Éa, The Ageless and the Divine (phase 2, alpha)
- Thread starter Pazyryk
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Pazyryk
Deity
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2008
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Can't tell from the post whether it affected >1 civ or not. The rule for the prophecy is that only Azzandarayasna follower cities in a fallen civ get flipped (having Maleficium after the prophecy being one way to fall). It's possible that the civ's neighbor had picked up the religion too and also had Maleficium. But it's more likely he is talking about one civ with multiple cities. (The button still available is a bug -- added to my list now.)
I played another game, on a starting site with elephants, and with a definite conqueror style.
A few generic notes:
- AI seems to be struggling (pathfinding limitations?) when sending units through "large" forest/jungles.
- 2 basic elephants (with militarism policies) can easily take cities defended by warriors. I'm wondering if elephants are not available too early (or too powerful). I don't think it's a problem if elephants are strong against warriors, but I'm afraid that agricultural civs will loose their cities before being able to build better units.
- I played a part of the game while overlooking error messages (most of them about an illegal priest).
- A bug when taking the capital city while some other cities are still free: the capital city is given back at the beginning of the next turn (see yr127)
Here's the log:
A few generic notes:
- AI seems to be struggling (pathfinding limitations?) when sending units through "large" forest/jungles.
- 2 basic elephants (with militarism policies) can easily take cities defended by warriors. I'm wondering if elephants are not available too early (or too powerful). I don't think it's a problem if elephants are strong against warriors, but I'm afraid that agricultural civs will loose their cities before being able to build better units.
- I played a part of the game while overlooking error messages (most of them about an illegal priest).
- A bug when taking the capital city while some other cities are still free: the capital city is given back at the beginning of the next turn (see yr127)
Here's the log:
Spoiler :
DharmaMcLaren
Warlord
Here's a Lua.log with some bugs. I put it on Dropbox because it's vast (about 300,000 lines). It was much longer, but I trimmed it: the last two lines were repeated some 350,000 times. In the game it's from, I got past turn 300 before I hit a game-ending crash, which I think is the furthest I've ever got. I played through a few error messages, which subsequently disappeared; the last one persisted up to the crash.
Some general notes:
I found myself having to train units and then delete them for want of something to produce, having run out of stuff to build. Research was at 0 although I had a pretty extensive empire and all available science buildings in every city, and two sages generating as much science as possible per turn, so I couldn't just research my way to new stuff to build, either. Perhaps you could reintroduce Research, Wealth and Culture as projects, maybe making them available with the appropriate Great Person building. Alternatively, a project that reduces knowledge maintenance (which, if I understand correctly, is why my research was at 0). That said, I was just about to colonise the new world (all of it; I had a good tech lead and a couple of cities with nothing to do but churn out settlers), which would have solved the 'problem'.
I founded Weave of Éa and then Cult of Leaves, and both religions were swiftly replaced by the theistic ones founded by one of my neighbours. The pressure was far, far higher on those theistic religions, and I didn't really have any way of combatting their spread. I'd just about managed to get it under control when the game crashed, though, by having my leader (a druid) focus on converting my capital and the adjacent cities - still, it looked like it would have taken far too long to drive back the theistic religions.
I had too much culture, even after completing four policy branches, and was forced to adopt Slavery, which I didn't actually want.
And a final very general note/query:
I'm looking at the manual and, well, not seeing a lot of the features when I play, or at least, seeing very buggy versions of them. For example, I can't make any diplomatic agreements except declarations of war and peace treaties with anyone; diplomacy screens are a bit buggy (sometimes they show the leader art they're meant to, sometimes they show Elizabeth); the names of leaders on the scoreboard are all base game leader names even after they acquire a leader and a civ name... a bunch of stuff like that.
Are a lot of them just not implemented yet (that's true of the greyed out ones, I'm guessing) or is there something wrong with my installation of the mod? I followed the instructions provided (twice) to the letter; I know nothing about what DirectX is or what it's for, but if it's of any relevance at all I'm running the game in DirectX 9, not 11, which seems to be what's suggested in the installation instructions (I can only launch the game in DirectX 9).
Some general notes:
I found myself having to train units and then delete them for want of something to produce, having run out of stuff to build. Research was at 0 although I had a pretty extensive empire and all available science buildings in every city, and two sages generating as much science as possible per turn, so I couldn't just research my way to new stuff to build, either. Perhaps you could reintroduce Research, Wealth and Culture as projects, maybe making them available with the appropriate Great Person building. Alternatively, a project that reduces knowledge maintenance (which, if I understand correctly, is why my research was at 0). That said, I was just about to colonise the new world (all of it; I had a good tech lead and a couple of cities with nothing to do but churn out settlers), which would have solved the 'problem'.
I founded Weave of Éa and then Cult of Leaves, and both religions were swiftly replaced by the theistic ones founded by one of my neighbours. The pressure was far, far higher on those theistic religions, and I didn't really have any way of combatting their spread. I'd just about managed to get it under control when the game crashed, though, by having my leader (a druid) focus on converting my capital and the adjacent cities - still, it looked like it would have taken far too long to drive back the theistic religions.
I had too much culture, even after completing four policy branches, and was forced to adopt Slavery, which I didn't actually want.
And a final very general note/query:
I'm looking at the manual and, well, not seeing a lot of the features when I play, or at least, seeing very buggy versions of them. For example, I can't make any diplomatic agreements except declarations of war and peace treaties with anyone; diplomacy screens are a bit buggy (sometimes they show the leader art they're meant to, sometimes they show Elizabeth); the names of leaders on the scoreboard are all base game leader names even after they acquire a leader and a civ name... a bunch of stuff like that.
Are a lot of them just not implemented yet (that's true of the greyed out ones, I'm guessing) or is there something wrong with my installation of the mod? I followed the instructions provided (twice) to the letter; I know nothing about what DirectX is or what it's for, but if it's of any relevance at all I'm running the game in DirectX 9, not 11, which seems to be what's suggested in the installation instructions (I can only launch the game in DirectX 9).
I've played a lot of Ea over the past two weeks while traveling, so I've got a lot of data/game logs. Most of it is written down and has yet to be typed, but here's one that I just played. It's the longest game I've managed, clocking in around 200 turns, and it's the first one that ended because I basically ran out of things to do, rather than a game-crashing error:
I'm going to try and type up a few more logs when I have time, but for now I want to share a couple of observations I have after playing a lot of 100-150 turn games:
-Currently, the most popular Civilization Names for the AI are the ones associated with being the first to open certain Social Policy branches. This makes sense, because no matter what happens, every civilization will eventually get the chance to choose a policy even if they don't focus on culture at all. The most popular policy names in my experience are the Kaza (Agrarian), the Nezeliba (Slavery), The Hod (Theism), and the Nemedians (Man Militarism). The Aes Dana (Sidhe Tradition) and Partholon (Man Commerce) showed up infrequently as well. I don't think I ever saw a Skogr or Eriu (Pantheism) Civilization, although this could be because I often wound up taking those names.
Another popular Civilization Name was the Ys (First to build Library). In about half my games on King level, a Sidhe AI would hit Ys around 17-27 turns in. The Sidhe start with Writing, so this makes sense; the Sidhe AI just immediately builds a library. I played as the Sidhe Ys once and was impressed; the +1science per capital pop, along with the library, gives you a great tech boost in the early game, which leads to a lot of versatility. You can go Agrarian and make your capital huge to get an even bigger research bonus, you can go Tradition to reduce knowledge maintenance further and get a sage for research, or you can quickly get to a 2nd tier military tech and go to town on your opponents. The AI really seemed to favor the Ys.
I also saw a decent amount of some of environment-influenced names. Mayd (Fishing Boats) and Eleutherios (Wine) were the most common of these, and when they appeared, they always pretty interestingly.
The strongest AIs seemed to be Nemedia, Ys, or The Hod (who are really good at spreading Azzandara), and from the diplomacy screen, the first two usually went Agrarian.
-City States are currently either really powerful allies (Cultural, Mercantile) or basically useless (Maritime, Religious). Cultural City-States struck me as the most unbalanced, as they allow you to get Policies ridiculously fast. A few adjustments to the given rewards will straighten this right out (although judging by the Commerce Policy branch, you already have ideas for what to do with City-States).
-Happiness has a very different dynamic in Ea than it does in base CiV. In base CiV, having extra happiness is basically useless (unless you're Persia and you want as many Golden Ages as possible). The only reason you need happiness is so that your civilization doesn't become unhappy and stop growing. So, it's almost always a good idea to trade away extra copies of luxury resources (or even your only copy) for 20 turns in order to get the money to buy a settler/worker.
In Ea, things are different:
-There are more technologies required to access luxury goods, and they are a lot more difficult to research (although this may change a lot with Knowledge Diffusion).
-City populations are not nearly as explosive as in base CiV, especially in the early game, so it takes a longer time for happiness to decline. I often went for the first 50-60 turns sitting on 7 or 8 happiness a turn.
-Happiness has a direct effect on your units' strength, making it especially desirable to get more happiness, rather than simply avoiding unhappiness as in base CiV.
This led to some interesting games; when I got lucky enough to have a couple of easily-accessible luxury resources, happiness wasn't a problem, and dealing with barbarians was significantly easier. In one game, I got a ton of luxury resources through Pantheism, traded them to everyone I knew for 240-200 each, and bought two settlers for some explosive growth. Sometimes, happiness wouldn't be a worry until I built 3 cities, and then I'd desperately look for any luxury resources I could get. My favorite was when I hoarded luxury resources and built a bunch of fairs, giving my units, at their peak, a +20% morale boost. That game crashed before I could go to war, but I had fun straight-up stomping barbarians.
One common thing throughout all my games, however, was a Golden Age around turn 60-75. In the early game, with the slower city growth, the beginning happiness level stays essentially the same. Every time, it was predictable. When I got a Golden Age, I obviously didn't complain; but after a while they stopped being special and started being a part of the game's natural pacing. In a fantasy mod like this, I feel that the Golden Age mechanic has a ton of untapped potential; maybe a Golden Age ushers in a new era of magic, making your spells stronger and better? Maybe it earns you free technology, or a special policy? Maybe they should be harder to achieve, but more rewarding?
