[MOD] Medieval: Conquests

Radunz said:

Well, about the monasteries, they already start with that bonus so i think they are a little over powered, because you start with it already.Also i they automaticly generate 2 points of research, wich a friend of mine used to ''cheat'' he builded a lot of monasteries and before the end of the dark ages he had longbown =/.
The mod is reeealy good just need some balancing

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Heh, yeah, I actually thought people could do that and spam Monasteries just to get the free research points.

To prevent this we could...

-remove the free research altogether.
-add an extra building that must be built. Say instead of Founding a Monastery the Monk can found a Hermitage. The Hermitage could then be upgraded to a Monastery. This would be Historicaly accurate as lots of Monasterys started with a single Monk or a small few.

Also, each town built will produce one research per turn. A monastery produces 3. I want the player to be able to produce at least 1 research per turn, but this could cause players to spam towns as well. We could make it so the Player only generates 1 free research point regardless of the number of towns, just like how Religon (Crosses) works.

I'm loading up a save game for you.

I recently had gotten the Conquest Adviser that gives you a free war galley. Well, it decided to put the way galley in a one-tile lake next to my monestary instead of on an ocean square. It was funny to see it, but it won't help me very much.

You may want to find the coding which puts added ships on ocean squares instead of coastal or lake tiles.

Jennvare said:

I'm loading up a save game for you.

I recently had gotten the Conquest Adviser that gives you a free war galley. Well, it decided to put the way galley in a one-tile lake next to my monestary instead of on an ocean square. It was funny to see it, but it won't help me very much.

You may want to find the coding which puts added ships on ocean squares instead of coastal or lake tiles.

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Ha, yeah I thought I put in a check for that but appariently not. I'll have to add a check that makes sure the plot has access to Europe or is not a lake. I'll add this to the list of things to fix.

Thanks for the report.

In a situation like that if you wanted you could just delete that war galley and then open world builder(ctrl-w) and add you one at an appropriate tile.

well those options would reeealy balance the game

Kailric,

Not sure if this intended or not, but gonna throw it out there anyways.

I'm up to like turn 230 or so in my game so I am starting to build up my soldiers. I've got the luxury food going to try and get more nobles since I only have a few.

The problem through is that the "training" of the nobility is still tied to the school house and such. In the beginning of my game, I schooled alot of specialists. Now in this late part of the game, pages are taking upwards of 30+ turns to get to squires. Im sure the squires are taking about the same. I won't have very many nobles for the coming battle. I also can't do veteran soldiers for the same reason, its taking too long to train.

You may wish to revisit this. I know you dont want an overabundance of nobles, but I think this is going a bit overboard. Since making pages takes luxury foods, maybe you can tie the training of pages and squires and tie that to luxury foods as well or just a flat number of turns to "grow up".

Save attached so you can peruse where I'm at with my game.

Update 1.1g is here...

-Units that Graduate into other units automaticly like the Page, Squire, and Serf no longer increase the City's education threshhold
-redused the size of the Workshop for the map graphic
-fixed Founding Father free ship spawns
-cleaned up building help text on the City Management screen so there isn't so much useless information like Replaced buildings
-The Monastery no longer gives a bonus to Research
-A Player only gains +1 Research each turn instead of +1 per city
-removed the popup that spammed each turn saying all research is complete
-reduced the Library bonus to Research to 50%

I finally figured out what you was talking about with education. I didn't ever realize that the game increases the time to Educate a student after each graduation. For now I have left these settings to at default except as explained above. If you want to fiddle with these settings I have edited the GlobalDefinesAlt.xml so you can change them.

Look for these tags in the file:
EDUCATION_THRESHOLD is the starting amount of Education required
EDUCATION_THRESHOLD_INCREASE is the percent increased with each graduation

@Jennvare
Thanks for the heads up on this. You can still load your saved game. Just expect a lot of Squires and Pages graduating the next turn

I love this mod. Great job.

I think there may be some errors in the terrain files regarding the use of "wine" where it should say "grapes."

Also, I don't seem to get anything from my treasures. I haven't tried relics, as I try to use them for shrines, but the treasure basically just disappears without giving me the money.

How about a quarry improvement to provide a bonus to stone and salt?

Lastly, why don't Monasteries have a bonus to faith? Or maybe even make a unit or two on it's own. (Also, not sure if this is just the pedia, but the Arab monasteries still show 50% bonus).

Oh yeah, I forgot to make a save or note of it, but there was one game where I was turning units into scouts without any horses. Might be some combination of % bonuses or something. Sorry I don't have any details on this.

