Version 4.0 Discussion Thread

[Rakete4]

Hey, it seems that Ri-Hatz is taking over the "chief mod tester" job that I had been occupying over the last couple of months.
That's great, because I can't spend much time on playing the mod right now.

Just want to add that terrain damage should be deactivated in cities. I have got a city on a flood plains/plains tile, and whenever I build a unit it already has got some damage before I can move it.

And I agree that the Planetary Mongoose map script is not perfect in choosing balanced starting locations. As an alternative until this is improved, I recommend to play on my Africa map . Just go to scenarios and load the first one in the list. It's not really a scenario, however, just a map.

[Harrier]

Hi, LunarMongoose. Just started playing this mod a few days ago (single player).

Must say I am enjoying it so far - I am almost at the end of the Ancient Era.

I dont usually like fantasy units in a Civ mod, but yours (so far) seem to fit in well with ancient myths etc. I do like the birds, so do the barbarians with occasional attacks and the AI Civs. My Viking neighbor has a stack of 10 in his nearest city.

A few early observations.

1.

Originally Posted by Rakete4

And I agree that the Planetary Mongoose map script is not perfect in choosing balanced starting locations.

My start city was surrounded by jungle and forest. When I was able to build roads, I was suprised I could not build them in the jungles and forests, so I was unable to connect resources to/from other cities. I am not a historian, but surely even in Ancient times there must have been basic tracks that allowed connection between settlements.

So allowing roads to be built in forests/jungles would be great. I have not yet reached Bronze Working so not sure what happens then.

2. I am playing on your reccommended speed for single players: TwilightLama (I know I should have chosen an easier level - first time), Small World, Eternal Speed.

I know it has been mentioned before, but it is annoying to keep on building units and then deleting them (to avoid bankrupting yourself) because you have completed all the available building and can not yet convert hammers to wealth etc. I end up building settlers which take longer and then deleting them -it lessens the fun of the game.

Realism Invictus ( a very big, detailed Mod - which I guess from reading some of your posts, you are not too fond of.) has an early build which converts 50% of hammers and splits it between gold and science. (Myself I think they should have included culture as well.) The reason I mention it is that they say the AI uses it as well. In fact that is their policy - if the AI can not use it, it is not in the mod.

3. Some of the animals seemed quite strong, Panda, Bear etc. I did not attack them due to the very poor survival odds. But as I said earlier nearly all my tiles arround the city were either forest or jungle.

Well thats my few cents worth and again thanks for a great mod - very impressive for a solo modder.

[LunarMongoose]

Sorry for not responding til now, been busy getting ready for the Big Day (which is now in 7 hours - I can't believe I actually made it).

Originally Posted by Ri-Hatz

What I don't get is the symbol you use for the plot yield commerce!? WTF is that? It looks like some kind of nasty candy for children. I want gold, man! Not candy..

It was an icon someone posted on these forums a really, really long time ago. The idea was to make it look more different from the vanilla gold icon (which I also changed, but less drastically).

Originally Posted by Ri-Hatz

A question about the barter civic or + in general: If I understand correctly barter gives +50% Gold in Capital, so if I run 100% research there will be zero bonus for me, whereas I get the most absolute profit in gold out of it if running 100% commerce.

There are two separate sources of the commerce subtypes (gold, research, culture, espionage):

FIRST, there's the total commerce (candy ) a city is doing. That is broken down into its parts based on your empire spending levels.

SECOND, any +x effects are added in, such as Priest or Merchant specialists, Priest or Merchant Superspecialists (Great Merchant that joined the city for example), certain Events that can make all your Granaries do +1 gold (hypothetical example), and a few buildings like the eBank wonder (which has +100 gold per turn on it).

Those TWO components are then added together, and the result has the sum of all active subtype modifiers (Barter, Monarchy, Market / Grocer, Wall Street, etc for gold) applied to it.

So if you had 10 commerce per turn in your capital, had gold funding at 50%, had a Priest specialist, had a Market, and were running Barter, you would get 6 * 1.75 = 10.5 gold per turn there. (Don't ask me how it handles fractional amounts, that's complicated, heh.)

