Game Options Discussion

os79

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This thread is to discuss two types of game options that need axing, moving or increased support in future.

This first post will focus on Custom Game options. The next post will focus on BUG's AND tab options. Add your ideas or suggestions as you see fit.
Rationale: Had you looked, seriously looked, at the options list? They are overwhelming! That's my perspective.

Here goes for Custom Game options. I will disregard base BtS options for obvious reasons.

Early Buildings, Civic Buildings, and Expanded Caste Buildings should get merged into the game. They should be a standard that make Rise of Mankind - A New Dawn the modpack it is. Tweak them as needed is better way to deal with them.

Added Corporations and Guilds should be merged in too. Too confusing as options.

I'm confused why there are two options very close to each other, Advanced Nukes and No Nukes. My opinion is that if you make units for this modpack, have them be part of the modpack, period. Then use No Nukes for players who prefer not to have nukes be part of the game for their reasons. Or revise No Nukes to only include ICBMs as base BtS have them already.

No City Limits and No Fixed Borders to me feel like overkill. Give them AI support or ax them.

Minimum Culture is somewhat like No Culture Flipping already present in the game option. No reason to have that option.

Other game options I see are fine by me.
Suggestions? Ideas?

I will get to BUG options discussion later tonight.
 
This thread is to discuss two types of game options that need axing, moving or increased support in future.

This first post will focus on Custom Game options. The next post will focus on BUG's AND tab options. Add your ideas or suggestions as you see fit.
Rationale: Had you looked, seriously looked, at the options list? They are overwhelming! That's my perspective.

Here goes for Custom Game options. I will disregard base BtS options for obvious reasons.

Early Buildings, Civic Buildings, and Expanded Caste Buildings should get merged into the game. They should be a standard that make Rise of Mankind - A New Dawn the modpack it is. Tweak them as needed is better way to deal with them.

Added Corporations and Guilds should be merged in too. Too confusing as options.

I'm confused why there are two options very close to each other, Advanced Nukes and No Nukes. My opinion is that if you make units for this modpack, have them be part of the modpack, period. Then use No Nukes for players who prefer not to have nukes be part of the game for their reasons. Or revise No Nukes to only include ICBMs as base BtS have them already.

No City Limits and No Fixed Borders to me feel like overkill. Give them AI support or ax them.

Minimum Culture is somewhat like No Culture Flipping already present in the game option. No reason to have that option.

Other game options I see are fine by me.
Suggestions? Ideas?

I will get to BUG options discussion later tonight.

Well, AND style was to never force a player to use some options, but...

Early Buildings, Civic Buildings, and Expanded Caste Buildings should get merged into the game --> I AGREE, they just don't hurt anyone but they do add something to the game

Added Corporations and Guilds should be merged in too --> I partially agree: I'm in favour of merging corporations, not sure about guilds. I seldom play with Guilds but they definetely needed to be improved some time ago; having a guild being founded in modern era is something awful, but I remember it happening.

Advanced Nukes and No Nukes --> Not sure; I always use Advanced Nukes but there are some strange units (like YAM) which some players find fun while others don't like. I would personally cut YAM and integrate Adv Nukes in the game, while leaving a No Nukes option.

No City Limits and No Fixed Borders --> I don't get your point, they look fine to me

Minimum Culture is somewhat like No Culture Flipping --> Definetely not. I added Minimum City Border to make culture important again as those 8 tiles always belonging to the city owner were game breaking for cultural playstyle. But I suppose that someone liked it if that rule was enforced in the game. If we want to make it default to remove that 8 tiles ownership limit and remove the option, that's fine with me, but I hope people don't start crying because their cities are starving because they're being culturally overwhelmed by another civ nearby.
 
I much prefer these as options, since I don't play with many of them. I absolutely do NOT like the expanded castles, so I would argue fervently to keep them optional. I also don't use guilds, early buildings, expanded corporations, or fixed borders. So unless having them optional is in some way breaking the game I think they should stay as options, even if they default to enabled and have to be turned off that's fine, but removing options will just alienate people.
 
45°38'N-13°47'E;13351965 said:
Well, AND style was to never force a player to use some options, but...

Honestly, why not? We should not care overmuch if players feel like their choices are taken out. Why? They can create their own modpack with their preferences, yes? But I'm OK with game options as long as they are actually game-changing, like Revolutions.

45°38'N-13°47'E;13351965 said:
Advanced Nukes and No Nukes --> Not sure; I always use Advanced Nukes but there are some strange units (like YAM) which some players find fun while others don't like. I would personally cut YAM and integrate Adv Nukes in the game, while leaving a No Nukes option.

Look good to me.

