Éa, The Ageless and the Divine (phase 2, alpha)

Pazyryk · Jun 13, 2013

onedreamer said:
make sure ranged units combat strength is considerably weaker than their ranged strength and the melee combat strength contemporary units.

The analogous units in base game you should be using for reference are range 1 Gatling and Machine Gunners, not Archers. Base game Archers function very much like siege, attacking from great distance and totally weak in combat. I was impressed with Gatling/Machine Gunners in G&K because they operate very differently from siege and do things that I think archers should be able to do, like defend a hill or fort (base archers can't do that). So having the same ranged/combat strength is part of their new function. (First strike would be a nice alternative, but no way to code that right now.)

Having said that, the values do need adjustment. The goal here is to make them comparable to light infantry (tier 2). They should be inferior for conquering cities, but superior for defending a rough terrain plot and perhaps equal or slightly inferior on a flat terrain plot (let's assume Éa Archers are like Legolas and will shoot you in the face at close range; or, if that is too much for you to swallow, that they have swords and can use them). Horse Archers require both Archery and Horseback Riding (and the resource but Horses are common) so probably should be considered tier 2.5. Chariot Archer is a weaker version of Horse Archer that requires only Archery and the resource, so really tier 2. Chariot is actually a tier 1 unit (no tech req) but should be somewhat better than Warriors with the resource req.

Whatever logic is developed above can be applied up the lines to tier 3, 4, etc. So..., perhaps archer should always be 2/3 strength of same-tier melee (remember that melee all have +33% city attack). Horse Archer line is a bit more complicated because you have both armored and unarmored/fast horse-mounted at each tier.

Elephants are supposed to be quite a bit stronger than same-tier. That's balanced by higher production cost (but perhaps needs to be raised more) and more restricted resource.

onedreamer said:
anyways, a morale penalty on mercs (or better: a no-happiness-bonus) wouldn't have been a bad idea.

The Slave bug is hiding the Merc morale effect. Mercs have baseline morale = 0, unaffected by civ happiness. Drops to -20 if you are at war with the mercs original owner (you can see original owner in the merc panel under "Employed" tab). It's a pretty key mod concept that mercenary and slave armies are decoupled from civ happiness (especially the latter, since slavery-focused civs can actually benefit from unhappiness).

the yellow piou said:
Your mod rocks

Thanks!

the yellow piou said:
- Copper is not visible at all on any type of terrain.

I'm trying to fix that. For now, you have to look in strategic view.

the yellow piou said:
- An allied mercenary CS was offering a lvl 2 light infantry but this unit didn't have any promotions in the menu (didn't hired it to check).

Yeah, I left the space for this, but didn't code it yet. I thought it would add a lot of interest when you are shopping around for mercs.

the yellow piou said:
- After discovering archery, i settled on a yew deposit. A few turns later the ressource has disapeared but i still have 6 yew in my commercial network.

Yew resource is removed if clear the forest/jungle. But I didn't account for the case of settling on one. I'll fix that.

the yellow piou said:
- After opening commerce, my capital produce 3g and 1g per

Every city in every civ gets 1p1g1s per :c5citizen:

. The 1p1g are just part of the mod yield system.

Calavente · Jun 14, 2013

onedreamer said:
You introduced building improvements that do this nicely. For example a market adds 1 gold to each resource, even unimproved. You removed luxuries from quite some terrain improvements and linked them to buildings. You linked some terrain improvements to building units (fish & game). So you can see how this was a consistent change in strategy about terrain improvement... just saying I had not been considering this before, too used to vanilla Civ logics. Not saying it is bad or anything. Let's say that in most cases now the terrain improvement is really an improvement (bonus), compared to a requirement.

I would say that this is bad....
IMO, buildings shouldn't give bonus to un-improved resources, or at least, improving the resource should give 2-3 times more bonus (alone or with buildings) that what can be done by buildings with un-improved resources. (however a big difference is that a building impacts all corresponding resources in BFC, while improvements needs to be made on each resources.... maybe improvement cost needs to be reduced a bit?)

IMO, getting a way to improve the land should be a really important factor (+ get roads to the improvements) (even for pantheist civs... there should be something to show that people are organised to GO to that resource.).

I thought about something (but hard to code).

Spoiler :

well. thats my thoughs... I put them here but you are not forced to read them...

