Version 4.0 Discussion Thread

:nuke::nuke::nuke:Without the Nukes-bonus, nuclear plants are not very usefull in the game.:nuke::nuke::nuke:

I agree, but this particular solution to the problem never occured to me. That is a seriously awesome idea dood; I love it. :) Unfortunately it's not just XML, heh. The problem is the Drydock, etc, are using the DomainProductionModifier. Without some SDK work, all you could do would be to make it increase production on ALL air units, which would include missiles and nukes.

I can hardcode the intended production bonus pretty easily, and make it show up in the building mouseover text and everything. The problem is the AIs. There's tons of great functionality out there in other mods - Railroad Artillery that can only move on Railroad tiles, mercenary units you hire out of a Python dialog Black Market screen, Dale's ranged bombardment, detailed tactical full-stack combat, Avain's "only get food and hammers from gathering and killing animals" in the Prehistoric era (the list is very long) - but I don't put them in THIS mod unless I'm sure I can teach the AIs to use them properly, OR they are at little or no disadvantage from NOT knowing how to use them properly.

I'll have to look at the AI code surrounding power plants closely, but I suspect it's hard for them to make a permanent choice like this (since you can't selectively demolish your own buildings later) on a long-term basis. AIs build stuff according to their current and short-to-medium-term needs, and those needs can change frequently. Aside from JDog's work in BetterAI to give them long-term direction in pursuing victory conditions - which is way too complicated for me to try to extrapolate from right now - I'd be locking them into doing things they might not really want to do.

NORMALLY, if a unit requires a building and an AI decides he really wants that unit all of a sudden, he says, "okay, I'll do that building next." Whatever building or unit the AI wants to build the most at any given time, wins; that's basically how it works. They know to build up a big army if they're planning a war, but I'm not sure they know how to decide in advance, as a general principle, how many nukes they want to use, if any. They look at current conditions, empire power levels, who's vulnerable to nukes right now, the status of the UN bill, and probably a bunch of other factors, and determine if they should build a nuke right now. That's about it. Adding strategic planning for this would be a major undertaking.

But if I tell them, "if you want more than a few nukes right now, build Nuclear Plants first"... then they may change their mind by the time the Plants are done, and then they're screwed. With any other building, it doesn't matter: all other buildings are completely positive in their effects (save a few unhealth points here and there, or temporary negatives like minus empire population), AND all other buildings are cumulative, meaning they don't lock out other building choices with their own benefits, potentially. Power plants are a special case.

The Nuclear Plant already has an advantage: at the small risk of a meltdown, it provides power without the Coal Plant's 2 unhealth penalty. Which is kinda a big deal, heh. Unless you're on a river, or finish the Three Gorges Dam, it's your only unhealth-free power solution til you get to Fusion Plants (which I added specifically to avoid the meltdown thing later). I can make the ICBM require the Nuclear Plant, but that will make it take too long to unlock, and again, it locks the AIs into an exclusive choice that they're not making intelligently. I can also lower the cost of the Nuclear Plant further to give it a little bit more of an advantage, even though that's less realistic.

It would also be slightly unfair to the Japanese civ, b/c their unique building is a non-polluting Coal Plant (with a few other bonuses too if I remember correctly). But I do wonder now if the AIs are using Fusion Plants at all with their current AI programming... Probably not, heh. I think the way it works is, you can build a clean plant to replace a (non-Japanese) Coal Plant, but after that you can't change. I dunno, maybe the permanent meltdown risk is acceptable if the AIs want to build lots of nukes at the current moment. But what if they don't, they build the Dam wonder instead as a result, and then they suddenly decide they DO want lots of nukes all of a sudden. A human player would not make that mistake nearly as easily.

I SUPPOSE I could lift the restriction on building multiple power plants in the same city though... That would certainly help. Hmm. :)
 
I SUPPOSE I could lift the restriction on building multiple power plants in the same city though... That would certainly help. Hmm.

Oh really???? I wasn't aware that there was such a restriction. We never reached that far in our multiplayer games.

You should definitely change that, not only because of the new nuke-building system that we are discussing, but also because you will rarely see any other power plants than cole plants in multiplayer games.

Usually, what happens in the industrial age is that all players try to research either Assembly line or Combustion as soon as possible. Then, once you have researched either of the two, you start maxing out your military capacities, upgrade units and max out your production if you have chosen assembly line. So anybody will build coal plants before any other plants are availalbe. And usually, you have got access to coal, because you only reach that far in the game when your nation is big.
At least, this is what happens on quick speed, I can't tell what is happening on eternal.

Oh by the way, nobody cares about these +2 unhealthy people from coal plants at that stage of the game.....Military is everything that counts then.

We played approximately 15 games and I reached assembly line in two of them. I sent you the savegame of one of the two recently. That game was the only one that would have lasted long into the 7th age or even into the 8th age, if there hadn't been that war weariness issue.

I am not sure about the correct names of the ages in MongooseMod, I just distinguish them by the background color in the tech tree. Most multiplayers games reach only until the 4th, 5th or 6th age, because at that time it is often already clear who would win and then we stopped.

