Before I start on the responses, there's something I need to say.
I generally don't read through most other mods' threads, because I only have so many hours in the day, but the other day I went into a few of Thalassicus' threads. One of them was about crash bugs; about two weeks ago, he figured out that the "Reload Landmark System" flag is what was causing most of the crashes that would happen when a unit was moving; apparently, the game was continually trying to reload all of the landmark (improvements and resources) art definitions on the fly, and it just couldn't handle that much workload.
Two days ago, I went and turned that flag off in my own mod, then played a complete game. ZERO CRASHES. The points where it'd previously crash you'd see the game slow down for a minute, possibly blank the screen, but then it'd come right back up.
So what does this mean for you, the users? Simple. You can either wait for v.1.04 (which I'll try to push out early next week), or just go into the Content mod's .modinfo file and change
<ReloadLandmarkSystem>1</ReloadLandmarkSystem>
to a 0.
I'd appreciate if some people tried this and could tell me whether it really makes a difference for them. No idea if you can do this for a game already in progress, of course. I need to know two things: first, if it reduces crashes, and second, whether you have any display issues afterwards.
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Might be that I'm India though. Seriously, their trait breaks even at like what, size 5?
6 in the vanilla game (3 / 0.5), 6.67 in my mod (4 / 0.6). Slightly different for occupied cities, but same basic idea.
When examining balance in various areas, I don't use a civ that gets a bonus in that area. That means no India, Persia, or Egypt when balancing Happiness. Persia, through their UB, gets +2 happiness per city, so they have a HUGE advantage in large empires.
This is why I use America when I'm testing; no UB (only two UUs), and their traits don't screw up my balance equations. (Extra visibility for land units obviously don't, and cheaper plot purchases only slightly does.)
Monarchy gives a quite huge happiness boost in a small (tall) empire, while that "one happiness per 10 pop" is neat too
It's really aimed for that, since there's no fractions involved. The problem I'm running into with it was that Eudaimonia used to be really the only +Happiness in the Tradition branch, but now the two policies before it also add Happiness. So if I keep Eudaimonia the same, then I'm effectively having THREE policies in a row, all of which add at least 10 Happiness in a typical game, which turns Tradition into the undisputed Happiness champion for anything other than a huge empire.
I'm okay with this, but it's definitely a shift in emphasis.
That's the point, I want you to change them
Generally speaking, I change policies if/when I think they significantly impede the ability of the AI to reach the future eras, either because they're substantially underpowered (to where the AI who takes them is at a significant disadvantage) or overpowered (to where the player who beelines for them is at a significant advantage). I don't WANT to start tweaking every policy in the tree to my own personal tastes; besides the fact that it'd make it too confusing for someone who's coming into this mod for the first time from the vanilla game, it's just a never-ending process.
It's the same reason why I've made almost no changes to techs before the Nuclear Era; while I COULD do a ton to those earlier techs, it isn't what my mod is for. I've long talked about the Third Mod, a hypothetical Balance mod that doesn't limit itself that way and represents all of the things I'd really want to do, but I haven't done that (yet).
Now, I've violated that guideline before, in specific cases where I felt the effect of a Policy completely contradicted the theme of the branch or the specific name of the Policy. (See: Planned Economy, Theocracy.) Obviously, the "theme of the branch" is what you're going for here, but I have to ask, which policies do you think violate it?
I'd like tradition to be small-empire branch for real, liberty to be a no-brainer for an expansionist, and preferably Honor to be less of a happiness-booster (srsly?)
To be clear, my Honor is far less of a Happiness-booster than the vanilla; Professional Army was dropped to 2 buildings instead of 4, so at best you'll get +3 per city, and that's only if you garrison everywhere.
As to being a "real" small-empire branch, it already is. It's just not as obvious.
Starter (+3 culture per capital, cheaper border expansions): this is obviously skewed towards small empires, although the second part helps large ones as well.
Aristocracy (+15% production when building Wonders): small empires are better at making Wonders, because you need high-production cities.
Legalism (free Culture building in your first 4 cities): obviously aimed at small empires. Funny balance note: if you start the game in a later era, where Monuments are already free, then this policy gives a free Opera House to each city, which is NOT cheap. (I'm assuming it'd use Temples in the vanilla game.)
Oligarchy (no maintenance for garrisons, x2 city ranged strength when garrisoned): this helps all sorts of cities, but since city ranged strength scales with size, this policy is best when you develop vertically.
Landed Elite (+1 Happy per 10 population in a city): Really favors vertical development, since if you're doing an ICS-style sprawl none of your cities will ever reach size 10.
Monarchy (+1 Happy and +1 Gold per 2 population in the capital): Duh. Oh, also, that help text isn't actually correct; it's not +1 Happy per 2 population. It's actually "-50% Unhappiness from population in the capital", which since I have 1.2/pop, means it's adding 0.6 per population, not 0.5.
