RAND 1.76 Balancing and Suggestions

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I like the reduced AI spawn of roads especially as it also applies to my automated workers. However, I think that "Cart paths" should be spawned everywhere within the cultural borders.

1. They cost nothing to build.
2. They provide a home team advantage for movement of units inside your borders.
3. Their existence makes it quicker to improve and link up newly discovered resources.

This is what I do in game which is why I don't turn off obsolete worker action buttons and put up with the clutter. If it showed (the best) no cost roads as well I would use it.

 

[BlueTemplar]

They cost worker turns, which might end up costing more than the measly 2 gold you need for roads, and they only give a movement bonus for units with 2+ speed not moving on flatlands.

You probably want to allow Spearmen to be built by Obsidian as well as copper / iron.

Wouldn't obsidian be rather associated with javelineers?

 

[Afforess]

I like the reduced AI spawn of roads especially as it also applies to my automated workers. However, I think that "Cart paths" should be spawned everywhere within the cultural borders.

1. They cost nothing to build.
2. They provide a home team advantage for movement of units inside your borders.
3. Their existence makes it quicker to improve and link up newly discovered resources.

This is what I do in game which is why I don't turn off obsolete worker action buttons and put up with the clutter. If it showed (the best) no cost roads as well I would use it.

Yep BlueTempler is correct. Roads also have an opportunity cost (build turns), and they are aware of it. The AI will not consider building cart paths unless it connects resources or cities.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Yep BlueTempler is correct. Roads also have an opportunity cost (build turns), and they are aware of it. The AI will not consider building cart paths unless it connects resources or cities.

So instead they sit in a city doing nothing. How efficint just like the "real" workers.

 

[Afforess]

So instead they sit in a city doing nothing. How efficint just like the "real" workers.

Considering that both actions produce the same result, who cares? At least in the cities they are safe from barbs.

 

[Requia]

I tmight help if the mission were adjusted to meet the tech tree. My current mission requires me to have both fighters and carriers, which is great except you need jet propulsion to build a carrier, and I'll probably have nuclear power before carriers regardless, which puts me into nuclear carriers.

 

[Cykur]

Wouldn't obsidian be rather associated with javelineers?

Well...you can make arrow / spear / javelin heads with all sorts of materials -- bone, rock, metal, fire hardened wood.

Currently you can already make Axemen with Obsidian. I was just pointing out that if we are putting restrictions on Spearmen to require Bronze / Iron, we should probably allow Obsidian too.

Ironically, in my most recent game I would have been completely screwed if I didn't have Obsidian. I managed to make enough Axemen to overpower an Iron equipped civilization.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Yep BlueTempler is correct. Roads also have an opportunity cost (build turns), and they are aware of it. The AI will not consider building cart paths unless it connects resources or cities.

On snail speed this is a big problem because there are going to be 50 turns before the next tech to show a resource. Which is not the next tech you will get but 5 down the track. Maybe the AI needs to consider game speed and how long before the next tech is got. That way the final choice of "go to nearest city and rest" could have an option before it "if there is enough time to get to a plot and add a cart path before the next tech, do it."

Considering that both actions produce the same result, who cares? At least in the cities they are safe from barbs.

The AI already wakes them from whatever action they are doing if there are any barbs to close, even if you, the player, can't see them, the barbarians.

 

[DJ We$t]

Another point which is very annoying for me.
I like the complexity of AND but in future eras there are to much buildings for each city.
I mean older buildings from former eras could be removed in future eras so you got more overview in citys and just need to build the important new buildings.

Maybe if I reached industrial era there are no buildings left to build from renaissance or what ever has been before industrial era.

 

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah, building spam starts becoming a problem even in classical era, and since they are all pretty diverse it often very hard to decide which building should be built in priority... but you can't have both diversity and easy choices, can you?

 

[DJ We$t]

haha thats right but its annoying cause most of the buildings do the same like buildings in previous eras with a more efficient boost so why not take out buildings that are outdated ?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

haha thats right but its annoying cause most of the buildings do the same like buildings in previous eras with a more efficient boost so why not take out buildings that are outdated ?

Surely you can achieve that by selecting the option to hide replaced buildings in the BUG options screen.

