Fallout: Tame The Wastes

Hey deon, is this the same deon from way back who started a fallout mod and made the BoS Leaderhead etc.? If so welcome back.

It would be great to have more people on board, especially with more skills!

Now to your points. They are fairly valid. Also remember this is still very early Alpha (even with all the progress we have made).

As to the 'Logic' of the tech tree, there are many 'logical' ways of looking at it. The tech tree is only a Mk1 and was done a while back, and fairly quickly too. A lot of development was stalled due to technical issues and bugs, that I could not solve and exhausted myself on. Then the team grew and a lot of these problems were resolved, and the 'next stage' of focus is in overhauling the way the economy of the game will work. So really the tech tree hasn't been looked at for ages.

Hunting: Hunting had the logic of needing armour to go hunting, so it went in after that. (as you don't want to get eaten by a gecko)

Barricade: 2 reasons why barricade comes at the end of the first era.
1: Game mechanic: Most factions need defenses to progress to getting settlers, and settlers need barricade to be built. Settlers are supposed to take a little while to come into play to simulate the idea of gaining 'confidence' in your town to go out in the frontiers.

2: 'Logic': The world could argue forever and a day on what the most 'logical' form for the tech tree to be in is, and multiple views would be equally valid. My current logic was, to build a barricade of any real worth, you would need tools and a workshop to prepare materials, especially things like watch towers, you would also need a sufficiently developed town to have the necessary 'manpower' to be able to do things like drag cars or put up solid style defences. The 'barricade entrances, etc.' stuff could be said to be represented in the 'basic shelter' type stuff of the earlier techs. But to wall in a town is a pretty big undertaking, you would be more likely to start with fire and guards to keep critters away.

Anyway, gameplay wise the difference is pretty negligible...

The tech tree will be developed and expanded, it is not just to make it 'big' but to allow detail and fun, and also to add in certain missing elements that we will be able to represent better once we add in some more engine additions. (such as crime).

The reason there is only one crossbow, is that it is quickly replaced with guns, also the tribals will feature an extensive, 'bow style' unit tree, as they will have less access to guns. (eventually) So bows are purposefully not featured right now because of saving them for the tribals.

The current idea of the tech tree is loosely based around 'Pre Fallout 1', 'F1', 'F2\Tactics', 'F3\NV'. Again full development of the tech tree and the later stages was stalled out due to bugs, and I just have not got back around to tooling it up properly, (again with a lot of things being better to wait for the engine upgrade, as this will fundementally change a lot of things)

As to the unit strength stuff, it all still needs balncing and full testing, I unfortunately lost my main testers to busy life, just as the mod got to the stage of really needing extensive testing, annd at the moment no one has stepped forward to take up the major role of testing/reporting/analysing, etc.

You could say unit strengths come down to vision, but I don't think having really high power units is even remotely a problem, as everyone will have them... a larger strength 'range' means more scope for balancing out a huge variety of weapons, armour, vehicles, etc. so the simple statement that the range of strength is 'too much' is just something that I would nominally disagree with, unless a larger argument and reasoning could be laid out as to why it is too big..

Anyway, I am always happy to debate, and listen to new ideas, etc. many of them may be shared and just not implemented yet!

The eventual goal is to make a mod as expansive and detailed as FFH2 or ROM:AND, etc.

Thank you for a quick reply! This is a doodle of my current idea for survival era:



If you want, I can describe what each tech should do. Maybe it will give you some inspiration and insight in what I mean about hunting and such.
You may think it's too short, but let me have my supper and think of what I want to tell . Basically in my point of view there's no need for separate techs like "light armor" or "improvised weapons" early. They are too detailed in comparison to "nuclear physics" techs in late game and are researched quickly any way. The idea with hunting is that your survivors will find one way or another to protect themselves as you develop the "technology", it's just the general direction which differs. Also you already said that "early game may seem too slow". Well, having less overly specific techs early and more general-stuff-related techs should help with that, to jump into more interesting (IMHO) "governemnt establishing/renovation" era quickly where you don't sit on your ass but actually go out and deal with neighbours and internal problems.