45°38'N-13°47'E;13351965 said:
No City Limits and No Fixed Borders --> I don't get your point, they look fine to me

The game mechanics created here don't really hurt the player. Just that they need to tweak their strategy, that is all. Get them immersed into the modpack known as Rise of Mankind - A New Dawn where the gameplay is a bit different. They are not radical changes like Revolutions or BarbarianCivs.
However, that is my opinion. If you prefer to leave these options in, that is fine.

45°38'N-13°47'E;13351965 said:
Minimum Culture is somewhat like No Culture Flipping --> Definetely not. I added Minimum City Border to make culture important again as those 8 tiles always belonging to the city owner were game breaking for cultural playstyle. But I suppose that someone liked it if that rule was enforced in the game. If we want to make it default to remove that 8 tiles ownership limit and remove the option, that's fine with me, but I hope people don't start crying because their cities are starving because they're being culturally overwhelmed by another civ nearby.

Honestly, they play Civ4 because they love to be a strategist. If they cry, then they may be in a minority ;).

Really, I think that Revolutions team created their options as options because some scenarios can not have Revolutions or BarbarianCivs involved. Also, maybe because some multiplayers can not tolerate Revolutions interfering with their games. Fixed Borders and City Limits don't really interfere with scenario or multiplayer immersion.
 
Now discussing options focused in BUG's A New Dawn tab.

First off: Resource Depletion and Terrain Damage options are no longer under support. So they should be axed because I am very doubtful that AI can deal with them.

Battlefield Promotions, Dynamic XP, War Prizes, Better Air Interception, and Defender Withdraw should be examined. I think they all can be bundled into one option named Advanced Battlefield. Put it in Custom Game. It is major game changing option so it fits there.

Multiple Religions can be bundled into Religion Decay. That option can be renamed Realistic Religions.

Realistic Diplomacy should be moved to Advanced Diplomacy tab.

No Storms should be a standard by now until someone figure out how to improve storm feature's impact on turn speed. When I turned Storms off, the turns speeded up significantly.

Max Units Per Tile should be axed because the AI in this game is not made for limited unit number. I don't know if you are willing to work on improving AI's ability with limited numbers of units per tile.

Strategic Events should become a part of modpack. No option is needed for these.

Sea Tunnels and Terraforming should be standard part of the game too.

These are my major concerns about that tab. Other tabs look OK to me so far.
 
This thread is to discuss two types of game options that need axing, moving or increased support in future.

Let's run down the list:
  • Early Buildings
    • I agree, with the caveat that early buildings need some balancing. I need to review it first, at least.
  • Civic Buildings
    • I agree this should be on by default
  • Expanded Castle Buildings
    • I think these need to be revisisted. I don't really like the catacombs or dungeon buildings. The catacombs building does not work well with the AI, as they build it very often. The dungeon is just a bit..gimmicky.
  • Expanded Corporations
    • I don't agree, and in my experience, Corporations are one of the least balanced parts of the game. They tend to give rather absurdly strong bonuses. Until balancing is fixed, they need to stay as options.
  • Guilds
    • Same as above. I honestly never liked the guilds either.
  • Advanced Nukes
    • I don't agree because I don't like a lot of the advanced nukes. A lot of them are very extreme and just to satisfy the type of player that likes big explosions rather than strategic gameplay.
  • No Nukes
    • This option shouldn't exist. I don't know why it got added.
  • No City Limits
    • This option should also not exist. I can not see a valid reason players should be able to "cheat" their way out of civic choices.
  • No Fixed Borders
    • Well I didn't put this option and got a lot of flack over it. Personally I like Fixed Borders, but there is enough people that don't that this option needs to stay.
  • Minimum Culture
    • This option should not exist, it breaks the cultural-style conquest and victories. I also added culture decay a while back so that should help prevent enemy culture from remaining long after they are gone.

Now discussing options focused in BUG's A New Dawn tab.

First off: Resource Depletion and Terrain Damage options are no longer under support. So they should be axed because I am very doubtful that AI can deal with them.

I agree.

Battlefield Promotions, Dynamic XP, War Prizes, Better Air Interception, and Defender Withdraw should be examined. I think they all can be bundled into one option named Advanced Battlefield. Put it in Custom Game. It is major game changing option so it fits there.

Good idea.

Multiple Religions can be bundled into Religion Decay. That option can be renamed Realistic Religions.

Sure.

Realistic Diplomacy should be moved to Advanced Diplomacy tab.

Good catch.

No Storms should be a standard by now until someone figure out how to improve storm feature's impact on turn speed. When I turned Storms off, the turns speeded up significantly.

I don't know. Does anyone play with Storms on? Storms were Zappara's pet project, but I don't know how many still use them.

Max Units Per Tile should be axed because the AI in this game is not made for limited unit number. I don't know if you are willing to work on improving AI's ability with limited numbers of units per tile.

