Probably Improved Gameplay Mod

Regarding the great generals, I also do not want to make them weaker on defense. I have already mentioned on the first page that I intend to tinker with the best defender code at some point. When I do that, I could change the asset value of a unit with a GG to make it much less likely to defend when odds are low.

Warlords introduced the use of fractional values for commerce types such as and to minimize the lost from truncation when adding up values from cities. They missed one important value: the from trade routes.

This has two effects.

1. Loss of from truncation when adding the routes for a single city.
2. The Harbor and Customs House often provide no benefit.

For example a trade route yields 1.10 base with 25% for connection to capital and 150% for sustained peace. Sadly, this yields only 1 because 1.10 x 1.75 = 1.925 which gets truncated (rounded down).

If you have three trade routes each yielding 1.10 base and 25% connection to capital, adding a Harbor provides no boost.

This is lame. Instead, the values should be kept as fractions (two decimal places) until they are added together for a single city. At that point they must be truncated to integers because they are yields.

If you're interested in this, I believe someone already wrote the code to do it (they suggested it in one of the BUG threads). I'd be happy to make the change even if you can't find the original code. It shouldn't be too hard as it only happens in a few places. It might be a little tricky if it has any ripple effects (e.g. BULL).

I have an another suggestion on Warlords:
Warlords can get special STACK promotions.
i.e. Tactics I-V gives +5% to survive in battle (in attack or defence) to ALL units standing in the same plot as Warlord unit
other possible warlord stack promos:
Morale I-V gives +5% to strength for all units in the plot
Logistics gives +1 move ---
Leadership gives +N% in gaining XP ---
Topography works same as 'Commando' just for all units in stack, enabled with discovery of say astronomy.
Foraging - reduces stack's support costs
Co-operation I-N - increases the radius of warlord promos effect (name it order radius) to 2,3,4 tiles etc. Technologies as HBR and RADIO also can increase this radius.

If a unit is in order radius of two warlords, only promos of more experienced one (or of one that is in the same plot as a unit if the second is somewhere outside) are taken in concideration.

additions:
* spyes can execute 'kill general' espionage mission. its success chance is based on target GG's expirience (like in Total War game).
* Warlord unit must get N% of XP that is obtained by units fighting under its command.

EmperorFool said:

Warlords introduced the use of fractional values for commerce types such as and to minimize the lost from truncation when adding up values from cities. They missed one important value: the from trade routes.

This has two effects.

1. Loss of from truncation when adding the routes for a single city.
2. The Harbor and Customs House often provide no benefit.

For example a trade route yields 1.10 base with 25% for connection to capital and 150% for sustained peace. Sadly, this yields only 1 because 1.10 x 1.75 = 1.925 which gets truncated (rounded down).

If you have three trade routes each yielding 1.10 base and 25% connection to capital, adding a Harbor provides no boost.

This is lame. Instead, the values should be kept as fractions (two decimal places) until they are added together for a single city. At that point they must be truncated to integers because they are yields.

If you're interested in this, I believe someone already wrote the code to do it (they suggested it in one of the BUG threads). I'd be happy to make the change even if you can't find the original code. It shouldn't be too hard as it only happens in a few places. It might be a little tricky if it has any ripple effects (e.g. BULL).

Click to expand...

Wow, I never noticed this! If this was fixed, gameplay would definitely be improved (and more sensible).

Why were the original net yields of trade routes left as integers? Does it improve game speed? Could they be changed to floating numbers instead?

and myself was building harbors and custom houses all over...

Jaroth said:

Why were the original net yields of trade routes left as integers? Does it improve game speed? Could they be changed to floating numbers instead?

Click to expand...

Everything was originally done with whole numbers for ease of coding and display I guess. When Warlords added fractions (they are still integers, just stored as "multiplied by 100" so 1.25 is stored as 125), they only changed the individual route calculations; they are truncated to whole numbers before being added.

essmene said:

and myself was building harbors and custom houses all over...

Click to expand...

Same here. It wasn't until I added the display of Actual Effects for buildings to BULL that I noticed. I'd have two nearly identical cities where a Harbor in one will provide +4 but none in the other.

