Beta v4.X - General Discussion

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In 4.03 beta I included the past day's work on the Unofficial Patch. Everything on the top bar is now clickable!

(Well almost everything! I've asked Alpaca for some assistance to link to another mod from the turn timer...)

If you have a Great Person coming up, clicking that section of the top bar will bring up the city where the GP will be born in. If there's no GP points generated in any cities, this section now shows current Great General progress, and clicking it brings up the military overview. In addition, the tooltip for this section has been reorganized to present more information in a way that's also easier to visually scan over at a glance.

Strategic and luxury resources have been combined into one resource section. The end result is visually very similar to before, but is much more optimized on the code side, and now shares a tooltip with uniform formatting. The gem icon now shows surplus luxuries instead of total. Resources completely absent from trade are now grayed out on the tooltip, so it's easier to identify which luxuries you need. Clicking the resource section now brings up the diplomacy overview.

Clicking happiness or golden age sections brings up the economic overview, where the happiness tab is located. I'm not sure how to tell it to focus on a particular tab.

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Today's v4.04 beta build brings you a balancing solution to Research Agreements.

I've seen a common feeling that vanilla RAs are overpowered and Declarations of Friendship underwhelming. I also feel Afforess's Tech Diffusion mod is pretty cool, having included it in a lot of distributions of the mod package. I've combined these concepts into a unified solution.

N% of the combined research of both players adds to your Science every turn. This is active for any two players when the following conditions are met.

Both players must:

• Research the Philosophy technology.
• Be at peace with one another.
• Have an active Declaration of Friendship.

Click to expand...

I have N set to 5% right now and will vary it based on play-testing feedback. All relevant interface elements has been updated to reflect this: the tech panel, tech tree, tech selection popup, top bar, and diplomacy screen. I also fixed a bug where several tech objects were not correctly displaying research overflow in general. Ideally I'd like this effect to be part of research agreements themselves, with RAs available only during a Declaration of Friendship, but since that option is not possible with current tools I settled on the passive bonus method.


This has several advantages over traditional solutions to research agreements:

• Declarations of Friendship have practical value.
• Eliminates the exploit where the "random" free tech can be predetermined by putting research into particular techs.
• Helps players who fall behind technologically. (Conversely, for players far ahead it's still a bare minimum 5% research boost.)
• More flexible than all-or-nothing vanilla agreements, with an effect each turn.
• Most importantly, it avoids penalizing players with an isolated start location on an island or peninsula. These players have less opportunity to form research agreements in the early game, so if costs go up over time, they're hit harder than a player who can make lots of agreements in the early game. Isolated starts will also benefit more from the aid to technologically-backwards civs as described above.

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In 4.05beta the RA bug should be fixed, and citystates start with defensive units.

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Today's v4.06 beta brings two things:

• Maritime city-states now give total 2:5 (friend:ally) split among the largest 5 cities. When captured, looting all the food stores at once gives an immediate 5 population boom split among the largest 5 cities.
• I've implemented the idea described in my first post of the National Wonders thread (also detailed as "Option B" in the archived posts). I'd like to see, through playtesting, if it makes the game more fun to increase our flexibility to specialize cities, while keeping NWs difficult to get for large empires. Details for each national wonder are on their tooltip ingame.

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The 4.08 beta build brings a lot of bugfixes, Maritimes are now 4:8 friendly:ally, and I included one thing I'm experimenting with to see how it works out in playtesting. This is similar to testing we did for a week last month in redesigning trading posts to have adjacency bonuses.

To explore balancing the economic advantage of start locations in the very early game, I delayed the gold bonus on river tiles from the base terrain to the Watermill. Realistically, this portrays how longer and more powerful rivers increase the commercial value of Watermills and Hydro Plants. I reinstated the 1 on city tiles from vanilla, and increased base empire gold +2/turn. With some balancing tweaks they're now almost identical to Lighthouses:



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Today's v4.09 beta build brings a few main things (I released a .08 but it had a small and important bug, which should be fixed in .09).