Thonnas said:

I love this mod. Great job.

I think there may be some errors in the terrain files regarding the use of "wine" where it should say "grapes."

Also, I don't seem to get anything from my treasures. I haven't tried relics, as I try to use them for shrines, but the treasure basically just disappears without giving me the money.

How about a quarry improvement to provide a bonus to stone and salt?

Lastly, why don't Monasteries have a bonus to faith? Or maybe even make a unit or two on it's own. (Also, not sure if this is just the pedia, but the Arab monasteries still show 50% bonus).

Oh yeah, I forgot to make a save or note of it, but there was one game where I was turning units into scouts without any horses. Might be some combination of % bonuses or something. Sorry I don't have any details on this.

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Thanks for the report. Glad you like the mod.

-I'll check on the wine/grapes issue.
-The treasure/relic units don't add "gold" in the form of Money you can spend, but rather Gold in the form of yields added to the city where you unload it. You then have to transport the gold to the Fair/Homeland in order to sell it.

We need to figure out a difference in your money you can spend and the gold resource so that they are not both called the same thing.

-The quarry improvement is on the list of things to add. If anyone with modding skills wants to add such things then by all means do so

-It does stand to reason the Monasteries give a bonus to Relgion just that they already have several bonues so just trying to keep them from being over powered. But in a way Monastery cities do have a bonus to Religon in the form of Shrines as a shrine gives a bonus to Religon and Shrines can only be built in a Monastery. And yeah, I need to fix the Arab Monastery.

-Yeah, there maybe a combination of bonuses where the Horse requirement for Scouts is reduced by 100%. I'll check into that.

Thanks again, Thonnas. Feel free to report anything else you find or think needs improved.

I'll combine the updates and post a new one tomorrow with a few fixes.

Kailric said:

-The treasure/relic units don't add "gold" in the form of Money you can spend, but rather Gold in the form of yields added to the city where you unload it. You then have to transport the gold to the Fair/Homeland in order to sell it.

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OH, that's great. I always figured that was from gifts from visiting natives. Never quite put two and two together, I guess. I like it. Maybe just put a message in the log saying something like "23 tons of gold added to your warehouse," or something like that.

Just wanted to ask the players of this mod what they thought about Castles and Castle building?

As it is it takes Materials, extra gold, and a long contruction time to build castles. Not to mention it upsets any Barbarians that may own the land. But you gain several benefits from building castles...

Motte and Baily
Starts with:
-Weaponsmith's House
-Armorsmith's House
-Forge
-Bailey Keep which gives a 25% bonus to Weapons, Armor, and Tools
-Workshop
-Stable
-and a Fort

Stone Keep Castles
Starts with:
-Weaponsmith's Shop
-Armorsmiths's House
-Blacksmith's Shop
-Lumbermill
-Ranch
-Stone Fortress
-Stone Keep which gives a 50% bonus to Weapons, Armor, and Tools

So, is having to construct castles in this way a feature that adds something fun and strategic to the game or is it more of a nuisance and castles should be founded like villages?

I've played a few games of this already and I have not seen a need to use the keeps/castles.
It may start with some of the buildings, but this game does not really favor having alot of cities which really hampers expanding.

Add in the ever increasing time to train new specialists and the plunging economy so coins are hard to come by, it's hard to keep expanding after a certain point, probably turn 150. Of course, this was always a problem with the base game so it may require extensive modding to make late game expansion viable.

That last save game I loaded in for you, I could not finish it because It was taking FAR too long to train anything; specialists, noblemen, etc. With a 65% tax rate from my beloved leader, getting coin was minimal, and the only thing the barbarians wanted was armor and weapons so little coin coming from that source.

It really dead ended for me at around turn 250 and I couldnt declare conquest to finish the game since my crowns were only 30%. I will restart another game focusing on ale, weapons, armor, tools and see if that flows better and makes for a better economy and faster crowns.

I'll let you know how that goes.

Jennvare said:

I've played a few games of this already and I have not seen a need to use the keeps/castles.
It may start with some of the buildings, but this game does not really favor having alot of cities which really hampers expanding.

Add in the ever increasing time to train new specialists and the plunging economy so coins are hard to come by, it's hard to keep expanding after a certain point, probably turn 150. Of course, this was always a problem with the base game so it may require extensive modding to make late game expansion viable.

That last save game I loaded in for you, I could not finish it because It was taking FAR too long to train anything; specialists, noblemen, etc. With a 65% tax rate from my beloved leader, getting coin was minimal, and the only thing the barbarians wanted was armor and weapons so little coin coming from that source.