I mean, overly specific techs (like scrapping/axe making/oiling) may be cool and all in mods like Caveman to Cosmos where people actually discover new stuff they never knew about, which may bring many new things.

But here we talk about rediscovery of general technology early.
Like, you find a book about survival, you won't just learn how to build an improvised spear in one book, then search for months for another about how to make a campfire, then for months how to make a simple armor, then another month about how to set up snares. That's the point. When people research "hunting", they find old books and talks about doing the whole thing since it was developed for centuries already.

It's more interesting to introduce more specific techs in the late game rather than early game. At first people quickly find literature and talk to each other to learn how to do basic stuff. However later technology rediscoveries should come slower and slower, since it requires better understanding of scientific studies and underlying data. There's no university so THERE the real science starts, not when you learn how to combine two planks to make a gateway.

Regarding unit strength, I know that it's not a big problem, I just don't like how we get str 2 units with wrenches early, and then str 60 power armor and such. I would rather have less specific units with progression and more tactical choices. I.e. developing better weapons gives automated promotion to all units, increasing their strength. Since we are not talking about spearmen fighting tanks, but rather a group of men who can pick up grenades, junk guns and even scavenge energy weapons and such, unit progression should bring more tactical choices and promotions avaliable rather than pure brute 10x strength.

Of course I am not a messiah and you had a lot of ideas about all of it yourself already, so let's see if we can merge our vision into one or at least help each other .

Wow, that is quite a lot of text and it states that this mod isn't good enough. It validates bringing up this:


Most if not all points are valid and justified. In a sense it didn't really call for this video, but it was the first thing, which came to my mind

Deon said:

P.S. Another grumble. I don't really like current unit strength progression. Jumping from str. 2 to 60 is something too extreme for my opinion. Also having a "crossbowman" unit which is the ONLY unit of Archer unit class is weird. The archer model could be an early hunter instead (trapper?). Okay, let me stop here, I have too many my own ideas which I should not pour all over you, sorry .

Click to expand...

I completely agree with this one. Unit strength is horribly unbalanced. I know the fallout universe has some intended unbalanced units, but a civ mod has to be more balanced than this. At one point I had a unit I, which was more or less invincible compared to the competition and it was in really early in the game. I could have killed every civ within reach if I wanted more or less without fearing losing even a single unit. I know the Fallout universe is the place to find powerful machines inside ruins, but this is ridicules overkill.

However we all know that game balance is an issue for quite a number of mods, this one included. In fact game balance is difficult and time consuming to get right

Scavenging, the first tech ever. What would a modern person do if he appeared in a megapolis ruined by war and disasters? Would he start to pick up seeds from the ground and try to grow a garden? Or maybe he would try to mine some metal from the ground and forge basic weapons? No, he would try to find a pre-war stash of weapons and food, of clothing and stuff to read. Thus the scavenging tech is the first to introduce gathering of supplies for survival.

Trapping. Looking for canned food and soda bottles is always fun, but what if you emptied all food stores nearby and there're small critters and insects trying to steal what's left of your food? Right, you make THEM food. Trapping is logical since it's a naturally replenishing resource of food and basic supplies (fur, glue, soap etc). However without a proper knowledge of the outside world you still cannot take on big baddies out there.

Ambushing. So you saw that big wolf-like creature many times and know where it hunts and when it goes to sleep. You saw its basic behaviour and know how to evade it and spy on it. Now put 2 and 2 together, and you can find a way to corner and kill it when it's alone, or set up a simple trap to impair its combat abilities. And suddenly you become a hunter. You are still hunted, but now you have an upper hand. Dangerous monsters are out of reach, but scavengers and smaller predators are your food now.

Hunting. So many of your friends died to this Yao Guai threat. You have scratches all over your body, and you've made yourself a crude crossbow (that suvival manual Dave gave you before he died to a falling roof was really nice). You even saw one of Yao Guai die when your buddy stabbed him in a soft spot under chest as he was screaming (who would not scream if his face is being eaten?). Now just a bit more training with your new crossbow and physical preparations, and you think you can lead a group to a lair of one of the big creatures to take it down.