Lplate · Jun 14, 2013

Hi,

I've resized that crown. Easier to do when I can see it in game. Attached is the dds atlas with the resized crown.

onedreamer · Jun 14, 2013

Pazyryk said:
The analogous units in base game you should be using for reference are range 1 Gatling and Machine Gunners, not Archers. Base game Archers function very much like siege, attacking from great distance and totally weak in combat. I was impressed with Gatling/Machine Gunners in G&K because they operate very differently from siege and do things that I think archers should be able to do, like defend a hill or fort (base archers can't do that). So having the same ranged/combat strength is part of their new function. (First strike would be a nice alternative, but no way to code that right now.)

Vanilla Archers don't work like siege engines. They don't have the city attack bonus (which is very consistent) and they don't need to set up. Also siege engines can't defend while archers can. The only thing they have in common is the ranged attack, a bit too little to say they are the same.
I completely disagree with your reasoning about having the same combat strength and ranged strength. If we put it on the historical/realism point of view, archers have always been used as an offensive unit, with very low protection, used to wear down enemy numbers from a distance before melee battle, which is exactly how archers operate in game. Most people see archers as the units that would defend the castle. Wonders of Hollywood... the vast majority of sieges were a pure game of waiting for famine to cause surrender, that is what a siege was in most cases. Machine Guns have been employed as a front line interdiction weapon, and in the game they appear as the last archery unit (in earlier stages of the game I remember them being siege units), they aren't a proper archer unit because they belong to a different era where archery is gone, unlike in your mod. They don't operate very realistically ingame, because they work as a strong defensive unit instead of an interdiction unit and they should need a set-up prior to fire IMHO. From a pure gameplay pow, forget about confrontations with Vanilla, and take your mod with chariot and chariot archers. They both have combat strength of 7, cost the same, but the chariot archers ALSO have a ranged attack. You must be able to see that there is a balance issue there.
In any game I have played so far, any, ranged units trade their ranged ability for lower defense. The combat strength of ranged units is used in defense calculations, that is the reason why it is lower: it's the trade off for their ranged ability. The reduced range to 1 is completely irrilevant to this point, since when an archer attacks, its target does not retaliate, so the main advantage of the ranged unit is the same wether it has 2 range or 1 range. 3 Range is what really makes the big difference since most units have a movement ability of 2.
Since Civ5 does not have height calculations, if you want archers to be a nice defensive unit on hills (agreeable) you could make them start with one or two promotions for rough terrain, although this favors them even in forests where they should not have any bonus (a penalty actually).

Elephants are supposed to be quite a bit stronger than same-tier. That's balanced by higher production cost (but perhaps needs to be raised more) and more restricted resource.

production cost doesn't balance anything. 15 strength vs 9 strength means you need 3 light infantry to kill an elephant archer. Is the production cost triple? Most importantly: is the maintenance cost equal to that of 3 units? No and no. It is unbalanced. A unit with 66% more strength than most its contemporary units and with over twice strength lower tier units cannot be balanced by anything. Currently if I start near elephants I restart the game.
Another consideration, the required resource should be strategic, with limited numbers, like horses, iron, etc.

The Slave bug is hiding the Merc morale effect. Mercs have baseline morale = 0, unaffected by civ happiness. Drops to -20 if you are at war with the mercs original owner (you can see original owner in the merc panel under "Employed" tab). It's a pretty key mod concept that mercenary and slave armies are decoupled from civ happiness (especially the latter, since slavery-focused civs can actually benefit from unhappiness).

sounds good.

Pazyryk · Jun 14, 2013

I've reworked Militarism branch to try to make it competitive. The actual effect of "Each policy adopted within branch provides extra free units based on total population" can be adjusted to fine tune the branch. The initial value used is sort of a guess anyway because the xml tag is not documented.

Berserker Rage now works and should be fun. The effect is similar to the base game Japanese UA, but not exactly the same since Morale decays toward baseline over time.