Originally Posted by Ri-Hatz

About your map script: We've had some starts where one of us had a small good starting location surrounded by ice and ocean and desert to all sides giving no real expansion possibilities.
That resulted in playing a few turns, comparing our future possibilities and.. restarting.

Yeah, it can happen. It currently still uses Cephalo's original custom starting location code, with some updates by Fuyu and others to sweeten the starting location itself better. Unfortunately there isn't much I can do about that right now.

Originally Posted by Ri-Hatz

Also the option 'start in old world' does not put all civs one one continent.

It tries to, but there are a bunch of other complicated rules it tries to follow too, and it doesn't always work out right.

Originally Posted by Ri-Hatz

Any suggestion on how many civs goes well on small or medium maps?

The default numbers were my best guess from eyeballing some sample maps, so, whatever works for ya; I haven't playtested any of the smaller sizes really.

Originally Posted by Ri-Hatz

What tech enables tech trading??? Couldn't find it anywhere!!

Guilds.

Originally Posted by Ri-Hatz

It would be nice to have two options available: 1. No unrealistic units. 2. No elite units.

I sympathize, but the problem I ran into was that the scifi units basically fill the same role as the early elite units - powerful but restricted - just in later eras. So from a gameplay standpoint it made sense to allow all of them or none of them.

Originally Posted by Ri-Hatz

Whats the deal with falcons? They seem very powerfull for just one strength. Falconry is for hunting. How could a falcon defeat or even attack a raft or archer anyways?
The idea of implementing birds is nice, but as it is now it feels strange to use falcons as military units or scouts.
Also why can they travel on coast? There should be a hunter who trained the bird with the bird at all times. It makes exploration along the coasts a bit too easy in the early ages compared to using boats.

I agree that in a perfect world they should have a handler, but they were a continuation of the War Dog, which has been running handler-less for some time now, so I guess I was just used to that.

Ships are still critically important for defending key water resource tiles and transporting units, and after you get past the initial Raft and Canoe types they are stronger than Falcons anyway.

Falcons were put in as a highly-optional alternative scouting and harassment option, basically. They can fly on Coast because there's no reason a well-trained bird shouldn't be able to, and it's neat having Prehistoric helicopters. Both the tech and the unit are expensive enough to justify their capabilities imo. Which is not to say I won't tweak their stats a little in the future; I tweak stuff all the time hehe.

Originally Posted by Ri-Hatz

The leader changing is nice, but also could limit some leaders and make them less usefull and limit their potential.
E.g. I played modern America and started with Washington and after beelining to some next age tech I switched to Lincoln. So there was no real chance to use Washingtons traits.
It would be so lovely to HAVE THE OPTION to change to the next leader. A simple pop up would do nicely here. The player would feel more in control that way too and can make the decision himself allowing to take leader change into strategical considerations.

The problem is, a lot of my Unique Units and especially Unique Buildings are balanced around the leader trait sequence of each civ. I agree with you that late-era-starts are not handled very well by the system as it currently is. What I would probably do is have you just jump straight into the right leader for that era in that case. (I always play from the beginning, so I didn't give later-era-starts too much thought at the time. Sorry.)

Originally Posted by Ri-Hatz

About the tooltip for wonders: In the build menu when mouseovering a world or national wonder it says: "National wonder: 1 left" or "World wonder: 1 left". That sounds like I can only build one world or national wonder in that city. A bit confusing.

It's a vanilla tooltip; I never changed anything about it. It means "this is a national wonder building, and 1 can be built here", obviously, but I suppose I could update the text.

Originally Posted by Ri-Hatz

There are some missing text entries. Especially when enabling new civic options theres the txt_key_whatever text in the popup.

Well aware of this... Just not enough time to do them all yet. Anything that affects gameplay always gets priority over this sort of work, and I've been working on gameplay-related stuff non-stop for years now. I try to do a few more text tags in each update, but yeah there's a lot still missing, and there's no foreign language support at all.

Originally Posted by Ri-Hatz

You did a great great job on the MOD and I will continiou to enjoy it!!

Thank you very much! I appreciate your interest.

Originally Posted by Ri-Hatz

You really should do some advertising! More people should enjoy this aswell..