---

Gathering. Hunting molerats and iguanas is nice, but you can scare them off, and then you will have to look in other dark cellars and pits. And there you can find not just small critters, but their bigger friends. So you need to try to figure out how to gather some food without rummaging in old stashes or stabbing rats with a stick. Of course plants is a logical answer! However it will take some time to find out which plant will fill your stomach, and which plant will outright kill you. This is important, folks. You cannot grow them in nice big greenhouses yet, but you can already pick them up in nearby bushes and ruins to feed your children.

Healers. You scavenged enough first aid kits to set up a small drug shop, and you found about healing properties of some plants when dried. Now you cannot use all this knowledge to help yourself, and in some cases you may not have time to use this knowledge. So a logical step is to find a tough group who need your service, and ask them for food and shelter for your help. Yes, you will do it in the morning, now just another sip of this Dream Juice, and a short talk to Spirits...

Medicine. So apparently these Journals on Internal Medicine and Big Science Books have some really good info in them, as long as you are able to find proper medicaments and have some basic training. It's possible to set up a proper hospital, at least it's much better than what these savages do to themselves with all the opiates and coagulants.

---

I will continue to describe other techs, and later tell which units/buildings should come with them. My wife came home and I need a break. I will update this same post. What I am trying to achieve is to tell you my vision of the early era. It may bring some new ideas to you (regarding the tech tree) and may let you think that I am THE person who can do it .

Heh Nightingale, I remember that guy, thanks for a good laugh .

I just had quite a lot of designing done here, so I have a lot to talk about . I mean, I spent like 1/4 of my time at work filling these notepads with the info on how I want to make it.

hmmm, that is a gameplay mecahinc I did not know about, you mean they can hide in your own cities?

Lib.Spi't said:

hmmm, that is a gameplay mecahinc I did not know about, you mean they can hide in your own cities?

Click to expand...

Yes, and it's an issue with Rogues in Caveman 2 Cosmos as well which everyone complains about. However rogues there are civic-specific and are a very weak unit, but here there's no real counter to a scavenger hiding in your town.

Well as to game play, balance and on and on and on.... like I said I lost my testers right when I needed them and have found no replacements. Not many people post any real feedback about gameplay or balance, most of the feedback is just around stuff that is already ear marked to be developed and fixed.. Incomplete stuff, or upgrading improvements, etc.

To be honest (and I don't mean this to be overly harsh) just coming and posting that things are 'horribly unbalanced' is just plain annoying! It doesn't help anyone do anything? I KNOW that stuff needs balancing! I KNOW that stuff needs more work that is why it is called ALPHA!!!!! Unless you have a suggestion as to what is unbalanced or how it is unbalanced or how to fix the inbalance, YOU ARE NOT HELPING, just being obvious!!

and breathe....

As to the tech tree stuff, writing stories about techs is again not all that helpful... I can write a whole bunch of post apocalyptic survival stories and the ways to survive, but that does nothing to actually make game mechanics...

I take your point about the balance between specific and unspecific content, but rather than simply 'broadening' early tech names, I actually want to introduce new game content that will keep the early era more engaging, stuff like random events.

Talking about unit balance, surely the point is more about balancing development, and figuring out why you are so much further ahead than the other factions.

Also just saying 'I had a unit' at 'a fairly early point in the game' is entirely unhelpful! What am I supposed to do with that piece of 'information'!!!! There are over 100 units and 100 techs and a huge amount of content! How am I supposed to do anything about a problem that has no definition stated!

It is just a little annoying, to have one person make one undefined statement, and then have another person make the same undefined statement in agreement!! Not Useful in any way shape or form!!

The point is a guy with a crow bar is a universe away from a guy with Power Armour and a Gauss Minigun!

That being said units are still completely in development, even possibly to the extent where the whole unit system will be thrown out and rebuilt from scratch because of some recent modcomp releases, but that move is still missing a few key code components that would be needed.

