any complaints about the Chiefdom and Despotism suggestions I proposed, I'll go ahead and implement those as well.

Ok, here are the new adjustments...

Despotism -10%
Monarchy 0%
Republic +10%
Democracy +25%
Federal +25%
Fascist -25%

I don't see why Federal would cause any additional WW over Democracy so I think those should be the same.

Since I didn't see any complaints about the Chiefdom and Despotism suggestions I proposed, I'll go ahead and implement those as well.

why you have deleted the no :mad: in the capital from despotism

why you have deleted the no :mad: in the capital from despotism

I didn't. I had just listed what would be changed. No :mad: in capital remains for Despotism.

Perhaps listing changes only is confusing? Next time maybe I'll just list everything out.

Is DC supposed to emulate a God Emperor mentality for Leaders like Pacal , Monty, or Ramses for ex.? Or was it intended for a Religiously lead society, or both?

It certainly is for early warmongers. But the question is whether it is used by them.
What do you think about my idea? Do you think there should be more advantages for DC?

Speaking of civics, is there any way you could convince the AI to stop switching and reswitching them the first chance they get? Most of the civs in my game spend the majority of their time in unproductive and destabilizing anarchy simply flopping back and forth between despotism and monarchy.

Speaking of civics, is there any way you could convince the AI to stop switching and reswitching them the first chance they get? Most of the civs in my game spend the majority of their time in unproductive and destabilizing anarchy simply flopping back and forth between despotism and monarchy.

Koshling did some work on that in the SVN. If you're using latest SVN and it's still happening, it might be useful to him to provide some additional details.

Speaking of civics, is there any way you could convince the AI to stop switching and reswitching them the first chance they get? Most of the civs in my game spend the majority of their time in unproductive and destabilizing anarchy simply flopping back and forth between despotism and monarchy.

Is that still happening in the latest svn for you? I thought I had that fixed.

Sorry, I haven't got around to figuring out how to set up the SVN. If you think you've already fixed it, please disregard me and my version seventeen dot oh

Sorry, I haven't got around to figuring out how to set up the SVN. If you think you've already fixed it, please disregard me and my version seventeen dot oh

:)

Well if someone poses a question I can answer, I don't like to leave them hanging. Even if it's been addressed and mentioned in another thread.

Sorry, I haven't got around to figuring out how to set up the SVN. If you think you've already fixed it, please disregard me and my version seventeen dot oh

Phew ;). Pleas let me know whether it seems significantly better for you once v18 is released - I'd appreciate the feedback at that point.

It certainly is for early warmongers. But the question is whether it is used by them.
What do you think about my idea? Do you think there should be more advantages for DC?
Oh for sure! It's a weak Civic to begin with. Reduce or remove some of it's negatives so AI and Player both see it as a viable alternative to Prophets.

@Steampunk,
Are you playing with REV ON? And/Or City Limits ON? Revolutions can cause the AI to switch between those 2 Civics as can City Limits. Think about it.

JosEPh :)

@ Joeseph: Sure, Revolutions is on. Is that always going to be a problem with that mod? I thought a simple solution would be to tell the AI to wait 100 turns minimum after switching civics before doing it again.

It may be a matter of play style since DC is for warmongers and comes early.
Its civic buildings are not bad.
Divine Monument (comes with Ceremonial Burial, which is unnecessary requirement because DC comes with Mysticism which requires CB) : +1 experience for new mounted and melee units.
Shrine : same as Prophet. provides more gold with resources.
Sacrificial Altar : +1:) ,+1:culture:, -50% whipping anger duration.
Tlalo's Altar (Wonder) : Free Sacrificial Altar in every cities. +2:), +2:culture:

I think that it will be enough if disadvantages are removed and Upkeep is lowered to Medium.
One problem is that whipping is certainly not useful.

BTW, I can't find the tag doing "lower military support cost" part.

It may be a matter of play style since DC is for warmongers and comes early.
Its civic buildings are not bad.
Divine Monument (comes with Ceremonial Burial, which is unnecessary requirement because DC comes with Mysticism which requires CB) : +1 experience for new mounted and melee units.
Shrine : same as Prophet. provides more gold with resources.
Sacrificial Altar : +1:) ,+1:culture:, -50% whipping anger duration.
Tlalo's Altar (Wonder) : Free Sacrificial Altar in every cities. +2:), +2:culture:

I think that it will be enough if disadvantages are removed and Upkeep is lowered to Medium.
One problem is that whipping is certainly not useful.

BTW, I can't find the tag doing "lower military support cost" part.

This is the one you want Climat:

<iFreeMilitaryUnitsPopulationPercent>20</iFreeMilitaryUnitsPopulationPercent>


@AIAndy or @Koshling

<iGoldPerMilitaryUnit>3</iGoldPerMilitaryUnit>

Can you take a look at this tag and see if it's working properly. Even when I set it more than 1, the amount in the Civilopedia says +1 :gold: Support Cost per Military Unit. Thanks.