Available from the download page (http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=14855).



--- Version 1.17 ---


Civilizations
• New Civilizations: Anasazi, Kongo
• Celts: new colour scheme
• Ethiopia: new colour scheme
• Israel: new citylist and UB (Bamah)
• Polynesia: new art for Marae (UB)
• Vikings: renamed Scandinavians

Leaders
• New Leaders: Kochininako, Mbemba, Nzinga, Po'pay, Richard Lionheart
• New Art: Tin Hinan, Xoc
• Fixed Diplomacy Text: Akbar, Nasser, Topiltzen
• Reassigned Traits: Brian Boru, Joshua, Robert

Traits
• Progressive: upgrade discount now applies only to military units
• Tactical: no longer reveals the owner of hidden nationality units

Civics
• Standing Army: upgrade discount now applies only to military units

Buildings
• Building costs adjusted to scale more appropriately through the eras
• Laboratory: now provides 2 scientist slots instead of 1

Wonders
• Colosseum: fixed a bug where the wrong unit could be built
• Hagia Sophia: now lets you build the regular building as well, cost increased to 500

Units
• New Unit: Colonist
• Asvaka (Kushan UU): redesigned with has movement rate of 3
• Ballista Elephant (Khmer UU): redesigned with a city attack bonus and able to ignore building defense
• Cog: new art for Mediterranean and Oriental civs
• Destroyer: now has an attack and defensive bonus against Torpedo Boat, Submarine, Attack Sub
• Hoplite (Greek UU): redesigned with free Cover and Formation promotions
• Horse Archer: now has a first strike, no longer has a bonus vs Siege Units
• Horseman: strength increased to 6, city attack penalty increased to 50%
• Humvee: no longer able to attack, withdrawal chance lowered to 25%, better AI
• Immortal (Persian UB): redesigned with a free March promotion
• Jaguar Warrior (Aztec UU): given Woodsman II as well
• Keshik (Mongol UU): redesigned with no city attack penalty and 25% withdrawal chance
• Legionary (Roman UU): no longer more expensive to build
• Privateer: new, more universal art
• Skirmisher: strength increased to 3, AI improved
• Torpedo Boat: can no longer enter ocean tiles
• Fixed several upgrade paths for UUs

Unit Art
• All unit art comprehensively optimized for better performance and memory usage
• New art for most units: Arabia, India, Tamil
• New art for several units: China, England, Iroquois, Japan, Korea, Mali, Mongolia, Netherlands, Nubia, Rome, Sioux
• New art for a few units: America, Berber, Byzantium, Egypt, Germany, Hatti, Israel, Kushan
• New art for a few units: Phoenicia, Polynesia, Russia, Siam, Spain, Sumer, Swahili, Zulu
• Existing unit art improved: Angkor, England, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Portugal, Siam
• Added more cultural diversity to Great People and Generals
• Numerous tweaks and improvements to unit animations

Religion
• New Missionary Art: Pesedjet, Baalism, Olympianism, Shamanism, Toltecayotl
• All missionaries now have correctly displaying effects when spreading religion
• Shortened some of the longer religion sounds

Routes
• Roads: reverted to 1/2 movement cost
• Paved Roads: changed to 1/3 movement cost, 1/4 after Cartography
• Highways: changed to 1/5 movement cost, 1/6 after Satellites

Resources
• Furs: no longer appear on Ice

Maps
• All mapscripts given an option for culturally linked starting locations
• Fractal: world wrapping options fixed
• Highlands: world wrapping options fixed
• Removed Maps: Gaul (25x30), North Africa (93x46)

Miscellaneous
• AI now only gets free starting techs on the two highest difficulty levels
• Cities can no longer be founded on Ice
• 'Fake' buildings are no longer listed in several parts of the UI
• Golden Age length scales better with game speed
• Inflation was too harsh on slower gamespeeds
• Resistance in captured cities now scales with game speed
• Fixed a few audio-related crashes

:goodjob:

I'm completely new to Civilization, and I have to say that, for me, this mod makes the game worth playing. I've done a lot of research in history, and having something a little closer to reality is very welcome. (And as a Mac user, I'm pleased to find something that works with OS X.) Thank God for culturally-related start points. Now, if we could only get rid of those damned leaders ... Talking to Roosevelt, followed by Brian Boru, followed by Elizabeth I does my head in. I wish we could just have "the American ambassador wishes to speak to you" or "the English have done such and such". Come to think of it, it would be nice if leaders changed over time -- it would add an extra dimension if you had to adjust to different characteristics periodically. But I'm sure that is well beyond "modding". I'm really grateful for HR -- an immense amount of work, I'm sure.

Awesome! Thanks Xyth, This will definitely be worth the wait. :D

Cool.

Pleased to see this, and when I can snatch time from tax preparation, grading, job applications, grading, book reports, grading, acting as moderator/DM for an online science fiction 'play your own nation' RPG, and grading, I'll give it a whirl.

So... eventually. :D

Great news!

As with 1.16, I will attempt to increase the default number of civs on Massive World size for my Windows box (just a personal preference). To add some spice I won't (at least initially) unpack the custom assets folder: let's celebrate the work Xyth has done in cleaning them up!

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=451121

I'm completely new to Civilization, and I have to say that, for me, this mod makes the game worth playing. I've done a lot of research in history, and having something a little closer to reality is very welcome. (And as a Mac user, I'm pleased to find something that works with OS X.) Thank God for culturally-related start points. Now, if we could only get rid of those damned leaders ... Talking to Roosevelt, followed by Brian Boru, followed by Elizabeth I does my head in. I wish we could just have "the American ambassador wishes to speak to you" or "the English have done such and such". Come to think of it, it would be nice if leaders changed over time -- it would add an extra dimension if you had to adjust to different characteristics periodically. But I'm sure that is well beyond "modding". I'm really grateful for HR -- an immense amount of work, I'm sure.

Leaders changing over time is a common request but I'm not aware of anyone who's managed to code it. If it is possible it would require extensive SDK work, meaning it can't ever be done on Mac as the SDK is Windows-only unfortunately.


Great news!

As with 1.16, I will attempt to increase the default number of civs on Massive World size for my Windows box (just a personal preference). To add some spice I won't (at least initially) unpack the custom assets folder: let's celebrate the work Xyth has done in cleaning them up!

Hopefully you see some decent performance/memory improvements. Loading time with the unit files unpacked is a certainly a lot faster than it used to be, but it's tricky to measure how much difference this optimization it makes in game, only that there should be some. I'd be interested in your findings.

At some point I need to do a similar optimization pass on all the building art. Most of the leaders have already been optimized but there's bound to some more gains there too. Neither would be as much work or as much benefit as the units, but every bit counts.

It's too early for me to give the definitive report, but in the little time I've had HR boots in a snap, and I suppose races along overall.

I will be more than happy to post whether I get MAFs, which would defeat the purpose of the extra civs. The strain on my processor can be considered a negative, along with excessive delays between turns or rolling a start.

Once again, wonderful news that we have so many goodies with this release!

Well, first error report. Have been getting a bunch of these. Screen freezes and music keeps playing. Once the track ends, the game crashes.

Well, first error report. Have been getting a bunch of these. Screen freezes and music keeps playing. Once the track ends, the game crashes.

That particular crash report is beyond my skill to interpret unfortunately, none of the usual indicators I rely on are there. I'll need to know some context: please let me know the civ you were playing, the era you were in, map size, and what other leaders were in the game with you. Does the crash happen randomly or does it happen again at the same point when you reload from an autosave?

Also, could you try disabling the music and see if that makes a difference?

Enjoying playing one of the new leaders. Thanks for all of your hard work.

A couple of things I thought were being changed for this version, which I suggest for the next version:
1. Paved roads to no longer require stone, but stone increases speed of building
(may increase the base turns to build.)
2. Pirates to get a small withdrawal change to make them a little tougher.

I also still think that 3 GPP per Great Person works better than 2.
If you keep the 2, I think you need to make it easier to get the first great person and also reduce the rate at which the amount needed for the next great person increases in the late game.
(One could try 2.5 GPP per Great Person, but this may require reworking the whole system, by for example multiplying everything by either 2 or 10.)

I had hoped that random events were on the list of things to work on for the next version.

1. Paved roads to no longer require stone, but stone increases speed of building
(may increase the base turns to build.)

This turned out to be complicated to code and much more hassle than I felt was worth it. Basically, if the tile is connected directly or indirectly to the civ's capital it's easy, but if not it gets messy because tiles don't belong to cities; they belong to players/teams. I'd have to loop through all nearby tiles looking for relevant cities and then testing to see if each city was connected to a Stone resource somehow. Or loop through all relevant cities, checking which can work that tile and which have access to Stone. Just not worth it for a 1 turn reduction in build time (because increasing the base build time higher than 4 is unrealistic when it's 6 for railroads and highways).

With roads reverting to 1/2 movement rate and Paved Roads reverting to 1/3 movement rate, the latter becomes a 'nice to have' rather than being absolutely essential to empire e management like it was prior to 1.17. I don't think the Stone requirement is too arduous in these circumstances.

2. Pirates to get a small withdrawal change to make them a little tougher.

Ah I forgot about this. Added to 1.18. I'm also going to lower the cost of Triremes to 40.

I also still think that 3 GPP per Great Person works better than 2.
If you keep the 2, I think you need to make it easier to get the first great person and also reduce the rate at which the amount needed for the next great person increases in the late game.

I'm pretty happy with it at 2 so far. I agree that there probably needs to be more GPP boosts by the late game though. The best way to achieve that is via buildings, either existing ones or new ones. I'll look into it.

I had hoped that random events were on the list of things to work on for the next version.

They are. Maps are the biggest priority, Corporations a smaller one, but I want to spend some time exploring the possibilities of the event system too. I haven't yet finalized what will and won't be in 1.18 and it often changes as it evolves anyway. Suggestions and reminders are always welcome.

Hi all,
Thanks for all the hard work Xyth! I can't wait to try 1.17 out, but unfortunately the download link is asking for a username and password from atomicgamer.

?

Hi all,
Thanks for all the hard work Xyth! I can't wait to try 1.17 out, but unfortunately the download link is asking for a username and password from atomicgamer.

?

Just checked, it's doing that for any page at www.atomicgamer.com so I suspect they're having server troubles of some sort. Try again a bit later and in the meantime I'll try find somewhere to host a mirror, just in case.


EDIT: Atomic Gamer seems to be working again

Some more things I thought were going to be done with 1.17:

Stables, was the cost increased somewhat?

Monastery, was it made to stay around a longer time?

I apologize if changes were made and I did not notice the difference.

P.S. I really think lots of improvements in random events are possible.
Besides balancing and improving what is there, lots of room to incorporate into events particularly quests: new religions, new units, new buildings, etc.

Stables, was the cost increased somewhat?

Yep. They they now cost 80 hammers. Several other buildings have had their costs adjusted too.

Monastery, was it made to stay around a longer time?

Not yet. I'm not happy with the potential solutions so far, so it's still on the todo list.

P.S. I really think lots of improvements in random events are possible.
Besides balancing and improving what is there, lots of room to incorporate into events particularly quests: new religions, new units, new buildings, etc.

Yeah there are a ton of possibilities there. Fortunately it's a system that's easy to add to incrementally, rather than having to overhaul the whole thing at once. I just need to sit down and look through all the existing events to get a better understanding of how to do it and where to start. Like map making/editing, it's new territory for me.

Only had a short glimpse at 1.17 and am quite impressed by the progress of this mod since I last played it. I seem to have forgotten how to play this game, and as I'm explaining to myself why I suck so badly on Emperor (was Immortal last summer), I'm realizing that even more standard strategems of plain BTS are suspended now, compared to earlier versions of HR: no early chopping, early academy, run-monarchie-through-Pyramids, free-tech-through-liberalism, nothing. That should get many people back interested in Civ IV, because no one can apply the well known recipes from the cook book.

Very early wealth production: I remember, that this was being discussed here, and I think, this discussion should continue;). Building wealth shouldn't be so commanding. Your economy shouldn't rely on it so heavily. Could this mechanism possibly be favoring rapid expansion playstyles, just like in Civ 3? Hopefully not. You might try to grab plenty of production sites that do nothing but build wealth to keep your research at 100%. Not an intelligent game mechanism, if that turns out to be true. I haven't played far enough to see proof of that, but I'm afraid that's what's happening.

The 25% culture boost of Traditionalism seems to be channeled through the building Monument, is that right? Because I didn't see any effect at first. Would be nicer to have the 25% right away, if that's possible.

Are there any changes to the AI handicap on Emperor? Their research rate seems much faster than I remember it from previous Emperor games. (No Tech brokering enabled.)

Bug report: art for Incan worker is having the red blobs. Tectonics map, earthlike, old world start, standard medium settings, displays strangely: The ice extends into the northern land area in the way, that interior inland lakes are covered with ice, I'd say to a degree, that looks like a flawed map script to me.

Swordsmen bonus against elephants: will drive every player crazy who extensively played Rome Total War:nope:.

Xyth and the most active contributors, you can be proud of the Tech tree! I first thought, it looks so damn clean, symmetrical and orderly, that there must be something wrong with it, but no.

And the reference charts look also pretty:). Further feedback in a few weeks:(…

Very early wealth production: I remember, that this was being discussed here, and I think, this discussion should continue;). Building wealth shouldn't be so commanding. Your economy shouldn't rely on it so heavily. Could this mechanism possibly be favoring rapid expansion playstyles, just like in Civ 3? Hopefully not. You might try to grab plenty of production sites that do nothing but build wealth to keep your research at 100%. Not an intelligent game mechanism, if that turns out to be true. I haven't played far enough to see proof of that, but I'm afraid that's what's happening.

I was going to explore converting production to wealth at a lower ratio, which gets higher as the eras progress. I still haven't done that and I should.

The 25% culture boost of Traditionalism seems to be channeled through the building Monument, is that right? Because I didn't see any effect at first. Would be nicer to have the 25% right away, if that's possible.