• Added the "Hover Info" mod by Adam Watkins to the unofficial patch (for compatibility reasons). This shows extra information when you mouse over unit flags.
• The bonus from Maritime city-states now improves over time, giving 1friend|2ally per era. For example, in the Medieval period (third era) Maritimes give 3|6 food, close to the previous value.
• Fixed a bug preventing city tiles from reverting back to vanilla's 1 (previously intended for v4.07).
• Auto-sorting for the production list.

In vanilla the production list is manually sorted by the order units/buildings/etc are listed in the files. Like the manually written tooltips, it's a puzzling design decision, because if effects are added to or removed from buildings or technologies it takes effort to redo the order for everything. It also causes problems for anything added in mods (always went to the bottom).

Now units are automatically sorted by:

1. Noncombat > combat
2. Land > sea > air
3. Tech cost
4. Name

Buildings:

1. Main flavor
2. Tech cost
3. Name

Wonders:

1. National > world
2. Name

If anyone wants me to, I could also set up an option where this categorization can be overridden and everything sorts alphabetically. It's actually rather fun to work with this part of the code.

Here's how I categorized the building flavors, in the order they appear on the list:

• spaceship
• happiness
• expansion, growth, tile improvement, naval growth, naval tile improvement, infrastructure
• production
• military training, offense, defense, recon, ranged, mobile, antiair, naval, naval recon, air, nuke
• city defense
• gold, water connection
• science
• culture
• great people
• wonder
• religion
• diplomacy
• default

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v4.11 beta has the following changes:

• The resource list now show how much is imported from citystates, and deducts these from the displayed "tradable" quantity.
• Promotions now update melee/ranged status as soon as a unit is upgraded, instead of when you end your turn.
• Flag promotions might work more reliably now.
  I've also enabled some debug text for these. If you encounter a situation where promotions appear that should not be there, please open the tuner and end your turn, then copy-paste the tuner output to the Bug Reports thread. Please also include information on the promotions that are displaying incorrectly, the unit type, and owner of the unit. This is a very difficult problem for me to track down so detailed feedback is essential.
• Clicking the turn timer or date on the top bar now opens InfoAddict if you have it installed.
• +1g on sea tiles from a Seaport, and moved +1f on sea tiles from the Lighthouse to the base coast terrain.
• The Maritime food distribution now prioritizes cities that are not on "avoid growth" status.
• Maritime food distribution now correctly calculates the era.
• Issues with erroneous "turns remaining" for techs might be fixed.
  If you encounter a situation where a tech shows negative turns remaining, please post your current and required research for the tech in the Bug Reports thread.
• Various other bugfixes I can't quite remember.

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v4.13 beta brings these changes:

• I reverted all National Wonders back to vanilla cost values. The main reason for abandoning the earlier experiment is I couldn't figure out a good way to deal with different map sizes with our current tools.
• National wonders now require the prereq building in 80% of cities. This requirement must be met when construction is started (or resumed), and is not interrupted each time a city is added to the empire (but the cost does go up as normal).
• Harbors
  • Removed resource bonuses
  • Returned maintenance cost back to vanilla 3/turn
  • +50% for sea units (was 25%)
  • +15xp for sea units (was 0)
• +15xp for air units with an Arsenal.
• Removed local resource requirement for Stables and Forges.
• +1 on Iron from a Forge.
• Reinstated 2 on Chinampas.

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v4.14 beta brings the following changes:

Thalassicus said:

The GetYieldModifierTooltip function incorrectly returns growth modifiers in the string, which are not yield modifiers. The GetYieldModifierTooltip function is hardcoded so this bug cannot be fixed directly, though we can write a new function to replace the bugged version.

Second, the GetYieldTooltipHelper function in InfoTooltipInclude.lua is bugged. It should display:

1. Base yield
2. Base modifiers
3. Surplus yield (<Base * YieldMod> - Consumed)
4. Surplus modifiers
5. Total surplus

It incorrectly displays #3 for #1 and does not show #3, which is significant if Floating Gardens are built in a city.