Well, it's been in my signature for a long time... Beyond that, I don't like to get too pushy with people. If you can think of a way to do advertising for it without sounding pushy, I'd be all for it.

[LunarMongoose]

Just a heads-up, with Diablo 3 launching in 6.5 hours now, I am going to be extremely unavailable for the next 7 years or so. The mod isn't completely done (will it ever be? ), and I've already made a few minor changes in my private version that I plan to release as a 4.0.2 update at some point here, but it's very stable and balanced in its current form, so I feel okay in leaving it mostly-alone for a while.

I apologize, but I've been desperately waiting for this game since it was announced 5 years ago, and I have the potential to make money playing it, which isn't true of Civ, so for the moment I'm dedicating my heart and soul in the Diablo direction.

I will still keep an eye on this subforum though, so feel free to keep posting!

Originally Posted by Rakete4

Hey, it seems that Ri-Hatz is taking over the "chief mod tester" job that I had been occupying over the last couple of months.

Don't count on it staying that way longterm, lol.

Originally Posted by Rakete4

Just want to add that terrain damage should be deactivated in cities. I have got a city on a flood plains/plains tile, and whenever I build a unit it already has got some damage before I can move it.

It's set that way on purpose... It's supposed to be an additional penalty for building on tiles like that (particularly Desert).

Originally Posted by Harrier

My start city was surrounded by jungle and forest. When I was able to build roads, I was suprised I could not build them in the jungles and forests, so I was unable to connect resources to/from other cities. I am not a historian, but surely even in Ancient times there must have been basic tracks that allowed connection between settlements.

So allowing roads to be built in forests/jungles would be great. I have not yet reached Bronze Working so not sure what happens then.

Bronze Working mainly allows you to chop down Forests, which is a bigger capability. For Jungles you need Iron Working, which realistically SHOULD require Gunpowder instead, but I tried that once a long time ago and it just doesn't work for gameplay reasons, heh.

There were absolutely roads in Ancient times. Building them anywhere only requires the Wheels technology, for obvious reasons. Bronze is required to build them in woodlands because of the trees you need to chop down to make room for a path. This is the same rule as in the vanilla game, so it's not like I was going out on a limb (pun intended) doing it.

Originally Posted by Harrier

I know it has been mentioned before, but it is annoying to keep on building units and then deleting them (to avoid bankrupting yourself) because you have completed all the available building and can not yet convert hammers to wealth etc. I end up building settlers which take longer and then deleting them -it lessens the fun of the game.

Oh FINE, I can add something like that. Darn you. I still maintain it should never actually be necessary, but I suppose I could be wrong about that, haha.

Originally Posted by Harrier

The reason I mention it is that they say the AI uses it as well. In fact that is their policy - if the AI can not use it, it is not in the mod.

Yes, the AIs would probably use that without any special code. I held off including such a Process until now b/c I didn't want to have it in the mod, not b/c I was worried about the AIs in this case. But yes, that is my policy as well about the AIs being able to use stuff, as you probably know.

Originally Posted by Harrier

3. Some of the animals seemed quite strong, Panda, Bear etc. I did not attack them due to the very poor survival odds. But as I said earlier nearly all my tiles arround the city were either forest or jungle.

Except for the Polar Bear, all the very-high-strength animals are Defensive Only, so they pose no threat. Realistically a few of them, like the Rhino, should be able to attack, but I tried that once and it doesn't work out gameplay-wise. (Trust me. )

Originally Posted by Harrier

Well thats my few cents worth and again thanks for a great mod - very impressive for a solo modder.

Thank you very much! I appreciate the compliment a great deal. I've had my real-life best friend, Rakete, and a few other people helping out with ideas, suggestions, playtesting, and bugfinding as I've gone along, but yeah I'm very proud to have done all the actual development myself. Even though I'm using a lot of resources from the other modders on this public forum here, hehe.

[Rakete4]

Originally Posted by Harrier

I know it has been mentioned before, but it is annoying to keep on building units and then deleting them (to avoid bankrupting yourself) because you have completed all the available building and can not yet convert hammers to wealth etc. I end up building settlers which take longer and then deleting them -it lessens the fun of the game.