Hmm. It should effect other sources of culture too, perhaps its effect is lost early on due to rounding. I'll investigate.

Are there any changes to the AI handicap on Emperor? Their research rate seems much faster than I remember it from previous Emperor games. (No Tech brokering enabled.)

Not to Emperor or the other difficulty levels, but there have been several tweaks to research rates elsewhere. Gamespeed settings have changed a fair amount to match the adjusted calendar.

Bug report: art for Incan worker is having the red blobs.

Not surprised one got past me after such an extensive unit art overhaul. Will fix.

Tectonics map, earthlike, old world start, standard medium settings, displays strangely: The ice extends into the northern land area in the way, that interior inland lakes are covered with ice, I'd say to a degree, that looks like a flawed map script to me.

Curious. Not sure it's something I can fix but I'll investigate nonetheless. That's not a setting I've tested all that much.

Swordsmen bonus against elephants: will drive every player crazy who extensively played Rome Total War:nope:.

That was added back when War Elephants were available considerably earlier than they are now. It probably doesn't need to be there anymore. Not sure of the Rome: Total War reference - crazy good or crazy bad?

Xyth and the most active contributors, you can be proud of the Tech tree! I first thought, it looks so damn clean, symmetrical and orderly, that there must be something wrong with it, but no.

Thanks, I've put a ton of work into it and everyone's feedback has helped refine it further. I feel it gets a bit convoluted in the late Industrial and Modern eras still, and there needs to be some more to unlock at that end of tree too, but it'll get there in time.

That was added back when War Elephants were available considerably earlier than they are now. It probably doesn't need to be there anymore. Not sure of the Rome: Total War reference - crazy good or crazy bad?
Bad! I'm probably not the only RTW player who mixes up game "experience" with eyewitnessing:D. In RTW, elephant trample attacks are devastating to even elite swordsmen, and the animations are rather mercyless, soldiers being thrown through the air.

The counter to elephants are slingers and javelineers, because of three reasons: their stones and projectlies harass the elephants more than anything, their loose formation lets them make sort of aisles for the at full speed charging animals, and thirdly, their light armament makes it easier to dodge the movements of an elephant at less than full speed. Compare that to tight formations of iron swordsmen in chain mail.

We all know, Civ IV isn't a tactics game, stacks, no battle orders, but what one can do is treating the units, that gain their effectiveness from speed charging, as vulnerable when standing an attack. Sword units should deal with elephants and chariots rather well, as attackers themselves. Conclusion: Swordsmen counter elephants, but only offensively, while Skirmishers get a defensiv bonus against them.

Bad! I'm probably not the only RTW player who mixes up game "experience" with eyewitnessing:D. In RTW, elephant trample attacks are devastating to even elite swordsmen, and the animations are rather mercyless, soldiers being thrown through the air.

Thanks for clarifying. Like I said, that bonus was added to solve a problem that no longer exists so I'll remove it.

The counter to elephants are slingers and javelineers, because of three reasons: their stones and projectlies harass the elephants more than anything, their loose formation lets them make sort of aisles for the at full speed charging animals, and thirdly, their light armament makes it easier to dodge the movements of an elephant at less than full speed. Compare that to tight formations of iron swordsmen in chain mail.

Skirmishers (HR's Javelineers) appear too early to act as a counter to War Elephants. That might change though if I ever introduce Slingers as a unit - which I'd like to do but it would require a lot more art variants than currently exist.

Very early wealth production: I remember, that this was being discussed here, and I think, this discussion should continue;). Building wealth shouldn't be so commanding. Your economy shouldn't rely on it so heavily. Could this mechanism possibly be favoring rapid expansion playstyles, just like in Civ 3? Hopefully not. You might try to grab plenty of production sites that do nothing but build wealth to keep your research at 100%. Not an intelligent game mechanism, if that turns out to be true. I haven't played far enough to see proof of that, but I'm afraid that's what's happening.

I confess to being a recent convert from Civ 3, but on Monarch level I am grateful for building wealth.

(My settings are Raging Barbs and Aggressive AI, which makes for a somewhat more tactical experience. Just playing Sandbox won't hold my attention).

Because of my various problems with rapid expansion, I tend to disagree that 1.17 is out of balance here. Rapid expansion is not altogether ahistorical; I concede building just for wealth may be gamey, but many possessions of the real life Ancient Era were little more than that.

Of course if more experienced players suspect it is broken I will stand corrected.

I confess to being a recent convert from Civ 3, but on Monarch level I am grateful for building wealth.

As an aside, I never played Vanilla Civ 3 (where rapid expansion was broken) but fiddled with Rhye's and population costs to favor a Middle Ages settler rush. The AI didn't like it, but it worked for me.

I concede building just for wealth may be gamey, but many possessions of the real life Ancient Era were little more than that.

Gamey is the right word for that. Or call it one-dimensional. One of the most interesting parts of Civ is making difficult decisions, when both options have strong up and downsides. Mechanisms that take away these fateful decisions from you, are crap to be avoided. (You must chop woods to survive, woe if you don't.:nono:)

Nothing wrong with expansion, but Civ 4 at least introduced AIs pursuing a space race win with four cities or a cultural victory with six or nine cities. So, the pursuer of a routine domination victory is a bit threatened by these tiny not at all expanded empires, which adds "suspense" and a few more dimensions.

I'm not an experienced player, I forgot to say, I played Immortal on a scenario map with abundant food und commerce ressources, so that wasn't a real Immortal game.

Civ 3: was fun, but I only know the vanilla version with the "broken" rapid expansion.



I'm suffering, that I can't continue my little 1.17 game right now and provide more feedback, because the new version really got me hooked:)!

Just checked, it's doing that for any page at www.atomicgamer.com so I suspect they're having server troubles of some sort. Try again a bit later and in the meantime I'll try find somewhere to host a mirror, just in case.


EDIT: Atomic Gamer seems to be working again

Thanks! Downloading it now. Can't wait to try it out.

Okay, I've been experimenting and I've managed to create different 'ranks' of wealth building that are unlocked at different techs:


• Property (Ancient): 25% production converted to wealth
• Currency (Classical): 50% production converted to wealth
• Finance (Medieval): 75% production converted to wealth
• Corporation (Renaissance): 100% production converted to wealth


The idea is that you can still build some wealth early on when you need it, but not so much that it encourages rapid expansion with numerous small undeveloped cities able to cover their maintenance costs and still produce a profit. As the eras progress wealth building becomes more viable but by then there are many more limits on empire growth in play (inflation, enemy civs, etc) so it shouldn't be a problem.

I plan to do something similar with the Research, Culture and Espionage building options as well. I also experimented with attaching these ranks to buildings rather than technologies but that's a lot more complicated and the AI doesn't really understand it.

Let me know your thoughts on this.

After some testing this is the scheme I'm going with for now (using the forum's nifty new table feature!):


Build %|Wealth|Research|Culture|Espionage
33%|Property|Writing|Aesthetics|Paper
50%|Guilds|Printing|Education|Photography
100%|Corporation|Sci. Method|Sociology|Radio



33% means it takes 3 hammers to produce 1 of the relevant commerce, 50% means it takes 2. I decided to go with 3 ranks instead since a '4 for 1' ratio felt useless and '3 for 2' (75%) felt a bit unintuitive. Each build option (except Espionage) thus become available in the Ancient or Classical era and becomes full strength sometime in the Renaissance. Espionage starts and ends a bit later as I did some reading and it's actually a lot more powerful than I thought.

Hm. I don't disagree, but I never got the hang of Espionage- I'm a casual player, really.

What is it wise to do with espionage points?

Xyth: I've lost both of my games in 1.17 to sudden quits; reloading from saved game it quits again. Playing as Anasazi and as Kongo to try out the new Civs. One quit around 1500, the other in 1650. Standard World map, raging barbarians, no tech brokering; one was at Prince one at Monarch. I'm on a Mac, system X. Usually I have trouble with maps above Large size-- they overload and quit when things get too busy. But never had this problem with Standard and have played at least the last 6 versions of HR extensively.

Xyth: I've lost both of my games in 1.17 to sudden quits; reloading from saved game it quits again. Playing as Anasazi and as Kongo to try out the new Civs. One quit around 1500, the other in 1650. Standard World map, raging barbarians, no tech brokering; one was at Prince one at Monarch. I'm on a Mac, system X. Usually I have trouble with maps above Large size-- they overload and quit when things get too busy. But never had this problem with Standard and have played at least the last 6 versions of HR extensively.

Is there a crash report when this happens? If so, please post it here as an attachment. Post the saved games too if you still have them. Regular crashes at the same point is indicative of a broken/missing art define which are easy to fix once I find them.

After some testing this is the scheme I'm going with for now (using the forum's nifty new table feature!):


Build %|Wealth|Research|Culture|Espionage
33%|Property|Writing|Aesthetics|Paper
50%|Guilds|Printing|Education|Photography
100%|Corporation|Sci. Method|Sociology|Radio



33% means it takes 3 hammers to produce 1 of the relevant commerce, 50% means it takes 2. I decided to go with 3 ranks instead since a '4 for 1' ratio felt useless and '3 for 2' (75%) felt a bit unintuitive. Each build option (except Espionage) thus become available in the Ancient or Classical era and becomes full strength sometime in the Renaissance. Espionage starts and ends a bit later as I did some reading and it's actually a lot more powerful than I thought.

I have enjoyed the existing production-to-wealth conversion mechanism: Wow, I can now viably run what would have formerly been not a 10% or a 0% but a `-50%' science rate! I've also seen the AI doing this, so, whilst it's a strong strategy, it's not unbalanced.

Whilst I don't know whether proposed reduction in the exchange rates is in itself an improvement, the proportions and associated technologies seem very reasonable to me.

However, these are the usual Civ IV rounded-down integer calculations, yes? So, after Property, the 33% conversion implies the following hammer-to-gold amounts: 9 -> 3, {8,7,6} -> 2, {5,4,3} -> 1, {2,1} -> 0. For cities generating less than 12 hammers (often the case in the Ancient Era), that would pretty much kill off the strategy of converting production to wealth altogether for me. Not only are the returns meagre, but I would also feel obliged to micromanage every turn to ensure that my wealth-generating cities generated multiples of 3 hammers.

Alternative integer calculations such as rounding up don't really solve the problem: If the rates were {9,8,7} -> 3, {6,5,4} -> 2, {3,2,1} -> 1, I would still be micromanaging, and that would become even more irritating. High exchange rates, such as 3 to 1, are as always in Civ IV, the source of the integer arithmetic problems: 2 to 1 is somewhat less of a problem, but would still motivate micromanagement.

Am I right here?

I have enjoyed the existing production-to-wealth conversion mechanism: Wow, I can now viably run what would have formerly been not a 10% or a 0% but a `-50%' science rate! I've also seen the AI doing this, so, whilst it's a strong strategy, it's not unbalanced.

The problem is that a small unimproved city can with no infrastructure can build wealth, cover it's maintenance costs and still make a profit for the empire. This allows (to a degree) the rapid expansion strategy that plagued Civ3: build many tiny and tightly packed cities that exist merely to build wealth to prop up your research and main centres.

However, these are the usual Civ IV rounded-down integer calculations, yes? So, after Property, the 33% conversion implies the following hammer-to-gold amounts: 9 -> 3, {8,7,6} -> 2, {5,4,3} -> 1, {2,1} -> 0.

Yes, that's how it would work.

For cities generating less than 12 hammers (often the case in the Ancient Era), that would pretty much kill off the strategy of converting production to wealth altogether for me. Not only are the returns meagre, but I would also feel obliged to micromanage every turn to ensure that my wealth-generating cities generated multiples of 3 hammers.

It's not meant to be a viable strategy to be honest. If a short term no-investment option like wealth building is more rewarding than building the infrastructure for longer term returns then I consider that to be broken. I want wealth building to be available early because there needs to be something to switch to those times when you need a short term boost or you're waiting for something you need to unlock. Wasting hammers on unneeded units or wonders isn't fun.

That all said, ranks of 50%, 75% and 100% might be a compromise worth trying.

Is there a crash report when this happens? If so, please post it here as an attachment. Post the saved games too if you still have them. Regular crashes at the same point is indicative of a broken/missing art define which are easy to fix once I find them.


I've attached a problem report for the Kongo game; played about 20 more turns this time before crashes resumed. Thanks for help.

I've attached a problem report for the Kongo game; played about 20 more turns this time before crashes resumed. Thanks for help.

When I first played your save game I got a crash after about 4 turns. The crash report from that seems to indicate a problem with a texture. I then tried again to see if it was repeatable but I was able to play into the 1700s without issue.

The crash log you sent me is audio related and that particular problem seems to exist in unmodified BTS as well. I suspect it's just coincidence in this case though and the texture crash is the real problem. Not an easy one to track down unfortunately but I'll see what I can do.

The problem is that a small unimproved city can with no infrastructure can build wealth, cover it's maintenance costs and still make a profit for the empire. This allows (to a degree) the rapid expansion strategy that plagued Civ3: build many tiny and tightly packed cities that exist merely to build wealth to prop up your research and main centres.

It's not meant to be a viable strategy to be honest. If a short term no-investment option like wealth building is more rewarding than building the infrastructure for longer term returns then I consider that to be broken. I want wealth building to be available early because there needs to be something to switch to those times when you need a short term boost or you're waiting for something you need to unlock. Wasting hammers on unneeded units or wonders isn't fun.


I think that we agree here! Check: Is city-spamming actually possible as of HR1.17? Aren't maintenance costs crippling enough to stop it? Has anyone demonstrated it? I've not tried city-spamming, but instead used an `opposite' approach --- build wealth on larger cities (perhaps captured during expansion!) after their basic infrastructure is installed, to support a larger empire. That doesn't feel like an exploit.



That all said, ranks of 50%, 75% and 100% might be a compromise worth trying.

