City State Diplomacy Mod (Updated)

[TheHarshax]

Originally Posted by Horace

Ive only played right the way through late game once using this mod so maybe others find it different.

I found that it was a little too easy later in the game, maybe the influence required should scale up a bit more, or diplo units could have less of an effect forcing you to complete more missions. Early game I think the effort required to gain CS is a bit more testing.

Then perhaps a few more difficult missions could be introduced (if this is possible). It would be interesting if city states asked you to capture certain cities or other objectives like natural wonders.

I'm curious what SP's you had in play. I agree that late game can be easy, if you optimize for diplomacy. The biggest reason, is that many of the quests are for Great Persons, which can be fulfilled by other CS's if you have the full Patronage tree unlocked. The next most common quest, in my opinion, is build such-and-such wonder. If you're a production powerhouse, this is easier too. There are three other quests: build road, find natural wonder, find Civ. These are nominal. Building roads is probably the biggest investment for any civ, because those roads cost $ per turn. The other two require exploration. If you are going for a diplomacy victory, you must put a priority on exploration. I've found that you don't get offered quests from CS's until you a) meet them, and b) establish a minimum amount of influence. The best Diplomacy strategy is to explore, find CS's, get $ from meeting them, send at least 1 envoy and then be pestered forever more by their quests. Once you have most of the map uncovered, the two dominant quests are Great Persons and Wonders, followed by Resource requests.

This mod (which is one of my must-haves by the way) compounds the values of wonders and great persons, by giving you the both a City State influence bonus (food, culture, units), as well as the benefit of said building or person. Therefore, I'd be inclined to reduce the frequency of City State quests.

Now, I've specifically attempted a diplo victory as Alexander, on a small map, King Difficulty. My early game strategy was similar to a cultural victory so I could a) unlock all of Patronage, and b) build the Foreign office. Once established, I started modest expansion and bee lined all diplomacy techs and the WTO. By end game, I was popping influence all over the place because of GP generation, and cranking out wonders faster than anyone else because of my strong tech lead (Patronage + Freedom + Reason + Landed Nobility). I also use CCMAT as mentioned earlier.

This mod makes Diplo victories as decision intensive as the Domination victory, and I applaud its design wholeheartedly.

ideas:
1) Reduce quest frequency
1a) Quests to generate Great Person requires that you gift Great Person to that City State, in turn, get HUGE Influence benefit.
2) Create ability to gift a resource to a Civ for influence
2a) Specific resources give more influence than general ones. Strategic gain greater influence over Military, subject to era necessity (iron less useful in Modern era). Luxury greater influence over Cultural and Maritime.
3) Ability to sell resources for fixed GPT to city states. (It sucks to have no customers, because the AI is spamming cities and has locked all the resources down)
4) Gift workers

[Gazebo]

Originally Posted by TheHarshax

I'm curious what SP's you had in play. I agree that late game can be easy, if you optimize for diplomacy. The biggest reason, is that many of the quests are for Great Persons, which can be fulfilled by other CS's if you have the full Patronage tree unlocked. The next most common quest, in my opinion, is build such-and-such wonder. If you're a production powerhouse, this is easier too. There are three other quests: build road, find natural wonder, find Civ. These are nominal. Building roads is probably the biggest investment for any civ, because those roads cost $ per turn. The other two require exploration. If you are going for a diplomacy victory, you must put a priority on exploration. I've found that you don't get offered quests from CS's until you a) meet them, and b) establish a minimum amount of influence. The best Diplomacy strategy is to explore, find CS's, get $ from meeting them, send at least 1 envoy and then be pestered forever more by their quests. Once you have most of the map uncovered, the two dominant quests are Great Persons and Wonders, followed by Resource requests.

This mod (which is one of my must-haves by the way) compounds the values of wonders and great persons, by giving you the both a City State influence bonus (food, culture, units), as well as the benefit of said building or person. Therefore, I'd be inclined to reduce the frequency of City State quests.

