Walter Hawkwood
RI Curator
You sure?
Being three times better than before, I reap 30 just out of religious buildings. I admit, I like it so much. And I admit I was a tad reluctant to report it because it feels so to have a building whose returns make the investment worth it.
Yeah, I suppose it is a bug. And surprised no one pointed it out. Or maybe not. Whatever.
Nope, and this is why I wrote "I think". We'll do that for 3.2.1 anyway.
Really? Oh well, then, I shouldn't have bought what others said to me because the game in which you see the AP bug was a huge strain as barbarian waves were so numerous. It made me stuck with one city for 3000 years. I decided to play with Raging Barbs because others said I played with skewed options, but it seems it wasn't that true. Still, it was an interesting gameplay as it made me learnt how to deal efficiently K-mod AIs and barbarians.
That was not to say that there isn't any pressure from barbarians on the World Maps. There is quite a lot of them, it is just that they don't really come from Raging Barbarians setting.
has anyone ever put anything inside of a reconnaissance car? what is the point of this? it is kind of a mysterious unit to me, like the gunboat. what is it for??
It's for getting recon aid and for having a quick unit to do recon with. Its combat usefulness is very limited.
should there be a limit to how many observatories you can build? there seem to be diminishing returns on how much you can learn from stargazing. as it is it is too much exactly the same as a university
Not really. They were quite crazy about observatories in the past. You see, it is not even about stargazing per se, but more about advanced maths and engineering required to get any meaningful results. Basically, observatories in Renaissance eras were the same as research institutes are now - a place where a lot of scientists were gathered to work on stuff; and the "stuff" in question could even be unrelated to astronomy.
perhaps the upkeep costs on battleships (ie predreadnaughts et al) should be increased? +1 gold per turn is negligible by the time you get them
It is quite hard to model the real amount of infrastructure needed to maintain a modern fleet in XX century; ideas welcome on how this could be modeled.
Ok, heres my latest gripe on unit balance which I have already modified in my game, and I'm happy with the results.
The medium cavalry are a flavor of light cavalry, but they are played completely differently as you can tell my their stats. One thing that was overlooked was the archers vs. medium cavalry. Since medium cavalry are technically light cavalry, archers get a massive 110% bonus against them. This is incredibly awkward to me, since I'd consider medium cavalry to be a counter to archers, not the other way around.
Currently medium cavalry is intended to be first and foremost the counter to light cavalry and recon units. Your suggestion is quite reasonable, yet that would leave no real counter for them, in turn. They are already very difficult to counter.
To make more realistic balance I gave all medium cavalry varients a hefty +50% bonus vs archers, and gave them a -50% penalty vs cities in exchange. Medium cavalry really don't add much to assaulting walls. This allows medium cavalry to reliably kill archers caught out in the open as they should.
Interesting. Maybe we'll do it like that.
Ok. Perhaps an industrial or late renaissance era improvement for jungles that has a good chance of spawning a natural-rubber resource? Now I understand why specific spices are not a good idea.
The problem here, of course, is that there is very few jungle left in the world by that time...
This works well in scenarios, but is not fun when a random map and random leader combines to give you a land-locked capital for a seafaring civilization. Perhaps I'm biased by how often I play random maps, but I would prefer to have a naval tradition and a less militarily-powerful seafaring trait.
That's not unreasonable. We'll think about it.
I'm well aware of the A.I.'s behavior in this case. Would the opposite be more palatable? (Have electric railroads provide +0.25 health.) Also, what about giving highways the same bonuses to tile production as railroads? That could only help the A.I.s, and would make highways interesting again.
Actually, I was contemplating just ditching highways. They don't really add anything significant to gameplay.
In your opinion, is it better balanced for one or the other right now?
I like the religious spread dynamics on random maps more. But it is certainly entirely playable on both.
About the net chance of epidemic when upgrading a building: I've observed this for Aqueducts replacing Wells, now. The game reports no change in epidemic chance, when it should be -1.5%. If my calculations are correct, a clinic obsoleting a bath and an epidemic colony should result in a net effect of +1.5%, but the game reports +3.0%. So this is still a bug, I think, unless it's already fixed in the SVN.