As to the whole scavenging and getting the good stuff straight away, I don't entirely agree, as this is not simply a 'scavenger/survival' mod, but a fallout mod. In fallout like most rpg's, you don't get the really good stuff straight away, most of what would have been early accessible good stuff, will have been scavenged away quickly by some one, or incinerated in nuclear fire. Most of the time to get a collection of good stuff, you either need money (a solid economy) or you need to fight your way through robots or fallout.

I am definately up for seeing your tech tree design, like I said mine was done over the space of probably only a few hours, (I haven't gone back to it yet, because my focus has been on game core development, which will translate into better and more diverse stuff later on.)

Anyway rant over...

hmmm, ok that is a pretty major mechanical flaw.. I had never seen that in any of my games.. So, does it happen if you have units in your city? I wouldn't think it was possible, because the unit is 'always hostile'?... if that is the case, then there is something somewhere in the game core that would need fixing, although at the same time.. as soon as the baddy comes out of your town you can whack him, and being in the town would make him useless anyway...but I would need more details on what is actually happening, as like I said I have never seen this! (but it is pretty funny! Them Skavs are wily!!)

If they are getting inside your town because you have no units defending your town then that is very different, and not a problem.

1) I told you I love what you are doing. I know it's annoying, but I did it anyway. Not because I want to teach you how to do it, but because I want to help hehe. I am a terrible person and I am going to hell, but I'd rather share my opinion than stay polite and quiet. Russian soul here.

2) I do not just post that "things are unbalanced", I try to tell how it could be possible to improve it. Again, everything I type is a suggestion, not a request. And if it looks like a request, be a better person and understand that it's most likely a language barrier and my inability to express myself in proper terms, rather than attempt to annoy or mentor you.

3) There's just too much you've done! Please understand that I am not a magical Helpdesk Support manager who can clearly explain you the problem with everything . I was overwhelmed both with (a) the amount of content which is already in and (b) the amount of content which needs balancing (which comes straight from "a"). Now I am not a tester team leader or something, so I cannot tell you how to fix stuff, I just try to give you information which you may find interesting. Like that one with scavengers hiding in cities.


Actually right now I am building a Survival era tech tree with units and early buildings. I will upload it and let you see, and hope we can work from that.


Again, take a deep breath and don't be angry at me. I am trying to be a friend, not an enemy, okay?
What I am trying to say (with "simplier early game tech tree") is that it's easier (ONLY IN MY OPINION, I SWEAR, NOT MENTORING ) to make a simple tech tree, balance THAT and then split bigger techs into smaller ones. Starting with a HUGE amount of techs as you do is extremely hard to control and balance, and requires not just a huge amount of testers, but also much more planning than when you go from generic stuff to more specific stuff.


I hope I explained my point good enough. What about stories with tech, it was me trying to explain WHY did I put them where they belong logic-wise. But I think I'd rather make a tech tree and show it, it will be more helpful than trying to explain what goes where and why .

Thank you for fast reply.

Lib.Spi't said:

hmmm, ok that is a pretty major mechanical flaw.. I had never seen that in any of my games.. So, does it happen if you have units in your city? I wouldn't think it was possible, because the unit is 'always hostile'?... if that is the case, then there is something somewhere in the game core that would need fixing, although at the same time.. as soon as the baddy comes out of your town you can whack him, and being in the town would make him useless anyway...but I would need more details on what is actually happening, as like I said I have never seen this! (but it is pretty funny! Them Skavs are wily!!)

If they are getting inside your town because you have no units defending your town then that is very different, and not a problem.

Click to expand...

You can move your scavenger in a foreign city with units just fine because he cannot attack/capture cities and you are not at war. I think it requires a DLL fix to disallow units of certain type to enter foreign cities.

P.S. If anything, and you will be annoyed about my big suggestions and rant about me trying to tell you what to do, I will still make resource icons and minor graphical stuff, so I think we can both benefit from this discussion.