I don't object to the proportions (and I like the 33%, 50%, 100% levels), only the results of the rounding in the integer arithmetic. Alternative: Let the conversion only apply to complete multiples so that the overflow isn't lost. I mean the following:

3 for 1:

9 :hammers: -> 3 :commerce: + 0 :hammers:
8 :hammers: -> 2 :commerce: + 2 :hammers:
7 :hammers: -> 2 :commerce: + 1 :hammers:
6 :hammers: -> 2 :commerce: + 0 :hammers:
5 :hammers: -> 1 :commerce: + 2 :hammers:
4 :hammers: -> 1 :commerce: + 1 :hammers:
3 :hammers: -> 1 :commerce: + 0 :hammers:
2 :hammers: -> 0 :commerce: + 2 :hammers:
1 :hammers: -> 0 :commerce: + 1 :hammers:


This would deal with both the micromanagement and the unfairness of rounding down. Is it practically codeable?

I've not tried city-spamming, but instead used an `opposite' approach --- build wealth on larger cities (perhaps captured during expansion!) after their basic infrastructure is installed, to support a larger empire. That doesn't feel like an exploit.

Yeah that's a perfectly reasonable use for it. At 100% it can support larger empires than I'd like in the early eras though.

I don't object to the proportions (and I like the 33%, 50%, 100% levels), only the results of the rounding in the integer arithmetic. Alternative: Let the conversion only apply to complete multiples so that the overflow isn't lost. I mean the following:

This would deal with both the micromanagement and the unfairness of rounding down. Is it practically codeable?

It's not possible to change the calculation but I might be able to grant the commerce lost to rounding separately. The AI wouldn't understand this but I don't think that would matter much. A more pressing concern is performance - if I have to check every city every turn to see if they're build a commerce then that's not worth it. Hopefully can find a way to attach it to the calculation directly.

Just realized I misunderstood your suggestion when I read it last night. I presume you're wanting those leftover hammers to be carried over and used in next turn's calculation? Unfortunately with commerce building there's no accumulating pool of hammers that they could be added to so it's just not possible and it gets even more complicated when you have to factor in a city potentially changing production from one turn to the next.

I'm fairly new to the mods of Civ IV and the last weeks I've been searching for the ideal mod/modcombinations with nr.1 of the requirements:P Cultural Linked Starts when I found out that this mod had it I immeadiatly checked it out. And of all the mods I've tried this far this is the best, in pretty much every aspect. This mod seems, of all the mods, the most close to the original Civilization and it really just feels like an amazing free expansion pack.
The fact that it also seems to be a really active project just makes it even better.
I haven't been able to play just that much and I hope I get to that ASAP. Till now I've only been able to check the civilopedia out and wow... you did a tarrific job. (removing the Barbarian and Minor Nation is also a big + that shows how much you care for a organized feel.)
Only feature I hope for in the coming future would be some more civilopedia texts for the new leaders/civs etc. I've no clue how all the xml stuff works but if I could be of any help in this matter I'd be glad to learn it!

Anyway, amazing mod and I certainly gonna stick with this one. My ongoing perfect-mod hunt I had the last week found its end with your mod... amazing :) Keep up the good work!

Just realized I misunderstood your suggestion when I read it last night. I presume you're wanting those leftover hammers to be carried over and used in next turn's calculation? Unfortunately with commerce building there's no accumulating pool of hammers that they could be added to so it's just not possible and it gets even more complicated when you have to factor in a city potentially changing production from one turn to the next.

Er, no, you had it right the first time. :) I didn't intend a carry-over-until-the-next-turn, just a partial conversion for the present turn.

I'm fairly new to the mods of Civ IV and the last weeks I've been searching for the ideal mod/modcombinations with nr.1 of the requirements:P Cultural Linked Starts when I found out that this mod had it I immeadiatly checked it out. And of all the mods I've tried this far this is the best, in pretty much every aspect. This mod seems, of all the mods, the most close to the original Civilization and it really just feels like an amazing free expansion pack.

Thanks for your kind words! Always great to know one's work is appreciated.

The fact that it also seems to be a really active project just makes it even better.

Civ5 was such a disappointment so I'll no doubt be working on HR till at least Civ6. Having active regulars and helpful feedback in these forums helps keep me motivated and inspired too.

I haven't been able to play just that much and I hope I get to that ASAP. Till now I've only been able to check the civilopedia out and wow... you did a tarrific job. (removing the Barbarian and Minor Nation is also a big + that shows how much you care for a organized feel.)

Yeah little things like that bugged me, nice to know they bothered others too hehe.

Only feature I hope for in the coming future would be some more civilopedia texts for the new leaders/civs etc. I've no clue how all the xml stuff works but if I could be of any help in this matter I'd be glad to learn it!

Unfortunately I don't have as much time as I'd like to write pedia texts, developing the rest of the mod consumes most of my modding time. If you feel inspired to write some of the missing entries, I'd gladly add them. No need to worry about the xml, you can just post or send it as text and I'll handle the formatting.

Anyway, amazing mod and I certainly gonna stick with this one. My ongoing perfect-mod hunt I had the last week found its end with your mod... amazing :) Keep up the good work!

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you enjoy your games as much as the civilopedia! If you have any issues or suggestions don't hesitate to let me know.

Er, no, you had it right the first time. :) I didn't intend a carry-over-until-the-next-turn, just a partial conversion for the present turn.

Isn't that effectively the same as rounding up though?

Isn't that effectively the same as rounding up though?

Perhaps I was not clear enough. When the conversion is n for 1, I presume that there is a calculation that runs something like:

gold := gold + floor[hammers/n], hammers := 0.

What I intended was:

gold := gold + floor[hammers/n], hammers := hammers - n * floor[hammers/n].

So, I didn't intend it as rounding up, just a mechanism to ensure that there is no wastage due to the side effect of the integer arithmetic. Otherwise, I would be micromanaging to ensure that my city produced a multiple of n hammers.


However, the result is still far in excess of the intention: At 3 for 1, 5 hammers yield 1 gold. I wish that there was a better way to implement this ...

I'm otherwise still busy trying to demonstrate to myself that wealth-production-supported city spamming really is possible in HR1.17. ;)

I see that in HR1.17 the length of time that a city remains unhappy after capture scales with game speed. Yes? On Odyssey speed, in the Ancient Era, a city of size 4 took 15 turns to be pacified. That is perhaps a fair scaling, but I feel that it reduces playability. However, I haven't any better suggestions to offer! Has anyone else an opinion on this?

Small bug:

AI_DIPLO_DEMAND_TRIBUTE_EQUAL_POWER_CLOVIS_1


Reminder:

You were going to see whether the colour of coast tiles could be made different from that of ocean tiles (I'd like the latter to be much darker).


Check:

Skirmishers are causing collateral damage (after Mathematics). Is this intended?

Perhaps I was not clear enough. When the conversion is n for 1, I presume that there is a calculation that runs something like:

gold := gold + floor[hammers/n], hammers := 0.

What I intended was:

gold := gold + floor[hammers/n], hammers := hammers - n * floor[hammers/n].

So, I didn't intend it as rounding up, just a mechanism to ensure that there is no wastage due to the side effect of the integer arithmetic. Otherwise, I would be micromanaging to ensure that my city produced a multiple of n hammers.


However, the result is still far in excess of the intention: At 3 for 1, 5 hammers yield 1 gold. I wish that there was a better way to implement this ...

Ah I get what you mean now. That would require changing the calculation itself though which I cannot do. I suppose I could 'refund' the amount determined by the original formula and then apply the new formula but the AI is still going to use the old formula in it's calculations. It might also mess up the financial advisor and city screen.

I see that in HR1.17 the length of time that a city remains unhappy after capture scales with game speed. Yes? On Odyssey speed, in the Ancient Era, a city of size 4 took 15 turns to be pacified. That is perhaps a fair scaling, but I feel that it reduces playability. However, I haven't any better suggestions to offer! Has anyone else an opinion on this?

Yes it now scales with gamespeed, at the same rate as most other factors of game speed (number of turns in particular):

Gamespeed|Scaling
Quick|50%
Normal|100%
Epic|150%
Saga|200%
Marathon|250%
Odyssey|300%

Small bug:

AI_DIPLO_DEMAND_TRIBUTE_EQUAL_POWER_CLOVIS_1

Found a couple more like this too. Fixed for 1.18, thanks.

You were going to see whether the colour of coast tiles could be made different from that of ocean tiles (I'd like the latter to be much darker).

I had a go at it for 1.17 but discovered that the final colour of coasts and oceans is produced by several different textures overlaying and that it's all too easy to screw up the blends between them and the land. I inadvertently created some strange looking beaches. A much trickier task than I expected but I'll give it another shot for 1.18.

Skirmishers are causing collateral damage (after Mathematics). Is this intended?

Yes. I intend to review the Skirmisher at some point, it's role, mechanics, and maybe even make it its own class of units. I'd really like to split it into Slingers (ancient) and Javelineers (classical) and possibly make Longbowmen the medieval equivalent (with Crossbowmen taking over as the era's city defense unit). The concept might extend into later eras too (Grenadiers for example). Biggest hindrance to doing this atm is available artwork.

I'd argue for it being the other way around- javelins as an ancient skirmishing weapon, slings as a classical one.

Also, if you're really hard up for artwork... what's lacking? You'd use the same skirmisher artwork for the javelin guys, all you need are slingers. Which ones are missing?

Ah I get what you mean now. That would require changing the calculation itself though which I cannot do. I suppose I could 'refund' the amount determined by the original formula and then apply the new formula but the AI is still going to use the old formula in it's calculations. It might also mess up the financial advisor and city screen.


The refund (exactly 1 or 2 hammers) wouldn't ever make a substantial difference to strategic calculations, so it doesn't matter if the AI doesn't know about it. But yes, I hear that you're saying that it's nontrivial to implement ... I'll mull over it and see if I can't come up with another idea. Can you point me to the place where the calculations are made?


Yes it now scales with gamespeed, at the same rate as most other factors of game speed (number of turns in particular):

Gamespeed|Scaling
Quick|50%
Normal|100%
Epic|150%
Saga|200%
Marathon|250%
Odyssey|300%


Thanks for these numbers --- is there a Civilopedia article on gamespeed?


This reminds me of something else that I realised last night. The interest that Financial civilizations get also scales with gamespeed --- it's only paid out every 6 turns on Odyssey. (I presume that this scaling ensures that it it once per turn for Quick.) However, I think that the reasoning leading to scaling with gamespeed is actually not appropriate for the interest, as no other financial transactions scale with gamespeed. A gold-for-resources trade is paid every turn. The commerce generated by working tiles is calculated every turn. Even the effect of `inflation' (whatever that means ... would be nice to eliminate this kludge) is calculated every turn.

To illustrate the result: To maximise the benefit of this bonus, the player should maintain a minimum balance in their treasury. In the Ancient Era, where the cap is 10 gold per `turn', and the interest rate is 1%, that means having a minimum balance of 1000 gold. The result of that 1000 gold is the player's budget is strengthened by 10 gold per `turn'. However, on Odyssey speed, that becomes in practice 10 gold every 6 turns, which is a very poor investment: 0.17% (and this rate doesn't increase with the different caps that arise as the Eras progress). This is just not worth the lost opportunity cost: Hold 1000 gold in the treasury so as to generate less than 2 gold per turn income. The Financial trait becomes very weak, and is possibly actually a hindrance. The reason that it's not fair is that all other income and expenses are calculated per turn, and don't scale with gamespeed.


Whilst on the topic, a side effect of the mechanism of the caps is that they lead to a one-dimensional strategy. There simply isn't any alternative to maintaining that minimum balance (if the returns outweigh the lost opportunity costs!). Perhaps the caps could be better removed altogether? The 1% interest earnt fairly represents a fair return on lost opportunity cost (it's money not spent on technologies, upgrades, etcetera), and doesn't having a large treasury attract the unwanted attention of one's stronger competitors? Yes, it might lead to exploits, but I'd like to be able to demonstrate that. Could you point me to the place where the caps are implemented?

I'd argue for it being the other way around- javelins as an ancient skirmishing weapon, slings as a classical one.

Really? Both weapons were used contemporaneously but I always hear of javelins in classical warfare and rarely slings.

Also, if you're really hard up for artwork... what's lacking? You'd use the same skirmisher artwork for the javelin guys, all you need are slingers. Which ones are missing?

Basically there are several different European ones (Balearic, Thracian, Slavic), an Incan one and that's it.

The refund (exactly 1 or 2 hammers) wouldn't ever make a substantial difference to strategic calculations, so it doesn't matter if the AI doesn't know about it. But yes, I hear that you're saying that it's nontrivial to implement ... I'll mull over it and see if I can't come up with another idea. Can you point me to the place where the calculations are made?

The percentages are set in CIVProcessInfo.xml but the calculation itself is hidden away inside either the DLL or BTS itself. Anything we want to attach to it would have to be done via onCityDoTurn in CvEventManager.py. CvMainInterface.py and BugFinanceAdvisor.py would also have to be adjusted to show the changes. Even a simple change would require a ton of testing.

Thanks for these numbers --- is there a Civilopedia article on gamespeed?

No. I should probably add one sometime. It's all very intertwined with map size and difficulty level though.

This reminds me of something else that I realised last night. The interest that Financial civilizations get also scales with gamespeed --- it's only paid out every 6 turns on Odyssey. (I presume that this scaling ensures that it it once per turn for Quick.)

Yes.

However, I think that the reasoning leading to scaling with gamespeed is actually not appropriate for the interest, as no other financial transactions scale with gamespeed. A gold-for-resources trade is paid every turn. The commerce generated by working tiles is calculated every turn.

When I first added Financial's interest bonus it was received every turn regardless of game speed. It was insanely overpowered on the slower game speeds, even with the caps. Drastically stronger than any other trait and Financial leaders were winning the game almost without fail. Never underestimate the power of compound interest.

However, I am going to raise the caps in 1.18 (to 100 per era) and see how that goes. I think that's a much safer and probably more effective solution. If that goes well we can consider removing the caps altogether.

Even the effect of `inflation' (whatever that means ... would be nice to eliminate this kludge) is calculated every turn.

Can't be eliminated without completely overhauling how maintenance is calculated and how everything is priced. A balancing nightmare.