Code:

Discipline 	&#8594; Military Tradition 	  &#8594; Professional Army
Warcraft	-/		   \&#8594; 	     Warrior Code
Warspirit   	&#8594; Berserker Rage

Free Warrior when the first policy is opened within this branch. Each policy adopted within branch provides extra free units based on total population.
Opener: Base free military units increased by 4
Discipline: +20% Combat Strength bonus for units in a tile next to other friendly military units
Military Tradition: Garrisoned units provide +1c and +1 local happiness
Professional Army: Upgrading units requires 50% less Gold
Warcraft: Military Units gain double experience from combat
Warrior Code: Culture from kills
Warspirit: +10% baseline unit Morale (does not affect slaves, mercenaries or non-living units)
Berserker Rage: Baseline unit Morale is boosted 1% for each hp damage sustained (does not affect slaves, mercenaries or non-living units)
Finisher: 1/3 of all culture converted to unit experience, divided among all military units

@Lplate, thanks for the fixed crown. (I agree with your idea for adding empty templates in the next version.)

@Calavente, I agree on the resources: the mods should be on improved rather than raw. But (if I remember right) there isn't a way to modify only improved resources. It's either the resource or the improvement itself. On the roads: you just want me to disappear again for a month while I code AI for that? No more "new AI" mechanisms for me, not for a while anyway. But I do wish that Civ5 wasn't so discouraging for building roads. It would be nice if we could have a happy middle between Civ4 (road on every plot) and Civ5 (absolutely only the minimum roads to connect cities for trade). I was thinking of maybe giving everyone a 50% discount on road maintenance.

@onedreamer, I think your logic is perfectly sound. Some considerations:

The AI is absolutely awful at using "standard" ranged units (standard meaning poor defense units with range 2).
The situation above is compounded by the fact that the AI very often has more of these ranged units than melee. That's already true in base Civ5, but then Éa makes this even worse (for some civs) with its peculiar tech specialization.
I just saw the preview for the next Hobbit movie and archers (elven archers, to be sure) were very clearly running through forests in a very spritely fashion. And I'm pretty sure I saw Legolas shoot an orc in the face from close range*. And, going back to LOTR2, they weren't total pushovers at Helm's Deep. OK, they got creamed. But they looked impressive when Aragorn was leading their charge after the wall had come down.
Concepts like distance and battlefield are all pretty squishy in Civ games. It doesn't particularly bother me that archers can fire over huge lakes, but it does bother me that they have the same range as siege. And the concept of unit is very plastic. I always assume that siege units have at least some melee around them: you wouldn't just have the machinery and operators in a big open field by themselves. Likewise, I can assume that the archers unit already has some element of combined warfare built into the single unit. If you really wanted a more reasonable representation of battle, you would have to: 1) expand the Civ5 map about 10x, and 2) dedicate some resources to building an AI for it.
I think what I meant to say about archers above was that they operate in a way that is more similar to siege than melee. "Well," you say, "of course they do because they are ranged." But my experience with G&K Machine Gunners was very different: they seem to operate more like melee than siege. They don't need protection (like melee) and they can't do damage at great distance (unlike siege). And that is what the mod needs. But really they are unlike either (more so in my opinion than base archers) and that's also good. It doesn't matter what Machine Gunners are in the real world. It's the Civ5 unit functionality I'm trying to co-opt, such as their ability to defend a fort (unlike base archers). Of course, anyone else can provide a dozen arguments going the other way.
The system should be given a fair chance after I've made some attempts at balancing it. I have made major reversals in the past (e.g., pantheism and improvements) so who knows what will happen.

*

Spoiler Surely this makes my case :

Lyrrix · Jun 14, 2013

Posting a zip file with save and lua log from the current turn.

Sustained values are not being applied (at least for me.) I have a Druid in my capital with Devotion II, currently using the Worship action (provides 2+Devotion Ranks Mana/turn sustained). However, when the turn ends, I'll only receive 1 Mana (from my capital) instead of the 5 I should be getting (1 from Capital + 4 from Druid sustained Worship action).

I've been ending my turn the normal way this entire game. Noticed that the beakers for techs also did not seem to be being applied through the Research action unless the units were cycled through. Just tried the Druid as well, clicking on the action provided the 4 mana that I should have received normally.

Pazyryk · Jun 14, 2013

@Lyrrix, Just hang in there for v11, probably tomorrow mid-day if nothing horrible happens. The yield type actions are done in a different way in v11 (for all but Worship anyway) and the end turn code is much more robust (Auto End Turn works now), so whatever problems there should clear up. I've tested a few actions very thoroughly, starting from a defined turn and running out 10 or more turns with 1) no interference, 2) clicking the action each turn or 3) running with Auto End Turn. In all cases the yield was the same or the thing being created was finished on the same turn.