-In the game's present state, Pantheism > Agrarianism, nine times out of ten. From what you've said in this thread about modifying overgrowth/flooding, this imbalance will probably change. But right now, Pantheism basically removes every hurdle presented by the game, while Agrarianism only makes them slightly easier to deal with:
-Because Wildland improvements automatically pop up for Pantheist civs, they don't have to build or protect workers. So, they can be building other stuff and sending more Warriors to explore/conquer, while Agrarian civs have to build workers and then keep Warriors around to protect them from Barbarians.
-Wildlands are created the turn after an improvement comes into a city's territory, saving time. Normal improvements take workers 4-8 turns to build. In addition, Wildlands can't be pillaged, while regular improvements are vulnerable (they also serve as a an irritating source of health to barbarians)
-Wildlands improve all resources, regardless of the technologies required for those resources to be utilized. So, a Pantheist civ can plop a city next to a Wine resource and instantly benefit from the Food/Gold/Culture bonus (but not the happiness), while an Agrarian civ has to research Zymurgy if they want the benefit. Hell, Pantheist civs can even ignore Mining and Agriculture if they want to (although it isn't a great idea); Agrarian civs have to spend time researching all the terrain improvement techs. However, as it is described in the game manual, it seems like Knowledge Diffusion will solve the technology problem for Agrarian civs once it is implemented (I just want to say that Knowledge Diffusion is one of the best ideas I've ever seen for Civilization; it was even implemented in Civ III through The Internet wonder, although that came a bit too late to be of use. Your approach to it is extremely elegant, not to mention realistic. I'm looking forward to it!)
-The benefits Pantheism presents in terms of resources far outweighs what Agrarianism has to offer. With Animal, Woods, and Earth Lore, you get extra food, extra culture (letting you snag more Pantheist resource boosters faster), and science. Agrarianism gives you a measly +1f on farms, and the +1p and +1g bonuses don't come until later. To be fair, Agrarianism gives you a pretty good set-up once the tree is completed; but it takes much too long and is too little in comparison to the powerhouse that Pantheism turns your cities into.
-As soon as you adopt Pantheism, forests, jungles, and marshes cease to be a problem at all. Are you being overgrown? Great! Wildlands don't care. You don't have to worry about land maintenance at all, and your units can enjoy the defense bonus that comes from overgrown Forests and Jungles in your territory. Agrarian civs, meanwhile, are hard-pressed to deal with this threat (although according to your tech tree modifications in this thread, they will have new tools in v6). This is probably my biggest problem with Pantheism, because it takes the really unique and interactive idea of "adapting to the changing environment" and allows you to ignore it completely.
-That's not to mention the fact that Pantheism will eventually let you interact with a Faerie Civilization entirely cut off from everyone else and communicate with gods.
What Agrarianism needs in this iteration of the mod is a way to compensate for all the problems listed above. I thought of a few random things that would have been really nice while I was trying to go Agrarian in a few of my games. There could be a policy that grants 2-3 free workers, letting you get a handle on forest overgrowth. There could be some sort of unique bonus that would parallel culture and science bonuses which Pantheism grants (maybe certain improvements give 1 happiness when worked?)
Another interesting idea is to heavily stress the "growth" aspect of Agrarianism. I could see the Agrarianism opener give +2f per farm, instead of just +1, allowing for really explosive growth that could lead to strong specialist cities. At the present, I can rarely get enough citizens in a city to create a strong specialist base (although I'm not a great Civ player by any means. If anyone does know how to do this well, please share your secrets with me!)
You could also cause the Pantheism branch to deny civs certain abilities. For example, I couldn't see a group of nature-respecting, horse-loving Pantheists who are devoted to Epona building Knackeries and Tanneries. If the Pantheists had to do without certain improvements, that might level the playing field.
-
From the games I've played, I feel like this version of the mod is halfway there. Sometimes, I found myself placing cities close together exactly as you mentioned, in order to expand without having to worry about my later cities being too far away from the capital, etc. However, usually, I found it better to give cities plenty of space, with no overlap, so that they could take advantage of every resource in the vicinity. I think I realize why this is: Buying Tiles (and, to a lesser extent, cultural expansion of city borders). Right now, It's almost always a better idea to build a city further from another, in the middle of a group of somewhat spread-out resources, and immediately buy a couple of resource tiles to get growth started. I think it's too easy to buy tiles, and that makes city placement less thought-provoking and more "I'm going to build a city in the middle of a bunch of resources, because I can buy access to them all".
In the last game I played, the one that I logged above, I made a rule for myself: I was not allowed to buy tiles. City placement instantly became much harder and more interesting. Do I build right next to this iron, but miss out on the fish two tiles away? Or should I build the city between both resources, but go without either until I get a monument or an artist in to allow for cultural growth? Will the Forest (3) over there spread to these nice, flat tiles I want to farm in the future? Suddenly, I had to make tough decisions on which resources I really needed and which I could do without. Even without buying tiles, however, cultural expansion still made city placement pretty safe, because you could count on the city to grow into itself eventually.
Even in base CiV, I feel border expansion is a bit easy. In Civ IV, if you wanted to gain a lot of territory, it cost you a Great Person. In CiV, it costs you 100g. That's an oversimplification, but I feel it illustrates how easy it is to grab land in CiV. You can put down a city, drop 200-400g, and have access to a resource 3 tiles away instantly. Having that kind of access makes it too easy to go for a "no-overlap" city placement style. In order for city placement to be tight and strategic, border expansion has to be tough. Maybe it's really expensive, or when you buy a tile, it takes 10 turns or so to integrate it into the city. Maybe you have to buy tiles with culture from your culture pool, and one tile purchase will set your next Policy acquisition back five turns. Maybe you have to devote yourself to culture and go straight for the Tradition or Agrarian Policy trees if you want that 30-tile city. I could be completely wrong about this; like I said, I'm no Civ expert. But this is what I've noticed when I play, both Ea and base CiV.
...Um, sorry for vomiting a huge wall of text all over the thread. I have some thoughts on barbarians and combat, but I'll save those for later, when they're more fully formed. I'm planning on playing as The Hod in the future in order to get a handle on Azzandara, and I'll see if I can start to understand combat more while I'm doing that.
I'm really excited this mod, and the ideas that are here. I've found myself becoming addicted to Ea. And it's Ea Alpha v.5. So I'm becoming addicted to the skeleton for a mod. It's barely started, and it plays like an entirely new, exciting game. This is really great stuff here, and if there's anything you need help balancing, I'll do my best to give feedback.
Oh, and also,
I'm think that when I checked my diplomacy screen, there were two players listed as Anra. However, I don't trust my memory and the autosaves from that game were deleted when I went to check, so I can't say for sure (The Schrodinger's Cat explanation is a great way of explaining the Prophecy of Va, by the way). Two civs with Maleficium does seem unlikely.
Lua.log (it's big)
Spoiler :
I'm going to try and type up a few more logs when I have time, but for now I want to share a couple of observations I have after playing a lot of 100-150 turn games:
-Currently, the most popular Civilization Names for the AI are the ones associated with being the first to open certain Social Policy branches. This makes sense, because no matter what happens, every civilization will eventually get the chance to choose a policy even if they don't focus on culture at all. The most popular policy names in my experience are the Kaza (Agrarian), the Nezeliba (Slavery), The Hod (Theism), and the Nemedians (Man Militarism). The Aes Dana (Sidhe Tradition) and Partholon (Man Commerce) showed up infrequently as well. I don't think I ever saw a Skogr or Eriu (Pantheism) Civilization, although this could be because I often wound up taking those names.
Another popular Civilization Name was the Ys (First to build Library). In about half my games on King level, a Sidhe AI would hit Ys around 17-27 turns in. The Sidhe start with Writing, so this makes sense; the Sidhe AI just immediately builds a library. I played as the Sidhe Ys once and was impressed; the +1science per capital pop, along with the library, gives you a great tech boost in the early game, which leads to a lot of versatility. You can go Agrarian and make your capital huge to get an even bigger research bonus, you can go Tradition to reduce knowledge maintenance further and get a sage for research, or you can quickly get to a 2nd tier military tech and go to town on your opponents. The AI really seemed to favor the Ys.
I also saw a decent amount of some of environment-influenced names. Mayd (Fishing Boats) and Eleutherios (Wine) were the most common of these, and when they appeared, they always pretty interestingly.
The strongest AIs seemed to be Nemedia, Ys, or The Hod (who are really good at spreading Azzandara), and from the diplomacy screen, the first two usually went Agrarian.
-City States are currently either really powerful allies (Cultural, Mercantile) or basically useless (Maritime, Religious). Cultural City-States struck me as the most unbalanced, as they allow you to get Policies ridiculously fast. A few adjustments to the given rewards will straighten this right out (although judging by the Commerce Policy branch, you already have ideas for what to do with City-States).
-Happiness has a very different dynamic in Ea than it does in base CiV. In base CiV, having extra happiness is basically useless (unless you're Persia and you want as many Golden Ages as possible). The only reason you need happiness is so that your civilization doesn't become unhappy and stop growing. So, it's almost always a good idea to trade away extra copies of luxury resources (or even your only copy) for 20 turns in order to get the money to buy a settler/worker.
In Ea, things are different:
-There are more technologies required to access luxury goods, and they are a lot more difficult to research (although this may change a lot with Knowledge Diffusion).
-City populations are not nearly as explosive as in base CiV, especially in the early game, so it takes a longer time for happiness to decline. I often went for the first 50-60 turns sitting on 7 or 8 happiness a turn.
-Happiness has a direct effect on your units' strength, making it especially desirable to get more happiness, rather than simply avoiding unhappiness as in base CiV.
This led to some interesting games; when I got lucky enough to have a couple of easily-accessible luxury resources, happiness wasn't a problem, and dealing with barbarians was significantly easier. In one game, I got a ton of luxury resources through Pantheism, traded them to everyone I knew for 240-200 each, and bought two settlers for some explosive growth. Sometimes, happiness wouldn't be a worry until I built 3 cities, and then I'd desperately look for any luxury resources I could get. My favorite was when I hoarded luxury resources and built a bunch of fairs, giving my units, at their peak, a +20% morale boost. That game crashed before I could go to war, but I had fun straight-up stomping barbarians.