If you run into a situation that you are out of useful things to build, then most likely your science rate is too low. Instead of building and deleting units, try to do the following:


1. Check if you have built the Palace in one of your cities.

2. Stop building new cities, because they increase your maintenance costs.

3. Check your civics and choose ones with low or better no costs. For example, Herbalism and Heritage are often not really necessary.

4. Check if you have researched Early Fishing. Then zoom into everyone of your cities and work water tiles instead of land tiles wherever possible. Try to research sailing to build lighthouses.

5. Build Gatherer/Workers and build Woodland cottages wherever possible. Work those tiles then. Woodland cottages are new in Version 4 and are a big gameplay-improvement !

6. Until you are able to build new buildings/wonders, build units, but do not delete them. You can still upgrade them later in the game, because there can be times when you have got a high commerce output, but desperately need more military. Check in the trade advisor if you exceed the number of free units. If that is the case, choose Tribal law civic.

7. Instead of building military units, you can also build settlers and move them to the tiles where you want to build your next cities, but wait until your research pace has become faster.



I hope this helps! If it doesn't, we can talk about the mod itself being the problem.

[Harrier]

Originally Posted by Rakete4

If you run into a situation that you are out of useful things to build, then most likely your science rate is too low. Instead of building and deleting units, try to do the following:


1. Check if you have built the Palace in one of your cities.

2. Stop building new cities, because they increase your maintenance costs.

3. Check your civics and choose ones with low or better no costs. For example, Herbalism and Heritage are often not really necessary.

4. Check if you have researched Early Fishing. Then zoom into everyone of your cities and work water tiles instead of land tiles wherever possible. Try to research sailing to build lighthouses.

5. Build Gatherer/Workers and build Woodland cottages wherever possible. Work those tiles then. Woodland cottages are new in Version 4 and are a big gameplay-improvement !

6. Until you are able to build new buildings/wonders, build units, but do not delete them. You can still upgrade them later in the game, because there can be times when you have got a high commerce output, but desperately need more military. Check in the trade advisor if you exceed the number of free units. If that is the case, choose Tribal law civic.

7. Instead of building military units, you can also build settlers and move them to the tiles where you want to build your next cities, but wait until your research pace has become faster.



I hope this helps! If it doesn't, we can talk about the mod itself being the problem.

Thanks for your comments - I will check suggestions out on my next (2nd.) game.

In this game:

!. Yes built. As soon as available.
5. I built Lumberyards not cottages. Will try cottages next.
6. I had to delete them because my income could not support them. Science at 0%. Probably because of your points (2, 3, 4). I think I was runing Tribal Law ( xx free unit support).
7. I did build settlers, as they took longer to build, then deleted them. I may be wrong, but I assumed they had a support cost the same as combat units. My income was hovering over negative at zero research. I did not want the game deleting valuable units arbitarely to get out of negative income.


As a side note I was using LM,s PW3 version map script.

My initial city was surrounded by forest and jungle. (it could not connect to other cities till wood chopping). My second city had plains and some forest. (became my capital) The other 3 locations were, 1. hills and mountains. 2. Desert and forest. 3. forest and marsh. 5 cities and 2 AIs on the same landmass (small)

P.S. In Industrial age and still surviving. Just two civs on differant landmasses. Trying for cultural or spacerace victory.

[Rakete4]

Originally Posted by Harrier

5. I built Lumberyards not cottages. Will try cottages next.

[...]

My initial city was surrounded by forest and jungle. (it could not connect to other cities till wood chopping). My second city had plains and some forest. (became my capital) The other 3 locations were, 1. hills and mountains. 2. Desert and forest. 3. forest and marsh. 5 cities and 2 AIs on the same landmass (small)

It seems that you have had a mostly inland starting location. When you are surrounded by forest, jungle, plains and hills, you will have abundant production anyway. So just build woodland cottages instead of lumberyards next time. Beside rivers, they reward even with 2 commerce.
When you have got coastal cities in your next game, do research Early Fishing, Advanced Fishing and Sailing early.

And good luck with your games. I can't play much myself right now I have only reached the renaissance age in my first game so far. The game is still ongoing.