 

[Koshling]

Surely you can achieve that by selecting the option to hide replaced buildings in the BUG options screen.

I wonder if it would be possible to add a button to the city screen to toggle this setting more dynamically...

 

[Arkatakor]

@Afforess

There still seems to be an issue with the Flexible Difficulty option; there are times where its impossible to activate or deactivate. Like some games I play with it and my difficulty increases. I go into the ROM Menu and set my difficulty to a lower level and it simply wont lower the difficulty. Then maybe some 50 turns later, I am able to lower the difficulty. In other words its only responsive part of the time. Last time we discussed this it was because there was a bug with turning it on / off (it would not always acknowledge the event of you clicking on the box to activate / deactivate it).

The reason I am asking you to look into this is because I believe its worth your time as there is a lot of potential in this game option; It can delay the anti-climax that this game (and all versions of Civ) suffer from (by increasing difficulty as soon as you are in first place). If there are already too many people playing on Diety, then it might be an idea to add one or two more difficulty levels that would not be choosable but could only be reached if you hit 1st place on diety with the flexible difficulty option enabled.

I am currently experimenting with this game option by putting the difficulty to diety as soon as I hit first place (I play emperor). It seems it might have a lot of potential in making otherwise predictable games more challenging.

 

[Afforess]

I wonder if it would be possible to add a button to the city screen to toggle this setting more dynamically...

You can, but I'm no artist.

 

[Afforess]

@Afforess

There still seems to be an issue with the Flexible Difficulty option; there are times where its impossible to activate or deactivate. Like some games I play with it and my difficulty increases. I go into the ROM Menu and set my difficulty to a lower level and it simply wont lower the difficulty. Then maybe some 50 turns later, I am able to lower the difficulty. In other words its only responsive part of the time. Last time we discussed this it was because there was a bug with turning it on / off (it would not always acknowledge the event of you clicking on the box to activate / deactivate it).

The reason I am asking you to look into this is because I believe its worth your time as there is a lot of potential in this game option; It can delay the anti-climax that this game (and all versions of Civ) suffer from (by increasing difficulty as soon as you are in first place). If there are already too many people playing on Diety, then it might be an idea to add one or two more difficulty levels that would not be choosable but could only be reached if you hit 1st place on diety with the flexible difficulty option enabled.

I am currently experimenting with this game option by putting the difficulty to diety as soon as I hit first place (I play emperor). It seems it might have a lot of potential in making otherwise predictable games more challenging.

Okay, I'll look into it.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I wonder if it would be possible to add a button to the city screen to toggle this setting more dynamically...

You can but I want that screen real estate for selecting the order that buildings and units are displayed in the bit where you select what to build next. Currently I comment code in and out.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Something I noticed on AND 1.75C and don't know if it's been fixed in 1.76:

- when Mastery Victory is enabled, you get 100 points for builiding the spaceship, not for launching it or (better) for reaching another planet. Is it meant to be that way?

- pretargetting nukes with Advanced Nuke Mod is possible only for ICBMs and Tactical Nukes; it seems like it's impossible to pretarget Fusion Nova, Plague Bringer etc. The pre-target button icon is there, you can select any city as an objective but the missile simple don't "save" its target.

 

[Arkatakor]

Okay, I'll look into it.

Thanks for this, very much appreciated; if I did not think this was an important option I would not keep bringing it up

 

[Arkatakor]

Here is a somewhat low priority suggestion;

It would be nice to add a simple animated graphic that shows a volley of arrows being shot at any enemy units that are adjacent to a city with a castle with the ballista improvement (or whatever its called) that drains 10% health for every turn enemy units are adjacent to your city. The graphic could be simple dart like lines to represent the arrows being fired.

This brings me to my next suggestion:

In the future era it would be nice to have a building similar to the aforementioned ballista improvement, like a tesla coil (think red alert!), that can be built in cities and zaps adjacent units for 10% every turn. Upon discovery of perhaps another tech it could be upgraded to have a range of 2 tiles instead of 1.

Or alternatively occupied forts in the future (or even modern) era could have that option added to them, upon discovery of a specific tech, such that enemies suffer 10% damage when passing by next to said occupied forts.

Just brainstorming ideas here