One common thing throughout all my games, however, was a Golden Age around turn 60-75. In the early game, with the slower city growth, the beginning happiness level stays essentially the same. Every time, it was predictable. When I got a Golden Age, I obviously didn't complain; but after a while they stopped being special and started being a part of the game's natural pacing. In a fantasy mod like this, I feel that the Golden Age mechanic has a ton of untapped potential; maybe a Golden Age ushers in a new era of magic, making your spells stronger and better? Maybe it earns you free technology, or a special policy? Maybe they should be harder to achieve, but more rewarding?
-In the game's present state, Pantheism > Agrarianism, nine times out of ten. From what you've said in this thread about modifying overgrowth/flooding, this imbalance will probably change. But right now, Pantheism basically removes every hurdle presented by the game, while Agrarianism only makes them slightly easier to deal with:
-Because Wildland improvements automatically pop up for Pantheist civs, they don't have to build or protect workers. So, they can be building other stuff and sending more Warriors to explore/conquer, while Agrarian civs have to build workers and then keep Warriors around to protect them from Barbarians.
-Wildlands are created the turn after an improvement comes into a city's territory, saving time. Normal improvements take workers 4-8 turns to build. In addition, Wildlands can't be pillaged, while regular improvements are vulnerable (they also serve as a an irritating source of health to barbarians)
-Wildlands improve all resources, regardless of the technologies required for those resources to be utilized. So, a Pantheist civ can plop a city next to a Wine resource and instantly benefit from the Food/Gold/Culture bonus (but not the happiness), while an Agrarian civ has to research Zymurgy if they want the benefit. Hell, Pantheist civs can even ignore Mining and Agriculture if they want to (although it isn't a great idea); Agrarian civs have to spend time researching all the terrain improvement techs. However, as it is described in the game manual, it seems like Knowledge Diffusion will solve the technology problem for Agrarian civs once it is implemented (I just want to say that Knowledge Diffusion is one of the best ideas I've ever seen for Civilization; it was even implemented in Civ III through The Internet wonder, although that came a bit too late to be of use. Your approach to it is extremely elegant, not to mention realistic. I'm looking forward to it!)
-The benefits Pantheism presents in terms of resources far outweighs what Agrarianism has to offer. With Animal, Woods, and Earth Lore, you get extra food, extra culture (letting you snag more Pantheist resource boosters faster), and science. Agrarianism gives you a measly +1f on farms, and the +1p and +1g bonuses don't come until later. To be fair, Agrarianism gives you a pretty good set-up once the tree is completed; but it takes much too long and is too little in comparison to the powerhouse that Pantheism turns your cities into.
-As soon as you adopt Pantheism, forests, jungles, and marshes cease to be a problem at all. Are you being overgrown? Great! Wildlands don't care. You don't have to worry about land maintenance at all, and your units can enjoy the defense bonus that comes from overgrown Forests and Jungles in your territory. Agrarian civs, meanwhile, are hard-pressed to deal with this threat (although according to your tech tree modifications in this thread, they will have new tools in v6). This is probably my biggest problem with Pantheism, because it takes the really unique and interactive idea of "adapting to the changing environment" and allows you to ignore it completely.
-That's not to mention the fact that Pantheism will eventually let you interact with a Faerie Civilization entirely cut off from everyone else and communicate with gods.
What Agrarianism needs in this iteration of the mod is a way to compensate for all the problems listed above. I thought of a few random things that would have been really nice while I was trying to go Agrarian in a few of my games. There could be a policy that grants 2-3 free workers, letting you get a handle on forest overgrowth. There could be some sort of unique bonus that would parallel culture and science bonuses which Pantheism grants (maybe certain improvements give 1 happiness when worked?)
Another interesting idea is to heavily stress the "growth" aspect of Agrarianism. I could see the Agrarianism opener give +2f per farm, instead of just +1, allowing for really explosive growth that could lead to strong specialist cities. At the present, I can rarely get enough citizens in a city to create a strong specialist base (although I'm not a great Civ player by any means. If anyone does know how to do this well, please share your secrets with me!)
You could also cause the Pantheism branch to deny civs certain abilities. For example, I couldn't see a group of nature-respecting, horse-loving Pantheists who are devoted to Epona building Knackeries and Tanneries. If the Pantheists had to do without certain improvements, that might level the playing field.
-
From the games I've played, I feel like this version of the mod is halfway there. Sometimes, I found myself placing cities close together exactly as you mentioned, in order to expand without having to worry about my later cities being too far away from the capital, etc. However, usually, I found it better to give cities plenty of space, with no overlap, so that they could take advantage of every resource in the vicinity. I think I realize why this is: Buying Tiles (and, to a lesser extent, cultural expansion of city borders). Right now, It's almost always a better idea to build a city further from another, in the middle of a group of somewhat spread-out resources, and immediately buy a couple of resource tiles to get growth started. I think it's too easy to buy tiles, and that makes city placement less thought-provoking and more "I'm going to build a city in the middle of a bunch of resources, because I can buy access to them all".
In the last game I played, the one that I logged above, I made a rule for myself: I was not allowed to buy tiles. City placement instantly became much harder and more interesting. Do I build right next to this iron, but miss out on the fish two tiles away? Or should I build the city between both resources, but go without either until I get a monument or an artist in to allow for cultural growth? Will the Forest (3) over there spread to these nice, flat tiles I want to farm in the future? Suddenly, I had to make tough decisions on which resources I really needed and which I could do without. Even without buying tiles, however, cultural expansion still made city placement pretty safe, because you could count on the city to grow into itself eventually.
Even in base CiV, I feel border expansion is a bit easy. In Civ IV, if you wanted to gain a lot of territory, it cost you a Great Person. In CiV, it costs you 100g. That's an oversimplification, but I feel it illustrates how easy it is to grab land in CiV. You can put down a city, drop 200-400g, and have access to a resource 3 tiles away instantly. Having that kind of access makes it too easy to go for a "no-overlap" city placement style. In order for city placement to be tight and strategic, border expansion has to be tough. Maybe it's really expensive, or when you buy a tile, it takes 10 turns or so to integrate it into the city. Maybe you have to buy tiles with culture from your culture pool, and one tile purchase will set your next Policy acquisition back five turns. Maybe you have to devote yourself to culture and go straight for the Tradition or Agrarian Policy trees if you want that 30-tile city. I could be completely wrong about this; like I said, I'm no Civ expert. But this is what I've noticed when I play, both Ea and base CiV.
...Um, sorry for vomiting a huge wall of text all over the thread. I have some thoughts on barbarians and combat, but I'll save those for later, when they're more fully formed. I'm planning on playing as The Hod in the future in order to get a handle on Azzandara, and I'll see if I can start to understand combat more while I'm doing that.
I'm really excited this mod, and the ideas that are here. I've found myself becoming addicted to Ea. And it's Ea Alpha v.5. So I'm becoming addicted to the skeleton for a mod. It's barely started, and it plays like an entirely new, exciting game. This is really great stuff here, and if there's anything you need help balancing, I'll do my best to give feedback.
Oh, and also,
I'm think that when I checked my diplomacy screen, there were two players listed as Anra. However, I don't trust my memory and the autosaves from that game were deleted when I went to check, so I can't say for sure (The Schrodinger's Cat explanation is a great way of explaining the Prophecy of Va, by the way). Two civs with Maleficium does seem unlikely.
Lua.log (it's big)
DharmaMcLaren
Warlord
I fixed that plan-adding bug:
This results in an endless loop of plan-adding attempts.
This appears not to!
Spoiler :
This results in an endless loop of plan-adding attempts.
Spoiler :
This appears not to!
DharmaMcLaren
Warlord
Getting another CTD, now; this is the last entry in the Lua log:
Spoiler :
Pazyryk
Deity
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2008
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Great comments. Lots of stuff but here is my current list (in addition to getting unimplemented stuff in of course):
On Pantheism, my unbreakable objective is for them to have civilizations with smaller populations that don't look like urban sprawl with every plot improved and/or deforested/dejungled. My solution was experimental and ... well ... somewhat radical. I sort of have two options going forward: 1) tone down the benefits, perhaps spreading out plot bonuses over more policies and techs would do the trick; or 2) call it a failed experiment and move on. In the second option, I'm not giving up my objective. Just have to go about it a different way. Or perhaps there is some 3rd option that splits the difference.
- Cities need to be toughened up. I reduced their range to 1 plot to avoid cross-fire in dense city areas. But city defensive strength needs to be improved.
- Too many policies late stage. Right now, the Culture Level equation approaches [10 x culture output / pop]. I'll try cutting that down to 5x while keeping turns to 1st polic about the same.
- Policy civ names too common. One problem here I think is that AIs are really good (with the extra units they get at Emperor+) at getting goody huts. When I checked this I noticed that many are getting the culture goody more than once. So I'm going to cut the culture boost by half. (Perhaps we need a tiny boost to early tech progression too, like +1s for capital.)
- Building costs. I'm looking at 2x across the board increase. Maybe this will solve the "run out of things to build" problem. Less important but good side effect is that it will delay the Ys naming condition to make it less common. Bad side effect is that players will be somewhat panicked when they see initial build times.
- Golden Age. First one should be much delayed (say turn 120+), but it should be dramatic and memorable.
- Tile buying lessens strategic city placement. I considered removing it entirely. However, right now I'm leaning toward a much steeper price escalation. Say 100, 200, 400, 800...
- City states. Still on the to do list.
- The Ag benefit (if it really exists at all) is too little too late. My current calculations are too focused on endpoint and not early effect. Ag civs can gain more food per unresourced plot than consumed. Pan civs can't. So that allows giant cities for Ag and not Pan. But clearly Pan is running away with the early advantage. Thoughts on this below...