The most advanced tech that I ever researched was advanced refining, by the way.
 
So, I would recommend to allow to build multiple power plants.

Ideally, an existing power plant should be removed when you build a new one, but you can also handle it that way that the previous power plant just becomes deactivated.

It is REALLY unlikely that somebody will ever want to build for example a coal plant first, then a nuclear plant, and then, after nuking the whole world, use the coal plant again.
 
Don't forget to read my first post at the end of page 2! It got so long I decided to split it up and make a dedicated post for the Nuclear Plant response, but then that went on to a new page and I was like, oh carp, now no one's gonna see the first post lol.

Oh really???? I wasn't aware that there was such a restriction. We never reached that far in our multiplayer games.

I am going from distant memory on this, but I think so. I will want to change it anyway b/c I want AIs to be able to upgrade to Fusion plants eventually if they want to.

Usually, what happens in the industrial age is that all players try to research either Assembly line or Combustion as soon as possible. Then, once you have researched either of the two, you start maxing out your military capacities, upgrade units and max out your production if you have chosen assembly line.

That accurately simulates WW1 (and WW2 slightly later), which is really neat! (And exactly what I was going for with that part of the tech tree. :D)

Oh by the way, nobody cares about these +2 unhealthy people from coal plants at that stage of the game.....Military is everything that counts then.

Okay, THAT tells me I need to significantly increase the penalties on the Coal Plant (AND my new Industrialism civic, lol). How does 2 unhappiness and 4 unhealth sound? It's supposed to be bad enough that you DO care, so thanks for prompting me on this. ;)

I am not sure about the correct names of the ages in MongooseMod, I just distinguish them by the background color in the tech tree.

Yep, that's why I added the color-coding: to make it easy to tell where you are, and what's what. :)

In addition to the entered-a-new-era popup window, it also displays the name of the current era in the top-left of the main interface btw, so you can note the names while you're in them. But just for reference it goes Prehistoric, Ancient, Classical, Medieval, Rennaissance, Industrial, Modern, Future.

Ideally, an existing power plant should be removed when you build a new one, but you can also handle it that way that the previous power plant just becomes deactivated.

The problem is the AIs may get into an endless game of musical chairs, where every third building they build is a different replacement power plant, b/c they keep changing their minds about which ones they want. They can end up wasting a ton of production as a result.

That was the whole point of my previous (really long) post: with normal buildings it doesn't matter if they change their mind later about what they want, b/c even if they DO change their mind later, they're still guaranteed to have gotten a perfectly good building out of it that's still useful in some way (b/c no normal buildings have permanent and serious drawbacks like meltdown chance, and no normal buildings block access to any other normal buildings).

That's the reason the vanilla rules let you replace a Coal Plant with any other type of plant: to get rid of the 2 unhealth, which is considered a serious negative in vanilla, heh.

It is REALLY unlikely that somebody will ever want to build for example a coal plant first, then a nuclear plant, and then, after nuking the whole world, use the coal plant again.

No, but it's very possible the AIs will build a CP first for power, then replace it with a NP for nukes, and then, after launching a few nukes, replace that with a HP or FP to get rid of the meltdown chance. ... Then decide they want nukes again and go back to the NP, heh.

Try to imagine how long it actually takes to "nuke the whole world" on a PlanetaryMongoose map with 34 players and running Eternal speed... This is a scenario I have to actually try and support. ;)

I'll also take a look at what the default meltdown chance IS btw... It will need to be increased to offset the nuke production advantage if I put one in, I suspect.
 
just a short reply about the power plants issue (I will answer your other long post a bit later):

yes, +2 unhappy, +4 unhealthy for the coal plant sounds good. (No Joke!)
Maybe it is too much in real-history terms, be we should ignore about that in this case.

In version 3.6.1 the assembly line is somewhat superior to combustion. Combustion offers the stronger military, but assembly line rewards with +75% production (25 from factory and 50 from coal plant), which is more powerful altogether.
That is why in our "Mongoose Mod 3.6.1b" we had increased the costs for the dreadnought and added electricity as prerequisite for assembly line instead of steam power.
So instead of that, to nerf the coal plant is another way of achieving better balance between assembly line and combustion.

Then, for the power plants system, maybe try to code it that way that any power plant can be built only once, so that you can upgrade, but not downgrade. Always the latest power plant should be active.

I know that this solution will not be ideal for the AI as it will always end up with all plants in each of their cities sooner or later, but it will be prevented from being captured in endless loops. The AI can then maybe build nukes with double speed from nuclear plants only within a short timeframe, but forget about that. Very very few games will last that long. Hmm, maybe you can prevent the +50% nuke production bonus from nuclear plants from expiring when another plant is built?


Also, you should add +1 or +2 unhappyness to the nuclear plant.

For the chances of meltdown, maybe use real history as a benchmark. So, one meltdown every 25 years or so for ~400 nuclear plants. But since one city in Civ4 actually represents several cities in the real world, calculate the meltdown chances with a number of 50 or 100 nuclear plants instead of 400.