Deon said:

2) How do you plan to deal with great nuisance ("scavengers", "thiefs" etc) for balance and non-enraging gameplay? Currently scavengers are 3 str (in comparison to 2 str early units), but that's not the worst part. The worst part is that if they move in a city, you cannot do anything about it. And they freely move in a city since they have a "cannot capture" flag on. Then when they are in a city you cannot attack them (BtS mechanic). Now if they did not have the "cannot capture" on, they would not be able to enter a city with attackers. But they do, so something should be invented to help dealing with them.

Click to expand...

Deon said:

Yes, and it's an issue with Rogues in Caveman 2 Cosmos as well which everyone complains about. However rogues there are civic-specific and are a very weak unit, but here there's no real counter to a scavenger hiding in your town.

Click to expand...

Sounds to me like somebody is trying to use some vanilla code with an XML setup not intended in vanilla. Maybe "cannot capture" should be ignored if you own a city in the plot in question. The key here is to figure out how you want it to work in game mechanics and then implement it.

Ignoring "cannot capture" flag depending on owner of plot/city in plot etc might actually be a fairly small task if done in the DLL. The problem is finding the right location to hook into and add conditions. I might take a look as I have a hunch of how it could be done, but I will not do so unless there is a clear goal on how the change should appear to a player.

Deon said:

2) I do not just post that "things are unbalanced".

Click to expand...

I think the rant was aimed more at me than you. I know it wasn't really helpful, but what I said was that we know it is really unbalanced. If I could just sit down and fix that, I would, but balance is tricky (which I also wrote). The rant was unjustified by my intention behind the post, but I admit it could be justified by the wordings alone. I didn't feel like writing a huge amount of text and I possibly left out vital clues to what I actually meant.

What is needed is to get somebody to sit down and think carefully about the layout of unit availability, tech order etc and then shift everything into a balanced order for all races. This is a great task and I'm not up for that task. However it looks like somebody else could be

Yeah the 'unbalanced' statement was aimed more at nightinggale than you

I think probably what got my back up (more than I initially realised, or would care to admit ) was the 'so much right and wrong here' statement, it was a big statement to make, without a lot of... evidence or I don't know 'backing up with content'. (admittedly my brain focussed more on the wrong part! )

The whole point is, I label it with an Alpha, and then people assume that I don't plan to evolve stuff with time, time being the main thing. (or perhaps I assume people assume )

Anyway, I honestly don't know where most of the raging came from, that is why I tried to 'couch' it with smiley faces,

That point about scavengers IS the kind of feedback I REALLY appreciate, as it is something I had never witnessed.. is it just Skavs?, or did you witness it with later units too? If so it is something of a game core issue which we will need to explore a fix for maybe..(If it is just skavs, as a unit they may go anyway, they are only early unit\concept, and they cause moroe problems than they are worth )

In part the current tech tree is actually the 'simple generic' version of what I eventually plan to make it.

One of the big problems is that I lost a lot of energy and design\development flow because of bugs that I didn't have the knowledge to fix. (I am essentially making this mod with no coding skills what so ever) I basically had about three months of banging my head against a wall until I eventually just gave up and considered letting the mod just die. Fortunately around that time a coder joined the team and he basically fixed 99% of stuff (there maybe some stuff we still don't exactly know about) Then together we got bogged down in the 'Dynamic Traits' mod-comp, which turned out to be much more broken and a headache than I first thought. There was about 2 or 3 months working with that code, and it is still not 'right' eventually I said to just set it to one side for a while and we will come back to finish it off later.

So anyway, the next job was getting things tidied up and making the first version of unit pop cost, then Finally!!! getting Alpha3 out as I was feeling it was about 6 months over due, now like I said we are working on overhaulling the economy to take that to the next level, which will in turn let us take everything else to the next level.

I have barely even looked at or thought about the tech tree in probably over a year now... right now I have been taking a deep breath after the release of Alpha3, and leaving flitz to do his magic dark arts with the code, then I will come back, take stock and decide the next steps.