Now, I've specifically attempted a diplo victory as Alexander, on a small map, King Difficulty. My early game strategy was similar to a cultural victory so I could a) unlock all of Patronage, and b) build the Foreign office. Once established, I started modest expansion and bee lined all diplomacy techs and the WTO. By end game, I was popping influence all over the place because of GP generation, and cranking out wonders faster than anyone else because of my strong tech lead (Patronage + Freedom + Reason + Landed Nobility). I also use CCMAT as mentioned earlier.

This mod makes Diplo victories as decision intensive as the Domination victory, and I applaud its design wholeheartedly.

ideas:
1) Reduce quest frequency
1a) Quests to generate Great Person requires that you gift Great Person to that City State, in turn, get HUGE Influence benefit.
2) Create ability to gift a resource to a Civ for influence
2a) Specific resources give more influence than general ones. Strategic gain greater influence over Military, subject to era necessity (iron less useful in Modern era). Luxury greater influence over Cultural and Maritime.
3) Ability to sell resources for fixed GPT to city states. (It sucks to have no customers, because the AI is spamming cities and has locked all the resources down)
4) Gift workers

Thanks for the very detailed write-up. I'll look into reducing quest frequency, as it does become an issue during the late-game. Right now, I'm still working on the AI to try to encourage it to STOP sending all of its diplos to just one or two CSs.

Your ideas are also cool, and will be very feasible once we get full access to the SDK.

Also, the mod seems to be slipping...off...the...front...page... we can't let that happen!

All glory to the HypnoCSD2!
G

[Yanikin_Tinkard]

Originally Posted by Gazebo

Also, the mod seems to be slipping...off...the...front...page... we can't let that happen!

G

That is because you have done such a good job. You mod is complete for most purposes until the SDK.

See your supposed to drag your projects out until the last minute of the deadline and make it look like you saved the day.... er... well maybe.

Happy Monday; you did do a great job though.

[Gazebo]

Originally Posted by Yanikin_Tinkard

That is because you have done such a good job. You mod is complete for most purposes until the SDK.

See your supposed to drag your projects out until the last minute of the deadline and make it look like you saved the day.... er... well maybe.

Happy Monday; you did do a great job though.

Thanks! Its almost done– I'll release a mildly tweaked version later in the week (perhaps next Monday– I'm in the finals crunch right now) that addresses some small balancing issues (WTO too cheap, etc.).

I'm going to laugh a lot when the ideas we have developed for CSD2 can't be implemented using the SDK for some inane and possibly arcane reason. Let's hope that's not the case.

G

[Dunkah]

Great Mod...

Using with the CCMAT mod. No issues as of yet...

Thanks for all of the hard work.

What are the chances that the boys at 2K or Firaxis use this for a new Supplement?

[sammual]

I love your mod but for some reason all the unit icons on the strategy map other then Warrior are wrong whenever I use your mod.

[Yanikin_Tinkard]

Originally Posted by sammual

I love your mod but for some reason all the unit icons on the strategy map other then Warrior are wrong whenever I use your mod.

Stratagy map is bad for getting icons correct. I don't know if anyone has figured that out yet.

[Gazebo]

Originally Posted by Yanikin_Tinkard

Stratagy map is bad for getting icons correct. I don't know if anyone has figured that out yet.

Yes- perhaps the new patch coming out soon will address this. I hope I'm not out of the country when it hits (leaving for two weeks soon). If so, CSD may be AWOL until I get back and correct it to work with the patch. Just a forewarning.

If it does hit while I'm out, I would greatly appreciate a few of you trying CSD and seeing if you can compile a list of problems- this would make the patch turnaround time much, much quicker, as I won't have to playtest as much (I guess this is the same philosophy as Firaxis, amiright?)

G

[Gazebo]

Originally Posted by Dunkah

Great Mod...

Using with the CCMAT mod. No issues as of yet...

Thanks for all of the hard work.

What are the chances that the boys at 2K or Firaxis use this for a new Supplement?

To quote Professor Farnsworth:

"A man can dream, can't he? A man can dream..."

[Yanikin_Tinkard]

Originally Posted by Gazebo

Yes- perhaps the new patch coming out soon will address this. I hope I'm not out of the country when it hits (leaving for two weeks soon). If so, CSD may be AWOL until I get back and correct it to work with the patch. Just a forewarning.

