ancient ruins rewards

I am curious as to the mechanic behind ancient ruins reward determination.

I have been doing some testing, using the new random seed feature, and I've come across an interesting/frustrating situation. Note, I am using scouts to unlock the ruins, and I'm playing at a level high enough to avoid getting settlers/workers as a reward.

It would appear that some rewards from ancient ruins are not available depending on what you have previously gotten from an ancient ruin. For instance, if the most recent ancient ruin gave you a tech, no amount of reloading will result in a tech from the very next ancient ruins you unlock. I've done over a hundred reloads and not gotten two techs in a row. It doesn't matter if its the same scout popping two ruins, or two different scouts popping two different ruins on either the same or different turns. The same goes for getting weapon upgrades and culture, and I've done enough testing now that I suspect that you can never get the same reward twice in a row. (Although I assume the game would happily give you barb camp locations revealed twice in a row if you were masochistic enough to want that...)

I am also starting to suspect that you can never get the same reward twice from any 3 ruins in succession, no matter how many times you reload. My current testing is trying to get a weapons upgrade for a scout. The previous ruin was a tech, and the ruin before that upgraded a different scout to an archer. I'm at roughly 50 reloads and I've gotten literally everything possible except a tech (which I'm already 99.99% certain isn't a possible reward) and the weapon upgrade. I've even gotten the ruin to spawn faith twice, and I know how rare faith from ruins is.

So, has anyone else done any rigorous testing on this subject, or alternately, is there someplace where I can look at the code so I know exactly what the reward parameters are?

Thanks.

-S

Sincro said:

So, has anyone else done any rigorous testing on this subject, or alternately, is there someplace where I can look at the code so I know exactly what the reward parameters are?

Thanks.

-S

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I haven't done rigorous testing of the possible rewards from ruins, but I understand that once a particular unit has been upgraded by a ruins in a game, it can never again be ruins upgraded in the same game.

That is, let's say that your initial warrior named "1st Regulars" finds a ruins and is upgraded to Spearman. The 1st Regulars can never again be upgraded by ruins for the duration of the game, although other Warriors are still eligible.

You can but there must be a certain amount of turns between a duplicate reward.

Not only will rewards not repeat from one ruin to the next, but the game also applies a replay penalty. If you got faith and then try again, the same ruin will give you a map. (Same with CS missions.)

@Mintcandy: Yes, I knew a unit can only be upgraded once, which is why I mentioned that it was a different scout which had previously been upgraded.
@BrokTheFanatic: How many turns?
@I was NC: Is it a total game replay penalty, or is it a degrading penalty. For example: Ruin 1: Tech. Next ruin, chance to get tech reduced 100%. Next ruin: chance to get tech reduced 75%. And so on.

-S

I was NC said:

Not only will rewards not repeat from one ruin to the next, but the game also applies a replay penalty. If you got faith and then try again, the same ruin will give you a map. (Same with CS missions.)

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I don't know what you mean by this.

smileyy90210 said:

I don't know what you mean by this.

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Sometime I go back to an auto save, mostly when having not micromanaged properly (e.g. an entire turn of production wasted save one hammer). When I go back to the ruin it gives a worse result.

Sincro said:

Is it a total game replay penalty, or is it a degrading penalty. For example: Ruin 1: Tech. Next ruin, chance to get tech reduced 100%. Next ruin: chance to get tech reduced 75%. And so on.

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It's a "the developers wrote code to punish you for what they consider cheating" penalty. Don't like that the ruin made your warrior into a pikeman, making it unable to upgrade to a legion? Replay the turn sending in a scout instead and you'll find out about a barbarian encampment.

Also happens in Civ Rev on the iPhone.

mintcandy said:

I haven't done rigorous testing of the possible rewards from ruins, but I understand that once a particular unit has been upgraded by a ruins in a game, it can never again be ruins upgraded in the same game.

That is, let's say that your initial warrior named "1st Regulars" finds a ruins and is upgraded to Spearman. The 1st Regulars can never again be upgraded by ruins for the duration of the game, although other Warriors are still eligible.

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Just happened few days ago so pretty fresh in my memory, it can happen.

I had a comp bow unit run over a ruin, get upgraded to crossbow, keep exploring and hit another ruin to get upgraded to Gatling gun. Was for sure the same unit because at the time it was my only crossbow unit. I don't recall exactly how many ruins or turns elapsed between first upgrade and second to gatling but best i recall something like 4 ruins later and 15-20 turns.