Waayyy too popular to remove.

Strategic Events should become a part of modpack. No option is needed for these.

Agreed.

Sea Tunnels and Terraforming should be standard part of the game too.

I disagree, I'm fine with them being options, they don't always work well.
 
I much prefer these as options, since I don't play with many of them. I absolutely do NOT like the expanded castles, so I would argue fervently to keep them optional.

Can you explain what part of them you don't like? I would like to revisit them at some point.
 
Now discussing options focused in BUG's A New Dawn tab.

First off: Resource Depletion and Terrain Damage options are no longer under support. So they should be axed because I am very doubtful that AI can deal with them.

Battlefield Promotions, Dynamic XP, War Prizes, Better Air Interception, and Defender Withdraw should be examined. I think they all can be bundled into one option named Advanced Battlefield. Put it in Custom Game. It is major game changing option so it fits there.

Multiple Religions can be bundled into Religion Decay. That option can be renamed Realistic Religions.

Realistic Diplomacy should be moved to Advanced Diplomacy tab.

No Storms should be a standard by now until someone figure out how to improve storm feature's impact on turn speed. When I turned Storms off, the turns speeded up significantly.

Max Units Per Tile should be axed because the AI in this game is not made for limited unit number. I don't know if you are willing to work on improving AI's ability with limited numbers of units per tile.

Strategic Events should become a part of modpack. No option is needed for these.

Sea Tunnels and Terraforming should be standard part of the game too.

These are my major concerns about that tab. Other tabs look OK to me so far.

I understand eliminating the storms and other options that are no longer under support or have if they have a performance impact, but I feel the need to reiterate; WHY do options that do neither of these need to be taken away? Having them has seemingly no detrimental impact, while removing them absolutely does.

And not everyone has the ability "go make their own" mod. This mod is the most enjoyable I've played precisely BECAUSE I have the option to set it up how I like it, not in spite of it and I suspect that many will feel the same.
 
Can you explain what part of them you don't like? I would like to revisit them at some point.
Went back and looked at them closer and edited to add specifics (If I'm going to say I dislike them I at least owe a good explanation). The catacombs and the Gatehouse effects were the ones that I had the most issue with. Also wasn't a fan of losing the culture effects with the keep, in part because I tend to play culturally and with revolutions enabled.

Overall in general my feeling was that they just added more to keep track of without adding enough to the game to be worthwhile.

I know others enjoy them, which is why I framed my thoughts around them staying optional.
 
When I found out Catacombs cause my city to be open to easy conquest, I panicked. But nothing happened. So yeah, ax that certain building. I know that I fought few cities with expanded castles before. AI did build them. But I think if you can combine some good features into one next building, Castle Defenses let's name it, with very high hammers cost, it can go a long way to focus AI attention and let it focus on new needs next.
 
88GTS, I don't mind options. However, there's a fine line between having options and too many options. So I'm basically suggesting axing unnecessary options and streamlining others.
 
88GTS, I don't mind options. However, there's a fine line between having options and too many options. So I'm basically suggesting axing unnecessary options and streamlining others.

Ok, that makes sense and Afforess' post actually hit my concerns with a lot of them on the head anyway. My concern is just that it's possible to go too far with streamlining. As an example,
Battlefield Promotions, Dynamic XP, War Prizes, Better Air Interception, and Defender Withdraw should be examined. I think they all can be bundled into one option named Advanced Battlefield. Put it in Custom Game. It is major game changing option so it fits there.

I tend to play with some of these enabled and some disabled. I really like most, but don't like the fractional XP that comes from Dynamic XP, and how much more difficult it makes it plan attacks. Defender Withdraw can also be irritating, since it feels too random (although not gamebreakingly so).
 
As much as I liked culture-wars, I hated the "Eight tiles always belong to you no matter what" aspect of the older AND, where a tile a great distance from a city had to be absolutely flooded by Legendary cities just to pry it away, where in any other case you'd be able to grab it easier.

With Advanced Nukes, some of them are fun others are... Strange... YAM being one of the strange ones :lol:
I always look forward to being able to use the biological weapons though. Never got to use one legitimately yet though...


I like the idea of advanced combat, but I don't like the Defender Withdrawal option heh. Always has been so annoying for me.


Fixed Borders sometimes I play with enabled, sometimes disabled. I lean a bit more towards disabled than enabled, but it's not something that I have any strong feelings for or against.
 
I tried storms. They're too rare, and stay in place too long. The tile becomes another one of those which you simply route your units around - no big deal.

I agree they usually last too much but I've used Storms all the time in last 2-3 years and never had any issues with them. I'm strongly against taking off this option.
 