I am not actually as angry with your statements as the text appears (ok maybe I am but I am getting over it quickly now ) I just had a minor rage moment I don't normally react like that, I surprised myself I think it was nightinggale that tipped me over the edge But me and him have talked a lot about a lot of things, I think it was a kind of 'OH NOW YOU GIVE FEEDBACK!!' Moment, and then there wasn't even any information to help me!!! And his codey math brain I would have expected to give me something more helpful and detailed hehe!!

Then the switch flipped and I was like right!! Shotguns to eyeballs time!! ah Necropolis such fond memories

Anyway, I appreciate your thoughts and I look forward to discussions with you, this damn thread has been quiet for ages (that was probably another reason, too quiet, then suddenly a bunch of people start talking) about balance! Duh of course it is unbalanced I have no play testers!

I can never play it for that long, because I know all the things I haven't added yet (or all the code I want!) So I am just like, ugh!! it is no fun without X, Y, Z!!

With the whole unit balancing thing (actually with balancing on everything, units, buildings, improvements) the numbers at this stage are purely 'conceptual' and guestimates, of the sort of power, i 'Reckon' they should have, what I need is play testers who will blast away with endless combinations to help shake out the math of it all. Again another task that I lost momentum with. Basically everything right now design wise is recovering from the 'Great Bug War'.

I have M.E. so my energy and ability to think clearly is severely limited most of the time, (another frustration) so I just have to do one 'bit' at a time, get it done (no matter how incomplete it is) leave it alone for a while, do something else, then eventually come back to it with fresh eyes and go, right... what didn't I do right, or what did I miss, or what idea did i forget about last time. with being 6 months behind my own imaginary schedule. I am probably still a ways away, from giving the tech tree it's second pass!

I know what you mean by burning yourself out with bugs, and the fact that you did not look at tech tree made me pop my head up and offer a help with that. You could let me try to help with tech tree, then make it more complex. As I said you should probably pay a big attention that technology would be remembered/discovered from more or less complex implementations of it rather than designed from scratch, so the common logic of "what comes after what" does not work here, and various aspects of human technology would be re-discovered in chunks related to specific utility areas rather than "knowledge pool".

I think I found the origin of the problem with scavengers, it may come from the fact that they cannot attack, so they just walk into the city instead of trying to kill the defenders. I will look into it more. I would also make them killable with early units of the same costs easier. Right now they just come in and pillage all improvements without repercussions.

And of course don't forget my comment about how OP the current scavenging camp is. It's like a workshop, a farm and a town all in one.

Oh also on the 'with a few skav camps I could research in 3-4 turns and build stuff quick' statement, did you just do the first tech era? how far did you actually get?

If it was only the first part then, go away and paly the full game!! hehe!

There is supposed to be a 'tipping point' with the first era, where to begin with you are caught in this grinding sense of striving to make it anywhere, then you start to get things together and roll on in to era 2.

Yeah the other thing to remember (although this is all early days implementation) is that compared to BtS everything will be 'widely overpowered' as I want to shift the sense of scale drastically. obviously this will all take time to get right, I point again to ALPHA!!!! hehehehe, but anyway, by the time I am done, skav comps will seem puny and useless compared to the ULTIMATE POWER!!!! to come!

I can't remember if I posted here on in the Dev group, but somewhere I talk about Vanilla style 'towns' giving like 20 coin (mostly because 2 BIG MONEY BAGS!! will look epic!!) so then compared to that 'level' of improvement, skav camps will be mieaningless.

One of the reasons why not a lot has been worked through with improvements, is I am holding my breath, waiting to see if redkey realeases a new version of superforts with upgrade levels of improvements being unlocked through techs. Right now you can upgrade a level 1 improvement all the way to the end, even when the 'build order' for the higher improvement isn't unlocked till the far end of the tech tree, which sort of made me go 'BAH!! Fine I can't be bothered with that I will do something else till a solution arrives!'

Lib.Spi't said:

I am not actually as angry with your statements as the text appears (ok maybe I am but I am getting over it quickly now ) I just had a minor rage moment

Click to expand...