Customs Houses typically will always yield something because they are +100%. As long as the base route yield is >= 1, you'll gain at least that much from that route. The Harbor will see much more gains from this change.

Here's the plan at the moment:
To Do:

• Merge CAR Mod.
• Trade routes as fractional. This will mean the trade bonus from walls will need to be removed.
• Latest Unofficial Patch and Better AI.
• Make promotions have 3 prereqs possible as per post #90 by EF
• Fix No Espionage. Turning EPs into culture and great spy points into GP-neutral points is unacceptable.
• Reconsider the change to Serfdom
• Return granary to original cost - increasing its cost has not changed strategy by much, if at all.
• Instead, to reduce the power of slavery, the anger from multiple-pop whips or piling on consecutive whips will be increased somehow.
• Merge BULL 1.0 and BUG 4.0
• Make PIG look in its own folder for BUG settings before looking in the BUG folder, as per post #132 by EF.
• Attach an asset value to GGs to make them less likely to be chosen as best defender?

I'm looking into the Fractional Trade Routes right now. I may include it in BULL as a compile-time option as changes will need to be made to BUG as well. To clarify, the normal BUG/BULL won't have this feature. You would specify a compilation flag (_MOD_FRACTRADE) when building your DLL to get it.

My main reason for doing this in BULL is that several other features of BULL would need to change to make use of it, and that makes it being separate complicated.

I think I will add a second set of matching functions that use values Tiles100 like the commerce functions do. There may be some other ramifications: Trade Mission depends on trade route yield, and the Imports/Exports demographics use these values as well.

My first draft of Fractional Trade Routes seems to be working (i.e. it didn't break my current game), but so far I've only plugged it into the total yield calculations for a city. The fractional values aren't displayed in the interface anywhere; that part won't be that hard.

Get rid of Medic III. The AI never uses it, and it would make the GG a more offensive unit.

I'd like some more double-edged promotions for GG units, too. Something like:

Tactician
An attached GG unit has a 100% withdrawal chance, but -25% strength.

Warlord
An attached GG unit has +50% strength in enemy territory, but -50% strength in friendly territory.

Guardian
An attached GG unit has +50% strength in defending cities, but -50% strength in outside of cities.

And I do like killmeplease's idea of stack affecting promotions.

Formation II
+10% vs. cavalry for entire stack.

Shock II
+10% vs. melee for entire stack.

Cover II
+10% vs. archers for entire stack.

Guerilla IV
+10% withdrawal for the entire stack.

Woodsman IV
+25% forest/jungle attack for entire stack. +1 first strick for entire stack.

Otherwise, I'll always settle them in my military Heroic Epic city. +2 xp forever or +20xp now, ~10-15 turns and I've broken even when it's popping a almost a unit per turn.

I really hate the idea of 'reduced chance to defend the stack'. I do like the idea of making the GG reduce the strength of the attached unit so it doesn't end up fighting. And stack affecting promotions do much better represent what a general would do.

The_Reckoning said:

An attached GG unit has a 80% withdrawal chance.

Click to expand...

This just gave me another idea: When an attacking unit with an attached GG dies, the GG escapes so you can attach it to another unit. If a defending GG unit dies the same thing happens but if you lose the plot where the GG is the GG is finally killed. This represents that the GG is not actually going into battle with his troops and can retreat when he sees they are lost.

Maybe have the GG sent back to your capital if this becomes too overpowering in the field:

1. Move stack of 2-move units 1 tile away from city.
2. Move the one with the GG next to city and attack.
3. If it dies, move the next unit onto the GG, attach and attack.
4. Rinse and repeat until you conquer the city.

EmperorFool said:

This just gave me another idea: When an attacking unit with an attached GG dies, the GG escapes so you can attach it to another unit.

Click to expand...

That sounds awesome, but I do have some small degree of reservation about this idea, because changes the fundamentals of great generals so much.

