Leaders

Do you guys know how pillaging is calculated? By improvement and era? It does seem kinda random, and it would be nice to know what to go for after the strat resources.

It's always felt completely random to me, with a tendency for farms to have the worst yields but still potentially returning good gold.

Pillaging AI resources has always felt like an exploit to me, since the major-civ AI doesn't seem to make a determined effort to pillage, and we can use it to trivialize combat. Destroy a few luxuries and strategics and they have a -83% combat penalty.

Thalassicus said:

Pillaging AI resources has always felt like an exploit to me, since the major-civ AI doesn't seem to make a determined effort to pillage, and we can use it to trivialize combat. Destroy a few luxuries and strategics and they have a -83% combat penalty.

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I've noticed that they've been pillaging occasionally lately, but only when they happen to be on a resource tile, and have nothing else to do.

I always assumed pillaging luxuries wouldn't help anything other than my ego, because of the generally high AI happiness. But targeted strategics pillaging could be different. If it doesn't take too long , could you amplify on the 83%?

Pillaging all the strategics gives -50%, and pillaging luxuries to very unhappy state adds -33%. It's not hard to do if they were a trading partner (giving them a few luxuries). When the war starts they lose those luxuries, then we also pillage what they have left, easily producing a 10-20 point happiness drop and crippling the AI's production and combat capabilities. It's cheesy and trivializes warfare so I avoid doing it anymore. Some AIs do keep rather close to the happiness cap, especially warlike ones with few trading partners.

A present for the new NW.

Sneaks said:

A present for the new NW.

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Very nice.

Honestly wasn't sure what to do with 2 rocks. Threw in a false viking looking village in the background

Thanks! The large image size helps with scaling too.

Dojo. Should work pretty well methinks.

Jelling Stones
Unique Heroic Epic for Denmark
Fixed cost equal to 3-city Heroic Epic
Culture: 1
Culture Looted from Conquered Cities
Units trained here start with the Morale promotion
Requires only Barracks in the city

I chose to go with a non-scaling cost since it's a UB, and shouldn't be as inaccessible as national wonders usually are for a conquest-focused player. The starting point for culture income is equal to one half the old Spoils of War culture.


@Sneaks
For reference I believe the sunbeams on vanilla buildings are about twice as wide, with blurred edges. The narrow beams can be hard to distinguish at the smaller icon sizes. I've attached the photoshop file with the layers used to create icons. It includes a lower layer with a circular mask for the icon, and a top layer which applies a shadow effect. Since you're doing several of these, I want to offer you control over how the images get cropped, if that matters to you.

Makes no matter to me too much, but I'll certainly attempt to use those masks from now on

Thalassicus said:

Pillaging AI resources has always felt like an exploit to me, since the major-civ AI doesn't seem to make a determined effort to pillage, and we can use it to trivialize combat. Destroy a few luxuries and strategics and they have a -83% combat penalty.

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v.12 -25% combat penalty when using more strategic resources than available (was -50)

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I feel like the happiness morale penalty should almost be buffed more than the linked one. Like -25% on unhappiness, -33% on resource shortage. But maybe not due to AI behavior?

I do think both are problematic for the AI. I think it's easier to starve them for strategics than happiness, which is why I chose to alter this one. I could set both at 25%.

Well, I think you SHOULD be punished more for having strategics broken in principle, but your point about the AI is very valid so I'd just leave it alone I guess.

GoodRevrnd said:

Well, I think you SHOULD be punished more for having strategics broken in principle, but your point about the AI is very valid so I'd just leave it alone I guess.

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I really liked the change. Sometimes I pillage AI resources & then I am able to defeat their swords with my spears. This would make the penalty less severe giving AI a chance.

Thalassicus said:

Jelling Stones
Unique Heroic Epic for Denmark
Fixed cost equal to 3-city Heroic Epic
Culture: 1
Culture Looted from Conquered Cities
Units trained here start with the Morale promotion
Requires only Barracks in the city

Click to expand...

First off, many many thanks for making ciV so such more enjoyable! Also, the depth of your reasoning and documentation is truly stellar

Now, I just started a game as Denmark yesterday with the 9.1.11 beta, and while I've never considered updating a mod during a game before, the above change would be very welcome. Do you reckon it would be possible to update and still continue a game currently at turn 139, 525BC, where I have not yet built the Heroic Epic (and obviously no SkiInf)?

pa2k said:

First off, many many thanks for making ciV so such more enjoyable! Also, the depth of your reasoning and documentation is truly stellar

Now, I just started a game as Denmark yesterday with the 9.1.11 beta, and while I've never considered updating a mod during a game before, the above change would be very welcome. Do you reckon it would be possible to update and still continue a game currently at turn 139, 525BC, where I have not yet built the Heroic Epic (and obviously no SkiInf)?

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Sounds a bit problematic, you should just start a new game.

Do you think you could modify the AI behaviour for conquest-focused civs? Spain, Rome, Denmark and Songhai always suffer very badly in score, and civs that have been reduced to 1 city often fail to make settlers to expand elsewhere. Askia especially if horrible under the AI. His UA is just too weak. 75 gold per encampment and defence while embarked (not that the AI often does that effectively) seem UP. He always ends up at the bottom of the pile for my games. A change to his UA would be nice, for example having a gold bonus for every unit killed (on top of the gold boost given by Honour) would be useful, or perhaps a bonus to combat or movement on river tiles. This would keep in line with the concept of "River Warlord". Also, Ramkhamaeng , Kamehameha and Pachacuti always seem to come up top. Conquest civs often end up at the bottom, and I'd like to see them strengthened. Rome never evolves into the juggernaut it was, Spain is often impotent and the Songhai get picked on every time. Only Denmark seems to do reasonably well.

Proposal: UA for Songhai changed to no combat and movement penalty when crossing rivers and gold gained for every unit killed. Ability can keep the name "River Warlord"
UA for Spain: Inquisition. Resistance in captured cities reduced by half and unhappiness in occupied cities reduced to 1 per population. (same as puppets, but with the unhappiness per occupied city penalty).
UA for Rome: Professional Legions. All units trained get a free promotion/+15 XP

Geppenguin said:

Do you think you could modify the AI behaviour for conquest-focused civs? Spain, Rome, Denmark and Songhai always suffer very badly in score, and civs that have been reduced to 1 city often fail to make settlers to expand elsewhere. Askia especially if horrible under the AI. His UA is just too weak. 75 gold per encampment and defence while embarked (not that the AI often does that effectively) seem UP. He always ends up at the bottom of the pile for my games. A change to his UA would be nice, for example having a gold bonus for every unit killed (on top of the gold boost given by Honour) would be useful, or perhaps a bonus to combat or movement on river tiles. This would keep in line with the concept of "River Warlord". Also, Ramkhamaeng , Kamehameha and Pachacuti always seem to come up top. Conquest civs often end up at the bottom, and I'd like to see them strengthened. Rome never evolves into the juggernaut it was, Spain is often impotent and the Songhai get picked on every time. Only Denmark seems to do reasonably well.

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The problem with tinkering in this area are 1) sampling and 2) AI vs human.

The only civ you mentioned as doing poorly in your games that also does poorly in mine is Denmark. And Polynesia has never done well although its UA allows it to get off to a consistently fast start.

In addition, any boost to a civ strong enough to make a difference for the AI will also help the human, possibly making one of those civs OP.