Pazyryk · Jun 15, 2013

Pazyryk said:
@Lyrrix, Just hang in there for v11, probably tomorrow mid-day if nothing horrible happens.

The horrible thing that happened was I got interested in city conversion processes. But these are desperately needed anyway. Late tonight is still a possibility...

Processes

All processes have a policy prereq as indicated.

Agrarianism
Industrial Agriculture (Industrialization) Converts 25% production into food distributed in all cities.

Pantheism
World Weave (Commune with Nature) Uses production to convert citizens into followers of The Weave of Éa worldwide, randomly converted from cities that already have at least one follower (pantheistic cult followers are considered followers of The Weave). 100 production needed to convert one non-religious citizen, 500 to convert a theistic citizen.
Éa Blessings (Forest Dominion) Converts 10% production into Living Terrain strength points, randomly applied to non-improved forest, jungle or marsh plots worldwide.
Major Spirits' Tribute (Mana Vortexes) Converts 25% production into influence points divided among all Major Spirits of Éa that are friends or allies, or all contacted if none are currently friends or allies.
Faeries' Tribute (Through the Veil) Converts production into boosted relationship with The Fay. Boost equals moving average of production contributed over the last 100 turns divided by 10.

Theism
Azzandara's Tribute (Heaven's Mandate) Converts 25% production into Divine Favor.
World Salvation (Theocracy) Uses production to convert citizens into followers of Azzandarayasna worldwide, randomly converted from cities that already have at least one follower. 100 production needed to convert one non-religious citizen; 500 to convert and already religious citizen.

(Anti-)Theism
Ahriman's Tribute (Hell's Mandate) Converts 25% production into consumed Mana. The Mana is directly consumed and never made available to the civilization.
World Corruption (Theocracy) Uses production to convert citizens into followers of Aŋra worldwide, randomly converted from cities that already have at least one follower. 100 production needed to convert one non-religious citizen; 500 to convert and already religious citizen.

Slavery
Oppression (Servi Aeternam) Converts 25% production into civilization unhappiness.

Militarism
Training Exercises (Professional Armies) Converts 25% production into experience points divided among all military units.

Tradition
The Arts (The Arts) Converts 25% production into Culture in this city.
Research (Rationalism) Converts 25% production into Science in this city.

Commerce
Trade Surplus (Mercantilism) Converts 25% production into Gold in this city.
Patronage (Patronage) Converts 25% production into influence divided among all City State friends and allies, or all contacted if none are currently friends or allies.

Lyrrix · Jun 15, 2013

Yay! Things to build when I run out of buildings!!

Sezneg · Jun 16, 2013

Pazyryk said:
The horrible thing that happened was I got interested in city conversion processes. But these are desperately needed anyway. Late tonight is still a possibility...

Processes

All processes have a policy prereq as indicated.

Agrarianism
Industrial Agriculture (Industrialization) Converts 25% production into food distributed in all cities.

Pantheism
World Weave (Commune with Nature) Uses production to convert citizens into followers of The Weave of Éa worldwide, randomly converted from cities that already have at least one follower (pantheistic cult followers are considered followers of The Weave). 100 production needed to convert one non-religious citizen, 500 to convert a theistic citizen.
Éa Blessings (Forest Dominion) Converts 10% production into Living Terrain strength points, randomly applied to non-improved forest, jungle or marsh plots worldwide.
Major Spirits' Tribute (Mana Vortexes) Converts 25% production into influence points divided among all Major Spirits of Éa that are friends or allies, or all contacted if none are currently friends or allies.
Faeries' Tribute (Through the Veil) Converts production into boosted relationship with The Fay. Boost equals moving average of production contributed over the last 100 turns divided by 10.

Theism
Azzandara's Tribute (Heaven's Mandate) Converts 25% production into Divine Favor.
World Salvation (Theocracy) Uses production to convert citizens into followers of Azzandarayasna worldwide, randomly converted from cities that already have at least one follower. 100 production needed to convert one non-religious citizen; 500 to convert and already religious citizen.