Let's run down the list:
  • Early Buildings
    • I agree, with the caveat that early buildings need some balancing. I need to review it first, at least.
  • Civic Buildings
    • I agree this should be on by default
  • Expanded Castle Buildings
    • I think these need to be revisisted. I don't really like the catacombs or dungeon buildings. The catacombs building does not work well with the AI, as they build it very often. The dungeon is just a bit..gimmicky.
  • Expanded Corporations
    • I don't agree, and in my experience, Corporations are one of the least balanced parts of the game. They tend to give rather absurdly strong bonuses. Until balancing is fixed, they need to stay as options.
  • Guilds
    • Same as above. I honestly never liked the guilds either.
  • Advanced Nukes
    • I don't agree because I don't like a lot of the advanced nukes. A lot of them are very extreme and just to satisfy the type of player that likes big explosions rather than strategic gameplay.
  • No Nukes
    • This option shouldn't exist. I don't know why it got added.
  • No City Limits
    • This option should also not exist. I can not see a valid reason players should be able to "cheat" their way out of civic choices.
  • No Fixed Borders
    • Well I didn't put this option and got a lot of flack over it. Personally I like Fixed Borders, but there is enough people that don't that this option needs to stay.
  • Minimum Culture
    • This option should not exist, it breaks the cultural-style conquest and victories. I also added culture decay a while back so that should help prevent enemy culture from remaining long after they are gone.

I mostly agree with these; I know many people don't like nukes but mostly it's because the game always ended in a global nuclear war and this could be irritating. I'm working on improving this side of the game, so possibly we could remove No Nukes option once we're done with improving nukes usage.
I agree Minimum City Border shouldn't exist. I've made this as an option because it was default ON when I started working on AND, so I thought it was something that you created or an incomplete feature, Afforess. Anyway we can get rid of it if people are not complaining because of starving cities overwhelmed by other civs culture.

I'm also against removing terrain damage and resource depletion. Never had any issues with them and I use them all the time since 3 years. IIRC I've imported some code by Koshling (from C2C) which enabled AI to understand terrain damage. As for resource depletion, I've never had any issue but I think resource discovery/depletion can (or need to) be tweaked, it's just a matter of xml balancing and I can work on that.


I agree on the Advanced Battlefield option and Realistic Religions.

Storms, as I've said I use them all the time with no issues.

I agree with your other ideas on Max Units per tile, Strategic Events, Sea tunnels and Terraforming.
 
I've never liked nuclear weapons, so I always play with them off in my games. Just my copper tuppence.

I agree that Early Buildings and Civic Buildings etc. should probably be folded into the game. Reducing the sheer plethora of options that are available to control small or short-lived sections of the game wuold hardly be a bad idea, if done in moderation.
 
88GTS, I don't mind options. However, there's a fine line between having options and too many options. So I'm basically suggesting axing unnecessary options and streamlining others.

If you think this mod got too many options, I recommend you peak over at Caveman2Cosmos and take a look at theirs.

0s79 said:
Honestly, why not? We should not care overmuch if players feel like their choices are taken out. Why? They can create their own modpack with their preferences, yes? But I'm OK with game options as long as they are actually game-changing, like Revolutions.

why is it that it sound like you don't give a crap about people in general? There is a reason why options exist, and that is because the user has more power to customize the game at any moment. For example, i always turn storms off because the turns speed is decreased a lot so I turn them off for better performance, plus I don't see a purpose with storms and see them get in the way... Unless somebody knows how to make storm appears on desert and do natural terraforming, then I don't mind it but I do mind the lag.

I turn the nukes off because and advance nuke off as well because advance nukes because I don't know npc blowing up my capital with 20 or more wonders built for it.

I turn on both no city limits and no fixed borders, I don't understand the main concept and it causes issues with me when I feel like conquering and colonizing lands for resources, and if I'm limited to a certain city, that just defeats the whole point of trying to conquer the world and make sure every square is colored with my empires color.
 
I'm strongly against moving the dynamic XP into one single option that also combines battlefield Promotions, War Prizes, Better Air Interception, and Defender Withdraw. I normally use all of them except the dynamic XP option which I never use. In fact i'm strongly against anything that reduces my options of how I can play which is what this thread is talking about.
 
I'm strongly against moving the dynamic XP into one single option that also combines battlefield Promotions, War Prizes, Better Air Interception, and Defender Withdraw. I normally use all of them except the dynamic XP option which I never use. In fact i'm strongly against anything that reduces my options of how I can play which is what this thread is talking about.

I agree with you.

I think the goal here should be creating a minimal set of options and default settings so that new players enjoy the game the most. Reduction for reduction's sake is absurd.

Some options shouldn't exist (they are basically cheating), some might be best merged to cut down on confusion, and others are fine as they are.
 
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