Click to expand...

• Fixed the above bug with vanilla city view's display of food income. It now splits display of all yields into base, base modifier, surplus, surplus modifier, and total. Only relevant information is displayed. This was rather complicated, and took about a day to finish rewriting some rather jumbled vanilla code, so please point out any errors.
• Reverted Smokehouse cost back to vanilla 100 (was 80).
• 100 Watermill (was 120).
• Moved the Camp improvement to Archery to improve the value of the Archery tech. Reduced the cost of the Trapping tech.
• Maritime city-states (MCS) now give a fixed total of 1:friend/2:ally food per era. This total food is split among all cities, with each city's allocation based on its status (capital gets more, razing cities get none, etc). The food each city receives is detailed when you hover the mouse over the city's food total in the city view.

For more information on how maritime city-state food distribution works, please see this post in the citystate balance thread.

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v4.15 beta brings:

• Arabia's trait now increases trade route income by 10% (was +1 per city). Overall income is about the same in an empire of five 10 cities and five 5 cities, with less gold in a more ICS-oriented empire, and more gold in a highly populated empire.
• Knight tech now requires only Civil Service and Horseback Riding.
• Cavalry tech swapped with Fertilizer.
• Aqueduct and Baths of Trajan moved to former 'trapping' tech, which is now Sanitation. Sanitation is a Classical Era tech focusing on population growth and the economy, unlocking Aqueducts, Baths, and Villages. Civilopedia text:

The earliest evidence of urban sanitation was seen in the Indus Valley civilization (2600&#8211;1900 BCE). In the cities of Harappa, Mohenjo-daro and Rakhigarhi, individual homes or groups of homes obtained water from wells. From a room that appears to have been set aside for bathing, waste water was directed to covered drains, which lined the major streets.

Roman cities and Roman villas had elements of sanitation systems, delivering water in the streets of towns such as Pompeii, and building stone and wooden drains to collect and remove wastewater from populated areas. One example is the Cloaca Maxima (built c.600 BCE) draining into the River Tiber in Rome.

Click to expand...

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v4.16 beta:

Implemented a fix for a submarine bug BomberEscort pointed out in this thread here.

• +1 sight range for Submarines and Nuclear Submarines.
• To see submarines, destroyers now must be adjacent to the submarine or attempt to move onto its hex.
• Also, I fixed a bug with maritime citystate food distribution preventing them from working in 4.15.

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v4.17 beta:

• Reverted Destroyers back to 5-tile sight range for revealing subs.
• Reverted river-gold bonus on watermills back to 21 (on the building), and reduced maintenance back to vanilla.
• Reverted 1 on freshwater TPs/Villages back to Sailing.
• Reverted 1 on freshwater Mines back to Engineering (left the Lumbermill bonus on Machinery).

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Continued in post #3


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Hey (Th)al(l)!

Personally I'm still running on 1.0.0.17. Because they discriminate mac users...
And my wi-fi on the laptop is broken, so that doesn't help either... ><


Anyway, Thall, what version(s) of Civ 5 is this compatible with all your mods.
And, for me, more importantly, what mods can I run?
Is there a mod for lower updates, with only the "liked" package of new stuff in the patch?

And, what runs along side with it?

Any answers would be welcome

Currently I'm using a/the list you recommended in some post a while ago:

Balance City Development v9
Balance Combat 16 beta
Balance Diplomacy 4 beta
Balance Leaders v8
Balance Policies v8 beta
Balance Research v5
Balance Terrain Improvements v14 beta
Thal's utilities v1 beta
Unoffical patch III 29 beta

Atilla's mod v10
Barbarian & ranged xp mod v1 beta
Better Japanese city names v1 beta
CityWillard v3
Copasetic UI tweaks v3 beta
Dale Kents map of the Worlds v2
DiploWillard v6
Emigration v2 alpha
Harder Free tech v2
Hover info v1 alpha
Info addict v7
Liberation Boost v1
R.E.D modpack v5
Satellites reveal map v2
Specialized barbarian units v2
Tech diffusion v2 alpha
Tech overflow v1


Edit:
Just downloaded all the latest versions of everything, but I run into one problem. My city interface is messed up.
The left part is mixed up (queu where production should be, settlers in a non-existant queu), and the right part is empty, only "manual specialists" is still correct

-Do you have a simple idea what is wrong? Or, what mod I should downgrade?