On Pantheism, my unbreakable objective is for them to have civilizations with smaller populations that don't look like urban sprawl with every plot improved and/or deforested/dejungled. My solution was experimental and ... well ... somewhat radical. I sort of have two options going forward: 1) tone down the benefits, perhaps spreading out plot bonuses over more policies and techs would do the trick; or 2) call it a failed experiment and move on. In the second option, I'm not giving up my objective. Just have to go about it a different way. Or perhaps there is some 3rd option that splits the difference.
DharmaMcLaren
Warlord
Had two size 12 cities in my last pantheism game. I think I might have just got lucky, though - one had access to three fish and cattle.
Pazyryk
Deity
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2008
- Messages
- 3,584
12 is fine at the high end for Pantheistic. Ag should be able to grow to what you see in the base game of 20 to 40 and working essentially every plot in the landscape (though they will need aqueducts, etc., to reduce disease/plague in very big cities).
Just thinking out loud here:
What if Pantheistic had to improve plots normally, but I keep their food production from non-resource plots always below sustenance? The human player quickly learns that it is not worthwhile to improve non-resource plots (the AI is already prevented from improving these). Additionally, Pan civs build any improvements over forest/jungle/marsh without removal. It would still look "sparsely developed" on the map, since only resource plots are developed and that is much less than 10% of all land. But perhaps it would feel a little more organic: an emergent property of yield levels rather than a dramatic rule difference.
I still want to give Pantheistic civs some benefit from controlling non-resource/non-improved plots. (Obviously, I can't do that in the current situation where they are already over-powered. But assuming I fix that.) It can't be a direct plot yield. But it should be something easy to remember. Say, plus 1 culture and 1 mana for every 5 unimproved plots owned.
Just thinking out loud here:
What if Pantheistic had to improve plots normally, but I keep their food production from non-resource plots always below sustenance? The human player quickly learns that it is not worthwhile to improve non-resource plots (the AI is already prevented from improving these). Additionally, Pan civs build any improvements over forest/jungle/marsh without removal. It would still look "sparsely developed" on the map, since only resource plots are developed and that is much less than 10% of all land. But perhaps it would feel a little more organic: an emergent property of yield levels rather than a dramatic rule difference.
I still want to give Pantheistic civs some benefit from controlling non-resource/non-improved plots. (Obviously, I can't do that in the current situation where they are already over-powered. But assuming I fix that.) It can't be a direct plot yield. But it should be something easy to remember. Say, plus 1 culture and 1 mana for every 5 unimproved plots owned.
Pazyryk
Deity
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2008
- Messages
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More out loud thinking:
There is one fundamental change that changes everything in this mod: that unimproved/non-resource plots are not sustaining. Everything else follows from this, including removal of the growing food basket for city growth, maintenance of wildlands, etc...
I did this initially by increasing food requirement per citizen to 5 while leaving base plot yields mostly unchanged (with farm + Ag + some techs giving you 6f from flat riverside grass or plains). A minor problem here is that I had to drive up resource and improvement food a lot, and then other yield types needed to go up too so they wouldn't look unbalanced. A bigger problem was that the AI was still working those 2f or 1f1p plots. So then I removed all yield from these plots to prevent AI stupidity. But now I have two major changes that accomplish the same thing: the high food req and the no-yield from unimproved/non-resource plots. What if I keep the second but removed the first? So:
3f food req per citizen
no yield from base plots
+1f from farm (+1 something from all improvements as in base)
Agrarianism gives +1f from from farms
+1f from farm with fresh water with Irrigation
+1f from farm with and without fresh water from Crop Rotation
Resource yields toned down substantially, maybe to 3 yield total unimproved.
So, an Ag civ with Irrigation can get 3f from riverside flat plots, which is sustaining. With Crop Rotation they can kick that up to 4f for riverside and 3f for non-river-side (grass only; plains have to be riverside to farm). Keep in mind that the food basket is not growing in this mod so I only need plots to be sustaining (assuming you have some food resources) to allow huge cities.
There is one fundamental change that changes everything in this mod: that unimproved/non-resource plots are not sustaining. Everything else follows from this, including removal of the growing food basket for city growth, maintenance of wildlands, etc...
I did this initially by increasing food requirement per citizen to 5 while leaving base plot yields mostly unchanged (with farm + Ag + some techs giving you 6f from flat riverside grass or plains). A minor problem here is that I had to drive up resource and improvement food a lot, and then other yield types needed to go up too so they wouldn't look unbalanced. A bigger problem was that the AI was still working those 2f or 1f1p plots. So then I removed all yield from these plots to prevent AI stupidity. But now I have two major changes that accomplish the same thing: the high food req and the no-yield from unimproved/non-resource plots. What if I keep the second but removed the first? So:
3f food req per citizen
no yield from base plots
+1f from farm (+1 something from all improvements as in base)
Agrarianism gives +1f from from farms
+1f from farm with fresh water with Irrigation
+1f from farm with and without fresh water from Crop Rotation
Resource yields toned down substantially, maybe to 3 yield total unimproved.
So, an Ag civ with Irrigation can get 3f from riverside flat plots, which is sustaining. With Crop Rotation they can kick that up to 4f for riverside and 3f for non-river-side (grass only; plains have to be riverside to farm). Keep in mind that the food basket is not growing in this mod so I only need plots to be sustaining (assuming you have some food resources) to allow huge cities.
one loud thinking without looking at your last 2 posts. :
maybe pantheist civs could get much more restrictions on buying culture tiles ?
like
-increased costs vs distance to city
-increased cost of resource tiles
-need to buy the surrounding non-ressource tiles
-can only buy a tile if close to at least 2 owned tiles... (thus your 2nd ring is easily bought but to get 1 tile of the third ring, you need to buy at least 2 tiles of the second ring instead of actual 1...
..etc
going from ag / nothing to pantheist costs you a LOT of culture to compensate the price of tiles between the price you bought it and the price it would have had costed in patheisme
or for pantheisme :
increase culture / science / gold / production output from resources (as compared to AG) but reduce food input and increase maintenance somehow (increasing food basket ? which the ag don't have?).
-costlier, smaller cities, but more efficient on a pop v pop basis.
-but less production capability empire-wide, but better "quality"
maybe pantheist civs could get much more restrictions on buying culture tiles ?
like
-increased costs vs distance to city
-increased cost of resource tiles
-need to buy the surrounding non-ressource tiles
-can only buy a tile if close to at least 2 owned tiles... (thus your 2nd ring is easily bought but to get 1 tile of the third ring, you need to buy at least 2 tiles of the second ring instead of actual 1...
..etc
going from ag / nothing to pantheist costs you a LOT of culture to compensate the price of tiles between the price you bought it and the price it would have had costed in patheisme
or for pantheisme :
increase culture / science / gold / production output from resources (as compared to AG) but reduce food input and increase maintenance somehow (increasing food basket ? which the ag don't have?).
-costlier, smaller cities, but more efficient on a pop v pop basis.
-but less production capability empire-wide, but better "quality"
I think that Pantheism's current power stems not from an inherent brokeness, but from a lot of different outside factors currently present in the mod's current mechanics. In all my games as a Pantheist, my big cities (10-15 population) required a couple of factors to grow so large:
-3-5 food resources, (depending on the type of food resource, and the amount of other non-food resources in the city radius)
-Animal Lore and Woods Lore (to give +2 food to each food resource in the city)
-All available food-increasing buildings for each food resource
The changes on your to-do list actually address each of these factors:
-I was only able to gain so many food resources by purchasing a couple tiles 3 tiles away from my city, in addition to natural cultural growth. With the hike in tile-purchasing prices you proposed, acquiring so many food resources would either A: empty the treasury, or B: take much longer by relying on cultural expansion alone.
-The slowing of policy gain from 10 x culture output / pop to 5x would make policy acquisition much slower. So, it would take longer to get the food bonus from Animal Lore and Woods Lore.
-If buildings are going to cost 2x what they do now, building every single relevant food-increasing building will go from being a somewhat time-consuming but worthwhile investment to impossible. Players will have to pick and choose which buildings are really important, and Pantheist players will probably only go for all food buildings if they really want a large city.
I bet that once all of these changes are made, Pantheism will not be nearly as fast as it is now. It will still get powerful, but by the time it does, Agrarian will be seeing benefits of their own.
I like the current functioning of wildlands (it has a kind of charm to it, knowing you don't need man-made improvements to utilize the land to its fullest), but this method also an interesting idea. I could see it making more sense to new players, and it would make Pantheist improvements take time to build and effort to protect, putting Pantheist civs on a more even playing field with Non-Pantheist civs.
This would be a good addition. It makes sense with Pantheism's current gameplay philosophy, and would provide a noticeable but not overpowered boost. Players could capitalize on it by getting as much territory as possible, or just leave it alone and enjoy the small bonus.
This is a good evaluation of food production. It might be a headache to re-balance all of the buildings/improvements/policies, but reducing the food required to sustain citizens would probably improve the game in the long run. I still haven't played enough games as an Agrarian civ or a Non-Pantheist/Non-Agrarian civ to see food production from every angle, but I feel like a scaled-down food requirement would work well.
Some of these ideas look good, but I feel like retroactively punishing Pantheist civs culturally for opening the policy branch would be both extremely difficult to implement and feel unfair to the player. Perhaps instead of punishing Pantheist civs, the Agrarian opener could get a bonus of 33% per tile, like Tradition has in base CiV? Maybe it could have a policy that halves the cost for buying a tile? The two-adjacent tile purchase rule is a pretty cool angle on city expansion; I'm curious how that would work. I could see it being pretty smooth.
What if Policy civ names required two policies, instead of just the opener? So, instead of there being one civ name tied to "first to Pantheism," there would be three civ names: one for "first to Animal Lore," "first to Woods Lore," and "first to Earth Lore." It'd work the same way for the other Policy branches. That way, Policy civ names would be less common, and there would be more variety to them. Players could go for Agrarianism->Aristocracy and get a name with boosts for gold and pop, or go Agrarianism->Guilds for a specialist boost or Agrarianism->Civil Service for production. That way, there would be different "flavors" of Agrarian/Pantheist/Tradition/etc. civ names.
Pazyryk
Deity
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2008
- Messages
- 3,584
Big changes coming in v6. It's still a couple weeks off...