A meltdown will be a rather rare event then. But I think that's fine. I remember that in Civ1 meltdowns happened very often which was somehow stupid.
 
yes, +2 unhappy, +4 unhealthy for the coal plant sounds good. (No Joke!)

My obscure-details deep-memory failed me on this, heh. Coal Plants actually ARE at -4 health already, and all other types of plants are at -2 health. This is from a pair of XML globals that set "power" to -2, and "dirty power" to -2, with them stacking in the case of the CP. The full health penalty was showing correctly in the city view after you built a plant, and working correctly functionally, but the effect of the first global was not being displayed in the mouseovers for the power plant buildings themselves (obviously the second one was).

Keep in mind that -4 health translates into -2 population in a city that is at or over its current health limit (pretty common but not always true), which is actually a solid counter to big +production, especially since the 2 lost tiles no longer being worked are probably 2 of your lowest-food (and thus highest-production or highest-commerce) tiles. (If they weren't 2 of your lowest-food tiles, then you'd be losing even more population. ;))

But also note that the population decrease is not immediate; the food bar takes time to empty the first time around. Whereas a happiness penalty is felt right away, so I'm okay with adding that.

A quick word about production percent bonuses btw. As a practical matter for evaluating mod balance, the Coal Plant does not add 50% production. Assuming you have a Forge (the Factory doesn't actually require one, heh), the CP adds 33% production. This is b/c it takes you from 150% of your base hammers, to 200% of them; and 200 / 150 = 1.33.

In version 3.6.1 the assembly line is somewhat superior to combustion. Combustion offers the stronger military, but assembly line rewards with +75% production (25 from factory and 50 from coal plant), which is more powerful altogether.

It has a certain amount to do with the tech tree too: Combustion leads to Tactical Nukes and some decent air units without actually having to get Assembly Line, if you wanted to rush either of those things. :)

Then, for the power plants system, maybe try to code it that way that any power plant can be built only once, so that you can upgrade, but not downgrade. Always the latest power plant should be active.

I know that this solution will not be ideal for the AI as it will always end up with all plants in each of their cities sooner or later, but it will be prevented from being captured in endless loops. The AI can then maybe build nukes with double speed from nuclear plants only within a short timeframe, but forget about that. Very very few games will last that long. Hmm, maybe you can prevent the +50% nuke production bonus from nuclear plants from expiring when another plant is built?

I'd been thinking about this situation the whole last 24 hours, and I already decided what I'm gonna do... Which is mostly what you described, except that Coal Plants can still be replaced by any other type, as usual. (The effect is just a "has power" boolean in the code btw, so they stack fine without any additional work.)

Well, plus the Hydro Plant can probably be replaced now that it has penalties too (see below), but I'll make sure they can't rebuild it, just like the CP.

Also, you should add +1 or +2 unhappyness to the nuclear plant.

I already added half the CP penalties to both the Nuclear Plant and Hydro Plant, ie -1 happiness and -2 health. On the NP it's for permanent storage of the spent fuel rods, and the more-frequent-than-a-full-meltdown "minor leak" scenario. I might change that to -2 and -1 though, heh.

On the HP it's for disruption of streams (which has gotten a lot of attention in the media recently as they're just now realizing the full extent of the environmental damage this causes), and the lack of fish and changes in flooding and whatnot that also occur.

I further added the HP penalties to the Three Gorges Dam, but in that case they only apply in the city where you build the wonder. (All the megaloads of electricity it generates are just sent on to your other cities without any local penalties. ;))

Oh, and I also got the hidden -2 health OFF the Fusion Plant (which I didn't realize was ON the FP til now, sigh) by zeroing those globals I mentioned, and using the health-and-happiness-from-bonuses stats to set it directly on the buildings for the CP and NP (that way they still don't have the penalties if you don't have Coal or Uranium hooked up).

(This solves ANOTHER problem too btw, b/c the AIs weren't even checking the values of the 2 globals; they just check if it's "dirty power" or not. If dirty power gave -10 health on the global they would treat it exactly the same. The new stats get looked at directly, so the magnitudes are factored in and I have less new AI code I have to write, hehe.)

For the chances of meltdown, maybe use real history as a benchmark. So, one meltdown every 25 years or so for ~400 nuclear plants. But since one city in Civ4 actually represents several cities in the real world, calculate the meltdown chances with a number of 50 or 100 nuclear plants instead of 400.

A meltdown will be a rather rare event then. But I think that's fine. I remember that in Civ1 meltdowns happened very often which was somehow stupid.

Not really a good idea... That approach is exactly how I ended up with much higher settings than vanilla on the nuke-damage control globals all this time lol. It may be severely lacking in almost every way imaginable, and full of hundreds of bugs, but vanilla does do one thing pretty darn well: gameplay balance. I've learned to rely on it, and whenever I have a choice I err on the side of not messing with their numbers.