I don't know about anyone else, but I don't really get overly attached to my warlord units. Sure, it hurts when they die, but there will always be more of them later. That said, I usually just create a single warlord (a medic), to qualify for West Point, then settle all my other great generals. To me, it makes more sense to reap the benefits of a continuing +2 xp/unit bonus vs a one-time +20 xp bonus and a handful of warlord-only promotions.

The stack promotions might tempt me away from my current behavior, but those are some major changes to the promotion system. Again, I find the ideas to be intriguing, yet I'm reluctant to actually jump on that, because it changes the promotion system so fundamentally. All of a sudden, promotions can affect other units? That's huge. It would require extensive game-testing to prove to me that it's balanced.

All in all, I'm a coward. I shy away from mods that introduce sweeping changes, especially when multiple parts of the game are changed (promotions, great people, the tech tree, etc) all at once. If you guys implement all these great-sounding ideas, I'll cheer you on (and perhaps even contribute a piece of code or two), but it's unlikely that I'll actually use the mod. Really, it's no big loss. But I have to say that I got kind of excited when I saw a mod with such small scope (BUG + BULL + BBAI + Praetorian nerf), because I'd been meaning to do the exact same thing for years now. That's me... a lazy coward!

Remember the criteria...

• Does the change improve or impact the game in a positive way?
• Is the change necessary?
• Does the change address a balance problem in a way that is not likely to unbalance further?
• Does the change make a particular decision making process more interesting, or allow alternative strategies to existing ones?
• Is it likely the change will have a negative impact on the AI's performance. If so, is the effect minimal?
• Does the change have at least some degree of realism?
• Could a similar effect on gameplay be achieved through a simpler change? i.e. Less is more.
• Is the change likely to confuse new players to the mod?
• Is the change going to be difficult to implement? Is it worth the programmer's time?
• Will the change be popular?
• Will the change be small enough to not unnecessarily increase the overall size (in MB) of the mod?

Yes to the starting questions.

With the AI things will get problematic. I am not sure if the AI would be able to use them effectively (or killing an GG effectively.

I think it would alter gameplay less than hacking withdrawl chances etc.

suggestion:
West Point (quite useless now): not +4 xp but LEADERSHIP promotion for untis built in this city.
Leadership: 50% upgrade discount, 50% exp from battle. Leads to tactics, morale, medic3, commando, woodsman3. prereqs: combat4. enabled with military tradition.
And make WP world wonder.

ps: i'll try to make stack promos mod. of course there will be major problems with teaching AI how to use warlords efficiently.

Powerslave said:

That sounds awesome, but I do have some small degree of reservation about this idea, because changes the fundamentals of great generals so much.

I don't know about anyone else, but I don't really get overly attached to my warlord units. Sure, it hurts when they die, but there will always be more of them later. That said, I usually just create a single warlord (a medic), to qualify for West Point, then settle all my other great generals. To me, it makes more sense to reap the benefits of a continuing +2 xp/unit bonus vs a one-time +20 xp bonus and a handful of warlord-only promotions.

The stack promotions might tempt me away from my current behavior, but those are some major changes to the promotion system. Again, I find the ideas to be intriguing, yet I'm reluctant to actually jump on that, because it changes the promotion system so fundamentally. All of a sudden, promotions can affect other units? That's huge. It would require extensive game-testing to prove to me that it's balanced.

All in all, I'm a coward. I shy away from mods that introduce sweeping changes, especially when multiple parts of the game are changed (promotions, great people, the tech tree, etc) all at once. If you guys implement all these great-sounding ideas, I'll cheer you on (and perhaps even contribute a piece of code or two), but it's unlikely that I'll actually use the mod. Really, it's no big loss. But I have to say that I got kind of excited when I saw a mod with such small scope (BUG + BULL + BBAI + Praetorian nerf), because I'd been meaning to do the exact same thing for years now. That's me... a lazy coward!

Click to expand...

May I just say, Powerslave, that essentially you are one of the exact people this mod is aimed at.

I mentioned the criteria above, but basically this mod is sticking to the KISS principle (Keep it simple and stupid). I appreciate that a large number of suggestions have been made in this thread, but only a few have been looked at under a magnifying glass, and even those that were should probably stand for closer inspection.