Victory Screen. The image below is just a template with some some placeholder numbers, but should give you the idea. There is a "score" for each victory type where points are gained for victory-appropriate activities. The mod will take the highest of these to use as your "game score".
Water plots are handled very differently. Borders don't spread in the normal way to water. Instead, fishing boats are used to take ownership of lake or sea resource plots. A lake can be claimed by a fishing boat even if the city is inland or not adjacent to the lake. Coastal cities build fishing or whaling boats to claim sea resources, and this can be done >3 plots from a city depending on techs. Yields for "remote" plots (>3 plots from owning city) are given through harbor and port buildings. Remote plots can be claimed by another city (possibly from another civ) if that city is within 3 plots of the resource. This system gives a very different feel to border expansion:
Camps are no longer built by workers. Instead they are established by Hunters very much like fishing boats above. This can be done "discontinuous" with your civ borders or >3 plots from city (as above) depending on Hunting line techs, with remote plot yields provided via Smokehouse and Hunting Lodge.
Pantheistic civs now need to build workers or slaves to improve resource plots (other than camp or sea resources as explained above). The main differences from Ag are that they receive 0 yield from improvements on non-resource plots and and can't build them. They can build all improvement types on appropriate resources and they can do this on forest/jungle/marsh without removing the feature. So they can't grow huge and will never develop more than a small fraction of all plots, keeping their naturalistic flavor. They still get some policy boosts for resource plots (with or without improvement) and gain mana for total unimproved land owned.
I'm also toning down plot yields across the board. It should function basically as before (non-improved/non-resource plots are still 0 yield so not sustaining) but with lower yield numbers overall (which is good for city screen UI). Unfortunately, this will put us back to square one for balancing. But I think the changes will be well worth it.
Here is the new doc section with new rules and (preliminary) yield values:
Yields, Resources and Improvements
General yield info
Special rules for water plot ownership, fishing and whaling boats, and camps
Improvement yields with tech boosts
farm +1f; Irrigation +1f (fresh water only); Crop Rotation +1f
pasture +1f; Domestication +1f
camp +1f; Tracking +1f
plantation +2g
vineyard +1g1c
mine +2p
quarry +2p
sawmill +2p; Forestry +1p
gatherer's hut +3s
fishing & whaling boats +2f (+4f on lake)
Policy boosts
Agrarianism +1f from farms and pastures
Resource yields with improvement, building & tech modifiers
Some resources have a name on the map that differs from the name of the resulting trade resource. For example, “Grapes” appear on the map but “Wine” appears for the traded resource (indicated as Grapes→Wine below). This is purely cosmetic and has no effect on game rules whatsoever. "Visible" tech and "trade" tech are listed if different. Improvement boosts are only given with the appropriate "trade" tech and are in addition to base improvement yields listed above. All resources provide +1g with market (not shown below). Asterisk (*) means that the yield is a plot boost but is also given via the city building for "remote" plots (beyond 3-plot radius) owned by the city.
Copper (s; Mining; Bronze W.) 3p; mine 1p; forge 2p; mint 1g; armory 1p; factory 1p
Iron (s; Mining; Iron W.) 3p; mine 1p; forge 2p; mint 1g; armory 1p; factory 1p
Mithril (s; Alchemy; Mithril W.) 3p; mine 1p; forge 2p; mint 2g; armory 1p; lab 2s; factory 1p
Naphtha (s; Chemistry) 2p1s; mine 1p; lab 2s; factory 1p
Blasting Powder (s; Chemistry) 2p1s; mine 1p; wrkshp 2p; armory 1p; lab 2s; factory 1p
Gold, Silver (l) 3g; mine 1g; fair 1c; mint 2g; bank 2g; jeweller 2c (+Jewelry)
Gems (l) 3g; mine 1g; fair 1c; apothecary 2s; bank 2g; jeweller 2c (+Jewelry)
Jade (l) 2g1c; mine 1c; fair 1c; jeweller 2c (+Jewelry)
Stone 3p; quarry 1p; stoneworks 1p1c
Marble (l) 2p1c; quarry 1c; stoneworks 1p1c
Salt (l) 2f1g; mine 1f; saltworks 1f1g
Fish, Crabs 4f with fishing boats; harbor 1f*; port 1f1g*
Oysters→Pearls (l) 2f1g1c with fishing boats; fair 1c; jeweller 2c (+Jewelry); harbor 1f*; port 1f1g*
Whale 3f1p with whaling boats; ivorywks 2c (+Ivory); harbor 1f*; port 1f1g*; whalery 1f1p1g*
Deer 2f1p; camp 1f; tnnry 1p (+Leather); smkhs 1f*; htg ldg 1f1g*
Boars 3f; camp 1f; tnnry 1p (+Leather); smkhs 1f*; htg ldg 1f1g*
Small Game→Fur (l) 2f1g; camp 1g; tnnry 1p (+Leather); txt mill 1g1c; smkhs 1f*; htg ldg 1f1g*
Elephants (s) 2f1p; camp 1p; ivorywks 2c (+Ivory); elstk 2p; smkhs 1f*; htg ldg 1f1g*
Mûmakil (s) 3p; camp 1p; ivorywks 2c (+Ivory); elstk 2p; smkhs 1f*; htg ldg 1f1g*
Horses (s) 1f2p; pasture 1p; tnnry 1p (+Leather); stable 2p; abttr 2f; knckry 2p
Cattle 3f; pasture 1p; tnnry 1p (+Leather); stable 2p; abttr 2f; knckry 2p
Sheep→Wool (l) 3f; pasture 1p; tnnry 1p (+Leather); txt mill 1g1c; abttr 2f; knckry 2p
Wheat 3f; farm 1f; grnry 2f; brewery 1c (+Ale); distillery 1c (+Spirits)
Grapes→Wine (l) 3f; vineyard 1g; fair 1c; winery 1g1c; monastery 1c; distillery 1c (+Spirits)
Sugarcane→Sugar (l) 3f; plantation 1f; distillery 1c (+Spirits)
Banana 4f; plantation 2f
Citrus Trees→Citrus (l) 3f; plantation 1f
Spices (l) 2f1g; plantation 1g; fair 1c
Dye, Silkworms→Silk (l) 2g1c; plantation 1g; fair 1c; txt mill 1g1c
Cotton (l) 1p2g; plantation 1g; ctn gin 1p1g; txt mill 1g1c
Incense (l) 2g1c; plantation 1g; fair 1c; monastery 1c
Reagents (s) 3s; apothecary 2s; lab 2s; mage guild 2m
Yew (s) 3p; bowyers 1p1g1c
Resources (non-map)
Timber (s) Timberyard provides 1 per sawmill; also gain 3 for 30 turns after forest or jungle chop
Leather (l) Tannery provides 1 per improved cows, horses, deer or boars
Ivory (l) Ivoryworks provides 1 per improved elephant or whale
Ale (l) Brewery provides 1 per improved wheat
Spirits (l) Distillery provides 1 per improved sugar
Porcelain (l) 1 from Kiln
Jewelry (l) 1 from Jeweller
Victory Screen. The image below is just a template with some some placeholder numbers, but should give you the idea. There is a "score" for each victory type where points are gained for victory-appropriate activities. The mod will take the highest of these to use as your "game score".
Water plots are handled very differently. Borders don't spread in the normal way to water. Instead, fishing boats are used to take ownership of lake or sea resource plots. A lake can be claimed by a fishing boat even if the city is inland or not adjacent to the lake. Coastal cities build fishing or whaling boats to claim sea resources, and this can be done >3 plots from a city depending on techs. Yields for "remote" plots (>3 plots from owning city) are given through harbor and port buildings. Remote plots can be claimed by another city (possibly from another civ) if that city is within 3 plots of the resource. This system gives a very different feel to border expansion:
Camps are no longer built by workers. Instead they are established by Hunters very much like fishing boats above. This can be done "discontinuous" with your civ borders or >3 plots from city (as above) depending on Hunting line techs, with remote plot yields provided via Smokehouse and Hunting Lodge.
Pantheistic civs now need to build workers or slaves to improve resource plots (other than camp or sea resources as explained above). The main differences from Ag are that they receive 0 yield from improvements on non-resource plots and and can't build them. They can build all improvement types on appropriate resources and they can do this on forest/jungle/marsh without removing the feature. So they can't grow huge and will never develop more than a small fraction of all plots, keeping their naturalistic flavor. They still get some policy boosts for resource plots (with or without improvement) and gain mana for total unimproved land owned.
I'm also toning down plot yields across the board. It should function basically as before (non-improved/non-resource plots are still 0 yield so not sustaining) but with lower yield numbers overall (which is good for city screen UI). Unfortunately, this will put us back to square one for balancing. But I think the changes will be well worth it.
Here is the new doc section with new rules and (preliminary) yield values:
Yields, Resources and Improvements
General yield info
- Each citizen requires 3f
- Each citizen produces 1p1s
- The city center plot generates 2f1p minimum (note: I'm removing the 4gpt city maintanence cost)
- A base plot without resource or improvement has no yield at all with the exception of oases (3f) and some natural wonders
- Pantheistic civs cannot build improvements on non-resource plots and get no yield from them; they can build all improvement types on appropriate resources and do this without removing forest, jungle or marsh
- Non-pantheistic civs can improve non-resource plots as follows:
- farms on floodplains
- farms on flat grassland
- farms on flat plains with freshwater
- mines on hills
- sawmills on forests
- sawmills on jungle with Forestry
- fishing boats on lakes (allowed also for Pantheistic civs)
Special rules for water plot ownership, fishing and whaling boats, and camps
- Cultural borders do not spread to water plots in the normal way, and these plots are not owned even if directly adjacent to a city except as described below. Lakes and sea resource plots can be claimed by fishing or whaling boats as described below.
- Any coastal plot with 4 or 5 adjacent land plots is a "natural harbor". A city adjacent to a natural harbor will take ownership of the plot (or plots) and gain a free harbor when they learn Sailing.
- Cities that follow Cult of Aegir will gain ownership of coastal and ocean plots spontaneously (not linked to culture). This ownership is lost if the city loses the cult as majority.