I'm not really sure with that version of CiV, to be honest. I know some of those mods were integrated into the core game in later versions. However, I've uploaded my backup folder below for you to look through. Many of the folders in it contain a complete set of mods, maybe you'll find a version that works well with the version of CiV you have.

http://www.7-zip.org/

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CQON2ZQJ



Beta Version History (Continued)
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v4.18 beta

• Reverted rivers and gold per city / per empire back to 4.0 numbers.
• Swapped 1 and 1 bonuses on coasts and lighthouses.
• Added to the unofficial patch (for compatibility reasons):
  • Sneak's custom notifications system.
  • Alpaca's DiploCorner.
  • Morlark's "Smarter TechTree Pipes" bugfix.
• Capturing cities now displays a notification on the right side of the screen instead of at the center.
• Disabled several files to isolate the diplomacy freeze bug.
  • Trade deals display of turns remaining.
  • Diplomacy window display of who's protecting citystates.
  • Ingame explanations of how declarations of friendship work.

Figuring out what's causing the freeze at the diplomacy screen is my top priority right now. I disabled a bunch of files that might cause the issue, but it's very difficult to test for this bug directly. If anyone encounters the freeze bug in v4.18beta or later (or plays a game successfully without encountering the bug) please post about it.

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v4.19 beta

• Fixed a bug with food display on the production panel (it now rounds decimal figures).
• Updated SaveUtils to v8, which should solve some caching warnings.
• Due to adding "Smarter TechTree Pipes" in 4.17, I realized I needed to move some techs around (the links now curve at the left instead of the right). No actual tech prerequisites were changed, this is purely a display adjustment. Hopefully the new arrangement makes it easier to follow tech progression.

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v4.20 beta

• More work on the resource display. Colors should show properly now, and luxuries no longer show a "used" entry.
• Increased Maritime food to 2/3 friend/ally per era.
• Reduced Maritime capture bonus to 4.
• +25% cost for Longswords' tech.
• 1/turn Hoplite maintenance (same as Spearmen).

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v4.21 beta

• Fixed some bugs with maritime food distribution.
• Aztec sacrificial captives are now sent to the lowest-culture city to be sacrificed (adding to that city's culture).

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v4.22 beta

This is my first pass at compatibility with the next major vanilla patch. In addition to dozens of small miscellaneous changes, there's two big ones I've described below.

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The developers seem to be following a trend of deflating gold numbers. Since release we've seen:

• Reduced income (less powerful trading posts)
• Reduced expenses (lower building maintenance)

Overall this means revenue should be about the same. I've adapted these changes and the cumulative difference from vanilla to this mod will roughly be:

• Buildings: cheaper to purchase and maintain
• Units: more expensive to purchase and maintain
  (this brings both categories to about an equal purchase modifier)
• More gold on coasts and water

To adapt the balance mods to this in v4.22 I've done:

• 1 villages (vanilla)
• Reduced purchase costs
• Reduced unit maintenance costs

I also redesigned the purchase modifier on tooltips so it's easy to tell, at a glance, how cost-efficient things are. It now shows c5gold:/) as a percent multiplier. So for example:

• 100 with 200% multiplier = 200 purchase cost
• 050 with 400% multiplier = 200 purchase cost

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I shifted the resource yield bonuses on buildings to more closely match post-patch vanilla. The places they moved my bonuses to actually make a lot of sense.

• Sheep/Cow &#8594; Stable
• Fish &#8594; Lighthouse
• Smokehouse is now Granary again
• Spice/Sugar/Banana &#8594; Granary
• Wheat &#8594; Granary

Differences:

• Deer &#8594; base improvement
• Kept luxury bonuses on the Temple instead of techs.