There's a hint that says "If you know too many civs to fit on your scoreboard, you can tweak its vertical spacing in BUG options menu!". BUG is wonderful, but I expect there are many casual players out there who have tried R.I. but haven't heard of BUG. Nowhere on the interface does it say "BUG Options" (except perhaps in the credits). This is why I think this (and other similar hints) should be changed to reference the "Interface Options menu" instead of BUG. Either that, or change the "Interface Options" menu to the "BUG Interface Options" menu.
Also, more small bugs:
- Python error when goody huts spawn hostile villagers and one or more of the surrounding squares is a mountain, lake, or ocean. Doesn't seem to affect anything, but the visible error is irritating.
- Military: Doctrines:RiteOfPassage links to itself instead of Military:SpecialPromotions:RiteOfPassage
- Ulugh Beg's first contact text has question-mark characters in it where there should be some sort of exotic characters, I think.
- Konrad Adenaur's first contact text starts "Dear Konrad Adenaur," (I think it should be "Dear [Player Name here],")
- The Elite Swordsman quest mentions the "middle ages". Shouldn't that be "the medieval era"?
- The Grandmaster Blacksmith quest caused my sawmills to get +1 hammer instead of my forges. This may be intentional, since forges eventually get replaced, but if so, the text needs to be updated.
- Tiles producing 10 food show 1 loaf of bread, which means they look exactly as if they are producing 5 food. (This might not be so easy to fix, I guess.)
Thanks, it is all noted.
The Shwedagon Paya wonder might be improved by removing the tech requirement for religious communities. Right now, the S.P. doesn't help much, since the main advantages of free religion and cult of personality don't become available until the techs they require have been researched, and the other religious civics are available early. I think making the missionary units available early might be too much, but just the buildings would make the S.P. to switch to Free Religion much more attractive.
Well, using SP to run Free Religion or Cult of Personality is quite out of "realistic" scope, so I like how it is right now - you are able to do it, but if you're so ahead of time, you will get less from these civics than when it is their time to shine. It is mostly intended to give you freedom to choose all the state religion civics. Moreover, since this is the only incomplete civic category for now, there will likely be one more civic (probably Renaissance-era) to make SP more useful.
Lastly, I am feeling the need for a line of anti-barbarian promotions for naval units. Please?
Noted. Not a bad idea.
My Greek campaign still going great. I can't get enough of this game. As a huge fan of Byzantium I have a few things to offer. I'll start on the lighter side.
I found this finnish metal band who sings a pretty sweet song about the Varangian Guard. Worth a listen. I'm adding it to the civ 4 soundtrack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x-5ZkTMyMc
Thanks, nice guys. Remind me heavily of Sabaton...
Now on a more serious note. After the debate with the Greek Water wheel, which doesn't make any sense for a variety of reasons, I brainstormed an idea for a significantly more ideal improvement. Forts. Asia minor is littered with them, and the Greeks absolutely depended on them for significant periods, especially throughout the byzantine era. Forts in many ways defined both the rise and the fall of the late greeks, and are worth receiving some attention in the game.
Now as for specifics, that's trickier. There's a lot of routes to take, and I don't know what the limits are for defensive improvements. Maybe an additional defensive bonus, a faster construction time, or an additional +heal bonus. i'm trying to research more for some better ideas, but researching the byzantine empire is a pain.
I am inclined to defend the water wheel. While it is true that the water wheel itself was not the cornerstone of Greek culture, it was symptomatic of one thing that was very definitely there - the extensive use of machinery to make a lot of agricultural and industrial tasks easier. They were the cradle of agricultural and industrial mechanization this side of Himalayas, and these advances were later carried to Europe by Romans and to Middle East by Arabs. We felt that this should be represented.
Along these lines. The Great walls of Constantinople should be strongly considered as a great wonder. The influence these walls had were far greater then the majority of wonders currently in existence, and their effectiveness was unmatched. At the very least these walls should provide a bonus to great engineers, a large cultural bonus, and a large defensive bonus. The walls are simply too significant to be left out of this mod.
Heres a little video on the walls, though this left out some other important aspects of the wall, such as the great chain. http://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-city-of-walls-constantinople-lars-brownworth
I feel disinclined to include them for a simple (and probably idiotic) reason that as a wonder, they'd be called "Walls of Constantinople", which ties them to a single city, while in almost 100% percent of games, Constantinople would not be the place they'd be built.