I also know already that the meltdown chance is more-or-less fine as-is, ie it's very infrequent but not zero. I would continue leaving it alone, except I need to raise it to compensate for the new nuke production modifier. So I'll probably change it by an equal amount to that. ;)

Btw the thing I love the most about your NP idea (and there are a lot of things I love about it), is that the doubled base nuke cost corresponds perfectly with the extremely high cost of enriching uranium early on. In the real-life Manhattan Project it literally took thousands of workers, doing it by hand for several years, to get enough for just a couple of bombs (and they were small bombs by nuke standards). So that lines up amazingly well with the big cost increase. :)
 
You (and AIAndy... hi Andy!) have really helped spur on the development of this update with all your great input and suggestions (over half of which I've agreed with as-is, and almost all of which I've agreed with in principle in some form, hehe). That, and your enthusiasm for playing the mod, AND your Africa tribute, have really made the difference on this thing, and definitely inspired me to come up with a bunch of ideas myself that I probably wouldn't have come up with otherwise. It would've been a lower-enthusiasm, just-hit-most-of-the-major-bases kind of update. So... thanks. :)

Thanks for that! But I have to admit that actually I made the Africa map simply, because I was having MUCH pleasure working on it. I love Geography. And I think you are updating your mod for the same reason. And you should really play in our Monday-group! To harvest what you worked on.
And now answer my mail, darn!

It may not ship til Sunday night - not sure yet - but the final round of changes is coming along nicely, and I am definitely going to get this thing to you for your Monday session if I possibly can. ;))

No need to rush it, it doesn't matter if it takes more days. I think that the Nukes-issue that i brought up will cost you a day or two alone.

Just fyi, I've added 2 more units that I wasn't even planning to add until I randomly decided to look into it yesterday... And I know you'll love at least one of em lol.

We'll see. I hope it's not a yellow and a green dragon :p

This mod is easily the biggest accomplishment of my life so far, and it's now gone from a professional-quality-but-still-far-from-perfect project, to an absolute work of art that I am fantastically proud of. Not trying to gloat, just being honest.

Yeah, you can be proud of that. My biggest accomblishment was also a computer game, that I programmed from 1996-98 called "Rakete". The 4th version was the last one I could finish. That's where my nick comes from.

Don't worry; my life sucks in plenty of other ways, so I need something to cling on to. ;) Anyway.

Very sorry to hear about that!
 
And you should really play in our Monday-group! To harvest what you worked on.

Maybe if you wanted to play a HugeMng / Eternal game that takes 4 months instead of 4 hours from start to finish, I would lol. As it is I kinda feel like doing it single player if my friend I've played with in the past doesn't want to. I've also got a lot of PS3 stuff to catch up on before early May...

And now answer my mail, darn!

No time lol. I literally take a break to reply on here when I need a break from staring at my PC monitor for 12 hours straight, and maybe watch an episode of something my DVR recorded for 25 minutes... then go back to work for a while, then back to sleep. I don't have 5 minutes to spare for anything until this is done.

Except my parents are visiting again starting this afternoon, and we've got some more work to do on the condo, and I've got some more stuff I need to stop and get listed on Amazon and eBay, sooooo, gonna be stalled for the next couple days unfortunately. I would've gotten this done in time if not for the nuke thing. :p

No need to rush it, it doesn't matter if it takes more days. I think that the Nukes-issue that i brought up will cost you a day or two alone.

Two to three full days of work on the power plant overhaul, which needed to be done anyway b/c it allows me to add a happiness penalty to the power effect, fixes the AI evaluation of the plant buildings, and fixes the penalty on the Fusion Plant it wasn't supposed to have.

And then half a day on the NP production effect (the AI code for this is actually pretty simple). Both of these are about halfway done at the current moment, and I still have most of my final XML to-do list items to do (though most of those will be quick).

OH, and I almost forgot to mention (my Civ4 brain is 12 hours ahead of my Forum brain at the moment... I've done so much digging around in the code it's hard to keep track of what I knew and thought and said last time I posted lol), I was wrong (again) about the plants being removed or demolished or whatever.

(Edited to fix another stupid assumption blowing up in my face): What actually happens is, through a complicated lever-and-pulley system connected to a steampunk gear-and-valve mechanism, it uses those annoying two XML globals I mentioned before to change the health penalty in the "power" category whenever you add or remove a power source, as needed. So in vanilla you CAN have all plant types in a city at once.

I was GOING to add some restrictions to that, but now I'm thinking it's probably better to allow a player to build some redundancy if he wants to, in case a nuke or spy or something takes one of the plants out later, or in case he has the Dam wonder but is worried about losing control of it soon.

We'll see. I hope it's not a yellow and a green dragon :p

No they're not, but the white dragon model I saw for the first time as a ported-to-Civ5 release a couple weeks ago is awfully tempting, now that you've reminded me of it... :p

Yeah, you can be proud of that. My biggest accomblishment was also a computer game, that I programmed from 1996-98 called "Rakete". The 4th version was the last one I could finish. That's where my nick comes from.