If it does hit while I'm out, I would greatly appreciate a few of you trying CSD and seeing if you can compile a list of problems- this would make the patch turnaround time much, much quicker, as I won't have to playtest as much (I guess this is the same philosophy as Firaxis, amiright?)

G

One can hope they fix the stratagy map. I was playing one were all my workers were archers??!?

I think a lot of games get released in Beta no a days and the end user tests them. Look at WoW though; they are still taking user created Addons and putting them in game. I wouldn't call it as bad a beta the whole time though.

[heinous_hat]

Originally Posted by Dunkah

Great Mod...

Using with the CCMAT mod. No issues as of yet...

Thanks for all of the hard work.

What are the chances that the boys at 2K or Firaxis use this for a new Supplement?

CCMAT includes Thalassicus' Balance mods which has a diplomacy component.
You might want to consider taking a look at that particular xml to check for possible unintended consequences concerning gold gift multipliers, etc. I just started using his combined pack (which is newer than CCMAT's) and haven't brought CS Diplomacy into the picture yet, but I did take notice that there are changes to gold gifts, CS attack quests and possibly others. Will post back after I take a look later today or tomorrow.

Of course, when the patch bomb goes off this could all be moot

[Gazebo]

Originally Posted by heinous_hat

CCMAT includes Thalassicus' Balance mods which has a diplomacy component.
You might want to consider taking a look at that particular xml to check for possible unintended consequences concerning gold gift multipliers, etc. I just started using his combined pack (which is newer than CCMAT's) and haven't brought CS Diplomacy into the picture yet, but I did take notice that there are changes to gold gifts, CS attack quests and possibly others. Will post back after I take a look later today or tomorrow.

Of course, when the patch bomb goes off this could all be moot

Whew! I just finished a major project. Hooray.

Anyways, sorry I've been in-and-out for the past week or so.

My plan (tentatively) is to create three versions of this mod:

1.) Standard (what you are all playing and loving right now)

2.) CTP compatible (boost gold costs, etc.)

3.) Stripped (takes out all CS/AI modifiers and non-critical AI tweaks- this will work with CCMAT and others)

What do you think?

For v.6, I'm not going to change much, just bump the infrequency of quests up, increase WTO cost slightly and maybe rearrange some of the artwork to reduce file-size.

By the way, has anyone actually used or built the WTO? I thought it was fun (paradropping ambassadors FTW), but I'm biased.

[Yanikin_Tinkard]

Originally Posted by Gazebo

Whew! I just finished a major project. Hooray.

Anyways, sorry I've been in-and-out for the past week or so.

My plan (tentatively) is to create three versions of this mod:

1.) Standard (what you are all playing and loving right now)

2.) CTP compatible (boost gold costs, etc.)

3.) Stripped (takes out all CS/AI modifiers and non-critical AI tweaks- this will work with CCMAT and others)

What do you think?

For v.6, I'm not going to change much, just bump the infrequency of quests up, increase WTO cost slightly and maybe rearrange some of the artwork to reduce file-size.

By the way, has anyone actually used or built the WTO? I thought it was fun (paradropping ambassadors FTW), but I'm biased.

Wow, that is above and beyond for 3 types. I guess though for the C2P version it isn't hard; just some numbers.

I never did WTO. My diplo game way back I had all the CS's so close. I have been deep in C2P lately, than Cat came out for WoW and friend got me running around there once in while. So much gaming, so little time.

congrats on project. My white board in my cube is full. . .

[heinous_hat]

Maybe you could address mod compatibility in a more general sense by breaking your xml down further so it's inherently more descriptive and easy to 'switch off'. It would be easier for you to mange as well, I'd imagine. The mod collection is only going to grow.

On that note, Gazebo, can you recommend a tool or method for analyzing xml elements across multiple files (find changes to common elements, etc)? Since file organization is pretty much arbitrary with CiV, something to alleviate the eyeball strain would be quite welcome

[Yanikin_Tinkard]

Originally Posted by heinous_hat

Maybe you could address mod compatibility in a more general sense by breaking your xml down further so it's inherently more descriptive and easy to 'switch off'. It would be easier for you to mange as well, I'd imagine. The mod collection is only going to grow.