For example, originally I increased the cost of the granary by 20 because I believed the granary to be the obvious choice first build far too often, and I wanted to increase the advantage of using alternative build orders. However, it was pointed out by one or two that the change did not really seem to have any interesting effect on gameplay in the end, as it didn't provide enough disincentive to not build the granary first all the time. So one might be forgiven for thinking that the logical next step to take would be to increase the cost further. But I remember noting to myself when I increased the granary cost that it didn't seem very realistic at all and it felt like it was already pushing in terms of how substantial a change it was. It's my opinion that increasing its cost even further is likely to have consequences that are only going to be more negative on gameplay. And it was also pointed out that the granary was only powerful because of Slavery and that Slavery should be re-examined instead.

So after all that, I have committed to undoing the change made to the granary (it will be returned to normal in the next release) unless further arguments for the change were able to convince me again.

Now it would be worth mentioning that I am open to accept criticisms on any single change I have made so far or intend to make. This does not necessarily mean that when there is debate over a change, the decision will be made based on the majority belief, but more like what the easily intimidated want. It's not really in the same category as most other feature-based mods.

I'm tempted to call it a flat-out balance mod but I don't want to exclude the possibility of making some changes that might improve gameplay without specifically addressing any one balance concern.

The bigger the change suggested for the mod, the less likely I am to think it will be a good idea. For example, your suggestion, killmeplease, does not IMO answer adequately several of the criteria. Further explanation and justification may change my mind but at the moment, making a change that includes several smaller changes (changing it to a world wonder, making a new promotion, changing or removing the standard GG promotion, xp cost reduction, improving Combat 4 (quite significantly! and thus improving Agg leaders), etc.) is almost out of the question.

uh i agree my ideas do not suite this mod conception.
about WP, i think it needs something to do with it. Maybe to make it giving Leadership (or Tactics?) promotion to units without changing promotion tree.

Changing the WP to instead give a free Leadership does sound very interesting. I would assume that this would be instead of the +4xp. It doesn't mess with other things in unit balance because it is not a prereq for any other promotion. It could make it possible for fairly high promoted units later in the game, where units seem to become more boring. A drawback is that it takes away one of those nice little advantages the GGs have, but this is late in the game after all.

It would certainly make the building more fun, comparing it with the bland +4xp that is really just an expensive barracks.

Giving the Tactics promotion instead (the +30% withdrawal) is too risky. Letting all siege units built in the city suddenly have minimum 30% survival chance is pretty powerful. I'm sure there would be other ways to abuse easy access to that particular promotion. Keep in mind there is a reason why only some units are allowed the 2 Flanking promotions.

Just to add to the discussion here, I once tweaked Amra's mod along similar lines. I took the idea from RoM, in which the Confucian shrine gives the Morale promotion to all units built in its city. Since Amra's mod includes Asatru, I thought it would be appropriate for Asatru's shrine to give the Leadership promotion in a similar fashion.

I liked the results -- only one player gets this GG advantage, and in only one city, and the player doesn't control where he gets it. Thus, if it happens to be a poor production city, he can either try to ramp it up or just wait longer to get those double XP capable units. It might also mean that the player might hold off on building Heroic Epic or other military national wonders until he founds Confucianism and/or Asatru, assuming that he even does.

Aggressive, Protective, and Charismatic leaders can have lots of fun with West Point, especially if you stack all of the other xp bonuses, like the Pentagon and Vassalocracy. A sneaky Charismatic leader can pump out Privateers with blitz, which net you multiple Great Generals from all those Caravels you destroy. In fact, you can even use your blitz Privateers to kill Frigates, though two or three Privateers might be necessary. Once your opponents start fielding Destroyers, it's probably time to retire your Privateers, unfortunately.

Not that I would ever do something so dastardly.

Anyways, I think that West Point is okay, as is. None of the national wonders are game breaking. They simply give you a slight edge, and West Point seems to fit into that realm. If it did get a buff, I think that I'd lean toward Leadership, because it's such an awesome promotion. If that's too overpowered, then I'd probably say Combat I (Combat II for Aggressive leaders).