[Harrier]

Originally Posted by Rakete4

It seems that you have had a mostly inland starting location. When you are surrounded by forest, jungle, plains and hills, you will have abundant production anyway. So just build woodland cottages instead of lumberyards next time. Beside rivers, they reward even with 2 commerce.
When you have got coastal cities in your next game, do research Early Fishing, Advanced Fishing and Sailing early.

Three were coastal, including the tree surrounded capitol, except for one coastal tile,that I forgot to mention.. As for the sea tiles - how do you beat the Turtles and later Sea Serpents? After many attempts I abandoned the seas.

Spending all your production on work boats and canoes etc. - which then get destroyed a few turns later - is not Fun. In the early game I built 5 canoes (2 strength) and attacked a turtle (5 strength)- all died and the Turtle was still at full strength.

If the Turtle appeared randomly, that may be OK, but as soon as I placed a work boat in any of my coastal cities within a few turns a Turtle appeared.

I hate to see what happens when the Kraken (150 strength) appears.

[Rakete4]

Originally Posted by Harrier

how do you beat the Turtles and later Sea Serpents? After many attempts I abandoned the seas.

Spending all your production on work boats and canoes etc. - which then get destroyed a few turns later - is not Fun. In the early game I built 5 canoes (2 strength) and attacked a turtle (5 strength)- all died and the Turtle was still at full strength.

If the Turtle appeared randomly, that may be OK, but as soon as I placed a work boat in any of my coastal cities within a few turns a Turtle appeared.

Hmm. That should not happen normally. Turtles and Serpents should only appear when you have researched a certain tech (i.e. Naval Warfare for the Turtle). When another player (AI or human) has already researched that tech, but not you, then the Turtles and Serpents should remain near those players coastlines. This is what I have observed in MM 3.6.1 and also in my first game with MM 4.01.

Have you maybe been very close to a more advanced player?
If you like, you can send me your savegames to shamainz at web dot de.
I will then take a look.

[LunarMongoose]

Originally Posted by Rakete4

When another player (AI or human) has already researched that tech, but not you, then the Turtles and Serpents should remain near those players coastlines. This is what I have observed in MM 3.6.1 and also in my first game with MM 4.01.

The sea monsters are Barbarian units, so they spawn like all barb unit types do: when the barbs gain techs. This happens slowly when a small number of players have a given tech and rapidly when most players have it, as in vanilla.

Once they are unlocked they will spawn randomly in the world. There is no connection to which players got the tech first. They are subject to normal barb rules, meaning they cannot spawn in tiles that any player has active vision of. So one possible strategy is to station sentries all along your coastline in advance.

Like all other barb units (particularly ones that can't directly attack cities), they will lock on to any nearby player units and try and kill them, but if there aren't any then they will move around randomly. They may leave and cross an entire ocean, or they may stay in the same general area forever.

The specific counter for Turtles is Quinqueremes, and if that unit needs to be made even stronger vs Turtles I'm willing to consider doing that. (There is also a unit with a specific bonus vs Serpents, namely the Clipper.) But these are sea monsters we're talking about, so the idea was they're supposed to be deadly when all you have is Rafts and Canoes, heh. They were put in as a random deterrent to the otherwise extremely-lucrative early use of water tiles.

It should also be noted that, since version 4.0, the maximum number of Turtles that can exist at once scales with world size from 1 up to 4, so on medium and especially large maps you will usually not be alone in having this problem.

All that being said, if you still hate playing with them, the No Elite Units game option can be used to disable sea monsters completely (along with the other stuff it disables).

[vktj]

Also the option 'start in old world' does not put all civs one one continent.

It tries to, but there are a bunch of other complicated rules it tries to follow too, and it doesn't always work out right.

I don't know how much PerfectMongoose modifies PerfectWorld, but I have managed to tell PerfectWorld "everyone will start on the largest continent":

http://samiam.org/Civ4/Totestra-20120524.diff

Here is the relevant code; I added the stuff in bold.

        for n in range(len(continentList)):
            oldWorldSize += continentList[0].size
	    # Don't delete "new worlds" from the list if we're going to
            # put everyone on the "old world" continent
	    if mc.ShareContinent == False:
                del continentList[0]
            if float(oldWorldSize)/float(totalLand) > 0.60:
                break

[LunarMongoose]

Originally Posted by vktj

Here is the relevant code; I added the stuff in bold.

