Future Direction of the Mod

[need my speed]

I don't want to turn this into some kind of Caveman to Cosmos mod. Not a dozen new eras, hundreds of new technologies, and a thousand new units and buildings.

 

[Pavel Chichikov]

I don't want to turn this into some kind of Caveman to Cosmos mod. Not a dozen new eras, hundreds of new technologies, and a thousand new units and buildings.

Very true. A lot of mods have broken themselves that way.

i think we should do something like RFC classical era.Some religions have a chance to replace old ones(Christians pantheon-religions only and Muslims pantheon-religions and Zoroastrians).and i agree.We need Inquisitors and multiple religion spread.and Maybe disabling Seljuks and a sooner Iran spawn (possibly 1100AD )...

I understand the issues but: Splitting core game mechanics and events for different eras defeats the purpose of RFC in a first place. Just make another stand-alone-mod. I'm still yet to see a decent Modern-Middle-East mod.

On religions, I think the whole issue is easily fixed if religions aren't stupidly made immortal anymore. World religions are born and inevitably die, splinter or mutate. Make holy-cities razable again, in fact ther could even be a special persecution/espionage for killing off moribund religions.

I've always argued from Rhye's days the main interest of this mod is it's unpredictability within set-paramaters. Once to much scripting and straightjacketing comes in the game loses interest.


Having the game end at 1980 (or even 1945!) is a very good idea in my opinion. Detailing the extreme complexity of representing the modern era is outside the scope of this mod.
By this point of the game momentum of long-existing trends becomes irreversible... the game just drags out into unit-stacking, babysitting your empire, and gradual bludgeoning of a few remaining enemies. Spiced with a few fun mechanics, but the AI is utterly clueless on using them. So the Human also has a massive atvantage over the computer at this stage because the AI can't cope with things like aircraft or power.
Best era for multiplayer, but for this mod in particular it's easily the weakest aspect. It's easily scrapped with minimal editing for UHV's and no new Civs.
1945 seems a great symbolic point to end it as well.

 

[mrrandomplayer]

I don't want to turn this into some kind of Caveman to Cosmos mod. Not a dozen new eras, hundreds of new technologies, and a thousand new units and buildings.

Thank you. I thought I was the only person who thought that.

 

[Wessel V1]

I fully agree with your post Pavel, especially this part:

By this point of the game momentum of long-existing trends becomes irreversible... the game just drags out into unit-stacking, babysitting your empire, and gradual bludgeoning of a few remaining enemies.

Mechanics to enhance the game should focus on somehow making that part of the game more excitable, not adding more stuff in areas where it's not needed.

I also agree with need my speed that for non casual mods like this, adding too much is destructive.

 

[Panopticon]

I read Pavel as saying that it is more difficult to achieve improvements here, rather than saying that they are necessary or a priority. I see several challenges in improving the very late game from 1900 on. First, you would need to improve combat AI, which could be difficult. Second, becoming uncontestably big and powerful is the natural route to supremacy and victory in games like Civ, which is why the short-cut Domination victory was added during the franchise, but it is hard to get Domination in RFC due to map design and vassal rules. Third, many games (UHV or otherwise) are already finished by 1900, yielding low returns to the effort put in.

 

[VGL]

I don't want to turn this into some kind of Caveman to Cosmos mod. Not a dozen new eras, hundreds of new technologies, and a thousand new units and buildings.

Yeah,too much is bad.but as long as all of the old ones can stay and doesn't completely revamps it,then it's good.but new eras(unless the information era is added) is ussles

 

[Meisterjaeger77]

I agree with what most users already posted, I would love to see some more new features, improvements or new ideas, even if that would require changements/removements of BtS/RFC content.
(Leoreth: You sure know the BASE mod. They changed quite a lot and it is a tremendously mod. Changements sure are not a problem, as long as it is not too harsh)

One thing I would LOVE to see changed, even if it is probably quite unimportant compared to the major changements from lately: I would like to see a remake of the ancient civilizations, especially Egypt. They sure were a lot more developed in terms of warfare (they were a way more aggressive civ as they are in DoC) or technology (they already were in knowledge of mathematics and astronomy, even if in more primitive form).
I do not know if more units, a research boost, more technologies or whatever would help to make Egypt or Babylonia more creative and variable to play, but right now, tech and build order are tight and in order to win their UHVs, you only have one (partly unhistorical, I think) way to play and need bits of luck.

 

[Lone Wolf]

That's why I don't like most UHVs anyway, many of them are very bean-county.

 

[NKN]

That's why I don't like most UHVs anyway, many of them are very bean-county.

True.

 

[Leoreth]

I don't want to turn this into some kind of Caveman to Cosmos mod. Not a dozen new eras, hundreds of new technologies, and a thousand new units and buildings.

I agree.

(Leoreth: You sure know the BASE mod. They changed quite a lot and it is a tremendously mod. Changements sure are not a problem, as long as it is not too harsh)

I don't like BASE that much. History Rewritten does similar things in a smarter way in my opinion.

 

[Tigranes]

I said this before, but I think it's worth to repeat it again.

Think about Rise and Fall. So many mods, so many civ series and expansions. And they all have all the civs starting together. Then comes Rhye and introduces concept of dynamic rise and fall. This concept alone (I don't even talk about stability) -- so evident in real history -- was overlooked both by professional developers and hundreds of modders with brilliant programming skills. It even gave RFC its name.

