Suggestion: Great people from first to discover tech X

Given the wide variety of specialists, the built-in free specialists, high food yields encouraging a specialist economy, and the difficulty of getting more than ~1-2 slots for any given specialist type, it is very difficult to manage to get great people of a particular type.

This is particularly annoying when you need a specific great person to found the shrine for each of the religions. It can be very hard to get the right kind of specialist.

So I would suggest one of the following fixes;
a) Add a free great person of a type that can found religion X to the first person to discover a tech that is 2-3 further down the tech tree from the tech that founds the religion.
b) Allow all the shrines to be built by any great person, not just limited to one or two of the
c) Increase the numbers of great person slots available from some of the buildings to make it easier to use just specialists of a particular type in order to develop the great person you want. Its worth making specialist economies more viable given the potential for very high tile yields from working plots.

It also might be worth changing the AI yields for selecting specialists. The AI seems to *love* hackers, which is really annoying since I completely hate espionage and how it is implemented in civ and SMAC.

*Edit*
Also, a bug; hydro plant doesn't require a river to be within the city's nearby radius, so you can still build one for the health bonus if desired.
Problem with early-spawning fungal towers. AI scouts can get caught in an infinite heal-loop. The tower bombards them, so they heal, so the tower bombards them, so they heal again, etc. The tower needs to attack rather than just bombarding, or you should just spawn mind worms for the first 50 turns or so.
Another bug: Armor unit doesn't count as a military purpose for the purpose of getting the "we fear for our safety" happiness penalty.
Bug: You can trade techs before the tech that allows tech-trading (holographic something-or-other).
Its still quite unstable if you alt-tab or try loading the game from within a game.
Airstriking Infantry seems to cause a crash. Also, is it just me or do Interceptors Strictly dominate Penetrators? Same stats, same cost, but Interceptors can intercept. I'd like to see these more different.

By the way; thanks for the mod. I'm playing a game on Immortal difficulty/aggressive AI and I'll tell you, its a struggle. Everyone keeps dogpiling me... (particularly Planet, who doesn't seem to understand that this is MY promised land).

Ahriman said:

So I would suggest one of the following fixes;
a) Add a free great person of a type that can found religion X to the first person to discover a tech that is 2-3 further down the tech tree from the tech that founds the religion.
b) Allow all the shrines to be built by any great person, not just limited to one or two of the
c) Increase the numbers of great person slots available from some of the buildings to make it easier to use just specialists of a particular type in order to develop the great person you want. Its worth making specialist economies more viable given the potential for very high tile yields from working plots.

Click to expand...

I think I'll implement option a for now. It also fulfills the need for more "first researcher" boni, given that are hardly any secret projects yet.

On the longterm, I'd prefer option c, but that requires some more thought of course on how exactly to achieve this goal.

It also might be worth changing the AI yields for selecting specialists. The AI seems to *love* hackers, which is really annoying since I completely hate espionage and how it is implemented in civ and SMAC.

Click to expand...

I'm afraid that's a vanilla civ problem. There the AI also always picks a Spy when auto-assigning a specialist.

Also, a bug; hydro plant doesn't require a river to be within the city's nearby radius, so you can still build one for the health bonus if desired.

Click to expand...

That's intended.
For the record, in the future the Hydro Plant will instead of +1 Health provide Fresh Water. So good if you're stuck without any rivers, lakes or jungle in the neighbourhood.

Problem with early-spawning fungal towers. AI scouts can get caught in an infinite heal-loop. The tower bombards them, so they heal, so the tower bombards them, so they heal again, etc. The tower needs to attack rather than just bombarding, or you should just spawn mind worms for the first 50 turns or so.

Click to expand...

The tower is immobile, so it can't attack.
I also want Fungal Towers to exist early in the game. So the desired solution would be to tell the AI not to heal in the presence of some bombarding units. I'll need to have a look at the related code... Put it on my to-do list.

Another bug: Armor unit doesn't count as a military purpose for the purpose of getting the "we fear for our safety" happiness penalty.

Click to expand...

I'll change that.

Bug: You can trade techs before the tech that allows tech-trading (holographic something-or-other).

Click to expand...

I've never encountered that.
Before assuming the worst, let's ask the simple questions though: does the AI have Holographics perhaps??
If not, could you please post a save?

Its still quite unstable if you alt-tab or try loading the game from within a game.
Airstriking Infantry seems to cause a crash. Also, is it just me or do Interceptors Strictly dominate Penetrators? Same stats, same cost, but Interceptors can intercept. I'd like to see these more different.

Click to expand...

I am unable to repeat this behaviour. Could you please post saves where this is happening? Are you playing version 5 with patch c?
I'm especially curious about the needlejet crash. This existed in 3.13 - cause unknown - but it was gone as far as I could tell in 3.17. I assume(d) it was related to the now removed unit workshop.

Regarding interceptors and penetrators being the same. Err yeah, I just quickly gave the units some stats after removing the unit workshop. Still needs some work of course. I guess you could just use interceptors for now.

I'm afraid that's a vanilla civ problem. There the AI also always picks a Spy when auto-assigning a specialist.

Click to expand...

I'm guessing that this is because the AI thinks all resources are equally valuable, and so sees a specialist that gives +1 beaker +3 espionage as better than a specialist that gives +3 beakers? Perhaps the best way to resolve this would be to reduce the output of hacker specialists to 1 beaker 1 espionage, and then maybe create a cheap building that adds +2 espionage to all hacker specialists in the city (or a national wonder that works in all your cities, or just in one). That way the AI probably sees the bonus as coming from the building, rather than from the specialist. Might work, might not.
Or just revert espionage to primarily come from buildings.

On hydro plants; it *seemed* briefly like cities don't spread fresh water (ie building a farm on one side doesn't spread fresh water to be able to build . But I didn't think to doublecheck.

On techtrading; I *thought* that the AIs didn't have holopgraphic projections. However, I had tech brokering off in game options, so its possible that they graded for holopgraphic projection from another AI who researched it, and then were tech trading with me, but I didn't see holopgraphic projection because they hadn't researched it themself. I didn't think to check in Worldbuilder. I'll check next game.

By bombarding Infantry, I only meant the strength 2 infantry unit, not the infantry class. Otherwise it works fine. Forgot to make a save, I'll do so if it happens again. Save that crashes in the other thread (more bugs).

You could give penetrators a chance to evade interception, or longer range, or give penetrators a strength bonus vs infantry and tracked units and foil units, or give penetrators a bombardment mission, or take the recon mission away from interceptors, or make interceptors more expensive.

Ah, Hydro Plants are an intended feature in the mod? And it will give fresh water to a base? To me that sounds like part of the job of a Recycling Tank. Waste water reclamation and making it available for re-use again.

Well, there's a whole bunch of effects which would fit best with a building called 'recycling tanks'. A base yield increase, a percentual yield increase, a health increase, a health increase from certain resources, a city maintenance reduction, a free specialist, fresh water, and so on. Of course you can't give all that to one building, so the effects are spread over a couple buildings related to the "recycling/enclosed ecology" theme. If you want, you can consider the Hydro Plant the "Recycling facility Mk1". The Recycling tanks is recycling facility Mk2. When I get around a tech tree review, the Pressure Dome will be recycling facility mk3, etc.