- Fishing and whaling boats are used to simultaneously claim and improve lake or sea resource plots. A city with a lake in its 3-plot radius can build a fishing boat and claim the lake, even if the city is inland and/or not adjacent to the lake. Coastal cities can build fishing or whaling boats to claim and improve sea resources. This can happen beyond the city's 3-plot radius depending on techs known: Fishing (3 plots from city); Sailing (5); Ship Building (7); Navigation (9); Whaling (whales only: 11); Astronomy (required to access any resource in or across ocean if outside your city's 3-plot radius). Any "remote" resource owned by your city (i.e., outside its 3-plot radius) can be claimed subsequently by any other civilization's city that is within 3 plots of the resource. Each sea resource owned at any range provides yields via Harbors (1f per resource), Ports (1f1g per resource) and Whalery (1f1p1g per whale).
- Camps are not built by workers. Instead, they work much like fishing boats above. A city with an unimproved "camp resource" in its range can build the Hunters unit. Hunters improve the nearest applicable resource with a camp, and claim the plot if it is not already owned. This can happen beyond the city's 3-plot radius depending on techs known: Hunting (3 plots from city); Tracking (5); Animal Mastery (7). As above, any "remote" resource owned by your city (i.e., outside its 3-plot radius) can be claimed subsequently by any other civilization's city that is within 3 plots of the resource. Each camp resource owned at any range provides yields via Smokehouse (1f per resource) and Hunting Lodge (1f1g per resource). Camps cannot be pillaged.
Improvement yields with tech boosts
farm +1f; Irrigation +1f (fresh water only); Crop Rotation +1f
pasture +1f; Domestication +1f
camp +1f; Tracking +1f
plantation +2g
vineyard +1g1c
mine +2p
quarry +2p
sawmill +2p; Forestry +1p
gatherer's hut +3s
fishing & whaling boats +2f (+4f on lake)
Policy boosts
Agrarianism +1f from farms and pastures
Taxation +1g from all improvements
Industrialization +1p from all improvements
Pantheism +1c from camps; civilization gains 1m for every 5 unimproved plots owned; zero yield from farms on non-resource plotsIndustrialization +1p from all improvements
Animal Lore +1f1s from Animal resources
Feral Bond +1c1m from Animal resources
Woods Lore +1f1s from Plant resources
Fellowship of Leaves +1c1m from Plant resources
Earth Lore +1p1s from Earth resources
Faerie Lore +1c1m from Earth resources
Feral Bond +1c1m from Animal resources
Woods Lore +1f1s from Plant resources
Fellowship of Leaves +1c1m from Plant resources
Earth Lore +1p1s from Earth resources
Faerie Lore +1c1m from Earth resources
Resource yields with improvement, building & tech modifiers
Some resources have a name on the map that differs from the name of the resulting trade resource. For example, “Grapes” appear on the map but “Wine” appears for the traded resource (indicated as Grapes→Wine below). This is purely cosmetic and has no effect on game rules whatsoever. "Visible" tech and "trade" tech are listed if different. Improvement boosts are only given with the appropriate "trade" tech and are in addition to base improvement yields listed above. All resources provide +1g with market (not shown below). Asterisk (*) means that the yield is a plot boost but is also given via the city building for "remote" plots (beyond 3-plot radius) owned by the city.
Copper (s; Mining; Bronze W.) 3p; mine 1p; forge 2p; mint 1g; armory 1p; factory 1p
Iron (s; Mining; Iron W.) 3p; mine 1p; forge 2p; mint 1g; armory 1p; factory 1p
Mithril (s; Alchemy; Mithril W.) 3p; mine 1p; forge 2p; mint 2g; armory 1p; lab 2s; factory 1p
Naphtha (s; Chemistry) 2p1s; mine 1p; lab 2s; factory 1p
Blasting Powder (s; Chemistry) 2p1s; mine 1p; wrkshp 2p; armory 1p; lab 2s; factory 1p
Gold, Silver (l) 3g; mine 1g; fair 1c; mint 2g; bank 2g; jeweller 2c (+Jewelry)
Gems (l) 3g; mine 1g; fair 1c; apothecary 2s; bank 2g; jeweller 2c (+Jewelry)
Jade (l) 2g1c; mine 1c; fair 1c; jeweller 2c (+Jewelry)
Stone 3p; quarry 1p; stoneworks 1p1c
Marble (l) 2p1c; quarry 1c; stoneworks 1p1c
Salt (l) 2f1g; mine 1f; saltworks 1f1g
Fish, Crabs 4f with fishing boats; harbor 1f*; port 1f1g*
Oysters→Pearls (l) 2f1g1c with fishing boats; fair 1c; jeweller 2c (+Jewelry); harbor 1f*; port 1f1g*
Whale 3f1p with whaling boats; ivorywks 2c (+Ivory); harbor 1f*; port 1f1g*; whalery 1f1p1g*
Deer 2f1p; camp 1f; tnnry 1p (+Leather); smkhs 1f*; htg ldg 1f1g*
Boars 3f; camp 1f; tnnry 1p (+Leather); smkhs 1f*; htg ldg 1f1g*
Small Game→Fur (l) 2f1g; camp 1g; tnnry 1p (+Leather); txt mill 1g1c; smkhs 1f*; htg ldg 1f1g*
Elephants (s) 2f1p; camp 1p; ivorywks 2c (+Ivory); elstk 2p; smkhs 1f*; htg ldg 1f1g*
Mûmakil (s) 3p; camp 1p; ivorywks 2c (+Ivory); elstk 2p; smkhs 1f*; htg ldg 1f1g*
Horses (s) 1f2p; pasture 1p; tnnry 1p (+Leather); stable 2p; abttr 2f; knckry 2p
Cattle 3f; pasture 1p; tnnry 1p (+Leather); stable 2p; abttr 2f; knckry 2p
Sheep→Wool (l) 3f; pasture 1p; tnnry 1p (+Leather); txt mill 1g1c; abttr 2f; knckry 2p
Wheat 3f; farm 1f; grnry 2f; brewery 1c (+Ale); distillery 1c (+Spirits)
Grapes→Wine (l) 3f; vineyard 1g; fair 1c; winery 1g1c; monastery 1c; distillery 1c (+Spirits)
Sugarcane→Sugar (l) 3f; plantation 1f; distillery 1c (+Spirits)
Banana 4f; plantation 2f
Citrus Trees→Citrus (l) 3f; plantation 1f
Spices (l) 2f1g; plantation 1g; fair 1c
Dye, Silkworms→Silk (l) 2g1c; plantation 1g; fair 1c; txt mill 1g1c
Cotton (l) 1p2g; plantation 1g; ctn gin 1p1g; txt mill 1g1c
Incense (l) 2g1c; plantation 1g; fair 1c; monastery 1c
Reagents (s) 3s; apothecary 2s; lab 2s; mage guild 2m
Yew (s) 3p; bowyers 1p1g1c
Resources (non-map)
Timber (s) Timberyard provides 1 per sawmill; also gain 3 for 30 turns after forest or jungle chop
Leather (l) Tannery provides 1 per improved cows, horses, deer or boars
Ivory (l) Ivoryworks provides 1 per improved elephant or whale
Ale (l) Brewery provides 1 per improved wheat
Spirits (l) Distillery provides 1 per improved sugar
Porcelain (l) 1 from Kiln
Jewelry (l) 1 from Jeweller
DharmaMcLaren
Warlord
Here's a suggestion that just struck me - since you've got ale being made from wheat resources, why not replace the current wine resource with "grapes" and have the winery produce a wine resource from, say, grapes, citrus or bananas? It'd mostly be a flavour thing, of course; just a thought.
Pazyryk
Deity
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2008
- Messages
- 3,584
I'll be following this advice, but it will take some time. I have to come up with a lot of new civ names/traits. Also, the GPs will have to be deferred to the 2nd tier policies, so there is a lot of reworking there. Probably won't make v6.
It's a good idea. I've been slowly moving toward a system where map resources look like things you find (unprocessed, like cattle) and then the trade resource is the processed goods (leather). V6 finally has the system where some resources are renamed in the map UI (grapes -> wine, oysters -> pearls, sheep -> wool, sugarcane -> sugar, citrus trees -> citrus, silkworms -> silk) without any real change in game mechanics. It's a UI-only effect and (in the game database) there is only one resource involved for each pair. Using this system, I can't mod it to require a building for the trade resource. However, the mod does have a "conversion" mechanic that happens for elephants/whales -> ivory and cattle/horses/deer/boars -> leather that does require a building. In this case, the map resource and the trade resource are actually two different resources (in the game database). The latter system adds a little bit of Lua overhead. But not too much. It may be worth doing for grapes->wine, with a winery requirement.
But I had never heard of citrus wine until I just now googled it. I didn't see any historical reference. Citrus already gives a big boost for sea exploration anyway. Bananas are sort of lacking though. Perhaps they should be one of the resources that can be converted to spirits by a distillery.
One problem in the base game is that most of the plantation resources are completely interchangeable and therefore forgettable. I can't remember in my last game whether I was a silk empire or a spice empire. This should matter...
DharmaMcLaren
Warlord
Well, you can make alcohol out of pretty much anything that produces sugars when it decays (though I'm not sure if the brewing/distillation methods would be historically appropriate for some things). There are patents for wines made of fish guts (which would otherwise be thrown back into the sea, usually, as a by-product of fish processing) and of mushrooms.
For historical examples of alcoholic beverages made with fruit, there's plum jerkum, which was made in parts of England using the same process as cider fermentation from apples (cider is another good example, incidentally), though I'm not sure when it was first made. Cheap wine has also been produced in Europe from the remnants of grape- and olive-pressing, called pomace.
The Aztecs brewed a kind of wine from the sap of the maguey plant, a sort of herb related to the yucca. Also in the pre-Columbian Americas, pineapples, honey (used to make mead all over the world, also), maple syrup, maize and saguaro sap were used to make various alcoholic beverages.
There's also the traditional Chinese plum wine called meijiu, with similar wines being produced in Korea and Japan, all of them at least a thousand years old.