It really dead ended for me at around turn 250 and I couldnt declare conquest to finish the game since my crowns were only 30%. I will restart another game focusing on ale, weapons, armor, tools and see if that flows better and makes for a better economy and faster crowns.

I'll let you know how that goes.

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Well, its been suggested to make it so that Military units can found Castles instantly so I will mod in an option you can turn on or off depending on your playstyle. I'll have the constructing castles turned off tomorrow in a patch to test out.

Yeah, that saved game would have been tough like it was. All those pages and squires increasing the education time before I fixed all that didn't make it easy.

Education times should be close to normal levels now so this would improve the economy.
However, sense there are more Specialist now it would seem reasonable to reduce the education threshold increase, maybe to 10% down from 15.

The tax rate, education times, and increasing enemy Conquest armies are there to put an urgency on the player to hurry up and get his military and crown production in shape. And at the moment its just like in the vanilla game. Without these it would be really easy to have an army ready by turn 300.

I would like to add other victory conditions so that the player can concentrate on building up an economy more than a military. One idea I had was much like in Civ4 where you build a space ship we could have it so that you have to build an Expedition Fleet to sail out and discover the New World. As in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue

And maybe some kind of Economic victory where you have to have a certain amount of buildings and goods.

But, yeah, let us know how your next game goes.

Hi Kailric, great Mod! I went back to Colonization for this mod, after months of CiV exclusively, and it was worth it!

A couple of points (pre your latest patch):

- I also had the problem with the long education times. Should be better now with the pages etc. not adding to the time, but it was a real pain in the butt!
- I got through the tech tree by turn 200 (on Patriot difficulty!), which killed my interest in that game. Might be better now you've reduced the Monastery bonus. I would also suggest you add a final, repeatable tech like the Future Tech, quite expensive, which gives some kind of repeatable bonus so it is worth pursuing, keeping your investment in research buildings valuable. Maybe a free Nobleman each time you research Future Tech? Something like that.
- What does the Jester unit do? I got one from immigration, but couldn't figure out any special powers. I thought maybe he'd increase production in the Theatre, but noooo....?
- Same the Wily Trader. The only special thing about him seems to be a lower cost of purchasing land. Big deal... :-(. Now, if he were a better Pedler, getting higher prices, maybe even with a second goods slot, THAT would make him valuable.
- Some work on the Civopedia would be appreciated, especially regarding the new units

Lots of fun, though! I especially like the Tech Tree and the variety of units with the different armor types. BTW, what would be great would be having the Weaponsmith make different weapon types, too. Say, 3 types, Ranged Weapons (Archers etc.), Melee Weapons (Infantry etc.), Polearms (Pikemen, Knights).

Edit: Oh, and BTW, I liked the Castle building, keep it that way.

Edit2: Another thing: Cloth seems useless (except for money). How about making it necessary to build large ships? Sails, you know..

Edit3: Oooops... I see you've already adressed the Jester and Wily Peddler issues in previous patches - should have looked first, sorry!

Lots of fun, though! I especially like the Tech Tree and the variety of units with the different armor types. BTW, what would be great would be having the Weaponsmith make different weapon types, too. Say, 3 types, Ranged Weapons (Archers etc.), Melee Weapons (Infantry etc.), Polearms (Pikemen, Knights).

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You really don't want to do this. Not unless you extend the game turns and make the Fair much more stable in pricing. I was having a hard enough time just keeping armor straight between mail and plate armors. Always had to keep switching to keep a good stock of all of them. You break out the weapons in such a fashion and you will really have a hard time managing who needs what. Lets not make this any more complicated that it already is. Besides..would you want a fourth weapon item for the ships? War Galleys take up weapons as well.

As for cloth for sails, I may agree with this. However, it doesnt seem like any of the ships use sails. The War Galley is a trireme using oars.

Just some thoughts.

Dragonlord said:

Hi Kailric, great Mod! I went back to Colonization for this mod, after months of CiV exclusively, and it was worth it!