I'm actually hoping-slash-planning to attempt an mmorpg startup in 5 years or so, since I can't seem to find any kind of real job (even the minimum-wage places won't hire me for anything - I've tried!) despite my moderately-significant credentials.

From the suggestions you've been making I'm actually not surprised to hear you have some background-slash-interest in game development hehe.

Very sorry to hear about that!

Eh, as soon as Diablo 3 finally comes out I'll be fine... Though they really pissed me off with this latest version of the rune system, sigh. Oh well. :)
 
Happy Birthday Mighty Mongoose. I have a feeling I might be late.. but I hope it's still the 25th of February where you are.

Reading the conversation between you and Rak makes me more appreciate the detail you're putting into this.

As a note from my end, I only play solo so can't say much about the multi-player experience. But playing solo, I have made it to the future era before being crushed by AI controlled mechs and things. That was pretty amazing. Plonking what must have been 100+ hours into the game, thinking I was in control, and then having Darth Vader, the Skrulls and what seemed to be half of Phyrexia rock up and hammer me.

Well, that's the way I imagined it anyway :)
 
There is another problem in Version 3.6.1. But the good news is that this will only require minor XML work.:thumbsup:

The Great Library is too powerful, when it is built very early, because you can spawn Academies in all of your major cities, each rewarding with +50% research.

It works like this:
1. Choose a philosophical leader: +100% Great Person birth rate.
2. Research Writing and Alphabet as soon as possible.
3. Build 4 libraries and then build the Great library in a city which has got much food.
4. Add a scientist-specialist in the city. The library in that city makes that possible.
5. Research Polytheism and Literature, build the national epic in the same city as the great library.

This city then produces:
2 Great Scientist Birth points from the Great library
6 Great Scientist Birth points from the 2 free scientists
3 Great Scientist Birth points from the additional scientist
-----
=11 Great Scientist Birth points
+100% Philisophical leader
+100% National Epic
----
=33 Great Scientist Birth points!

With Pacifism - civic it can even be up to 44.


=> Happy Academy building, because you will get a Great Scientist every few turns! :D

If you don't believe me, I can send you a savegame in which I played like that, getting around 7-8 Academies very early. I was then far ahead of AiAndy which is usually impossible, because he is a very skilled player.
We later increased the costs for all prehistoric techs, and that made that trick less useful, but this has many disadvantages and I wouldn't recommend to do that. And I know that you would not do that anyway.


I have been sitting in front of the tech-tree now for quite a while and I think I have found a very nice solution to the problem:
Exchange the effects of the Great Library and the Copernicus' Observatory! So, +100% research for the Great Library and +2 free Scientists for the Copernicus' Observatory.
This would also nerfe the strong Copernicus' Observatory/Oxford-University -Combination, which rewards a single city with +200% research. With an academy in that city, a few great scientists and many towns, you could easily get 400 research points in such a city, which is too powerfull.

The Copernicus' Oberservatory/Oxford-University - combination obsoletes only with satellites, but a Great Library/Oxford-University - combination can only work for a very short time, until Scientific Method is researched.

Secondly, the first player who reaches Astromony and can thus build the Copernicus' Observatory is also often the first player to have Rifleman, so it would be good to slow that player down a little. There is also the Theory of evolution in that area of the tech tree, which is a powerful tech-wonder as well.


Also, nerve the Philosophical leader to +50% Great Person birth rate only, because +100% is too powerful keeping in mind that Philosophical has an additional +25% Wonder construction bonus. But maybe you have already nerfed it, I just can see what is in Version 3.6.1.
 
Maybe if you wanted to play a HugeMng / Eternal game that takes 4 months instead of 4 hours from start to finish, I would lol. As it is I kinda feel like doing it single player if my friend I've played with in the past doesn't want to. I've also got a lot of PS3 stuff to catch up on before early May...


Our games usually last 2-4 Mondays, so 8-16 hours per game actually. We only play until it is clear who will win.
And we usually don't use the turn timer, if that may help you....
But if you don't want to ....can't help you then :rolleyes:


Except my parents are visiting again starting this afternoon, and we've got some more work to do on the condo, and I've got some more stuff I need to stop and get listed on Amazon and eBay, sooooo, gonna be stalled for the next couple days unfortunately. I would've gotten this done in time if not for the nuke thing. :p

Work on the condo should be good for your muscles, bones and blood circuit. Really!
Man is not made for sitting on a chair for too long.


And about the power plants issue, I can't really follow you any more, but I think there is no more to add about that. Just do it the way you think is best.
 
One more input from my multiplayer experience - and this will probably be the very last input:

The turn timer runs too fast during the first approx. 50 turns, especially during the very first turn. From turn 50 to 100 it fits quite well and after turn 100 there is too much time.
We played on quick speed, and I think the turn timer was set on average pace.

We never used the turn timer in the vanilla version, so maybe it's the same in vanilla.
 