Now, which revolutionary new feature would give DoC its name if we don't pick random "Dawn of Civilization" name? Which fundamental part of historical reality became DoC's landmark? Dare I say none?

How about creating some fundamentally new experience instead of building on top of the existing features? Here is just one example:

There were 2 fundamentally different types of civilizations in history: nomadic and sedentary. Sons of Cain and Sons of Abel. This fact is not a secondary feature, it is a fundamental piece of historical reality like religion, like wars, like culture, like science. Ignoring this reality in the game called Civilization is like ignoring females in the game called Humans.

Civilization series have engine that revolves around sedentary civilization only, only Sons of Cain are present. Barbarians suppose to represent nomads, but they too become city dwellers early in vanila game. The only time I saw something close to represent Nomads as they are -- was Mongols scenario in Warlords: I am talking about Mongol Tent unit.

That is a good starting point. Imagine playing civilization with mobile "cities". Just a new object that can move. Call it horde. Horde has population points, which can work tiles in BFC. It can build regular units and animals instead of buildings. Animals like horses or sheep act like mobile improvements on tiles they are parked on. Horde does not generate money. You have to move your animals into cultural border of sedentary (regular) civ to cash them. You can also pillage and capture cities which will act like puppets in Civ5: AI manages them for you and creates units and tributes for you. You can always raze them. You can also cash the culture of the city you have captured. Techs are not researchable. You discover them from huts, buy them from others, or occasionally capture them in wars.

Something along these lines. I hope you got an idea.

 

[srpt]

here is a proposal for making crowded cities more optimal:

tiles that generate at least 2 food get an additional +1 food if they are 1 tile from the city

cities get a free trade route with any city within 3 tiles that is at least size 3

cities get +10% GPP per other city within 3 tiles that is at least size 6

the other cities do not have to be yours, but they must be eligible for trade routes

I'm interested to know what other players think of these ideas so I made a custom DLL for people to try. there's also a text file.

would these changes make Venice-Genoa any more viable to you, for example, or Varanasi-Pataliputra?

 

[Leoreth]

Good ideas, but maybe all of them might be too powerful?

 

[srpt]

quite possibly. I thought if I could get it so that crowded cities were actually slightly better in some circumstances, then you could readjust overall GPP, maintenance, growth etc.

 

[Publicola]

here is a proposal for making crowded cities more optimal:

/snip/

would these changes make Venice-Genoa any more viable to you, for example, or Varanasi-Pataliputra?

I like these ideas. Historically, cities have tended to concentrate in narrow corridors, usually oriented around rivers -- the Indus, the Niles, the Euphrates, the Po. However, in pretty much every Civ mod I've seen, players are very much encouraged to separate cities as much as possible, so their BFC do not intersect. If we can adjust the settings to ensure that both players and AI must seriously consider whether 'clumping' cities together is an optimal strategy, it will make for a much more realistic historical mod. This would also have the effect of making far-away colonies a much more realistic option, as they would not receive the usual benefits of city-clumping that would occur in a player's core.

 

[mrrandomplayer]

I like these ideas. Historically, cities have tended to concentrate in narrow corridors, usually oriented around rivers -- the Indus, the Niles, the Euphrates, the Po. However, in pretty much every Civ mod I've seen, players are very much encouraged to separate cities as much as possible, so their BFC do not intersect. If we can adjust the settings to ensure that both players and AI must seriously consider whether 'clumping' cities together is an optimal strategy, it will make for a much more realistic historical mod. This would also have the effect of making far-away colonies a much more realistic option, as they would not receive the usual benefits of city-clumping that would occur in a player's core.

Yeah, maybe some bonuses for cities on the same river?

 

[Fresol]

Here's my alternative proposal:

- Free trade route to cites in your capital's 2nd ring. You need connection to the city and OB and non-mercantilism etc. as usual.
- Tile that generates at least 1 food/commerce and is in at least 2 cities' 1st ring yields 1 more food/commerce when worked by these cities.

The food/commerce bonus may equal (number_of_cities_sharing_the_tile - 1) if it's not enough. But I fear too much food makes super-specialist-center too easily accessible. The food bonus should be balanced carefully.

I like these ideas. This change of rule will boost Italy and Maya significantly. Egypt, India and others are going to benefit from it as well.

 

[Shadow Merc]

Isn't there a way to change how the AI values certain spots on their settler maps when founding cities? I thought I saw this in RFC Europe somewhere, maybe even Classical World. Maybe changing the values a bit would prevent them from spamming close cities so often.

Anyway, it doesn't seem like all the AI are plagued by horrible city placement. Some actually make decent city choices most of the time. I.E., I regularly see India found cities like Lahore and Mumbai that aren't too cluttered, and Babylon usually only settles Kalhu on the copper. But Egypt & Ethiopia come to mind as the worst offenders. Especially Ethiopia. Most of the time they seem determined to found all of their cities within two spaces of each other.

 

[Publicola]

If we're interested in keeping the bulk of ancient cities in river valleys, would it be possible to make a rule that says that cities can only be built by rivers or coasts or on connected roads until the tech level reaches a certain point (probably the classical era, though possibly the medieval era would work if you throw in a few exceptions for landlocked civs). This would allow the early spread of settlements to much more closely match their historical spread -- you don't really get exclusively inland cities until the transportation issue has been resolved. Thoughts?

 

[VGL]

I think classical era Is better so nations like Persia could settle cities