A couple of points (pre your latest patch):

- I also had the problem with the long education times. Should be better now with the pages etc. not adding to the time, but it was a real pain in the butt!
- I got through the tech tree by turn 200 (on Patriot difficulty!), which killed my interest in that game. Might be better now you've reduced the Monastery bonus. I would also suggest you add a final, repeatable tech like the Future Tech, quite expensive, which gives some kind of repeatable bonus so it is worth pursuing, keeping your investment in research buildings valuable. Maybe a free Nobleman each time you research Future Tech? Something like that.
- What does the Jester unit do? I got one from immigration, but couldn't figure out any special powers. I thought maybe he'd increase production in the Theatre, but noooo....?
- Same the Wily Trader. The only special thing about him seems to be a lower cost of purchasing land. Big deal... :-(. Now, if he were a better Pedler, getting higher prices, maybe even with a second goods slot, THAT would make him valuable.
- Some work on the Civopedia would be appreciated, especially regarding the new units

Lots of fun, though! I especially like the Tech Tree and the variety of units with the different armor types. BTW, what would be great would be having the Weaponsmith make different weapon types, too. Say, 3 types, Ranged Weapons (Archers etc.), Melee Weapons (Infantry etc.), Polearms (Pikemen, Knights).

Edit: Oh, and BTW, I liked the Castle building, keep it that way.

Edit2: Another thing: Cloth seems useless (except for money). How about making it necessary to build large ships? Sails, you know..

Click to expand...

Hey, and glad you like the mod. The tech tree at the moment is far from complete. And, yeah, I was just thinking yesterday on what to do with the tech tree and keeping it going late in the game. For one thing I eventually want to add in more techs that lead up to Gunpowder. As of now there really isn't a Chemistry line of techs or a Medical for that matter so that needs added. But, regardless there does need to be a "Future Tech" so you can keep using those buildings and research useful.

I never realized that the Education times where increasing. When I play I usually never had more than 4 cities and I just never noticed that so I didn't think to adjust this. Really glad this was pointed out.

Yeah, the Jester was gimp for a while. I may also add to him a bonus to Crown production so he can be seen performing in your Palace courts. I plan on adding a Troubadour type citizen that also works as an Entertainer with just a bonus to Culture.

Yep, the Civilopedia needs worked on. I'll see if I can at least add some short descriptions of the more complex elements.

At the moment, yeah, Cloth and Coats are just Money makers. As far as cloth for sails if it seems like this would add to the game then we may do this.

I would have to agree with Jennvare on the more Weapons idea. I thought about this of course during development but was already worried by adding Armor types a player would have too much to produce in order to have large enough and strong enough army to win a Conquest.

What I have planned at some point is to make it so that Barbarians villages that succumb to the player will become Vassals instead of just being destroyed. And at that point they begin to transfer goods to the player. Barbarians villages wont count against your Fealty so it would just be free goods each turn. These extra goods (armor, weapons, etc) may make it so we can add more variety.

Thanks for the feedback guys. I hope to get another update out today so stay tuned

Kailric said:

I would have to agree with Jennvare on the more Weapons idea. I thought about this of course during development but was already worried by adding Armor types a player would have too much to produce in order to have large enough and strong enough army to win a Conquest.

What I have planned at some point is to make it so that Barbarians villages that succumb to the player will become Vassals instead of just being destroyed. And at that point they begin to transfer goods to the player. Barbarians villages wont count against your Fealty so it would just be free goods each turn. These extra goods (armor, weapons, etc) may make it so we can add more variety.

Thanks for the feedback guys. I hope to get another update out today so stay tuned

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Well, re the weapons and sails, I guess it's a matter of taste whether one wants more or less complexity - personally I can't get enough .

Cool idea with the Vassals - sort of like the Puppets in CiV?

Dragonlord said:

Well, re the weapons and sails, I guess it's a matter of taste whether one wants more or less complexity - personally I can't get enough .

Click to expand...

Yeah, its tough developing mods to fit everyones tastes. The best thing to do is just make it Moddable so that others can make it they way they like

Update 1.1h is up for download, please test to see if all the changes below are working as stated.

-The Tech Tree has be modified somewhat. There is now two Repeatable Techs. One being Renaissance which converts Research into Culture. Divine Right has also been reworked and it now converts Research into Fealty. Once you are able to research these techs you can change from one to the other at will.
-Mechanical Clock tech bonuses has been modified
-New Improvement: Quarrry, available after researching Stoneworks.
-On the city screen there is now 1 new Icon to represent Immigration and the Culture icon now shows the amount of Culture.
-you will now recieve a message after unloading a Treasure unit into your city
-fixed Arab Monastery
-Furs unit now called correctly Hides

Castles still work the same at the moment. I do plan on adding the ability to customize it so that Castles are founded instantly.

Also, I'll combine all the updates sometime in the next day or so.