I wasn't going to do this again til the last of the XML work had been done, but my unforeseen power plant overhaul and nuke production mod are now both completely finished and reasonably-well tested (along with a bunch of other stuff mixed in that I did over the last week), soooo I've gone ahead and updated the Change Log sticky once more.

The current plan is XML work today and tomorrow, and release notes, credits, testing, zipping, and uploading on Sunday.

Exchange the effects of the Great Library and the Copernicus' Observatory! So, +100% research for the Great Library and +2 free Scientists for the Copernicus' Observatory.

Yep, I agree... Thanks for the detailed analysis on this point, hehe.

The only thing that annoys me about this change is the lack of Great Scientist points in the first 2-3 eras now, but I was gonna look over the Great Wonder point types again anyway.

Also, nerve the Philosophical leader to +50% Great Person birth rate only, because +100% is too powerful keeping in mind that Philosophical has an additional +25% Wonder construction bonus. But maybe you have already nerfed it, I just can see what is in Version 3.6.1.

The problem is, in this update I've buffed every other leader trait in the mod, except Philosophical. Some were minor boosts, some were significant, and some were complete overhauls and redesigns, but I knew this one was the strongest so I left it alone. If I nerf it now I'd be concerned about it being a little too weak for the new average trait strength level, heh.

It's a 5 second change to make on your end if you guys still want to of course, so there's that. :) I would ask you first give it another try with all the other changes that've gone on around it in v4.0, though.

The turn timer runs too fast during the first approx. 50 turns, especially during the very first turn. From turn 50 to 100 it fits quite well and after turn 100 there is too much time.
We played on quick speed, and I think the turn timer was set on average pace.

I already changed this a week ago, based on your previous request about it a month ago. ;) As you suggested at the time, there's less time given from number of cities, and more time given from number of units... as well as the base amounts being tweaked a little.

I'll be curious to see what you think of the new setup, but it's just a few numbers in an XML file that's now included if you ultimately want to tweak it some more.

We never used the turn timer in the vanilla version, so maybe it's the same in vanilla.

Yep, it was exactly the same. :)
 
First, I'm going to post a bunch of email conversation for public record, that were due to this website going down last weekend and again yesterday morning, more than anything else...

From March 3:

The forum is still down, but I hope to see your posts and changelog soon.

The only thing I wanted to discuss, really, was the Great Library / Copernicus effect swap you suggested. After looking at the situation carefully, I disagree. Some pre-existing reasons for keeping it the way it is are:

1) You give up some very desirable other paths in the tech tree going straight to those two instead. Particularly the GL, which I always set out hoping to rush to and get, but never actually do b/c I always wind up getting lots of other stuff in that era first that I want even more, heh.

1a) You give up some very desirable other Great People types pushing Scientists all in one city like that. If you get Academies up in every city, great, but that means you didn't get lots of other GP-related stuff.

2) As I said on my forum post that you can't read yet (sorry, I don't run their website; all these downtimes ARE getting pretty annoying), the GL is the only real source of Great Scientist points at all in the first three-and-a-half eras. It needs the 2 free scientists to catch up to the other Great People types.

3) You're over-valuing the "+100%" type stats again. ;) If you have a Library and Observatory already in a city, the Oxford is only a 67% increase, and if you have those 3 things, the Copernicus is only a 40% increase. If I nerf their amounts further, I'm afraid they will seem like they're not even worth getting at all.

3a) Same thing with Great People points: For a Philosophical leader, the National Epic is only a 50% increase over what he's getting without it. And it goes down from there with additional effects.

4) I understand the "getting a Great Person literally every couple of turns" thing, but that's part of what happens playing on Quick, perception-wise. Also, there ARE rapidly diminishing returns on GP generation, b/c each next one always costs noticeably more than the previous one.



NOW THEN. Given all that, I DO understand that your point is probably still valid, and going for heavy Great People is potentially a slightly-overpowered strategy. That's where these next two points come in, which are from other changes I've already made in the last 2 months:

5) I said this in my forum post too (though I left a lot of these other arguments out cuz I hadn't given it as much thought yet this morning), Philosophical has not been buffed at all, while every single other leader trait has been. Some were slight buffs, some were major buffs, and some were complete redesigns and overhauls, but the average trait strength level should be higher now, and so you're missing out on a bit more by being Philo instead now.

5a) Pacifism was given a fairly strong new penalty effect while it was getting moved into its new subcategory location. I think that GP booster in particular will be adequately balanced now.



AND LASTLY, a point from the opposite direction:

6) When you're in Classical, you have fewer cities (typically) than when you're in Medieval, and any one single city is a bigger part of your overall total research income. Being able to toss a Copernicus +100% research effect on your Palace's +8 commerce, particularly with Monarchy / Bureaucracy added in, is more powerful on the GL than it is on C's Obs.

It's fine that you do not change the GL - copernicus. The GL is not as powerful as the old Silk Road.
But maybe in your next game, choose a philosophical leader, play on an island map and try that strategy, and if you win that game on high difficulty level, then reconsider my proposal.
And this is just xml-related, hence we can mod our own version 3.7b ;-)

Well maybe I DO need to nerf Philosophical then. That would be totally fine if it's really necessary. I just don't think swapping GrLib and C's Obs is the right answer to the problem, for the long list of reasons I typed out before. :)
 
From March 8:

I kept having more last-minute work to do on it lol.