Ancient great works aren't discontinuing when classic works appear, which makes for some odd scenarios, like, my people just completed rock paintings and adopted chivalry on the same year.
That's intentional, as they never discontinue. One might argue for Ancient works that if you "build" them later on, you've just made an important archaeological discovery.
Vassalism mechanic is so freakin broken on the world maps. I totally understand why it was turned off. I don't know exactly why the AI is doing this, but almost all of them beg to vassal into the top empires. They will do this even if they are doing perfectly fine on their own. This was never a problem in 3.1, so maybe its K-mod or barbarians? I think I'll try to make the best of it and spark world war. Me and my 5 vassals against russia and her 6 vassals. The sad thing is I gotta keep regecting more vassals every year.
That's true. I guess K-Mod has reworked the logic behind AI vassalization. We will likely have to disable it for our maps (and as the default option for random maps) until we can make it behave in a more reasonable manner.
Just a fast comment regarding your point doubling culture: it is right that early Great Works will have this doubling after 1000 years. But that only works for Ancient, Classical and Medieval Great Works somehow. Later ones won't have it in time. Let's suppose (because I don't play with tech trades off) Renaissance normally starts around 1000AD for a typical game, thus at the time the Renaisssance Art and Baroque GW will be constructed, 1000 years later is 2000AD, which is basically the end of the game and thus useless to consider the culture doubling capacity.
Anyhow, for the earliest GWs, that is a true fact though.
And that's why all works after medieval era will get a gradually increasing cultural output from now on, with modern ones ultimately getting 20 culture.
Bug i reported some time ago still exist. It's, a crash when screen jumps to units piechota or piechota liniowa (infantry and line infantry for Poland). I don't think its MAF because when i upgrade my piechota to later unit, crashes stop. If it will help i can provide saved game from earlier svn (downloaded just before official release 3.2).
Heh, I remember trying to fix that one. As a matter of fact I feel I've learned quite a lot about how Civ 4 graphical engine works since then, and I'm ready to give this one another try. But I'll need a save game, since I can't reproduce this issue myself now.
If unit aid was changed to be front-loaded it would greatly help the stack of doom problem, and better represent diminishing returns on roles already present in the stack. Rather then giving a bonus to the third Aid I suggest giving a bonus to the first aid, and reducing the third.
Interesting notion. We'll discuss that.
This is a bit more out there (and difficult), but consider giving pikemen a larger base strength, and penalize them with -% bonuses vs targets to make pikemen more appealing to keep later in the game for its aid bonus. This would better represent gunpowder armies of the next era since they continued to keep pikemen for quite a while. (or just give pikemen something to keep it from going obsolete as fast?)
That's actually a good idea. Pikemen should be an "all-purpose" unit.
The culture flipping mechanic IS broken by K-Mod: at least, it was the case in an older version, I did not check a recent one.
I also realised that no cities were culture flipping in my games since a long time. When I had an obvious case in a game, I searched for the codes. In CvPlot.cpp (void CvPlot::doCulture()) I reverted one line of code back to the original BtS one and tested it: the city in my game immediately culture flipped to me.
For the sake of it, this was the line of code in question:
Spoiler :Code://if (pCity->isBarbarian() || (!(GC.getGameINLINE().isOption(GAMEOPTION_NO_CITY_FLIPPING)) && (GC.getGameINLINE().isOption(GAMEOPTION_FLIPPING_AFTER_CONQUEST) || !(pCity->isEverOwned(eCulturalOwner))) && (pCity->getNumRevolts(eCulturalOwner) >= GC.getDefineINT("NUM_WARNING_REVOLTS")))) if (pCity->isBarbarian() || (!GC.getGameINLINE().isOption(GAMEOPTION_NO_CITY_FLIPPING) && (GC.getGameINLINE().isOption(GAMEOPTION_FLIPPING_AFTER_CONQUEST) || pCity->getPreviousOwner() != eCulturalOwner) && pCity->getNumRevolts(eCulturalOwner) >= GC.getDefineINT("NUM_WARNING_REVOLTS"))) // K-Mod
PS: I do not play RI and don't know if this is relevant.
Checked the source code, and the line is different there. I guess we use a later version of K-Mod that fixed this issue already.