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v4.24 beta

• The clock now remembers if you change it between 12/24hr time formats.
• I've re-organized the mod package to clearly distinguish between CiVUP and TBM. Each one has a distinct goal:
  • CiV Unofficial Patch: minimal gameplay impact like BUG from Civ 4, fixing bugs, missing information or critical problems with the game and its user interface.
  • Balance mods: increase the choices and interesting decision-making opportunities available to the player by tweaking the power of various strategies.

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v4.25 beta

• Added a potential bugfix for the diplomacy screen freeze (thread here).

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v4.26 beta

• Added a fix for the research bug (turns until complete showed incorrect numbers, research went faster than indicated with a DoF active).
• 40% from Bazaars (was 35%).
• Siege units rebalanced:
  • Weaker against land units.
  • Stronger against fortified units and cities.
  • Promotions more important.

Siege units had the v2 numbers in this mod, and now are v3. The bold-faced numbers are change from vanilla. For example, siege units are ~40% weaker vs normal units compared to vanilla, and ~60% stronger vs cities.



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v4.27 beta

• Added a fix for a bug with citystate capture notifications.

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v4.28 beta

• Fighters/bombers now use aluminum. (Cumulatively, all aircraft now use aluminum while modern land/sea units use oil.)
• Size of aluminum deposits increased.
• Land units deal half damage to ships.
• Submarines can get the Scouting and Survivalism promotion paths. Rank III of either one unlocks Supply (like Targeting III does).

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v4.29 beta

• Added translations in Deutsch for building tooltips (thanks Berkan!)
• Included WWGD as part of the Balance - Leaders component (at Sneaks' request).

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v4.30 beta

• Added a temporary partial fix for starvation notices appearing when a city is relying on maritime food to sustain itself. The notification no longer appears, and I'm trying to figure out how to hide the sound effect + glow that occurs on the city. This notification display is coded in the c++ side of things so it's difficult to get rid of or change.

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v4.31 beta

• Internal code optimizations.

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v4.32 beta

• Fixed some critical bugs from the code changes in 4.31. If you noticed stuff not having any effect in .31, try .32 and see if it works.

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v4.33 beta

• Fixed a bug where promotions were not correctly converting melee <> ranged status when units are upgraded.

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Thalassicus said:

I'm not really sure with that version of CiV, to be honest. I know some of those mods were integrated into the core game in later versions. However, I've uploaded my backup folder below for you to look through. Many of the folders in it contain a complete set of mods, maybe you'll find a version that works well with the version of CiV you have.

Click to expand...

I've been testing and trying. And, I came to a conclusion!

The unofficial patch is the only one currently not playable with my version.
Is there a previous version of it, that you still have?
I used 29 beta, and now I have the most current one. And this mod is causing problems.

I'm gonna plough through you're back up's though. Thanks for the trouble. And they really need to update for the mac, this is annoying. It's not getting patched, and now we can't even use the mods anymore :O

All the previous versions of the unofficial patch should be in that backup.

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In 4.03 beta I included the past day's work on the Unofficial Patch. Everything on the top bar is now clickable!

(Well almost everything! I've asked Alpaca for some assistance to link to another mod from the turn timer...)

If you have a Great Person coming up, clicking that section of the top bar will bring up the city where the GP will be born in. If there's no GP points generated in any cities, this section now shows current Great General progress, and clicking it brings up the military overview. In addition, the tooltip for this section has been reorganized to present more information in a way that's also easier to visually scan over at a glance.

Strategic and luxury resources have been combined into one resource section. The end result is visually very similar to before, but is much more optimized on the code side, and now shares a tooltip with uniform formatting. The gem icon now shows surplus luxuries instead of total. Resources completely absent from trade are now grayed out on the tooltip, so it's easier to identify which luxuries you need. Clicking the resource section now brings up the diplomacy overview.