Oh.

Umm... oops.

I'll take a look at that when I have time, but it's probably something I deleted and shouldn't have. Sorry!

[Rakete4]

Ancient Temples, Thermal vents and probably also Methane ice can be traded. That does not make sense, not only because they do not have any health or happiness effects.

As far as I remember, they could not be traded in Version 3.6.1.
Any idea how this bug arised ???

[Rakete4]

The Roman Forum (unique building) is very strong:

+50% Great Person birth rate seems a bit much, maybe reduce to +25%? The unique unit of the Romans (Legionary) is also quite strong, so 25% should suffice.

[LunarMongoose]

Originally Posted by Rakete4

Ancient Temples, Thermal vents and probably also Methane ice can be traded. That does not make sense, not only because they do not have any health or happiness effects.

As I said in my email, I'm not sure what happened. If they really WERE working correctly before, it's probably a typo and should be an easy fix. They're supposed to be unharvestable, so that trading isn't relevant. They are Resources rather than Features just so I could make them revealed by techs, which is not something Features can do.

Originally Posted by Rakete4

+50% Seems a bit much anyway, maybe reduce to +25%? The unique unit of the Romans (Legionary) is also quite strong, so 25% should suffice.

Believe it or not, I realized that a month ago. Reducing it to 25% was one of the changes I mentioned I had already made internally for the 4.0.2 version, but hadn't released yet. I was hoping no one would notice the problem before then, lol.

But yeah, I already changed it to 25% a while ago. I'll try to get 4.0.2 out to you guys soon... That Old World code fix is pretty important too.

[NDCSPURS]

Hurry production seems to be bugged. When I hover over the button the price in the tool tip seems to be correct and I can only press the button when I have enough gold for it, but when do, it only ever takes 1 gold from my treasury.

[LunarMongoose]

Originally Posted by NDCSPURS

Hurry production seems to be bugged. When I hover over the button the price in the tool tip seems to be correct and I can only press the button when I have enough gold for it, but when do, it only ever takes 1 gold from my treasury.

Yikes, that sounds like a serious bug. I'll take a look, thanks for the report!

Btw I'm aware my files are unavailable at the moment. Sorry about that, I lost my website service when Apple switched from MobileMe to iCloud a week ago. I've been meaning to sign up for a free file hosting place but I've been sick, heh.

[Rakete4]

While I was testing my new Africamap overhaul (which will soon be released ), I saw that sometimes a Civ does not develop properly, because they have got insufficient culture in most of their cities, actually no culture at all. This is because they do not research Parietal art and thus can not build Cave paintings, which are the only regular source of culture in the prehistoric age.

This does only happen once in a while, but it is still annoying, because these civs will never be able to catch up. After a while without any culture growth, the 4 workable tiles on top, bottem, left and right of the city even decease so that the city can not work any tiles.

Obviously this can only happen to Civs which do not have the Creative trait or a culture-iflavor in the civ4leaderheadinfos.xml.

The doubling of tech costs for previous ages, which is new in Version 4, could have worsened the problem, because the AI will be less likely to research parietal art once it has passed the prehistoric age.


There are plenty of ways to solve the problem, but it's up to you to choose the best one.

[Harrier]

Originally Posted by Rakete4

While I was testing my new Africamap overhaul (which will soon be released ), I saw that sometimes a Civ does not develop properly, because they have got insufficient culture in most of their cities, actually no culture at all.

There are plenty of ways to solve the problem, but it's up to you to choose the best one.

It may help if you gave some pointers on the "There are plenty of ways to solve the problem" So he knows which one to choose. Just a thought - .

[LunarMongoose]

Originally Posted by Harrier

It may help if you gave some pointers on the "There are plenty of ways to solve the problem" So he knows which one to choose. Just a thought - .

Lol, well, I can only really think of 2 off the top of my head: make Parietal Art required by some other tech very early in the tree, or add a minimal culture flavor value to every leader. Or, obviously, add another source of culture early on. Given the choice I would add the flavor values.

Although from the current co-op game I'm playing with Daryn, I'm leaning more towards accepting defeat and caving in and adding the early build process that you guys have been clamoring for for generations... That could have a culture component potentially.