When I first added Financial's interest bonus it was received every turn regardless of game speed. It was insanely overpowered on the slower game speeds, even with the caps. Drastically stronger than any other trait and Financial leaders were winning the game almost without fail. Never underestimate the power of compound interest.

However, I am going to raise the caps in 1.18 (to 100 per era) and see how that goes. I think that's a much safer and probably more effective solution. If that goes well we can consider removing the caps altogether.


Please reconsider. The scaling with gamespeed really is a problem. The caps are easier to modify.

Apart from being incompatible with other turn-based financial transactions, scaling with gamespeed means that the Financial trait is actually worthless on Odyssey. The return per 1000 gold invested is currently less than 2 gold per turn. I can get a greater benefit in many ways (perhaps by building wealth!), and that without the lost opportunity cost: The 1000-per-Era gold could be better invested in supporting deficit spending, unit upgrades, technology purchases, etcetera, whilst at the same time not prompting my more avaricious neighbours to make arrogant demands.

If it's not scaled with gamespeed, the current caps lead to the Financial trait being worth only 10 gold per turn in the Ancient Era, and more generally 10 gold per turn per Era. The compounding effect is only visible whilst the treasury is being built up to the `cap-limit' of 1000 gold per Era. If 10 gold per turn per Era really is overpowered (for the AI, for the human player?), then the level of the caps needs to be lowered rather than raised. (Hmm: Perhaps it would be simpler to give the Financial player a treasury bonus of X gold per turn per Era, not call it capped interest, and not require an investment? Not elegant!)

----------------

Aside: I've done some more play-testing and I now have an opinion on the scaling of pacification with gamespeed: The conqueror likes it! The negative effect of having to garrison captured cities longer is nicely offset by the fact that they aren't so quickly smothered by the culture of nearby not-yet captured cities.

Workers of the World, unite under the red flag!

HR1.17: See the attached save file: Somewhere around 400BC the Workers started appearing as red splodges. I've not seen this before.

Please reconsider. The scaling with gamespeed really is a problem. The caps are easier to modify.

I'll have a think about it. Either the scaling or the cap has to stay, removing both would be game breaking.

(Hmm: Perhaps it would be simpler to give the Financial player a treasury bonus of X gold per turn per Era, not call it capped interest, and not require an investment? Not elegant!)

Easier to balance but it removes strategy completely from the equation. Not ideal.

Aside: I've done some more play-testing and I now have an opinion on the scaling of pacification with gamespeed: The conqueror likes it! The negative effect of having to garrison captured cities longer is nicely offset by the fact that they aren't so quickly smothered by the culture of nearby not-yet captured cities.

Good news.

Workers of the World, unite under the red flag!

HR1.17: See the attached save file: Somewhere around 400BC the Workers started appearing as red splodges. I've not seen this before.

I'm not able to load the saved game atm but I'm guessing HC = Huayna Capac? if so, that's due to bad art define for the Mesoamerican worker and is fixed for 1.18.

Hi Xyth! I'm a happy fan, enjoying 1.17. Just wanted to leave you a save game/error report. I suspect it's similar to what others have experienced, as it happens in the Medieval Era.

Keep up the excellent work!

319586

319588

Hi Xyth! I'm a happy fan, enjoying 1.17. Just wanted to leave you a save game/error report. I suspect it's similar to what others have experienced, as it happens in the Medieval Era.

Keep up the excellent work!

Thanks for these. That crash report is related to the display of city buildings on the world map, however I continued your saved game into the 1600s and wasn't able to reproduce it. Does it happen repeatedly (on or near the same turn) for you?

I notice though that you are running BTS 3.17. I don't know if that could be the cause of this particular crash but please update to 3.19 as its bound to be the cause of other problems.



EDIT: I have discovered and fixed one error directly related to Polynesian city art. I didn't cause a crash for me but it may have done on 3.17.

I'm not able to load the saved game atm but I'm guessing HC = Huayna Capac? if so, that's due to bad art define for the Mesoamerican worker and is fixed for 1.18.

Check!

Now, we're at it with bad art assets: In one of my games the Thai rushed me with some startlingly pink horse archers (or horsemen or whatever they're called now).

It was largely my own fault misreading the diplomatic situation, but their hues were kind of unsettling.

First: the work you've put into this mod is amazing. I've played through a whole game with it and it is phenomenal and complex. Well done.

Is there any chance in the future of the addition of a RFC stability mechanic or something like the revolutions in the Revolution mod? I'm playing on mac, and I wonder if it would require a custom dll? I don't know if you've already addressed this (I'm new to CivFanatics) so please forgive me if you've done so already.

Again, thanks for creating this incredible mod!

Yes, something like that would require modifications he can't do without the dev kit, which he doesn't have access to and probably never will.

Now, we're at it with bad art assets: In one of my games the Thai rushed me with some startlingly pink horse archers (or horsemen or whatever they're called now).

It was largely my own fault misreading the diplomatic situation, but their hues were kind of unsettling.

Hmm, I'm not able to reproduce that. Pink units means a texture is missing or not referenced properly but both the Thai Horseman and Horse Archer are showing up the expected colours for me. What graphics settings are you using?

First: the work you've put into this mod is amazing. I've played through a whole game with it and it is phenomenal and complex. Well done.

Thank you.

Is there any chance in the future of the addition of a RFC stability mechanic or something like the revolutions in the Revolution mod? I'm playing on mac, and I wonder if it would require a custom dll? I don't know if you've already addressed this (I'm new to CivFanatics) so please forgive me if you've done so already.

Yes, something like that would require modifications he can't do without the dev kit, which he doesn't have access to and probably never will.

The Revolutions mod relies heavily on a custom DLL. As Mac BTS does not support these there is no way I can make it function in HR. That said, it's a concept I want to look into at some point and it might be possible for me to implement something vaguely similar, though much simpler. I'd need to do a lot of testing before confirming either way though.

I understand that you made the change so that on cities can be founded on Ice.

However, that leaves a number squares with special resources that can never be exploited.
Annoying.
I wonder whether there is any way to change that.

I understand that you made the change so that on cities can be founded on Ice.

However, that leaves a number squares with special resources that can never be exploited.
Annoying.
I wonder whether there is any way to change that.

Please read the following post and subsequent discussions to know why this was done and ideas for alternatives. Input is appreciated.

Thanks for these. That crash report is related to the display of city buildings on the world map, however I continued your saved game into the 1600s and wasn't able to reproduce it. Does it happen repeatedly (on or near the same turn) for you?

I notice though that you are running BTS 3.17. I don't know if that could be the cause of this particular crash but please update to 3.19 as its bound to be the cause of other problems.



EDIT: I have discovered and fixed one error directly related to Polynesian city art. I didn't cause a crash for me but it may have done on 3.17.

I continue to crashes in the Middle Ages as well. Still playing Kongo and Anasazi mostly. But they don't generally repeat, so I'm ignoring them.

BTW, speaking of Skirmishers, the Anasazi Atlatl is an awesome early game unit, which can be completely dominant in the very hilly terrains spawned on Terra maps.

As with 1.16, I will attempt to increase the default number of civs on Massive World size for my Windows box (just a personal preference). To add some spice I won't (at least initially) unpack the custom assets folder: let's celebrate the work Xyth has done in cleaning them up!

Hopefully you see some decent performance/memory improvements. Loading time with the unit files unpacked is a certainly a lot faster than it used to be, but it's tricky to measure how much difference this optimization it makes in game, only that there should be some. I'd be interested in your findings.

I have an delightful game in progress. Monarch Level; 24 AI Civs on Old World Start; Raging Barbs, Aggressive AI and Fewer Religions. Current turn is 320/600. It's too early, but so far no performance issues save some turn lag.

The one thing I would like to adjust are the number of religions. Is it possible to adjust locally the "Fewer Religions" to 1/2 rather than 2/3?

Having reached the Medieval Era, I have more confidence that my rig's memory allocation will hold to game's end. That is of course if I can make it that far: Civ with these settings has become quite a challenge!

http://well-of-souls.com/civ/civ5_expansion.html

They are adding some new stuff to Civilization 5.

May be some stuff that will inspire some changes or additions to HR.

Very complicated and new religion system.

Having fun with a really tough game as Isabella on Emperess. I decided to play a spiritual leader to get to know the civic table a little better.

It's ages ago that I played unmodded BTS last, so it's diffucult to see what's going on and going wrong for me in late medieval, early renaissance times. At this stage, the AI is teching horrendously fast, even taking in account the AI is playing on Noble. I looked into the CIV4HandicapInfo.xml and found not much of a difference to BTS. iResearch is set to 130, was 120. And the AI starts with four initial techs, was two. I rule these factors out, because in the ancient era I was on par or ahead. Has anyone encountered this phenomenon? Otherwise it must be my sleepy playing and being used to a mod that's restricted to antiquity.

Since the unlimited specialists were removed from Caste System, you are bound to build cottages to generate commerce for research – once you eventually researched Employment. You will have to wait then for Democracy to run unlimited scientists. This amounts with the now missing three beakers per specialist through Representation to a drastic dependency on the base commerce of your starting position, regarding your research speed. And there's not much to decide, to try, to risk, to do something about that initial commerce situation by your own choice, mostly because you can't snatch Representation anymore by chopping the Pyramids (free choice of government civics) very early! I do like the change to Caste System and Pyramids, but where the hell are the early beakers are supposed to come from, now:crazyeye:?

I was lucky to have a productive starting location with horses next to the capital. I killed my next neighbour right away and his capital was excellent; that's why I stayed on par for a long time. In my first two games, I was doing very bad, though, and this aggressive approach and exploiting the building of wealth as soon as possible appears the only viable solution.

My second next neighbour was Protective. Driving me nuts with the Medic promotion. The meaning of being a protective leader turns into the opposite, if Medic promoted chariots are perfectly well suited for early rushes, really inviting you to raid the enemies instead of protecting your frontiers from raiding enemies. I wish I had had them.

Mapscripts:
When I tried the World mapscript, all settings medium and normal, culturally linked, old word start, it returned a strange Standard size map that left space to claim 25 cities for each civ without conflict, even though I added more starting civs than default, expecting some immediate fighting about settlement locations. And it returned the civs starting everywhere.

Tectonics is giving me all kinds of strange Tundra starts, and the maps look arid altogether, despite I selected temperate.

I hope I'm not putting you on the wrong track, Xyth, but in my impression, there's something buggy with those map scripts – perhaps connected to the "culturally linked Python:confused:.

Bugs:
The Olympic bug is still in, held games won't leave cities, sometimes.

I remember my warrior pillaged, civic was Militia. In Vassalage and Conscription pillaging is impossible.

Miscellaneous:
Post office, custom house and tavern seem too close techwise, although they may fit there thematically. No big problem, but you're queuing several alike buildings in your cities.

I like the cuneiform loading screen very much, starting to understand my first words while the game is loading;), but in one of the info screens, it makes for a hard read.

Post Office, Custom House, and Tavern are (as I recall) placed close together because that's kind of a gap in the game- there's not so much to build in the medieval-renaissance era.


Medic promotions should only be available for 'infantry' units in my opinion: melee, archer, and gunpowder troops.

It seems to me that the Medic promotion mostly favors large stacks of units, because it means there's a tangible advantage to standing in the same square as a medic and resting a turn (or being a medic and resting a turn). That offers an advantage to siege warfare on both sides: units are harder to wear down by attrition, but city-busting stacks are harder to destroy.

Protective isn't and shouldn't be totally useless for offensive warfare- that was one of the flaws in its original design, was that it mainly benefited units by giving them a free City Defense promotion. Since the AI already tends to turtle in its cities and let you ravage the countryside, and doesn't seem smart enough to raid your land effectively... that's a problem. The City Defense promotions teach it to pile all its armies up in the cities, and it becomes very vulnerable to a clever opponent.

Many "Protective" leaders in the game (like Churchill) were successful in war when their troops finally went on the offensive, after all. "Protective" leaders should have AI priorities and promotions so that you think twice about attacking them, and have to fear their counterattack, but will probably live in peace with you otherwise. They shouldn't just be a slightly harder type of nut for you to crack open.

Whereas "Aggressive" leaders will more predictably attack you, and "Tactical" leaders could do either.

Does that make sense?

Having the frequency with which Financial gives interest depend on game speed is not a good idea.
As stated by someone else, the other money you get you get every turn, regardless of game speed. The maintanence costs apply every turn, the same regardless of game speed.
Therefore, the interest should not change with game speed.
It is research costs, etc. that change with game speed.

I did not find the interest "overpowering on slow speeds."

I am playing a Financial Leader on Oddesey speed and while the interest is better than nothing, it is now an extremely weak benefit.

I strongly recommend putting the interest back to how it worked in prior versions. Leave the cap alone.

Really? Both weapons were used contemporaneously but I always hear of javelins in classical warfare and rarely slings.



Basically there are several different European ones (Balearic, Thracian, Slavic), an Incan one and that's it.



The percentages are set in CIVProcessInfo.xml but the calculation itself is hidden away inside either the DLL or BTS itself. Anything we want to attach to it would have to be done via onCityDoTurn in CvEventManager.py. CvMainInterface.py and BugFinanceAdvisor.py would also have to be adjusted to show the changes. Even a simple change would require a ton of testing.



No. I should probably add one sometime. It's all very intertwined with map size and difficulty level though.



Yes.



When I first added Financial's interest bonus it was received every turn regardless of game speed. It was insanely overpowered on the slower game speeds, even with the caps. Drastically stronger than any other trait and Financial leaders were winning the game almost without fail. Never underestimate the power of compound interest.

However, I am going to raise the caps in 1.18 (to 100 per era) and see how that goes. I think that's a much safer and probably more effective solution. If that goes well we can consider removing the caps altogether.



Can't be eliminated without completely overhauling how maintenance is calculated and how everything is priced. A balancing nightmare.

I understand that you made the change so that on cities can be founded on Ice.

However, that leaves a number squares with special resources that can never be exploited.
Annoying.
I wonder whether there is any way to change that.