Finisher (+2 Food and +15% Growth in all cities): On the surface, this looks like it favors large empires more than small, which is why I'd thought it'd fit better in Liberty. But the +15% is on GROWTH (meaning net food), not on Food like my own Super-Finisher for Liberty, so it favors empires where you still WANT all of your cities growing and have large surpluses, so it helps large cities out a bit more. Overall, though, still mostly a sprawl-favoring policy.
So I'd still like to swap the two Finishers. Getting a single Great Person really seems more like a small-empire thing, especially since you'll generally use it to place an Improvement near your capital.
Is it possible in civ5 to give boost to the X largest cities? (without lua...)
No, it's not possible without Lua. You can give a lot of bonuses to a Capital simply by saying "do X if a Palace is present in this city", and one of the thoughts I had for changing Eudaimonia would be to do this; instead of +10 Happiness, it could just add +5 Food, +5 Production, +5 Science, +5 Gold, and +5 Culture to your capital. (Sort of the inverse of the Order Finisher.) I'd keep the doubled Empath happiness, though, because I really want that effect somewhere.
Suppose you COULD make it some boring +xx% more culture in capital or something, since that's where the most culture is in a small empire ... No?
Can't do that. Here are the things I can do involving the Capital:
> Reduce unhappiness from capital population by a percentage (see Monarchy)
> Add flat yields to the Capital (not used directly)
> Add flat yields based on the population of the Capital (Monarchy)
> Add yield modifiers to the Capital (Commerce opener). Note that Culture is not a yield.
> Add Happiness when a certain building is present (no point in doing this for the Palace, since you can already just add a flat Happiness to an empire)
> Add flat Culture when a certain building is present (Tradition opener)
> Give individual units for free near the Capital (Warrior Code, Collective Rule, Citizenship, or the Liberty finisher)
Honor should have a policy that reduces unhappiness from puppeted cities
Back before this last patch, Autocracy had a policy that subtracted a percentage of population Unhappiness from Occupied cities (meaning anything that didn't have a Courthouse, which'd include puppets). This stub isn't currently being used for anything directly, although it's included in my Thought Control super-finisher for Autocracy.
The problem with putting it in Honor is that it's just too early. The AI is unlikely to HAVE any occupied cities at that point of the game, so if he's taking a policy that he can't get any benefit from, it's a big advantage to the player. And in general, a city often doesn't stay occupied long enough to justify a policy, so if I did add this somewhere, it'd be as a secondary effect of another policy.
After climbing some on the extended tech tree I realized that, with my huge production and like 200 GPT, I simply WOULD win in the end, so I quit
Every game hits this point. In the vanilla game, you'll often reach that point in the late Renaissance/early Industrial, where the game is clearly over and it's just mopping up while you want for a victory condition to arrive. This, obviously, is not a good fit for a future-era mod, so nearly all of my balance changes are aimed at making it so that you generally don't hit that point until right around the start of the Fusion Era.
Also, is spore tower supposed to be so weak? I could solo one with 1 mech infantry ...
Basically, yes, they are.
Digital-Era Spore Towers, which is what you were probably facing, have this:
> 60 strength, 60 ranged strength, range of 2
> Heals 2 HP per turn, AND 1 HP per combat (both when defending AND attacking)
> Attacks twice per turn. (Two shots per turn at 60 strength is nothing to sneeze at.)
> Two randomly-selected promotions from the following list: Cover I, Volley (that's attack-vs-fortified), Accuracy I, Barrage I, Spontaneous Healing (10% chance of +5 healing per combat). Cover I is twice as possible as the others, and if it's picked twice then it gets Cover II the second time. As a result, a Spore Tower is likely to be very difficult to kill through bombardment.
For all of this, you get 100 gold per kill. Fusion Era towers gain the Range promotion (+1 range), and bump up to 150 gold, but this obviously doesn't make them harder to kill, just more dangerous if you leave them alone. Nanotech Era towers gain a third randomly-selected promotion and the Bioenhancement (+10% combat) promotion, and give 200 gold; these WILL be tougher to kill.
Now, the 60 strength is like all Psi units; it adjusts up or down based on the strength of the opponent. So if a Mech Infantry (42) attacks a Spore Tower (60), the Spore Tower will drop 25% down to a 45 base. If the MechInf has a lot of promotions, it could easily have the advantage, but it's likely that you'll have a hard time bombarding it down first, and if you don't kill it the tower will be able to do a lot of damage. Note that a 70-strength Modern Armor would have just as hard a time, because the 60 would move UP to 70 to match. (Same goes for air units. Stealth Bombers will do 3-4 damage per attack, assuming no Cover or Spontaneous Healing.)
Basically, Spore Towers aren't meant to be very durable when facing land units. What they're meant to be is exactly what you seem to have noticed: a motivation to keep some ground units around, instead of just using long-range bombers to control. City-states and small empires should have no problem with this, and the smaller your empire is the less chance one will spawn in your territory. What this does, though, is force people with large empires to keep a number of units scattered around their empires to react to tower spawns... which is exactly how the AI already plays. A human player would move his entire army to the front lines, which'd make conquest much easier, but the AI wouldn't do this. So by giving the player a valid reason to do the same, I remove a significant advantage over the AI.