I'm down to just a couple cleanup things now, should only take an hour or two. But I pulled a long work session today to get as much done as I did, and I pretty much can't stay awake any longer.

I've gotta run one errand later today but that's it... will definitely be posting on the site, and hopefully releasing it, in the next 12-16 hours, 24 tops. And don't worry, I mean it this time.

K, going to sleep. 24 more hours, maybe less, I promise.

you are still awake???????
Really, go to be now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It must be 6 or 7 in the morning where you are!!

Yep, sent that at 6:38am. Again, don't worry, I'm a strong night owl... It varies, but in general I'm most likely to be awake whenever it's dark outside. :)

Now if you'll eggskuse me, I have to get back to tweaking my dragon stats, now that there's a new one and all. :p

And don't forget that war weariness issue, that's 50 times more important than those dragons.

I already changed it 5 days ago; it didn't quite make it into the last patch note update, heh. I'm done tweaking the dragons now; I have to run over to Michaels again which'll take about an hour, then I have two final XML things to do that should take about half an hour each, then I'll immediately post the final set of notes for ya to read, and get started on the packaging process. I expect to be staying up as long as it takes to get this thing released, but we'll see; doing the release notes is a real chore, and the patch notes to convert are twice as long as any previous major update this time, heh.

I have got up now, just in case you want to send me any notes prior to the release!

I'm gonna post them on the forum here in half an hour or so. I'm on my very last thing right now. This is where I THOUGHT I was 8 hours ago, fyi, but I got sidetracked by even MORE unexpected stuff I noticed I needed to do. Sigh.

...

I know I said half an hour, but my last line-item to update the build costs of the Ancient and Classical great wonders naturally turned into an update of the build costs of ALL the wonders in the game, plus the projects, including a much-needed update of the spaceship components (which are projects), since the last time I adjusted those the mod didn't have a full Future Era yet in its tech tree...

So yeah, 3 hours instead of half an hour. This sort of thing has been the typical way everything I've tried to do in the last 2 months has gone... Just saying. :p
 
From March 9:

1. For the city maintenance costs for distance, it's good that you reduced them, but you didn't write by how much you reduced them. Make sure you didn't reduce them by more than 20%. In our modded Mongoose Mod 3.6.1b, Andy reduced them by too much, I think 50% or so. Now the tribalism Civic and the Forbidden palace are quite useless. And setting up a coastline-nation like Chile doesn't cause any economic problems either, which is not realistic.

That was actually a mistake on my part. I usually proof-read the notes as I'm posting them to fix that sort of thing; when I first write them it's just off to the side as quickly as possible so I can get back to working on the next thing I'm doing, heh.

I DID reduce them, so there was a note about it, but then I gave it some more thought and decided to undue the change, which is why the note right after it says I didn't change anything. I just forgot to remove the first note. Sorry. :)

Basically the argument I ultimately came up with goes like this: You originally claimed inland empires were under-powered compared to coastal empires, in general. So based on your ideas I added the Woodland Cottage, moved regular Cottages to Pottery, and changed the Silk Road over to +2 trade routes in inland cities. All those things are a boost to inland empires. Which were weaker than coastal empires to start with, according to you guys (and I fully believe you :)).

So that should even things up, just on its own. Does it really cause an overshoot, where you then have to buff coastal empires by shifting the maintenance levels, to get them even again? I don't know for sure, but it doesn't seem like it to me.

In any case the change I made, since it wasn't clear, was +10% to all NumCity and -10% to all Distance maintenance values in the XML WorldSize file (they also show up in the difficulty level entries, but the ratios between those should probably remain intact). I would definitely keep the total maintenance equal, so I'd always change them by matching amounts. Btw I also increased the Colony maintenance percents, but NOT by 10%; they are linked to the Distance percents, so I set them to be proportionally equal to the new values there.

All of this is removed atm, with the same percents as in v3.6.1, currently (which is also the same as vanilla). I'm willing to put my new values back if you REALLY think I should, but I do not want to nerf the Palace, Forbidden Palace, Versailles, Tribalism, and Communism effects, AND the idea with vanilla's values is to encourage using colonies for more-distant cities anyway, which would be a bit less necessary with reduced distance costs. Let me know what you think. :)

2. I recommend to change heroic epic back to only a 4th level unit requirement, not 5. In Multiplayer games, you can't take care of every single damaged unit as much as in single player. So often you lose units before they get a lot of upgrades. Also, I think heroic epic requires literature and literature is not really a strong tech anyway, now that you nerved the national wonders (which is good, btw.). And heroic epic is often researched early by peaceful players, and the heroic epic gives them at least at small military boost, while other players go for Macemen straight.