Please read the following post and subsequent discussions to know why this was done and ideas for alternatives. Input is appreciated.

This change was made to prevent large and unrealistic polar cities. It's not the ideal solution though as the actual problem is due to the high yield of coastal waters. Some map scripts generate a lot more ice terrain than is desirable too. Consider it a temporary fix until I can implement a more finely tuned solution.

I continue to crashes in the Middle Ages as well. Still playing Kongo and Anasazi mostly. But they don't generally repeat, so I'm ignoring them.

Yeah there is something strange and elusive going on in the Middle Ages. No luck tracking it down yet but hopefully with time I'll uncover the problem.

BTW, speaking of Skirmishers, the Anasazi Atlatl is an awesome early game unit, which can be completely dominant in the very hilly terrains spawned on Terra maps.

I quite like how the Atlatl has turned out. Situationally strong in a way that makes you adjust your strategy to accommodate it. Ideally I'd like to tweak all UUs to be more like this.

The one thing I would like to adjust are the number of religions. Is it possible to adjust locally the "Fewer Religions" to 1/2 rather than 2/3?

That's not an easy change to make but I can see how it would be useful to your large games. When I get a chance I'll PM you the relevant file with the change made. Remind me if you don't receive it within a few days.

Having fun with a really tough game as Isabella on Emperess. I decided to play a spiritual leader to get to know the civic table a little better.

It's ages ago that I played unmodded BTS last, so it's diffucult to see what's going on and going wrong for me in late medieval, early renaissance times. At this stage, the AI is teching horrendously fast, even taking in account the AI is playing on Noble. I looked into the CIV4HandicapInfo.xml and found not much of a difference to BTS. iResearch is set to 130, was 120. And the AI starts with four initial techs, was two. I rule these factors out, because in the ancient era I was on par or ahead. Has anyone encountered this phenomenon? Otherwise it must be my sleepy playing and being used to a mod that's restricted to antiquity.

It doesn't work that way. The AI doesn't have a separate difficulty level, it's all determined by the player's difficulty setting. So if you're playing on Emperor then that entry in CIV4HandicapInfo.xml determines all bonuses and penalties for you and the AI. You'll both have the same research rate (defined by <iResearch>) but the AI will be getting numerous other economic and production bonuses that you're not getting. These are all defined by the tags that begin with 'AI'.

The Custom Game/Scenario shows 'Noble' greyed out for all AI but it doesn't mean anything other than poor UI design. The entry in GlobalDefines.xml merely sets the default difficulty when the game is loaded for the first time.

HR is deliberately more difficult so I recommend starting on a lower difficulty than you would choose for unmodded BTS.

Since the unlimited specialists were removed from Caste System, you are bound to build cottages to generate commerce for research – once you eventually researched Employment. You will have to wait then for Democracy to run unlimited scientists. This amounts with the now missing three beakers per specialist through Representation to a drastic dependency on the base commerce of your starting position, regarding your research speed. And there's not much to decide, to try, to risk, to do something about that initial commerce situation by your own choice, mostly because you can't snatch Representation anymore by chopping the Pyramids (free choice of government civics) very early! I do like the change to Caste System and Pyramids, but where the hell are the early beakers are supposed to come from, now:crazyeye:?

Your prime source of commerce in the early game is from the Redistribution civic; build many mines in your hills and camps in the forests/jungles/savannah. Slavery will also give you some commerce from your Quarries and Plantations. Build Kilns in your cities too.

Mapscripts:
When I tried the World mapscript, all settings medium and normal, culturally linked, old word start, it returned a strange Standard size map that left space to claim 25 cities for each civ without conflict, even though I added more starting civs than default, expecting some immediate fighting about settlement locations. And it returned the civs starting everywhere.

I haven't tested the Old World start recently, I may have broken something.

Tectonics is giving me all kinds of strange Tundra starts, and the maps look arid altogether, despite I selected temperate.

I hope I'm not putting you on the wrong track, Xyth, but in my impression, there's something buggy with those map scripts – perhaps connected to the "culturally linked Python:confused:.

Culturally linked starts doesn't change the map or starting locations at all, all it does is reassign which civs get which location. So it won't be that. Both of those map scripts use Tundra (alongside Peaks) to represent mountainous terrain like the Himalayas, making the terrain a lot more common than on other map types. They are also both designed for realism over balance. I'll take a look though.

Bugs:
The Olympic bug is still in, held games won't leave cities, sometimes.

Yeah, I haven't been able to figure out what's going on there. I may need to rethink its mechanics a little.

I like the cuneiform loading screen very much, starting to understand my first words while the game is loading;), but in one of the info screens, it makes for a hard read.

I noticed that. I'll see if I can fix it.

I remember my warrior pillaged, civic was Militia. In Vassalage and Conscription pillaging is impossible.

The Protective trait makes one's improvements immune to pillaging. I'm guessing that's what you're seeing there, civics shouldn't be affecting it at all.

My second next neighbour was Protective. Driving me nuts with the Medic promotion. The meaning of being a protective leader turns into the opposite, if Medic promoted chariots are perfectly well suited for early rushes, really inviting you to raid the enemies instead of protecting your frontiers from raiding enemies. I wish I had had them.

Protective isn't and shouldn't be totally useless for offensive warfare- that was one of the flaws in its original design, was that it mainly benefited units by giving them a free City Defense promotion. Since the AI already tends to turtle in its cities and let you ravage the countryside, and doesn't seem smart enough to raid your land effectively... that's a problem. The City Defense promotions teach it to pile all its armies up in the cities, and it becomes very vulnerable to a clever opponent.

Many "Protective" leaders in the game (like Churchill) were successful in war when their troops finally went on the offensive, after all. "Protective" leaders should have AI priorities and promotions so that you think twice about attacking them, and have to fear their counterattack, but will probably live in peace with you otherwise. They shouldn't just be a slightly harder type of nut for you to crack open.

Simon describes my intentions for the Protective trait well.

Medic promotions should only be available for 'infantry' units in my opinion: melee, archer, and gunpowder troops.

It seems to me that the Medic promotion mostly favors large stacks of units, because it means there's a tangible advantage to standing in the same square as a medic and resting a turn (or being a medic and resting a turn). That offers an advantage to siege warfare on both sides: units are harder to wear down by attrition, but city-busting stacks are harder to destroy.

The Protective trait only grants it to Melee, Archer and Gunpowder troops. It is available to Mounted, Recon and Naval units via experience, but not until the Medieval era.

Having the frequency with which Financial gives interest depend on game speed is not a good idea.
As stated by someone else, the other money you get you get every turn, regardless of game speed. The maintanence costs apply every turn, the same regardless of game speed.
Therefore, the interest should not change with game speed.
It is research costs, etc. that change with game speed.

I did not find the interest "overpowering on slow speeds."

It was overpowered in combination with Build Wealth, but since I'm probably adding ranks to that mechanic that may be enough to warrant removing the game speed scaling from interest payments. I'm still experimenting and testing.

Mapscripts:
When I tried the World mapscript, all settings medium and normal, culturally linked, old word start, it returned a strange Standard size map that left space to claim 25 cities for each civ without conflict, even though I added more starting civs than default, expecting some immediate fighting about settlement locations. And it returned the civs starting everywhere.

My settings and preferences were similar, save the world size (Massive). It seems here at least the Old World starting locations were honoured, as I have encountered 18/24 of the AI civs in less than a quarter of the map.

That's not an easy change to make but I can see how it would be useful to your large games. When I get a chance I'll PM you the relevant file with the change made. Remind me if you don't receive it within a few days.

Thank you. Please do not hurry, as I don't see my next game starting for a while. That said, the adjustment may be useful for others: I don't know whether number of religions has been dissected, but having all 18 in play too early distorts their benefits IMHO.

The Protective trait only grants [the Medic I promotion] to Melee, Archer and Gunpowder troops. It is available to Mounted, Recon and Naval units via experience, but not until the Medieval era....I fail to see how that's relevant (although it occurs to me that Medic-promoted transports may be good 'hospital ships' for damaged ground units, that's something I'll have to try).

What I mean is that there are, essentially, two kinds of ground combat in the game. One is "siege warfare" the moving of large stacks of units, typically with a move rate of 1 except in the very late game, up to enemy cities to duke it out with the defenders. In these kinds of fights, both sides usually have several units on a side, the attacker brings siege units, and so on. It's somewhat positional and predictable what will happen and when- the attacker batters down the city's defense rating, then tries to storm it with assault troops in enough numbers to overrun the defenders.

The other is "raiding warfare," usually done by fast units (or infantry exploiting rough terrain in the enemy's homeland to march into unattackable positions where they can defend against cavalry counterattack).

The Medic promotion is most useful for 'siege' warfare, on both sides of the line but especially for the attacker, because of how it affects your ability to heal up your troops after a pitched battle on enemy territory.

It is not so useful for raiders, in my opinion, because raiders are often expendable and expended (they have to get close to enemy cities and are vulnerable to counterattacks, but damage the enemy's economy and bring in money anyhow).

Now, the idea that "protective" leaders will excel at offensive and defensive positional warfare, slogging battles over strong fortresses and so on... that actually makes sense. That's where you expect tenacity, meticulous preparation, and skill at rallying the people for long pounding matches to pay off.

To take WWII Britain as an example, the British were quite good at set-piece actions (Montgomery made his career around them) but not so good at agile, mobile actions (the only general I can think of who was really good at them was O'Connor, and he played only a limited role in the war because Rommel got lucky and captured him almost immediately on the German arrival in North Africa). So for Churchill the "protective" leader to excel at positional "siege" battles actually makes sense.

Meanwhile, "aggressive" leaders with their free commando promotion would excel at "raiding" warfare, because they can penetrate deep into your territory so easily. Countering them would be hard- you'd need a fairly strong force of counterpunch units in a zone five tiles or so deep behind the frontier to intercept their raiders, and even then they could ravage the borderland just by riding a few squares in along your own roads and hitting "pillage."

The safest bet might be to not connect your road network to their at all... worked for the Soviets in Barbarossa, so to speak.

(There's a story there too, if anyone wants to hear it)

You'll both have the same research rate (defined by <iResearch>) but the AI will be getting numerous other economic and production bonuses that you're not getting. These are all defined by the tags that begin with 'AI'.
Hm, there's only one line different to the BTS CIV4HandicapInfo.xml, the iResearch tag (plus the additional starting techs), or are there any other AI handicap modifiers defined elsewhere:confused:?

HR is deliberately more difficult so I recommend starting on a lower difficulty than you would choose for unmodded BTS.
No complaints about that. In Bts, four free starting techs is Deity level, in HR it's Emperor, however. I have a simple assumption, why the AI is sweeping from a one-tech-lead towards a six-techs-lead during the late medieval, early renaissance age: The AI arrives there just a little sooner and gets all those finance and science multiplier buildings up just a few turns before you. I noticed, that as soon as the human player catches up with constructing the same finance and science buildings, he is lagging behind by a more or less constant distance in numbers of techs.

I was lucky to get a GA in the right moment, which helped me to build Versailles in time. This wonder combined with Aristocracy relaxes the economy greatly. I almost caught up with the AI:king::

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Your prime source of commerce in the early game is from the Redistribution civic; build many mines in your hills and camps in the forests/jungles/savannah. Slavery will also give you some commerce from your Quarries and Plantations. Build Kilns in your cities too.

True, but it's still much less beakers compared to the BTS Pyramids-Representation mechanism.

I haven't tested the Old World start recently, I may have broken something.

My settings and preferences were similar, save the world size (Massive). It seems here at least the Old World starting locations were honoured, as I have encountered 18/24 of the AI civs in less than a quarter of the map.

I hope I reported the right settings, I'll have to check again. My current game is on a Mixed map, normal medium settings, and everything's working fine there.

The Protective trait only grants it to Melee, Archer and Gunpowder troops. It is available to Mounted, Recon and Naval units via experience, but not until the Medieval era.
Have a Protective leader attack you with Medic promoted knights and trebuchets: You will need to build a lot of ranged units yourself to soften this enemy stack before your city, and still the recovery rate of the stack is quite threatening. It shows, the Protective trait is perfectly suitable for harassing the enemy in his territory, rather than securing the homeland. It's true, I was mistaken about chariots having the Medic promotion, but Medic promoted axes make an early axe rush considerably easier. That too reduces the idea of Medic promotion through the Protective trait to absurdity.



It's a pity, that I don't have the time to play on Odyssey speed, because on Normal I'm finding my unique unit, conquistadors, going swiftly obsolete in a matter of turns, when cavalry becomes available. It takes three to four, sometimes two turns during this stage of the game to research the next tech. This time lapse effect showed in BTS, too, but I'm not sure, whether it was so extreme. The conquistadors arrive in their "theater of operations", when you're busy building artillery in your mainland cities…

Hm. Pacing may be an issue.




Regarding the Conquistador, perhaps we should make one of its special features that it is available early? The Spanish did most of their great feats of conquest in the 15th and early 16th centuries, which was chronologically before the widespread use of gunpowder weapons for cavalry by at least fifty years. Sure, there were some arquebuses and cannon mixed in with the forces deployed by Cortez, Pizarro, and the Reconquista. But they didn't dominate, the way the wheellock pistol and the modification of tactics to accomodate gunpowder dominated 17th century and later cavalry warfare.

In the early iterations of Civ IV, before they added the Cuirassier unit, I'm pretty sure the Conquistador replaced the Knight. We might not want to go back that far, but... we could seriously consider it. At the moment, as I recall, the Byzantine Cataphract is a high-strength Knight substitute that basically gives them the striking power of a Cuirassier; the Conquistador is a Cuirassier-substitute that gets defensive terrain bonuses and a bonus against melee troops.




It would arguably make more sense for the Cataphract to be a Knight with first strikes and/or a higher withdrawal chance. That would reflect the unusual tactical sophistication of Byzantine heavy cavalry, and their use of archery.

While the Conquistador would be an early-availability Cuirassier which excels at beating up primitive units (bonus against melee as usual, possibly also a modest bonus against archers, like the Janissary or Pombos), and also more useful for taking or sacking cities.