Banana wine has been made in east Africa for long enough for it to have significance in social rituals. East Africa has also produced banana beers, with a cereal crop added as a leavening agent.
The oldest Indian alcoholic beverage, sura, could seemingly be made of just about anything: fruit (including grapes) as well as various cereals.
It's hard to get any historical information, but there's also rose hip wine, lychee wine, palm wine, and brandy made of various fruit (probably the most certainly historical of the above), and in the modern era, wines are made from very numerous fruit. There's no particular reason they shouldn't be - the same process as is used to make grape wine can be used to make wine from other fruit, with slight adjustments. The addition of sugar from other sources or a yeast nutrient to encourage fermentation is necessary for certain fruit.
I could probably produce a list of fruit that don't require those additives to be used to make wine (e.g. grapes) on request; beer fermentation is, of course, slightly different, and if I'm not mistaken, the variety of organic material that can be used in the distillation of spirits is even more diverse, but the chemical process is more complex and labour-intensive; one thinks of potato vodka, which I'm told is very good. That's an open offer - if there's anything I can do to help (though I'd not be much good for the technical side of things, I'm afraid; I can only really offer research skills) let me know!
I absolutely agree about diversifying the resources, in the sense of distinguishing them from one another, but also in the sense of further expanding the base resources of the game in order to enhance flavour. A lot of the mod's strength, and one of the main reasons I keep playing it despite its current state of incompletion, comes from the diversity it produces: every game is slightly different, and since the civs that are produced are produced circumstantially, their cultural qualities are more fluid - for example, earlier today I founded Aldebaran in a tropical subcontinent rich in citrus (which is what made me think of citrus wine); previously I've founded Aldebaran in a grassland area rich in cotton - presumably the two societies, despite the common focus on plantation agriculture, would be rather culturally different. I enjoy these little emergent details tremendously, hehe.
It would be very interesting to see seafaring pantheistic human pearl-divers who drink maguey sap wine, or Fallen Sidhe llama-herding slavers feared for their war elephants.
A good way of making the distinction between resources "matter" might be to permit the resources to be used in various ways depending on your civilisation's developmental trajectory - citrus could be a dietary supplement for long-range voyages by sea, a cash crop grown to make wine, a staple foodstuff, etc.; cattle could be kept primarily for leather, primarily for dairy products, primarily for meat, etc. - though I recognise that such a system, if it were organised in such a way that each potential bonus precluded the others (no seafaring bonus for citrus wine producers, or at least less of one) would be a lot of work. It would add an interesting resource management element to the game, however, that could maybe eventually be transferable to colonisation, when settlers bring some crops along with them and have to use them differently to adjust to their new environment, or else the colony struggles and fails. This is all very blue-sky, naturally.
I'm rambling endlessly now, but apparently I'm just full of ideas today. Since you're trying (if I understand correctly) to differentiate the pantheism route from the agrarianism one and see that they both have their own strengths and weaknesses, I'd point out that historically that actually has been the case. The most relevant example might be the success of the Greenland Inuit coinciding with the demise of the Greenland Norse, since in that case, the pantheism/theism dichotomy held true along with the hunting-gathering/agriculture one. Hunter-gatherer subsistence is far more sustainable in the long term than most agricultural practices. The intensification of production enabled by agriculture and industry introduces a risk of environmental instability - salination of soils due to intensive irrigation, soil erosion due to deforestation or overgrazing, toxic pollution due to by-product run-off from certain types of mining, forest fires due to unsustainable forestry, etc. - all of which have claimed their victims in the past (the Maya, the Greenland Norse, various Mesopotamian dynasties, various Polynesian societies, and so forth). On the other hand, the possible yields are far, far higher. Base Civ doesn't really model resource depletion at all. I think one of the great strengths of the pantheistic method of subsistence (which is, presumably, a sort of magically enhanced hunting-gathering) would be that it carries no risk of resource depletion, whereas the agricultural/industrial method risks catastrophic resource depletion without careful management.
(Oh, and I seem to be sometimes getting a crash upon the founding of Azzandarayasna that doesn't report anything unusual to the Lua log.)
For historical examples of alcoholic beverages made with fruit, there's plum jerkum, which was made in parts of England using the same process as cider fermentation from apples (cider is another good example, incidentally), though I'm not sure when it was first made. Cheap wine has also been produced in Europe from the remnants of grape- and olive-pressing, called pomace.
The Aztecs brewed a kind of wine from the sap of the maguey plant, a sort of herb related to the yucca. Also in the pre-Columbian Americas, pineapples, honey (used to make mead all over the world, also), maple syrup, maize and saguaro sap were used to make various alcoholic beverages.
There's also the traditional Chinese plum wine called meijiu, with similar wines being produced in Korea and Japan, all of them at least a thousand years old.
Banana wine has been made in east Africa for long enough for it to have significance in social rituals. East Africa has also produced banana beers, with a cereal crop added as a leavening agent.
The oldest Indian alcoholic beverage, sura, could seemingly be made of just about anything: fruit (including grapes) as well as various cereals.
It's hard to get any historical information, but there's also rose hip wine, lychee wine, palm wine, and brandy made of various fruit (probably the most certainly historical of the above), and in the modern era, wines are made from very numerous fruit. There's no particular reason they shouldn't be - the same process as is used to make grape wine can be used to make wine from other fruit, with slight adjustments. The addition of sugar from other sources or a yeast nutrient to encourage fermentation is necessary for certain fruit.
I could probably produce a list of fruit that don't require those additives to be used to make wine (e.g. grapes) on request; beer fermentation is, of course, slightly different, and if I'm not mistaken, the variety of organic material that can be used in the distillation of spirits is even more diverse, but the chemical process is more complex and labour-intensive; one thinks of potato vodka, which I'm told is very good. That's an open offer - if there's anything I can do to help (though I'd not be much good for the technical side of things, I'm afraid; I can only really offer research skills) let me know!
I absolutely agree about diversifying the resources, in the sense of distinguishing them from one another, but also in the sense of further expanding the base resources of the game in order to enhance flavour. A lot of the mod's strength, and one of the main reasons I keep playing it despite its current state of incompletion, comes from the diversity it produces: every game is slightly different, and since the civs that are produced are produced circumstantially, their cultural qualities are more fluid - for example, earlier today I founded Aldebaran in a tropical subcontinent rich in citrus (which is what made me think of citrus wine); previously I've founded Aldebaran in a grassland area rich in cotton - presumably the two societies, despite the common focus on plantation agriculture, would be rather culturally different. I enjoy these little emergent details tremendously, hehe.
It would be very interesting to see seafaring pantheistic human pearl-divers who drink maguey sap wine, or Fallen Sidhe llama-herding slavers feared for their war elephants. A good way of making the distinction between resources "matter" might be to permit the resources to be used in various ways depending on your civilisation's developmental trajectory - citrus could be a dietary supplement for long-range voyages by sea, a cash crop grown to make wine, a staple foodstuff, etc.; cattle could be kept primarily for leather, primarily for dairy products, primarily for meat, etc. - though I recognise that such a system, if it were organised in such a way that each potential bonus precluded the others (no seafaring bonus for citrus wine producers, or at least less of one) would be a lot of work. It would add an interesting resource management element to the game, however, that could maybe eventually be transferable to colonisation, when settlers bring some crops along with them and have to use them differently to adjust to their new environment, or else the colony struggles and fails. This is all very blue-sky, naturally.
I'm rambling endlessly now, but apparently I'm just full of ideas today. Since you're trying (if I understand correctly) to differentiate the pantheism route from the agrarianism one and see that they both have their own strengths and weaknesses, I'd point out that historically that actually has been the case. The most relevant example might be the success of the Greenland Inuit coinciding with the demise of the Greenland Norse, since in that case, the pantheism/theism dichotomy held true along with the hunting-gathering/agriculture one. Hunter-gatherer subsistence is far more sustainable in the long term than most agricultural practices. The intensification of production enabled by agriculture and industry introduces a risk of environmental instability - salination of soils due to intensive irrigation, soil erosion due to deforestation or overgrazing, toxic pollution due to by-product run-off from certain types of mining, forest fires due to unsustainable forestry, etc. - all of which have claimed their victims in the past (the Maya, the Greenland Norse, various Mesopotamian dynasties, various Polynesian societies, and so forth). On the other hand, the possible yields are far, far higher. Base Civ doesn't really model resource depletion at all. I think one of the great strengths of the pantheistic method of subsistence (which is, presumably, a sort of magically enhanced hunting-gathering) would be that it carries no risk of resource depletion, whereas the agricultural/industrial method risks catastrophic resource depletion without careful management.
(Oh, and I seem to be sometimes getting a crash upon the founding of Azzandarayasna that doesn't report anything unusual to the Lua log.)
Pazyryk
Deity
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2008
- Messages
- 3,584
Yes! Someone get's it! (And I haven't even added Pirates yet...)
Any help on adding details is welcome. It's always a balance between historical/realism and gameplay. Everyone says that and then uses the argument to ignore the first part. But the first part is needed to help the player remember the 100s of details that the game rules throw at them. (Of course, by historical/realism what I mean is having some basis in real history, mythology or established fantasy.)
Gameplay and game mechanics do come into play, though. The mod had a problem where too many resources hook up to smokehouse which causes a UI problem and makes it hard to remember what the resources are. V6 simplifies this to "camp resources" only (deer, boars, small game and elephants), which is easy to remember and has game mechanics advantages even if the realism part is compromised a little.
There are still a number of resources that aren't really differentiated yet, so these should get special attention. I've added a number of new buildings to do this, but more wouldn't hurt. Also, interesting game effects linked to specific resources are always possible. These can be via a building or not. (Citrus preventing Scurvy is an example. That one fits another important objective of making sea exploration less trivial.)