On that note, Gazebo, can you recommend a tool or method for analyzing xml elements across multiple files (find changes to common elements, etc)? Since file organization is pretty much arbitrary with CiV, something to alleviate the eyeball strain would be quite welcome

http://www.wingrep.com/

They are all just "text" files.

Find across multiple folders, files, types of files only, all files, case sensitive, whole words only.

Replace across same.

[heinous_hat]

Thanks Yanikan. Grep is nice when you know what you're looking for and I've looked at it but generally stick to integrated utilities (eg Dopus) for finding duplicate files and strings. The problem here is not being familiar with all of the available strings and having wade into huge blocks of text to learn anything. What I'm after is something that shows an aggregate view of xml elements so it's easier to find conflicts and have a clear view of everything that's in play for a collection of mods/files. I'd imagine I can do that with Access or something similar, but thought there might be a more focused non commercial application that I was missing. If anyone did any Total War modding, there was a nice community developed DB manager for that file system that displayed an aggregate view and even allowed editing. Something like that would be brilliant.

[Yanikin_Tinkard]

I'm not sure I know what you are asking for than. Only other thing I can think of is notepadd++

I do a lot of coding at work with that. It has a compare to show to files at once?

[Seek]

@Gazebo, remember this?

Originally Posted by Gazebo

Finally, the forum cannot have a culture-per-citizen bonus because this mechanic isn't coded into the game. I tried it and it didn't do anything, so meh. Make that #146 on my 'things I need to do when the SDK comes out' list. So, for now, it has +2 culture. Lame.

On another thread, Valkrionn outlined how to do it if you're still interested:

Originally Posted by Valkrionn

There is no need for it to be a true yield for that; It would be extremely easy to do via lua.

Add a new tag to buildings (easily done with sql) called "CulturePerPop" or something similar.

Then in lua, do the following:

1. Hook into ActivePlayerTurnStart
2. Loop all players, so it applies to AI as well as human.
3. Loop all cities of the player.
4. Check all buildings in the city for a non-zero value in the new tag.
5. If found, add to a counter, and keep checking buildings.
6. Once all buildings are checked, counter should hold the total amount from all buildings in the city. At this point, multiply the counter by the city's population, add to player culture.

I've done similar things in some unreleased mods.

(Don't worry, I thanked him!)

[heinous_hat]

Originally Posted by Yanikin_Tinkard

I'm not sure I know what you are asking for than. Only other thing I can think of is notepadd++

I do a lot of coding at work with that. It has a compare to show to files at once?

Yes, I use that as well. Compare plugin is pretty handy. I was looking for something that generated a formatted table where you could load up the default xml and then aggregate that with your mod folder. As I said, I suspect I can do this with Access, but I'm not current on DB applications. I'll ask over in the tools forum as I don't want to gunk up Gazebo's thread. Just something that came to mind while getting CS Diplomacy properly merged with the Balance mods

[Horace]

Originally Posted by TheHarshax

I'm curious what SP's you had in play. I agree that late game can be easy, if you optimize for diplomacy. The biggest reason, is that many of the quests are for Great Persons, which can be fulfilled by other CS's if you have the full Patronage tree unlocked. The next most common quest, in my opinion, is build such-and-such wonder. If you're a production powerhouse, this is easier to

Im not sure, I probably had some patronage but probably not the entire tree in that game.

I think I was mainly getting influence via wonders and letting trade deals expire for a turn or 2, then getting the connect xx to your network thing and redoing the deal.

I just find that I barely build diplo units late game and if I do its not really much effort. In the early game its more of a tactical choice whether to commit 10 turns or whatever for just bumping yourself into friend territory.

For me, it would be nice to see:

Harsher AI diplo penatlies for stealing their CS

Some harder more rewarding quests (capute xx city) - I know this may not be possible yet

The work req late game to build diplomacy levels increased