Does this make sense?

You might even make the Conquistador lower strength than the standard Cuirassier (say, Strength 11), but its bonus against melee makes it significantly more effective against its dedicated counter-unit (the Pikeman), so it's still a pretty significant upgrade from the Knight.

That would fit well into Xyth's goal of making the unique units... I can't find where he said it, but I remember. His point was that unique units shouldn't just be "OHMIGOD SUPER!" versions of the normal units of their era. They should be superior, but their advantages should significantly affect how you use the unit- so you have to tailor your strategy to take best advantage of the strengths of your special unit. If you just use it the same way you'd use the default units, you don't get so much benefit from it.

Making the conquistador strong against primitive units and relatively good (for cavalry) at city assaults encourages the Spanish player to go find a primitive enemy to beat up while those units are available.




Also, yes, I think we need some way to restrict Medic promotions, at least from mounted and siege units. Naval units are okay, but mounted and siege units become much more dangerous when you can give them medic promotions, because they're harder to wear down in combat.

I think I may have an insight on the Olympics bug: Saved game loading. It seems to never leave whatever city it was in when a save is loaded (or, on rare occasions, appear and disappear *on the same turn* right after loading).

On the Medieval era crashing, I seem to recall that I really started to see performance issues and crashes on a previously stable game about the time I researched Compass. Perhaps the problem has something to do with the way trade routes over Ocean is handled?

I have done some more thinking about the Financial Trait versus game speed.

For simplicity let us assume 2 game speeds, Fast and Slow.
For simplicity let us assume each turn for Fast is 1 year while each turn for slow is 6 months.
Slow has twice as many turns as Slow.

The city maintenance costs are the same for the two speeds.
If it is 10 per year on Fast then it is also 10 per turn on Slow, which is 20 per year on Slow. In dollar terms your rent is twice as much per year on Slow as on Fast.

A cleric specialist generates 1 per year on Fast and 2 per year on Slow.

A plot with one coin generates 1 per year on Fast and 2 per year on Slow.

A technology that costs 1000 on Fast should cost 2000 on Slow, so that it takes the same number of years to research but twice as many turns on Slow.

With Financial on Fast you get +1 coin (commerce?) per city per turn, the same as from a cleric specialist,
With Financial on Slow you also get +1 coin (commerce?) per city per turn, which is 2 per year.

Let us assume the older version of the Financial Trait.

With Financial you earn 1% on your money per turn, subject to the cap.
On Fast that is 1% per year, on Slow that is 2% per year.
If you are at the cap, you get twice the dollar amount per year on Slow as on Fast, which matches the increased costs and income from other sources.

The one difference is how long it takes you to reach the cap, in other words how long it takes you to save of the maximum useful amount to benefit from the interest.

Let us assume for example a net income of 50 per turn and a cap of 1000.
It takes 20 turns to save that up, ignoring for simplicity interest effects.
This is 20 years on Fast but only 10 years on slow.

Once you are at the cap, the dollar amounts earned are in the right 2 to 1 ratio.
However, at the Slow Speed it takes half of the effort to get to the cap.

1000 dollars on the Fast speed is really equivalent to 2000 dollars on the Slow Speed.

I think the following revised version of the Financial Trait would work:
On Slow, receive interest once every other turn, in other words once year.
(Equivalent to making the interest rate per turn 1/2% rather than 1%, resulting in a rate of 1% per year on both speeds.)
On Slow, double the cap.

Then once one gets to the cap of 1000 on Fast you get 10 per turn.
Once one gets to the cap of 2000 on Slow you get 20 every other turn.
On a per turn basis, you get the same amount at each speed, as it should be.
On a per year basis, you get twice the amount on Slow, as it should be.

Now it takes the same number of years to save up the cap on both speeds.

This seems similar to the revision for 1.18 to the new 1.17 version that you mentioned.

While I have assumed a ratio of 2 to 1, similar ideas apply for any other ratio.
For a 3 to 1 ratio, one would get the interest once every 3 turns, but the cap would be three times as much.

As has been noted before, when you reload a saved game with Olympic Games in a city, it does not leave after the usual number of turns.

This happened to me in my current game.
City X had "perpetual" Olympics.
However, after a good while, the Olympic Games at random came to City X.
The games now left at their usual time!
No more perpetual Olympics.

I am guessing that whenever the Olympics games show up they set an exit date.
However, any exit date is not included on a reload of a saved game.

Hope this helps to figure out what is going wrong.

To check the World mapscript again, which had appeared awkward to me, I selected one more time Old World Start, culturally linked, break Pangea, everything else medium and normal, and what I got was a Pangea map with no sign of culturally linkedness.

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Aesthetically, the World mapscript produces interesting maps, and I wouldn't mind the challenge, but in that first roll I'm at an inland lake with one crab, two calendar resources both covered with jungle, and all other workable tiles covered with wood… This would make for a terrible laggy early game in HR on Emperor. I would reroll.

This start is also illustrating my view, that HR isn't offering enough sources of commerce in the early game.

Since the unlimited specialists were removed from Caste System, you are bound to build cottages to generate commerce for research – once you eventually researched Employment. You will have to wait then for Democracy to run unlimited scientists. This amounts with the now missing three beakers per specialist through Representation to a drastic dependency on the base commerce of your starting position, regarding your research speed. And there's not much to decide, to try, to risk, to do something about that initial commerce situation by your own choice, mostly because you can't snatch Representation anymore by chopping the Pyramids (free choice of government civics) very early! I do like the change to Caste System and Pyramids, but where the hell are the early beakers are supposed to come from, now:crazyeye:?

Your prime source of commerce in the early game is from the Redistribution civic; build many mines in your hills and camps in the forests/jungles/savannah. Slavery will also give you some commerce from your Quarries and Plantations. Build Kilns in your cities too.

This reply seems a little unsatisfying to me. Redistribution and Employment may be of help, but they come too late. That's hardly "early game" anymore. And there's little point in beelining to Redistribution; other important techs are too vital to leave out: Monarchy for building wealth, The Wheel to connect your resources, military techs to deal with barbarians…

A suggestion to create "more early commerce": How about making kilns improvements instead of buildings? It takes forever, until you are allowed to chop woods, while kilns should be possible to be built from the very beginning. The according kiln knowledge is older than 4000 BC, I suppose. For the sake of balance, to grant something to floodplain starters, too: perhaps irrigation ditches very early (art existing)? And more of the like.

Sadly, I wasn't able to finish my Isabella game, and there's little chance to do so in the next weeks. But it's been great fun so far:thumbsup:, and HR should be dragged more to the light of day. Isn't it possible to "apply" for coverage on the "front page" of the forum. I would like to see HR 1.18 as big attentionwise as it deserves:).

Hm, there's only one line different to the BTS CIV4HandicapInfo.xml, the iResearch tag (plus the additional starting techs), or are there any other AI handicap modifiers defined elsewhere:confused:?

Besides CIV4HandicapInfo.xml, there are others in CIV4GameSpeedInfo.xml, CIV4WorldInfo.xml, and CIV4EraInfos.xml. All of them affect the player and the AI though, I'm not aware of any that affect just one and not the other. The AI gets ahead because of it's bonuses to production, commerce, etc

It's a pity, that I don't have the time to play on Odyssey speed, because on Normal I'm finding my unique unit, conquistadors, going swiftly obsolete in a matter of turns, when cavalry becomes available. It takes three to four, sometimes two turns during this stage of the game to research the next tech. This time lapse effect showed in BTS, too, but I'm not sure, whether it was so extreme. The conquistadors arrive in their "theater of operations", when you're busy building artillery in your mainland cities…

If you beeline both units there are a minimum of 14 techs between the Cuirassier and Cavalry. That's fewer than I'd like, I might take a look at some of the techtree crosslinks around then and see if I can improve the situation a bit.

Regarding the Conquistador, perhaps we should make one of its special features that it is available early?

Making the conquistador strong against primitive units and relatively good (for cavalry) at city assaults encourages the Spanish player to go find a primitive enemy to beat up while those units are available.

In the early iterations of Civ IV, before they added the Cuirassier unit, I'm pretty sure the Conquistador replaced the Knight. We might not want to go back that far, but... we could seriously consider it.

The Heavy Horseman is unlocked right back at the start of the Medieval era, so sometime between 500 and 1000 CE. That's much too early for the Conquistador. Having it unlock a bit earlier could work though, and it certainly would benefit from a general redesign.

It would arguably make more sense for the Cataphract to be a Knight with first strikes and/or a higher withdrawal chance. That would reflect the unusual tactical sophistication of Byzantine heavy cavalry, and their use of archery.

As would the Cataphract. I haven't got time to look at them at the moment but I'll added both to my todo list.

That would fit well into Xyth's goal of making the unique units... I can't find where he said it, but I remember. His point was that unique units shouldn't just be "OHMIGOD SUPER!" versions of the normal units of their era. They should be superior, but their advantages should significantly affect how you use the unit- so you have to tailor your strategy to take best advantage of the strengths of your special unit. If you just use it the same way you'd use the default units, you don't get so much benefit from it.

That's the ideal, yes. Challenging to achieve it for every UU but we can chip away at it.

Also, yes, I think we need some way to restrict Medic promotions, at least from mounted and siege units. Naval units are okay, but mounted and siege units become much more dangerous when you can give them medic promotions, because they're harder to wear down in combat.

Siege units haven't been able to take the Medic promotions for quite some time now in HR. We can try removing it from Mounted units.

I think I may have an insight on the Olympics bug: Saved game loading. It seems to never leave whatever city it was in when a save is loaded (or, on rare occasions, appear and disappear *on the same turn* right after loading).

As has been noted before, when you reload a saved game with Olympic Games in a city, it does not leave after the usual number of turns.

This happened to me in my current game.
City X had "perpetual" Olympics.
However, after a good while, the Olympic Games at random came to City X.
The games now left at their usual time!
No more perpetual Olympics.

I am guessing that whenever the Olympics games show up they set an exit date.
However, any exit date is not included on a reload of a saved game.

Hope this helps to figure out what is going wrong.

Yeah the problem is definitely related to saving and/or loading games. I just haven't been able to figure out why it isn't working as intended. I'll keep at it.

On the Medieval era crashing, I seem to recall that I really started to see performance issues and crashes on a previously stable game about the time I researched Compass. Perhaps the problem has something to do with the way trade routes over Ocean is handled?

It seems to be a texture related crash so it's related to something that gets unlocked around that time, or an item that switches to its Medieval/Renaissance graphics. It doesn't seem to be related to any particular civilization which, along with its unpredictability, is what is making it so hard to track down.

I think the following revised version of the Financial Trait would work:
On Slow, receive interest once every other turn, in other words once year.
(Equivalent to making the interest rate per turn 1/2% rather than 1%, resulting in a rate of 1% per year on both speeds.)
On Slow, double the cap.

Then once one gets to the cap of 1000 on Fast you get 10 per turn.
Once one gets to the cap of 2000 on Slow you get 20 every other turn.
On a per turn basis, you get the same amount at each speed, as it should be.
On a per year basis, you get twice the amount on Slow, as it should be.

Now it takes the same number of years to save up the cap on both speeds.

This seems similar to the revision for 1.18 to the new 1.17 version that you mentioned

That makes sense but I wonder if it would actually make reaching and maintaining the cap too hard on the slower gamespeeds. I'll test it out.

This start is also illustrating my view, that HR isn't offering enough sources of commerce in the early game.

How many turns is it taking on average for each tech?

A suggestion to create "more early commerce": How about making kilns improvements instead of buildings?

Hmm. That's an interesting idea, I'll have a think about it.

But it's been great fun so far:thumbsup:, and HR should be dragged more to the light of day. Isn't it possible to "apply" for coverage on the "front page" of the forum. I would like to see HR 1.18 as big attentionwise as it deserves:).

The J usually posts the list of new Civ4 modding updates around the beginning of each month. I've listed 1.17 in the relevant thread so it should be included. I'm going to try and get 1.18 done before the end of May so it can be included in the next one. As always though, things can take longer to finish than I expect.

If you beeline both units there are a minimum of 14 techs between the Cuirassier and Cavalry. That's fewer than I'd like, I might take a look at some of the techtree crosslinks around then and see if I can improve the situation a bit.
That's surprising me, it felt like much less than 14. Maybe I didn't upgrade my knights right away, so the time I "had" conquistadors appeared yet shorter.

There's no criticsm here, because on Normal gamespeed we just have to live with the fact, that the armies look a bit mixed, so to say. In my game, I had submarines before cruisers, my opponent grenadiers in an otherwise late medieval army, and there are chances, that the anti-tank-guys will show up, before you're done with upgrading your riflemen to infantry. That's all unavoidable on Normal. Realism Invictus seems to be honestly attempting to furnish all eras with a specified unit set. They must be all addicts to enjoy all these high-definition eras at full extent;).

Originally Posted by Keinpferd View Post
This start is also illustrating my view, that HR isn't offering enough sources of commerce in the early game.
How many turns is it taking on average for each tech?
I didn't think of taking notes, which I should have. My measure here was the speed at which the AI was hurrying away and how long I was kind of helplessly waiting for Employment to build cottages.

The data I remember: You can't have both Writing and Employment as soon as you'd like. If the diplo endorses it, Writing is more valuable, for tech trade opportunities. I think I had Writing between 1200 and 800 in my several attempts. In my continued game I got to Employment maybe around 300 BC. In BTS you could have already built many cottages at the time.

In the last screenshot, I provided (about the World mapscript), the player will have a hard time to reach Employment and all the neccessary wood cutting techniques to build huts on wood tiles until 300 BC.

Kiln as improvement: or another improvement, that could be built before bronze age without upsetting the historians to much. The concept of Commerce in Civ is a little strange anyway. While food (space filled with edibles) and production (space filled with "workables") are making sense, commerce is representing what kind of space exactly? Trade, long before you can build a market, symbolized by coins, long before you researched currency? On water tiles, there's commerce, shortly after you learned fishing, how? I guess we must understand commerce in a broader sense, as a commutative flow of experiences, tales, news, observations, foreign unexplicable artifacts, hoards of feather and ore, divine utterances of the seven winds… Commerce is what's coming from the outer world of your little stone age village inside. A part from that will be locked away by the nobles and priests, Civ-Wealth, a part turns into knowledge, Civ-Science. Just trying to understand, what I'm asking for, if I'm asking for sources of commerce in the pre-bronze age;).