On castles, they are kind of a pain, especially if you don't use an expert worker to build them, but it does kind of make sense for what you get out of it. It might just be better to have them as town upgrades, though. It would be nice to be able to upgrade existing towns that already have some significant infrastructure.

Maybe you could have infantry able to build forts and watchtowers, maybe even roads.

Is it intended that trade ships can't interact with native villages? I was pretty bummed when I docked up and found out I couldn't trade with my trade ship.

On the tech tree, I was going to suggest that you add a base research of something like 5 or 6, and bump up the tech costs 5x or 6x. Basically, I think one of the problems is that a single researcher is very significant, but without one, research is super slow. I think gaining 1 research per settlement wasn't all that bad, either. The problem was just that tech costs are relatively low. I could see there being an issue with the different map sizes, though, as there's more room to expand on the larger maps. I think some base research and increased tech costs could be fix enough. That's basically how it works in CIV.

I never understood the reasoning behind the increased training time in the core game. It's a completely absurd concept, and all it does is penalize the player for training units instead of buying them, especially since you have to pay gold for anything beyond field labor anyway. It makes some sense when training with the natives, I guess, but not in your own cities.

Looks like farms still give a bonus to wine instead of grapes. I also noticed that rivers don't give a bonus to gold production on peaks. I also made a little tweak you might want to consider. I made grapes, barley, and deer give +1 to food production. That way there is some value to them even beyond the first few you'd use for economic purposes.

Thonnas said:

On castles, they are kind of a pain, especially if you don't use an expert worker to build them, but it does kind of make sense for what you get out of it. It might just be better to have them as town upgrades, though. It would be nice to be able to upgrade existing towns that already have some significant infrastructure.

Click to expand...

Towns can have all the buildings that a Castle has except for the Keeps so there wouldn't be much to upgrade for a town. We could allow the Bailey Keep and Stone Keep to be upgrades of the Townhall. So that the build order would be Townhall, Manor, Bailey Keep, and the Stone Keep.

However, the main point of Castles is that they where such a huge aspect of the Medieval time period, there is literally thousands of Castles in Europe, and I want them to be a significant part of this mod. Castles where built for defensive and offensive purposes and controlled the area surrouding them. I want it to be an exciting thing when a player can finally build his first Castle. I am thinking of makeing it so that a Castle adds a defense bonus to surrounding towns as well as maybe offer more experience to soldiers "trained" at the castle.

So, in your idea what would make Castle "building" more appealing?

Is it intended that trade ships can't interact with native villages? I was pretty bummed when I docked up and found out I couldn't trade with my trade ship.

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Yeah, I should change this as land start Civs can't trade with the natives this way and that rules out one reason a player has to build ships. I'll change this the next update.

On the tech tree, I was going to suggest that you add a base research of something like 5 or 6, and bump up the tech costs 5x or 6x. Basically, I think one of the problems is that a single researcher is very significant, but without one, research is super slow. I think gaining 1 research per settlement wasn't all that bad, either. The problem was just that tech costs are relatively low. I could see there being an issue with the different map sizes, though, as there's more room to expand on the larger maps. I think some base research and increased tech costs could be fix enough. That's basically how it works in CIV.

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Well, we could add a feature where the cost for research is modified by the Map size. The main deal with Research at the moment is that the Tech Tree is not complete. There is still a lot I want to add. However, in the mean time the player still needs to be researching techs on up into his Conquest so that he can even gain a Tech that helps to turn the tide of battle in his favor just in the nick of time. So I'll increase the cost of Techs next update.

I never understood the reasoning behind the increased training time in the core game. It's a completely absurd concept, and all it does is penalize the player for training units instead of buying them, especially since you have to pay gold for anything beyond field labor anyway. It makes some sense when training with the natives, I guess, but not in your own cities.

Click to expand...

In the next update I'll remove the increase and we can test how the game plays out that way.

Looks like farms still give a bonus to wine instead of grapes. I also noticed that rivers don't give a bonus to gold production on peaks. I also made a little tweak you might want to consider. I made grapes, barley, and deer give +1 to food production. That way there is some value to them even beyond the first few you'd use for economic purposes.

Click to expand...

Ok, I'll have the wine/grapes error fixed next update. It does make sense to get a bonus of food out of those bonuses so I will probably add that change as well. Seems like I thought about doing it before actually.

Ok, I may have an update tomorrow.

Hi Kailric!

I like your mod and here you are a little collaboration, I redid the Founding Dignataries graphics I think that now is much clear, added the Porge attitude icons and remove that white line when loading the game

Hope you like the changes for your MOD.

Regards!