I know of such horrible moments. Once in a while I have moments where I feel like writing code, which only works on 64 bit CPUs for no reason. Such urges usually appear when I read groundless ranting posts. I have no idea why

Lib.Spi't said:

I can never play it for that long, because I know all the things I haven't added yet (or all the code I want!) So I am just like, ugh!! it is no fun without X, Y, Z!!

Click to expand...

I usually feel the same way. Once I tried using feeder service in colo mods I can't bring myself to seriously play mods without it anymore.

Deon said:

I think I found the origin of the problem with scavengers, it may come from the fact that they cannot attack, so they just walk into the city instead of trying to kill the defenders. I will look into it more. I would also make them killable with early units of the same costs easier. Right now they just come in and pillage all improvements without repercussions.

And of course don't forget my comment about how OP the current scavenging camp is. It's like a workshop, a farm and a town all in one.

Click to expand...

That is a vital clue. It shows that my hunch was wrong. Luckily it mean it has to do with AI attack code instead. I say luckily because I fixed quite a number of bugs in that for both RaR and M:C and I think that code is more or less a copy paste of BTS code. This mean I will likely have a decent chance of finding the offending part. What would be really ideal would be a savegame, which doesn't use random seed where the scavengers move into the city when you press end turn and does that each time. Such a savegame is a gem for figuring out where it goes wrong.
Also do NOT lock modified assets in the game as history shows that it makes loading the game next to impossible.

Maybe the solution would be that scavengers can't be in a plot where a military unit belonging to a different owner is placed (make that different team). That will prevent them from moving into guarded plots (cities or no cities) and if you move into them, they move to the nearest free plot. This allow your units into hunting the scavengers away from your improvements. You can't kill them, but you have a change of defending your improvements at the cost of mass producing units to keep them away.

If it was only the first part then, go away and paly the full game!! hehe!

Click to expand...

I played about half of tech tree. The point is, with starting 3 scav camps I was able to get 5x times points of other AIs on Monarch. They did not have ruins nearby so I was able to build 10 crossbowmen in 10 turns and kill everything around their cities and their workers. I researched all needed techs when they were struggling with basic ones. As I said, having a size 12 city with lots of productions (80+ hammers in early era) from 3 improvements is a bit strange.

ok, so part of that sounds like map script tweaking, to get a better 'spread' of stuff, I introduced logging teams to forests a while back to try and help combat not having ruins. Also were BoS, Enclave and Super Mutants active? Otherwise the map script code fix may not have initialised. (we have been exploring the why of it, on flitz's version he seems to have it fixed, but when we apply the same fix to mine, the issue is still there [at least to an extent] So the final fix is still being implemented)

Partly the 'getting mega cities' is another one of those scale things that I want, so when I am done, a size 12 city will be a puny town of like 120 people. Also I hope to make it that maintaining those improvements is going to be very hard (hence skavs coming in and pillaging everything ) With the unit pop cost in there as wel, this makes city growth 'slower' as well, as you balance growth and unit production.

Really the goal is to have it that all of the faction cities will be around the 12 mark at the same time.

Also if you read the starting post, I recommend playing Noble difficulty, as currenly that is the only one that has been properly adjusted to simulate the 'Fallout' world, if you do that, your 10 crossbowmen will hopefully not be quite as illustrious as on monarch.

There will also be more limitations placed on units in the future as well (like needing resources per X units) so even though you can build a unit in a single turn, unless you have the resources and empire size to back it up, you won't be able to build a lot of them all at once.

I did not understand your comment about illustrious crossbowmen... On Monarch AI gets more stuff than on Noble, it also gets free production bonuses, free happiness etc. On noble AI would be even worse.

Yes but you would be swarmed at every step by hordes of creatures if you stepped outside your borders!

Try Noble, make sure you play in line with all the points made in the opening posts, then we can talk balance etc. after that

I tried noble, same result. I find and settle near ruins, I build 2-3 camps and I outtech AI in no time. Wildlife is never a problem to find a path to AI to kill it .