DharmaMcLaren
Warlord
Here's some resource differentiation brainstorming:
In the same vein as citrus preventing scurvy, it might make sea exploration less trivial if you added a requirement for a suitable source of cloth: flax, hemp or cotton (the first two needing to be added). The absence or presence of suitable sailcloth has historically been a major determinant in deciding which cultures are capable of seafaring. While most Polynesian islands lacked native hemp, flax or cotton, they did use a cloth called tapa made from the pounded bark of mulberry trees, but I can't find out if they used it as sailcloth - I'd imagine they must have. The fact that they couldn't construct truly watertight vessels (bailing was a constant necessity) suggests to me (in the absence of a book to tell me one way or the other) that they did indeed lack hemp or flax for caulking. On Easter and other islands, they did use bark-derived fibres to make ropes, which makes me think that they are suitable for caulking; if that's the case, you could always add mulberry trees → mulberry bark with a building to convert it to tapa.
Leaving tapa aside, to differentiate cotton from other 'luxury' plantations, and at the same time make sea exploration less trivial, I would:
- either expand it into 'fibrous plants' (to include hemp and flax) or add hemp and flax in addition to cotton.
- make cotton, hemp or flax (or fibrous plants) a prerequisite for the construction of large, sea- and ocean-faring ships.
- perhaps add bonuses with a combination of certain technologies, improvements and resources - e.g., recognising that sail boats are often more useful for fishing than row boats, making fishing boats more productive with hemp/flax/cotton/fibrous plants after the discovery of sailing.
Spice and incense are perhaps the closest things to truly luxury resources - they really have no uniform wholly practical application whatsoever. While certain plants used as spices or incense do have practical uses, I think it would be overspecification to break 'Spices' down into every single spice. However, spice has, in many cultures, had traditional significance, being used around the world in funerary rites, magic and religious ceremony. It might be an idea to distinguish it with a higher culture yield than other luxury resources, though perhaps only under certain conditions - like put the bonus on an associated policy-enabled building, rather than on the resource itself. Here are some ideas:
- Agrarianism → Aristocracy → Noble Tombs (+1 culture from Spices).
- Pantheism → +1 culture from Mounds with Spices; +1 culture from Shrine with Spices.
Of course, the same can be said of incense; if anything its primary use is ceremonial. Many incenses and spices are derived from same plant; ultimately the necessary quality is fragrance and flavour, respectively, which are, of course, detected by very closely related senses. Thus, you could perhaps collapse spices and incense into 'fragrant plants', and then (I'm not sure how this would work, exactly) require the player to decide whether to use them as incense or as spice - both could give additional culture as described above, but perhaps incense could also give divine favour/mana, and spice could give commerce.
In the same vein as citrus preventing scurvy, it might make sea exploration less trivial if you added a requirement for a suitable source of cloth: flax, hemp or cotton (the first two needing to be added). The absence or presence of suitable sailcloth has historically been a major determinant in deciding which cultures are capable of seafaring. While most Polynesian islands lacked native hemp, flax or cotton, they did use a cloth called tapa made from the pounded bark of mulberry trees, but I can't find out if they used it as sailcloth - I'd imagine they must have. The fact that they couldn't construct truly watertight vessels (bailing was a constant necessity) suggests to me (in the absence of a book to tell me one way or the other) that they did indeed lack hemp or flax for caulking. On Easter and other islands, they did use bark-derived fibres to make ropes, which makes me think that they are suitable for caulking; if that's the case, you could always add mulberry trees → mulberry bark with a building to convert it to tapa.
Leaving tapa aside, to differentiate cotton from other 'luxury' plantations, and at the same time make sea exploration less trivial, I would:
- either expand it into 'fibrous plants' (to include hemp and flax) or add hemp and flax in addition to cotton.
- make cotton, hemp or flax (or fibrous plants) a prerequisite for the construction of large, sea- and ocean-faring ships.
- perhaps add bonuses with a combination of certain technologies, improvements and resources - e.g., recognising that sail boats are often more useful for fishing than row boats, making fishing boats more productive with hemp/flax/cotton/fibrous plants after the discovery of sailing.
Spice and incense are perhaps the closest things to truly luxury resources - they really have no uniform wholly practical application whatsoever. While certain plants used as spices or incense do have practical uses, I think it would be overspecification to break 'Spices' down into every single spice. However, spice has, in many cultures, had traditional significance, being used around the world in funerary rites, magic and religious ceremony. It might be an idea to distinguish it with a higher culture yield than other luxury resources, though perhaps only under certain conditions - like put the bonus on an associated policy-enabled building, rather than on the resource itself. Here are some ideas:
- Agrarianism → Aristocracy → Noble Tombs (+1 culture from Spices).
- Pantheism → +1 culture from Mounds with Spices; +1 culture from Shrine with Spices.
Of course, the same can be said of incense; if anything its primary use is ceremonial. Many incenses and spices are derived from same plant; ultimately the necessary quality is fragrance and flavour, respectively, which are, of course, detected by very closely related senses. Thus, you could perhaps collapse spices and incense into 'fragrant plants', and then (I'm not sure how this would work, exactly) require the player to decide whether to use them as incense or as spice - both could give additional culture as described above, but perhaps incense could also give divine favour/mana, and spice could give commerce.
The idea that having access to citrus and cotton cloth would directly effect sea exploration blows my mind. It's an extremely creative way to make the naval side of Civ more interesting. That would be really awesome to see implemented.
This might be a bit too abstract or bizarre of an idea to implement, but I thought it would be cool if owning/importing a certain resource gave positive effects to your units. For example, for every extra copper resource you possess, your units could get a +1% morale boost. Iron could give a +2% bonus, and Mithril a +3% bonus. That way, you could seek out metal strategic resources by aggressively trading and/or expanding to claim them, and they would have a use in combat even if you weren't using all of them. In a similar way, possessing Incense could make the abilities of Priests and Paladins somewhat stronger, or reduce their mana cost, or maybe increase the rate at which they gain exp.
Also, I've been thinking about resources and flavor/historical accuracy in regards to Pantheism and Agrarianism, and I had a theory. Pantheist civs have a special connection to the land; they coexist with the forests and when they work the land, they get the most gain possible from it. Meanwhile, Agrarian civs don't really understand the deepest workings of nature, but they compensate in sheer efficiency by building mines and farms. Their improvements don't make the best use of the land possible, but they provide plenty of raw food and production for their cities to grow huge.
The special connection to nature that Pantheist civs have is represented in-game currently by the fact that their policies grant them special yields from resources: in addition to food, production, and gold, they can gain mana, culture, and science from their improvements. Having these bonuses early on gives them access to more policies and more technologies faster. So, their growth curve theoretically could look something like this:
Improve resources -> Gain bonus mana/science/culture -> Get policies/technologies faster -> Research techs that grant access to buildings that give food/gold/production bonuses -> Gain bonus food/gold/production
Agrarian civs, meanwhile, start with a good amount of food due to their natural farming/pasture bonus, and have the ability to mine all hill hexes, not just resource ones. In addition, they get a decent amount of science and production quickly because they gain more citizens faster. Eventually, they get enough civilians that they can start assigning people to specialist slots, giving them bonus mana/science/culture/whatever else. So, their growth curve theoretically could look something like this:
Improve all tiles -> Get more citizens -> Gain bonus food/production/gold -> Get technologies/basic buildings faster ->Research techs that grant access to buildings with specialist slots -> Gain bonus mana/science/culture
The growth curves here are almost mirror opposites of each other. Obviously, Pantheists would always have a bit of an edge in mana/science/culture, and Agrarians would in food/production/gold likewise, but they both eventually end up with at least decent levels of everything. The two approaches have very different playstyles, but they both end up being fairly balanced against each other (in theory). I have no idea.
This opposite growth curve theory really doesn't lend itself to any new suggestions or ideas at this stage; it was just a thing that I had been thinking about for a while and I wanted to put it down into words.
The new screenshots look tantalizing, and I'm liking the balance changes you've listed.
This might be a bit too abstract or bizarre of an idea to implement, but I thought it would be cool if owning/importing a certain resource gave positive effects to your units. For example, for every extra copper resource you possess, your units could get a +1% morale boost. Iron could give a +2% bonus, and Mithril a +3% bonus. That way, you could seek out metal strategic resources by aggressively trading and/or expanding to claim them, and they would have a use in combat even if you weren't using all of them. In a similar way, possessing Incense could make the abilities of Priests and Paladins somewhat stronger, or reduce their mana cost, or maybe increase the rate at which they gain exp.
Also, I've been thinking about resources and flavor/historical accuracy in regards to Pantheism and Agrarianism, and I had a theory. Pantheist civs have a special connection to the land; they coexist with the forests and when they work the land, they get the most gain possible from it. Meanwhile, Agrarian civs don't really understand the deepest workings of nature, but they compensate in sheer efficiency by building mines and farms. Their improvements don't make the best use of the land possible, but they provide plenty of raw food and production for their cities to grow huge.
The special connection to nature that Pantheist civs have is represented in-game currently by the fact that their policies grant them special yields from resources: in addition to food, production, and gold, they can gain mana, culture, and science from their improvements. Having these bonuses early on gives them access to more policies and more technologies faster. So, their growth curve theoretically could look something like this:
Improve resources -> Gain bonus mana/science/culture -> Get policies/technologies faster -> Research techs that grant access to buildings that give food/gold/production bonuses -> Gain bonus food/gold/production
Agrarian civs, meanwhile, start with a good amount of food due to their natural farming/pasture bonus, and have the ability to mine all hill hexes, not just resource ones. In addition, they get a decent amount of science and production quickly because they gain more citizens faster. Eventually, they get enough civilians that they can start assigning people to specialist slots, giving them bonus mana/science/culture/whatever else. So, their growth curve theoretically could look something like this:
Improve all tiles -> Get more citizens -> Gain bonus food/production/gold -> Get technologies/basic buildings faster ->Research techs that grant access to buildings with specialist slots -> Gain bonus mana/science/culture
The growth curves here are almost mirror opposites of each other. Obviously, Pantheists would always have a bit of an edge in mana/science/culture, and Agrarians would in food/production/gold likewise, but they both eventually end up with at least decent levels of everything. The two approaches have very different playstyles, but they both end up being fairly balanced against each other (in theory). I have no idea.
This opposite growth curve theory really doesn't lend itself to any new suggestions or ideas at this stage; it was just a thing that I had been thinking about for a while and I wanted to put it down into words.
The new screenshots look tantalizing, and I'm liking the balance changes you've listed.