I ran amok killing hordes of barbs and opponent civs with that way advanced Gatling gun unit.

I was doing longest name ever achievement so know for sure it was settler to make 33 cities for achievement easier, me playing celts, Pangea, standard pace, standard size map.

Jacozilla said:

Just happened few days ago so pretty fresh in my memory, it can happen.

I had a comp bow unit run over a ruin, get upgraded to crossbow, keep exploring and hit another ruin to get upgraded to Gatling gun. Was for sure the same unit because at the time it was my only crossbow unit. I don't recall exactly how many ruins or turns elapsed between first upgrade and second to gatling but best i recall something like 4 ruins later and 15-20 turns.

I ran amok killing hordes of barbs and opponent civs with that way advanced Gatling gun unit.

I was doing longest name ever achievement so know for sure it was settler to make 33 cities for achievement easier, me playing celts, Pangea, standard pace, standard size map.

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Are you playing Vanilla? I think that was patched out.

Not sure how many turns and maybe need a ruins in between, but I have definitely gotten at least 2 30 culture ones and on some other game 2 science techs. I have G&K and its updated. It is rare though, to get a duplicate.

@Jacozilla what Unresolved says is probably spot on, you can't keep upgrading a unit anymore.

Hmmm, well ill certainly believe you guys.

I was sure it was the same unit but maybe my brain just isn't remembering right.

I have vanilla plus all dlc/expac. I just got G&K couple months ago aftering taking long break from civ5.

It was just so memorable because I had just gotten comp bow tech, upgraded my archers, and couple turns later one of my comp bows ran over a ruin to become a crossbow, then not much later (I thought) run over another run to become a gatling and then went on a killing spree.

I was playing settings to make longest name ever achievement easier, standard size Pangea with only one other civ set to India thinking he'd be less likely to expand much so I was running across ruins pretty much unopposed and for quite some while as I expanded across the comtinent

There is also the worst ruin that just reveals location of barb encampments, some of them about 50 or more tiles away. Does G&K still have that? I could keep playing G&K to find out but I am just curious?

Yep. Still has it. Although to be fair I've never seen a barb-reveal ruin show me barb camps that far away. Ones I get are usually 10-20 tiles away.

I'm not a fan of the map reveal ruin either. It can situationally be useful I suppose, especially if it shows you another ruin in your area but the reveal-radius seems really small. Wild be lot more useful if it revealed say double or triple the current radius.

Yeah, that's the next worst one. Then culture, then faith, then free unit upgrade, then tech. From worst to best ruins bonus.

I may have exaggerated the barb encampments being revealed as far as 50 tiles away. It just felt that far. I'll measure it properly next time I get that crappy ruin bonus.

BrokTheFanatic said:

Not sure how many turns and maybe need a ruins in between, but I have definitely gotten at least 2 30 culture ones and on some other game 2 science techs. I have G&K and its updated. It is rare though, to get a duplicate.
.

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but were these consecutive ruins?

Sincro said:

or alternately, is there someplace where I can look at the code so I know exactly what the reward parameters are?

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CvGoodyHut.cpp in the source code in the SDK, but basically, except for gold, you will not get the same reward good hut within the last three huts - so tech, culture, pop, gold, tech is possible, but tech, culture, pop, tech is not. Faith huts will not appear until a certain number of turns have passed.

Once a unit has been upgraded by a goody hut it cannot be upgraded again (this was changed from the early release of the game).

The % chance of each goody hut is identical, but if you want some to appear more often you can just add duplicate entries into the XML file/table

Duplicates CAN happen, I often find survivors in 2 consecutive ruins and at least once I got consecutive culture.

I was NC said:

Sometime I go back to an auto save, mostly when having not micromanaged properly (e.g. an entire turn of production wasted save one hammer). When I go back to the ruin it gives a worse result.

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Its random. On reload, actions happened to produce a different random value. I've dramatically improved ruins output by accessing them with different timing/order on reload.

smileyy90210 said:

Its random.

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I have no knowledge of source code (not even sure if that's the right phrase) and so will defer to anyone else. All I have is experience with outcome ___ which was great but cannot ever be replicated on a reload. Same with CS quests. The latter is even more pronounced. Having it also occur in Civ Rev lead me to conclude there's an intent.