I'm not quite sure which thread this should go in, so I'll just default it to this one.

In my current game I recently razed two barbarian cities that had lasted into the late Renaissance/early Industrial era by virtue of being on a mostly desert island that nobody really had much interest in (at least until I discovered it also had the only unclaimed source of Aluminum, but I digress). Because they had lasted so long, the barb-built cottages had had time to grow into towns/villages, which I pillaged after razing the cities. This generated the following error:

"Error in improvementBuilt event handler <bound method BUGEventManager.onImprovementBuilt of <BUGEventManager.BUGEventManager instance at 0x37b7b058>>"

(Pillaging one in a different tile resulted in the same error message except for the alphanumeric string at the end changing to "0x3a077058", so I suspect that part is just the tile identification number.)

I still got the usual amount of gold and the improvement downgraded correctly. Interestingly, I only got the error message when pillaging them at town/village/hamlet levels; the error did not display after doing so at cottage level. There was no such error after pillaging towns created by another civ.

I'm playing as Meiji (so I have the cottage-growth-rate modifiying Progressive trait), if it matters.

Realism Invictus seems to be honestly attempting to furnish all eras with a specified unit set. They must be all addicts to enjoy all these high-definition eras at full extent;).

I would like to add some more units to flesh out certain eras like that but the art just isn't available in sufficient variety. Realism Invictus has the advantage of not requiring the same set of units for every civ.

In the last screenshot, I provided (about the World mapscript), the player will have a hard time to reach Employment and all the neccessary wood cutting techniques to build huts on wood tiles until 300 BC.

Don't forget that Jungle gives commerce and doesn't have reduced food in HR. Because chopping comes later I've deliberately made wooded tiles better overall, and allowed the camp to built in them without a resource. Chopping too early can in fact ruin your economy if you're not careful.

In my current game I recently razed two barbarian cities that had lasted into the late Renaissance/early Industrial era by virtue of being on a mostly desert island that nobody really had much interest in (at least until I discovered it also had the only unclaimed source of Aluminum, but I digress). Because they had lasted so long, the barb-built cottages had had time to grow into towns/villages, which I pillaged after razing the cities. This generated the following error.

I'm playing as Meiji (so I have the cottage-growth-rate modifiying Progressive trait), if it matters.

It will be related to that or to Protective's immunity to pillaging. I can't tell since I'm not at my computer but I've probably neglected to check whether a player is a barbarian or not in one of those two sections of code.

Should be easy to fix, thanks for the report.

It appears that once you have built a railroad you can not replace it with a highway (And vice versa?)
This is (mildly) annoying since some improvements get a bonus from and not the other.
Is there is some way to change this?

It will be related to that or to Protective's immunity to pillaging. I can't tell since I'm not at my computer but I've probably neglected to check whether a player is a barbarian or not in one of those two sections of code.

Should be easy to fix, thanks for the report.

One further datum: After going back and reloading from an old autosave, I changed the order of actions slightly, pillaging the adjacent town *before* razing the second barb city (so it was still in their cultural borders this time). No error resulted.

So here was the sequence of events this time around:
Pillage town (no error)
Raze city
Pillage village (error)
Pillage hamlet (error)
Pillage cottage (no error)


Some more data:
It looks like the barb aspect may have been a red herring, as I'm now getting the same error when pillaging towns, villages, and hamlets that were built by another civ (Sargon, specifically). The common element seems to be that the error only show up if the pillage is performed *after* the cultural borders retreat and the tile is unclaimed.

I'm back home now so I'm able to follow up on these error reports.

It appears that once you have built a railroad you can not replace it with a highway (And vice versa?)
This is (mildly) annoying since some improvements get a bonus from and not the other.
Is there is some way to change this?

I see what's causing this. There's a tag that I thought only affected the way the AI used routes but it seems it affects the player also. Currently it's set so that Railroads and Highways have the same 'value' and that's why they're not able to replace each other.

I'll change it so that Highways have higher value and can replace Railroads; unfortunately I won't be able to make it work the other way around. To compensate I'll adjust the improvements that get bonuses from Railroads to also get the same bonus from Highways.

The downside is that you'll have to be careful not to overlay the parts of your rail network that you want to use for moving slow units around (Railroads are better for 1 movement units, Highways better for 2 movement units). But that's better than the current situation where you can potentially not place Highways at all.

Thanks for reporting this.

It looks like the barb aspect may have been a red herring, as I'm now getting the same error when pillaging towns, villages, and hamlets that were built by another civ (Sargon, specifically). The common element seems to be that the error only show up if the pillage is performed *after* the cultural borders retreat and the tile is unclaimed.

That's exactly what it was. I neglected to check if an improvement was on an unowned tile in the code for the Progressive trait. Fixed for 1.18, thanks for your help isolating the problem.

Heaven knows some modern nations have built up massive highway networks and let the railroads decline into a state of relative atrophy. It's happened in the US.

Small but important update: I think I've finally fixed that Olympic Games bug.

Our friend BoggyB over at the German Civ forum started a story as the wise king Solomon. Should this be the first story based on HR:)?

If there's been another already, please let me know or, if you like, tell him directly here (http://www.civforum.de/showthread.php?80186-History-Rewritten-Im-Auftrag-des-Herrn).

I happened to look at a play through of a BTS Civ IV game on You Tube.
Since it has been about a year and a half since I played BTS, I was mainly noting the many differences from HR.
I was impressed by how many improvements there have been in HR.
Job well done.

Hey, Xyth, Howard, Keinpferd, everyone.
After a very busy year, I'm looking forward to another quiet summer with History Rewritten.
It's great to see all the progress you've made since September; this mod just keeps getting better and better!
I'm sure I'll have plenty of comments. (I'm very interested in the corporation mechanics for 1.18.)
But first, I'll try my hand at a few games in 1.17. :)

Hey, Xyth, Howard, Keinpferd, everyone.
After a very busy year, I'm looking forward to another quiet summer with History Rewritten.
It's great to see all the progress you've made since September; this mod just keeps getting better and better!
I'm sure I'll have plenty of comments. (I'm very interested in the corporation mechanics for 1.18.)
But first, I'll try my hand at a few games in 1.17. :)

Welcome back!!

I'm playing through my first game of 1.17 right now. It's quite engaging.
I have some balance suggestions to make, but I'll start with a few minor errors and improvements.


The Civiliopedia incorrectly states under 'Base Terrain' that cities cannot be built on hills.
The Traditional trait would be better expressed as +5:) from Palace rather than +5:) in capital. As it is, the bonus happiness derives from a hidden building in the capital, which is confusing, since the happiness tooltip suggests +6:) from buildings at the start of the game, with only +1:) from the Palace visible.
-50% trade route yield seems a tad too much for Redistribution; very soon, the civic is a net loss compared to Reciprocity. I would lower the penalty to -25% trade route yield. I might also suggest you enable fractional trade route yields, as some other mods do. That way, trade route commerce could be rounded down to the nearest tenth, not the nearest whole number.
EDIT: Amber (and Pearls, if you add them) should probably be enabled by Harvest Boats not Fishing Boats. You don't fish amber; you harvest it from the sea bed.


Is there any particular part of the mod you wish to focus on for 1.18, apart from corporations?

Hi Xyth,

Here is another crash report and autosave from HR 1.17. This time with BtS 3.19.

I'm looking forward to your corporations improvements, but I need to get past the renaissance first. :please:

I'm playing through my first game of 1.17 right now. It's quite engaging.
I have some balance suggestions to make, but I'll start with a few minor errors and improvements.

Bring 'em on :)

The Civiliopedia incorrectly states under 'Base Terrain' that cities cannot be built on hills.

Fixed.

The Traditional trait would be better expressed as +5:) from Palace rather than +5:) in capital. As it is, the bonus happiness derives from a hidden building in the capital, which is confusing, since the happiness tooltip suggests +6:) from buildings at the start of the game, with only +1:) from the Palace visible.

I can actually get rid of Traditional's fake building altogether, and add the happiness directly to the Palace like you suggest. I should look over the other trait bonuses, there's probably some others that I could implement much better these days.

-50% trade route yield seems a tad too much for Redistribution; very soon, the civic is a net loss compared to Reciprocity. I would lower the penalty to -25% trade route yield.

Yep, I came to this conclusion too. Already fixed.

I might also suggest you enable fractional trade route yields, as some other mods do. That way, trade route commerce could be rounded down to the nearest tenth, not the nearest whole number.

That cannot be done without a custom DLL.

Amber (and Pearls, if you add them) should probably be enabled by Harvest Boats not Fishing Boats. You don't fish amber; you harvest it from the sea bed.


Both options aren't quite right really, but I have no problem switching Amber's improvement. I've no plans to add Pearls at the moment, there's just no room for them.

Is there any particular part of the mod you wish to focus on for 1.18, apart from corporations?

Well the other major focus was to be getting the real world maps updated, but that's stalled for the most part. Several maps were replaced with better ones, some were replaced altogether, and I've done a lot of cropping, fixing rivers and starting locations as well. However, the process of adding the new terrains and resources I found rather tedious and time consuming so I'm just going to a bit every now and then rather than try get it all done at once.

So, other than the Corporations, 1.18 is mostly about smaller tweaks, fixes, balancing, and additions.

Hi Xyth,

Here is another crash report and autosave from HR 1.17. This time with BtS 3.19.

I'm looking forward to your corporations improvements, but I need to get past the renaissance first. :please:

That is almost certainly a crash related to the Colosseum. There's been reports of that wonder also producing unexpected Settlers so something is definitely broken there. Looking into it, thanks for the report.

I've played my first game of 1.17 to 500BC. It's going well.
However, I have identified several (of what I perceive to be) balance issues with the early game:


Between Monarchy (+50%:hammers: in capital) and Agrarianism (+1:hammers: for Farms, Pastures, Plantations, and Wineries) civics, production is very easy to come by. This leads to a number of problems, including:
Settlers are relatively cheap compared to BtS. Thus, all players expand very rapidly. It's not unusual for an empire to have ten cities by 750BC.
Ancient Era units are relatively cheap compared to BtS. Thus, all players can defend themselves fairly easily. Early offensive warfare is comparatively difficult.
Also, barbarians are rather tame compared to BtS. This is because the AI (and therefore the barbarians) do not start with Archery and take some time to reach Bronze Working. By the time the barbarians can spawn Axemen, the wilderness is mostly gone.
As a consequence, commerce appears to be scarcer in the early game. I say "appears" because HR offers more commerce in absolute terms, between Cemeteries (:gold: from priests and settled Great Prophets), Kilns, Monarchy (+50%:commerce: in capital) and Redistribution (+1:commerce: for Mines and Camps) civics. Unfortunately, players are compelled to overexpand: Settlers are cheap, war is expensive, and they need to secure their share of the land.
In the end, many cities are stuck building Wealth. This is not because buildings are poorly designed; they provide a better return in the long run. However, many players find that they need gold right away to avoid insolvency caused by overexpansion - and Wealth is their only option.
Separately, many buildings are now tied to resources. This can be severely imbalancing. In my current game, I have access to Peat, Horses, and Elephants; so all my cities enjoy +30%:hammers: from Kilns and Stables, unlike my rivals. By contrast, I have no precious metals or stones, so Markets are worthless.
Furthermore, my cities enjoy an overabundance of health and happiness from buildings and resources. I always have more than I need.
Finally, the landscape around my cities is fairly uninteresting. All the resources are connected; every flatland tile has a Farm; every feature tile has a Camp; hills are bare, awaiting Windmills, since +1:yuck: from Mines is counterproductive; and my workers are slowly converting everything to Cottages. It's as predictable as an algorithm.


These issues may seem intractable.
But after thinking them through, I think I've hit upon a simple and elegant solution.
It only requires a revision of the improvement system and a slight tweaking of Agrarianism civic.
Best of all, it should be fairly straightforward to code.
Meet me in the Feedback: Improvements thread for more details.

EDIT: After checking my game, I've changed some of the in-game calendar dates I posted.

I've played my first game of 1.17 to 500BC.

That's an awfully short amount of data to base a new "system" of improvements upon. My first three and a halve games of 1.17 were extremely different from each other, rendering it almost impossible to state some generalized thoughts to help Xyth improve the mod.

What difficulty level did you play, anyway? That’s essential to a judgement, whether there's enough commerce in the early game (and should we count the civic Employment belonging to early game?), for one thing. As you know, many things don’t scale with difficulty levels such as the one hammer on farm tiles in Agrarianism.

That's an awfully short amount of data to base a new "system" of improvements upon. My first three and a halve games of 1.17 were extremely different from each other, rendering it almost impossible to state some generalized thoughts to help Xyth improve the mod.

What difficulty level did you play, anyway? That’s essential to a judgement, whether there's enough commerce in the early game (and should we count the civic Employment belonging to early game?), for one thing. As you know, many things don’t scale with difficulty levels such as the one hammer on farm tiles in Agrarianism.


That's a fair point.
For the record, I'm playing on Emperor at Normal speed on a Standard sized Fractal map.
My leader pick was random; I got Djoser of Egypt. Based on his traits, I decided to try for a Culture Victory
I built nine cities, founded three religions, snagged the Oracle, and hit the top of the scoreboard fairly easily.
I've attached my latest save file to this post.

Now, unfortunately, I don't have much spare time to play History Rewritten, though I play the mod exclusively these days.
I admit that most of my recommendations are based on a very narrow sample size. You'll just have to bear that in mind when reading.

That said, my improvement system is mostly intended as fun and flavourful, and only partially as a balance fix.
(Most of the balance issues related to overproduction can be fixed with a simple change to Agrarianism civic.)