(Anti-)Theism
Ahriman's Tribute (Hell's Mandate) Converts 25% production into consumed Mana. The Mana is directly consumed and never made available to the civilization.
World Corruption (Theocracy) Uses production to convert citizens into followers of Aŋra worldwide, randomly converted from cities that already have at least one follower. 100 production needed to convert one non-religious citizen; 500 to convert and already religious citizen.

Slavery
Oppression (Servi Aeternam) Converts 25% production into civilization unhappiness.

Militarism
Training Exercises (Professional Armies) Converts 25% production into experience points divided among all military units.

Tradition
The Arts (The Arts) Converts 25% production into Culture in this city.
Research (Rationalism) Converts 25% production into Science in this city.

Commerce
Trade Surplus (Mercantilism) Converts 25% production into Gold in this city.
Patronage (Patronage) Converts 25% production into influence divided among all City State friends and allies, or all contacted if none are currently friends or allies.

Non-boring conversion processes? Love it.

Lplate · Jun 16, 2013

Pazyryk said:
Slavery
Oppression (Servi Aeternam) Converts 25% production into civilization unhappiness.

What's the advantage of running your civ as unhappily as possible?

Pazyryk · Jun 16, 2013

To be different than everyone else?

You have to look at this in context with the rest of the policy branch.

Pazyryk · Jun 16, 2013

Just a note on balancing ranged units in v11:

I'm going to do this mostly by lowering the effect of ranged attacks globally. Here's the relevant code:

Code:

UPDATE Defines SET Value = 100 WHERE Name = 'RANGE_ATTACK_RANGED_DEFENDER_MOD';			--changed from 125 in G&K (was 100 in vanilla)
UPDATE Defines SET Value = 1800 WHERE Name = 'RANGE_ATTACK_SAME_STRENGTH_MIN_DAMAGE';		--changed from 2400 in G&K
UPDATE Defines SET Value = 900 WHERE Name = 'RANGE_ATTACK_SAME_STRENGTH_POSSIBLE_EXTRA_DAMAGE';	--changed from 1200 in G&K

I need them to keep their high melee so they can defend. (A strong first strike would be a nice alternative but I don't know how to code that.) I could have balanced them by lowering ranged strength, but the problem with that is that the AI assesses and compares unit strength based on the ranged value for ranged units (this is on the dll side).

So the AI will judge a 9/9 (ranged/combat) unit as equal to a 9 melee unit. My goal is to make this assessment actually true (because it obviously isn't in the base game).

The code above is in CoreTables/GlobalDefines.sql in v11 if you want to play around with the values. The values I set above are just a first guess at balance.

Pazyryk · Jun 17, 2013

Éa II, v11 available from the OP (will break saves)

And new Manual here! Updated for v11 with various new things: processes, racial effects on CS relationships, etc...

I managed to get 11 of the 15 new Processes done. I added all listed above except Azzandara's Tribute, Ahriman's Tribute, Oppression and The Arts. These 4 are in the DB (but disabled) so I should be able to get them working in a hotfix. When you test these, keep in mind that most have a small "buffer" that needs to fill before anything happens. For example, xp and influence points won't start being distributed out until you have >10 points accumulated.

Also, feedback is planned for certain Processes that need it. For examples, Éa Blessings and the 3 religious conversion processes will have notifications: "Living Terrain strength was increased in 5 plots due to Éa Blessings" or "5 non-religious and 2 religious citizens were converted to Azzandarayasna due to Azzandara's Tribute". Conversely, the human player will get a notification if something changes in their territory (terrain strength or citizen religion) due to someone else's Processes. This will be in next version or maybe a hotfix.

There is an annoying UI bug related to the Processes that I haven't been able to solve yet. When you select one, then the city range strike button becomes flaky. For some reason the banner doesn't update and then the button doesn't show. But it will show if you enter/exit the city screen. I should be able to cure this in a hotfix.

The Policy popup window is very accurate now. I double checked all the help text (and cleaned up formatting) while adding in the Processes. Processes are documented there because they all have a policy prereq.