You could easily be right about this. Keep in mind my only first-hand experience is with Huge / Eternal, cooperative survival, Raging Barbarians games where nearly all of our units have reached level 4, and many have reached level 6 to 8, by the middle of the Ancient era. Mostly just from fighting barbs, lol. And you need that high-level army to survive against the DarkMongoose-difficulty AIs soon afterward on these settings, typically. :p

Would you recommend reducing West Point from lvl 6 to 5 as well? Actually what I should REALLY do is L4 Heroic, L5 WP, and +1 to the lvl req if Raging Barbs is on... there are already a few things the AIs do differently in their AI code when that game option is set, so it wouldn't be setting a dangerous precedent or anything. :)

1. Leave all maintenance costs exactly as they were in Version 3.6.1. The woodland cottage should solve all those problems that we had in version 3.6.1. In my opinion, the woodland cottage is by far the biggest improvement of all changes that you made, I'm sure it will work much better than our solution to prepone the real cottages to an earlier tech. It will lead to a great flexibility in the prehistoric period, whether to focus on food, production or trade. Just make sure that the woodland cottage can also be built in jungle, but I think you mentioned that it can be built there as well.

Keep in mind that I did ALSO move normal Cottages to Pottery a while back, but I reduced their commerce by another point and you restore that lost point by researching Monarchy, so it should be fine.

Also wanted to point out, that while the new SIlk Road is admittedly fairly useless to them, Coastal Empires can still benefit from the cottage stuff. Not as much as Inland Empires, but it's not like coastal cities can't work land tiles instead if they want to, especially when it's early and they have a fairly low population.

So that's another reason I don't think inland will be overpowered now, and thus that I don't need to change the maintenance costs. Which is good, cuz I was willing to, but it would've gone against my better judgement. ;)

2. Reduce to level 5 for West Point, please. We never play with raging barbarians.

Yep, that's why I asked. :) :) :)

4. Please consider removing the Blitz from the Early thank, you will make Andy happy ;-)

Please relay to Andy my sincerest apologies, but I really can't. I want the Blitz to be there if you upgrade their speed with a General, AND all other tank units have free Blitz, so it feels "right" to me to have it on there.

If the General thing didn't exist and there was absolutely no way to have it do anything, then yeah I'd remove it. But I personally do actually use it when I play.

(Also, there's a second hidden / secret / promotion-upgradeable ability for tanks now too, that used to be in the mod years ago: if you give them Barrage, they will gain a weak splash damage effect. I used to love that, but the vanilla code to support unlocking it poofed in either Warlords or BTS, and I never fixed it til now. Soooo... that's an additional promotion-related special tank ability, if it makes him feel any better, hehe.)
 
From March 9, continued:

One last thing to mention about the cottages. Tribes and Settlers are going to be significantly more expensive than you're used to now that I've fixed the scaling on their prices, as we discussed a couple weeks ago. And that's as-intended.

But the same problem also affected Gatherers and Workers to a lesser degree. So those are going to be more expensive than you're used to as well, though not by as much. So you won't be able to build as many tile improvements, as quickly. So the RELATIVE importance of cottages, and all other tile improvements, will be going down a bit for you, in the early parts of the game.

I'm currently considering reducing the Gatherer build cost a bit more to compensate for this, but I dunno yet. Other than that I'm done. I've left the maintenance costs alone as planned, and already added the Heroic / WP reductions with +1 when Raging is set. :)

To be open, I was never aware that there were those dragons in the mod, until you mentioned them ;-)

After you get the new version, you should really open the WorldBuilder, place a few dragons, and do some combats with em... The sound effects are great now that I've got them working again (plus new ones), and in particular, THE NEW STORM DRAKE IS FREAKIN' AWESOME. I absolutely LOVE the model on it, and the combat effects... Sooooo glad I added it. :)

But it's also a major balance improvement, b/c now the dragon that can go into Coast tiles and fight ships has 60 strength instead of 90 before when that was the Blue Dragon's job, and that was a bit overpowered vs ships, heh.

Disagreed, because I'm sure it will be 10th March, hehe :) In central european time time you have got only 22 minutes left.

Well, I'm the one writing the notes, so I'm going to continue using my local timezone... Plus I always put stuff from after midnight on the previous day when I'm simply staying awake til 6am to get more done, and it's all in one work session. The next day's entry typically starts the next time I wake up, hehe.

I'm hoping to get it released late tonight, but we'll see. Tomorrow afternoon (my time) at the latest.

A simple solution would be to let woodland cottages expire when Pottery is researched. But we should leave it like it is for the moment. I am quite confident that it will work well.

Believe it or not I actually thought of doing this a week ago. My answer is that, with this change the player would probably just build Lumberyards in his Forest / Jungle instead, since they don't expire til much later (Replaceable Parts), and ignore the new Woodland Cottage due to the early expiration, even if they kinda wanted it.

So for that reason I agree with not expiring the WC. :) I could set it to expire in Replaceable Parts just for the heck of it I suppose, but it should be pretty obvious well before then that they need to switch to normal Cottages, heh.
 
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