EDIT: Sorry, I attached the wrong save file!

Some of his experiences match mine, though it's been so long since I played normal BtS that I have little standard of comparison.

Playing Phoenicians.
In the city build menu the Cuirassier looks the same as a Musket.
(everything but the image is fine.)

Playing Phoenicians.
In the city build menu the Cuirassier looks the same as a Musket.
(everything but the image is fine.)

Fixed for 1.18, thanks.

I'm starting to lose track of what's finished and what's not with 1.18, which is a sure sign I need to stop, clean it up, and release it. The version notes so far are listed in the spoiler below; let me know if there's a fix or addition missing that you feel is vital. I try to keep organized but its inevitable that some items get misplaced occasionally.


Version 1.18 (not yet finalized)

Civilizations
• Dutch: UW changed to the Amsterdam Bourse
• Removed outdated strategy pedia entries for several civilizations

Leaders
• Fixed Diplomacy Text: Clovis

Traits
• Financial: calculated every turn once again
• Industrial: also gives 50% faster production of Labourer
• Protective: wasn't meant to be giving a free Drill I promotion
• Tactical: now gives wealth (based on experience) for killing enemy units in rival territory
• Traditional: fixed a bug that granted combat culture to non-Traditional leaders

Civics
• Agrarianism: now gives 1 commerce per Farm, 1 production per Pasture
• Bureaucracy: now has medium upkeep, commerce only from Lumbermill and Watermill
• Clan Warfare: now has medium upkeep
• Confederation: redesigned (medium upkeep, no maintenance costs from distance, +1 happiness from Harbour)
• Environmentalism: also mitigates unhealthiness from Corporations
• Free Market: redesigned (unlimited Merchants, +50% commerce from trade routes, faster production of Executives)
• Free Religion: renamed Pluralism, now has low upkeep
• Industrialism: redesigned (unlimited Engineers, +2 unhealthiness, +2 production per corporation)
• Organized Religion: renamed Orthodoxy
• Professionalism: redesigned (+1 trade route per city, +1 commerce from Orchard/Workshop, 1 happiness from Market)
• Redistribution: trade penalty removed
• Social Welfare: also mitigates unhappiness from Corporations, commerce from Village/Town removed

Buildings
• New Building: Shipyard
• Public Transport: redesigned (costs 280, +10% production and commerce from Oil, no unhealthiness from Village & Town)

Wonders
• Brandenburg Gate: fixed an error thrown every turn after construction, movie should now play
• Olympic Games: fixed error where it could remain in a city permanently
• Porcelain Tower: now unlocked by Printing

Corporations
• Corporations redesigned and replaced by 14 real world examples
• Corporations now cause unhappiness and unhealthiness in their cities
• Corporate maintenance removed
• Some Corporation HQs grant Research or Culture per city instead of Wealth
• Headquarters removed from Wonders Pedia page, merged with Corporation entries

Units
• Battering Ram: now susceptible to flanking strikes
• Chariot: can also upgrade to the Horse Archer
• Heavy Footman: now upgrades to Rifleman (as do its UU variants)
• Horse Archer: redesigned completely as a Classical/Medieval unit
• Horseman: no longer has a bonus vs. Melee, now unlocks at Riding
• Infantry: also requires Rifling
• Pikeman: now upgrades to Rifleman
• Pirate: now has a 25% withdrawal chance
• Siege Tower: now susceptible to flanking strikes
• Skirmisher: now does more collateral damage but to fewer targets
• Ship of the Line: also requires Gunpowder
• Swordsman: no longer has an attack bonus vs War Elephants
• Trireme: cost reduced to 40 (was 50)
• Warrior: now 50% stronger against animals, can hunt them for food
• Wooden Siege and Naval units build 25% faster with access to Prime Timber

Unit Art
• Mesoamerican Worker (Medieval) is no longer a red blob

Promotions
• New Promotion: Nomad (3 ranks)
• Medic: no longer available to Mounted units

Religions
• Asatru: new movie
• Druidism: new movie
• Toltecayotl: renamed/redefined as Teotl, new movie
• Monasteries now obsolete at Electricity
• Capped 'Fewer Religions' calculation at 18 civs

Terrain
• Coast: now a bit more visibly distinct from Ocean
• Desert: now requires 2 movement and has a 25% defense penalty
• Flood Plains: unhealthiness lowered to 0.25
• Jungle: now gives some production for chopping
• Savannah: no longer removes 1 production from its base terrain

Resources
• New Resource: Prime Timber
• Amber: now obtained by Harvest Boats
• Banana: renamed Fruit, obtained by Orchards
• Dye: fixed a bug preventing it being placed on maps
• Elephant: now obtained by Pastures
• Flax: new art, now obtained via Farms
• Olives: now obtained by Orchards
• Spice: now obtained by Orchards
• Wheat: improved art
• Numerous adjustments to resource distribution

Improvements
• Improvements have been extensively rebalanced and tweaked
• Several improvements have new terrain restrictions (also shown in Pedia)
• Several improvements that required a resource can now be built in certain terrains as well
• Several improvements have a chance to produce a resource
• Several art adjustments
• Winery: redesigned as Orchard

Routes
• Highway: can now be built over a Railroad

Maps
• New Maps: Africa (Large), Europe (Standard), North America (Large)
• Removed Maps: Mediterranean (52x32), Western Europe (38x48)
• Eurasia: cropped North America and the Atlantic
• All maps renamed with their mapsize setting instead of their dimensions
• Maps list which civs they are compatible with
• Numerous tweaks to coastlines
• Fixed many disconnected or backward flowing rivers
• New resources and terrains are still not finished being added to maps, sorry
• Fixed an issue with incorrect starting locations when quitting and reloading maps

Mapscripts
• World: improved start location assignment and old world starts

Miscellaneous
• Culture levels scale with gamespeed more appropriately
• Build Wealth/Research/Culture/Espionage are now split into 3 ranks (33%, 50%, 100%)
• Fixed an error thrown when pillaging outside cultural borders
• Several refinements and additions to the Civiliopedia

I've spent a lot of time trying to get the real world maps updated, a process I found quite frustrating. They're still not done I'm afraid, but there's now a much better base to start from when I next have enough motivation to try again.


Things cut from 1.18, will hopefully be back in 1.19 or later

• Civil war mechanics
• Fighter, Bomber, and Jet Fighter art variants
• Extra animal units for hunting

Apologies for dropping the Jets. Adding new unit art is a process that can lead to crashes if not checked and tested thoroughly and I think its best I don't add that into the mix a this point. It'll be one of the first things I work on for 1.19 though, I've made decent progress on it.


Things I still have to finish before release:

• Fix some improvement art that isn't working with certain resources
• Try fix the Chinese War Elephant animation glitch
• Test some fixes applied to the Colosseum
• Finalize numbers for resource distribution, discovery, and depletion
• Decide final form of Quarries and Lumbermills
• Swap Financial's interest bonus to corporate bonus
• Test and fix any errors on Windows BTS

I have a fair bit of modding time over the next few days so I'm hoping I can get through most of that and have 1.18 ready to release on the weekend.

It's Looking better and better:goodjob:.

I have a fair bit of modding time over the next few days so I'm hoping I can get through most of that and have 1.18 ready to release on the weekend.

Excellent! I'm looking forward to it.
You know, I might actually post reports of my first game in 1.18 here, with screenshots and everything.
It'll be fun, and useful when discussing 1.19, and might give me some incentive to finish a game.
(No, I haven't returned to that Egypt game yet.)

• Protective: wasn't meant to be giving a free Drill I promotion
• Tactical: now gives wealth (based on experience) for killing enemy units in rival territory

I'm confused by these entries. Are you cutting free Drill promotions from Protective? Or are you fixing a bug which gave free Drill promotions to too many units? Likewise, for Tactical: does it now give wealth for killing enemy units in rival territory only, or rival territory plus neutral and friendly territory?


And a few more minor suggestions for 1.18:

I like that Harbours are available before Lighthouses in HR. Why not take it one step further and swap the effects of Harbours and Lighthouses, just like in the Rhye's and Fall of Civilization mod? It makes more sense that way: Harbours offer shelter to fishing boats and provide +1:food: on Coast and Ocean tiles. Lighthouses offer direction to trading vessels and provide +50% trade route yield. The Cothon and Trading Post UBs can be tailored to match.
Great Artists are available much earlier than in BtS, thanks to the free Artist specialist slot from Creative leaders. A Great Work (+4000:culture: on Standard speed) can be overpowering in the Ancient Era, blocking huge tracks of land from settlement and stealing tiles or even prompting revolts in culturally defenseless cities. Perhaps Great Works should have a technology requirement: Architecture or Nobility or some such?
'The Singularity' is a much more interesting name for 'Future Tech.'

Excellent! I'm looking forward to it.
You know, I might actually post reports of my first game in 1.18 here, with screenshots and everything.
It'll be fun, and useful when discussing 1.19, and might give me some incentive to finish a game.
(No, I haven't returned to that Egypt game yet.)

Sounds good.

I'm confused by these entries. Are you cutting free Drill promotions from Protective? Or are you fixing a bug which gave free Drill promotions to too many units?

Cutting the Drill promotion from Protective. I think it was due to a discrepancy between my notes and what was actually in game, but I don't remember now which was correct. I have no issue reversing this if its deemed undesirable.

Likewise, for Tactical: does it now give wealth for killing enemy units in rival territory only, or rival territory plus neutral and friendly territory?

Only in enemy territory but the gold calculation is changing to be based on the experience the defeated unit had accumulated. Formerly it was based on the experience the winning unit would receive. Two reasons for this; the bonus felt a bit lacklustre as you rarely got more than 1-3:wealth:, and the old method was a bit of a performance hog. The new method shares the same code as Traditional's culture bonus and thus both are much more efficient.

I like that Harbours are available before Lighthouses in HR. Why not take it one step further and swap the effects of Harbours and Lighthouses, just like in the Rhye's and Fall of Civilization mod? It makes more sense that way: Harbours offer shelter to fishing boats and provide +1:food: on Coast and Ocean tiles. Lighthouses offer direction to trading vessels and provide +50% trade route yield. The Cothon and Trading Post UBs can be tailored to match.

That does make sense. I'll put it in.

Great Artists are available much earlier than in BtS, thanks to the free Artist specialist slot from Creative leaders. A Great Work (+4000:culture: on Standard speed) can be overpowering in the Ancient Era, blocking huge tracks of land from settlement and stealing tiles or even prompting revolts in culturally defenseless cities. Perhaps Great Works should have a technology requirement: Architecture or Nobility or some such?

There's no way I can attach requirements to do a Great Works, all I can do is change the amount of culture they provide and the unit can perform them. I guess it might be possible via a 'fake' unit replacing Great Artists after a certain tech but that's messy.

'The Singularity' is a much more interesting name for 'Future Tech.'

I don't think the tech in HR really represents technological singularity, just unknown as yet unknown advances of the future. Perhaps if the future era is expanded a bit more, but not at this time.

Imo future tech is basically useless in this mod given the enormous amount of health and happiness bonuses you can get from elsewhere. Is it possible to code a random chance benefit for future tech? Like it randomly adds extra culture/espionage/units/build modifiers/corporate bonuses/other random things?

'The Singularity' is a much more interesting name for 'Future Tech.'I disagree.

"The Singularity" implies specific views about how advanced technology will affect the world- one might reasonably be skeptical about them. Also, the entire point of talking about a Singularity is that the nature of the world post-Singularity becomes inherently unpredictable: the future is assumed to be in the hands of AIs with godlike intelligence, so we mere mortals can't guess or project how things will turn out as a result.

When Vinge invented the idea, his point was that we cannot see through the Singularity; a post-Singularity future will not look just like the industrial age only with ray guns, jet packs, and longer life expectancies.

And there's no mechanism in Civ to reflect this- the essential paradigm of how the game works won't change, you'll still be fighting with basically the same armies and building essentially the same kind of cities under Future Tech.

So "Singularity" doesn't really describe the technological endgame of Civ. Indeed, Civ is implicitly a non-Singularitarian game.

Now, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri... that is another story. That's a Singularitarian game in that one of the endings involves transcendence, and a future beyond transcendence which is inherently unlike any other thing in the human experience.

Although it's a Singularity that doesn't look quite like Vinge imagined, and the trigger is the merger of AI, telepathy, and Planet's consciousness. The invention of AI in and of itself doesn't change things as much or as quickly in the game as some of the wilder-eyed Singularitarians would expect.

After some testing this is the scheme I'm going with for now (using the forum's nifty new table feature!):

Build %|Wealth|Research|Culture|Espionage
33%|Property|Writing|Aesthetics|Paper
50%|Guilds|Printing|Education|Photography
100%|Corporation|Sci. Method|Sociology|Radio


33% means it takes 3 hammers to produce 1 of the relevant commerce, 50% means it takes 2. I decided to go with 3 ranks instead since a '4 for 1' ratio felt useless and '3 for 2' (75%) felt a bit unintuitive. Each build option (except Espionage) thus become available in the Ancient or Classical era and becomes full strength sometime in the Renaissance. Espionage starts and ends a bit later as I did some reading and it's actually a lot more powerful than I thought.

I've been watching how this works in my HR1.18 games. It takes so long for rates to rise from 3-1 to 2-1 that I've only ever really seen 3-1 rates.

As the human player, I can see that the yield from a 3-1 rate is very poor and only ever use it when desperate to bootstrap myself out of a hole after overconquering (often towards Currency around 500BC). However, I've seen the 3-1 rate :hammers: to :science: widely used by the AI (across multiple cities, and not in particular times of need), and I believe that this cripples the AI. They waste hammers on a futile struggle to compete in research where they should be using those hammers to build an army to defend against the rapacious human player. ;)

In the light of this, I feel that it would be better to simply omit the 3-1 level and use its activation technologies to replace those of the 2-1 level. That is:

Build %|Wealth|Research|Culture|Espionage
50%|Property|Writing|Aesthetics|Paper
100%|Corporation|Sci. Method|Sociology|Radio


Do others have the same observations? Opinions?