Fixed GP city conquest bug [hotfix 10a]
Arcane City States now give mana if you are not religion Azzandarayasna (4 for friends; 8 for allies)
Holy City States now give divine favor if you are religion Azzandarayasna (4 for friends; 8 for allies)
Holy City States become Unholy if they are majority Aŋra; these give mana only if you are a Fallen civ (4 and 8 as above)
Changed "resting" relationship for City States based on racial likes/dislikes. These vary from +10 (e.g., Man for Man, Sidhe for Sidhe) to -50 (Man for Heldeofol or Sidhe for Heldeofol).
Fixed bugs that gave player 0 (human player) credit for killing units that they didn't kill
Fixed bug that was giving newly hired mercenaries the Slave promotion
Newly hired mercenary or newly captured military unit slave will instantly go to the correct morale (0 or -30, respectively) rather than decaying to that value over time
You can recapture a Slave (the worker type unit) if it previously belonged to you. It will be a normal Worker.
Auto End Turn will now work properly; if you used this before then your GPs would not do the per turn actions they were supposed to do at end turn
Changed GP Build, Trade, Research and Perform actions. You will now see instant feedback in city yield and top panels. And they are all now subject to city yield modifier. However, if total research modifier in the city is < -50% due to knowledge maintenance, then Research will be applied as if city modifier = -50%. (Worship is still not reflected in UI but the points should add up correctly.)
Major rework of Militarism policy branch (see here)
Added corrected Crown icon (thanks Lplate!)
Changed Slave Raider and Slave Maker promotions so they are automatically given with policy rather than becoming earn-able; these won't transfer if the unit is hired out as a mercenary (however, units captured or hired by the civ with the policy will gain the promotion)
Civ unhappiness conversion to production moved from Servi Aeternam to Slave Castes
Sisukas and Crécy now properly gain Strong Infantry and Strong Archer promotion (respectively) for new units. These and similar do transfer with merc hiring or unit capture.
Fixed various other problems with free promotions and their transfer between civs (merc hiring or unit capture). Some like Slave Raider and Slave Maker don't transfer; most others do.
Barbs now capture workers, slaves & setters as a slave unit (as if they had Slavery)
Adding 11 of 15 new city conversion processes (see here)
Weakened ranged attacks globally (see here)

Calavente · Jun 17, 2013

Pazyryk said:
@Calavente, I agree on the resources: the mods should be on improved rather than raw. But (if I remember right) there isn't a way to modify only improved resources. It's either the resource or the improvement itself. On the roads: you just want me to disappear again for a month while I code AI for that?

hahah,
never, never...
I'm just rambling here... it keeps my brain from sclerosing on business-as-usal things...
it's just that I found brutally that it is strange that improvements 3 tiles away bring the same yield as nearby improvements when you need to cross deep jungle to access it. Then I tried to imagine a solution and I went bogus.

[to_xp]Gekko · Jun 17, 2013

you could check into Thalassicus mod, he moved the river gold bonus away from unimproved river tiles unto improved river tiles.

XplorR · Jun 17, 2013

reporting an error message, got it right after I started down the Militarism path.

hix · Jun 17, 2013

trying an island game, when this happened....btw, the carrack does not seem to be buildable. i have the tech and resources, but doesn't show up.

Pazyryk · Jun 17, 2013

@XplorR, I've found the bug that caused the initial error in your game. Either you or an AI was using the Perform action and that was triggering a new (and bugged) line of code. Looks like you kept playing for a while after that but the game data was so corrupt that 100 things were going wrong.

@hix, there isn't any indication of an error in the log. The last thing you were doing was looking in the Pedia. What happened then? Did you get a CTD? Do you remember what you were looking at?

On the Carrack: this and all other "cannon bearing" ships require Chemistry. You wouldn't necessarily notice it but there is a star icon under the Chemistry tech with the help text: "Required for all gunpowder units: Arquebussmen, Great Bombarde, Cannons, Carracks, Galleons & Ironclads". There are plenty of other ships you can build with Ship Building though.

Pazyryk · Jun 17, 2013

Hotfix a for v11. Download and "Extract Here" inside your MODS folder.

This fixes two new bugs related to city culture accounting that caused fatal game data corruption when player or AI did the Perform action.

Also adds The Arts Process. Available with The Arts policy and allows your city to convert 1/4 production to culture.

Éa, The Ageless and the Divine (phase 2, alpha)

Deity

Richard's voice

Esus (Allegedly)

Attachments

Dragon

Deity

Chieftain

Attachments

Deity

Deity

Chieftain

Warlord

Esus (Allegedly)

Deity

Deity

Deity

Richard's voice

QCT junkie

Chieftain

Attachments

Warlord

Attachments

Deity

Deity

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