Clicking happiness or golden age sections brings up the economic overview, where the happiness tab is located. I'm not sure how to tell it to focus on a particular tab.

Today's v4.04 beta build brings you a balancing solution to Research Agreements.

I've seen a common feeling that vanilla RAs are overpowered and Declarations of Friendship underwhelming. I also feel Afforess's Tech Diffusion mod is pretty cool, having included it in a lot of distributions of the mod package. I've combined these concepts into a unified solution.

N% of the combined research of both players adds to your Science every turn. This is active for any two players when the following conditions are met.

Both players must:

• Research the Philosophy technology.
• Be at peace with one another.
• Have an active Declaration of Friendship.

Click to expand...

I have N set to 5% right now and will vary it based on play-testing feedback. All relevant interface elements has been updated to reflect this: the tech panel, tech tree, tech selection popup, top bar, and diplomacy screen. I also fixed a bug where several tech objects were not correctly displaying research overflow in general. Ideally I'd like this effect to be part of research agreements themselves, with RAs available only during a Declaration of Friendship, but since that option is not possible with current tools I settled on the passive bonus method.


This has several advantages over traditional solutions to research agreements:

• Declarations of Friendship have practical value.
• Eliminates the exploit where the "random" free tech can be predetermined by putting research into particular techs.
• Helps players who fall behind technologically. (Conversely, for players far ahead it's still a bare minimum 5% research boost.)
• More flexible than all-or-nothing vanilla agreements, with an effect each turn.
• Most importantly, it avoids penalizing players with an isolated start location on an island or peninsula. These players have less opportunity to form research agreements in the early game, so if costs go up over time, they're hit harder than a player who can make lots of agreements in the early game. Isolated starts will also benefit more from the aid to technologically-backwards civs as described above.

Wow, this sounds very interesting. An actual reason to DoF. Have the original research agreements been removed? I commented out that line in the Philosophy tech to disable them, but I'd like to uncomment it again if it's no longer necessary. Shouldn't open borders also be required?

What do you think about also bringing trade (gold) and cultural exchange benefits into a DoF? Until now I automatically decline almost every DoF or open borders request. But these changes could make this part of the game actually interesting and worthwhile.

I disabled the same line under Philosophy to do this, since we can't remove the free-tech part of regular RAs yet (with current tools). Due to this restriction I replaced the active system with a passive-bonus one.

There's lots of options with this... economic returns... interacting with/without open borders, and so on. This is a basic starting point I can modify it based on feedback.


======
On a side note, I did extensive testing under regular peacetime, but not under actual DoF situations. Since DoFs were added after those tools were created, I don't think it's possible to use the worldbuilder or debugging tools to force two players to have a DoF. After finishing my testing I added the 2 lines of code that should in theory check for that. Please post results of playtesting to check this is working.

When hovering the mouse over the top bar's technology section, the extra science from the automatic RAs should show up on the tooltip like regular RAs (once you and at least one DoF partner have Philosophy).

Thalassicus said:

I disabled the same line under Philosophy to do this since we can't remove the free-tech part of regular RAs yet (with current tools). It's basically like automated RAs to work around that particular issue.

Click to expand...

So I'm not sure if I got it right... Basically, the old "RA Tech" was removed to disable the old system and now, if you got an DoF (and both have Philosophy) you automatically get the extra science? So Signing a DoF automatically "signs" the new RA System? And it is for free too (so no signing cost)?

And to the System itself... If player1 has 300 and player2 100 , then both get (300+100)*5% = 20 added to the maximum (like the CS-Ally 33% bonus from that one policy) science?

If I'm right, the general idea sounds cool (but the auto-signing is not so cool ^^ hope they soon release the necessary tools).

Right, it's a passive system just because there's no way to disable the free tech component of vanilla RAs yet. Ideally I'd like to make it actively signed like vanilla RAs, though I feel that even in the short-term, the advantages outweigh this temporary drawback.

I suspect the difficulty of signing DoFs with lots of leaders will counterbalance its free nature. In general I find in vanilla it was easier to sign RAs with people than get them to agree to a DoF, so the overall effect is probably reduced. I can't say for certain without playtesting. If testing shows it's too weak or too powerful I can adjust things up or down, and add effects like a gold surplus or drain, or interactions with things like open borders.

You're right in how it works similar to the citystate policy. On average, each DoF will increase research by 10%.


=================
There was a bug in 4.04beta, if you'd like to continue existing savegames then open this file:
Unofficial Patch\UP_General.lua

and change these two lines:
to this (add ID at the end):
Then save the file.

This is great, look forward to trying it out!

In 4.05beta the RA bug should be fixed, and citystates start with defensive units.

So i love the idea but i have a concern. Mainly the more DOF's you have the more science you have. On huge maps with lots of civs this could throw off the balance because you have more civs to DoF with, without any gold cost. Also if ppl aren't spending the gold on this RA's they will have more to rush buy things, not sure if this might throw off balance.

Would it be possible to in addition to gaining science when conditions are met that a negative gold per turn was added? sort of like maintenance on keeping the information flowing between your civs. This might help keep the gold balanced and also make it so taht you dont just automatically Dof with everyone you can with no downside

N% of the combined research of both players adds to your Science every turn. This is active for any two players when the following conditions are met.

Click to expand...

I really dislike this, particularly when combined with the permanent diplo penalty for being denounced by someone you have a DoF with.

This biases the game far too much in favor of peaceniks and against warmongers. War needs to be a viable strategy, but here you could have a 30%+ science advantage from being a peacenik player.

Its easy to maintain DoFs when you don't start a war with anyone, but can become very difficult if you start playing as a warmonger.

It also speeds up the overall rate of tech research, which is already fast enough.

I prefer the RA mechanic to this one. It would be reasonable to have something where you could only sign an RA if you had a DoF. But in the absence of the ability to do that, I'd prefer the standard system.
Free research just for the DoF is a bad thing. There's a reason why they got rid of tech trading. This change seems to be circumventing that.

This is a very large mechanic change, beyond the scope I think of what a balance mod should do.

On average, each DoF will increase research by 10%.

Click to expand...

Way too much.

Thalassicus said:

I can adjust things up or down, and add effects like a gold surplus or drain

Click to expand...

rhammer640 said:

Would it be possible to in addition to gaining science when conditions are met that a negative gold per turn was added?

Click to expand...

@Ahriman
The diplo modifiers are addressed in WWGD and the personality changes.

In vanilla CiV, pursuing a conquest strategy has clear advantages in everything, I think this is well-established by the community:

• AI weaknesses (not very good at tactical combat)
• Population (more cities)
• Production (more tiles worked)
• Gold (puppets inherently focus on gold)
• Army size (to do the conquering)
• Science (population 8594; science 8594; tech lead in Civ 5)
• Policies (puppets do not increase costs yet generate culture)
• Great People (same GP costs but with more specialists)
• Army quality (more population 8594; science 8594; tech lead 8594; advanced troops)

I'm shifting it towards Civ 4's balance:

Conquest

• AI weaknesses
• Population
• Production
• Gold
• Army size

Building

• Science (research agreements, and puppet contribution reduced)
• Policies (puppet culture reduced)
• Great People (national wonders, and more valuable annexation means less puppets, so more of a GP cost increase)
• Army quality (if builders can finally achieve a tech lead)

This makes a lot of sense to me. 4x games are about more than just warfare. I know it's personal preference, but for me, if one aspect of the theme significantly outweighs the others (explore/expand/build/conquer) I just don't find the game as enjoyable. I like tradeoffs between one strategy and another.

Civ 5's warmonger focus is also a noticeable change from Civ 4's more balanced approach, and some people do like it, there's nothing wrong with that. I've enjoyed quite a few games like StarCraft focused on warfare. If you do prefer Civ 5's conqueror focus that's an understandable opinion. However, many things I do are designed to shift Civ5 to the balanced approach of Civ 4. It's been an important motivating force of these mods from the start.

Have you done any testing or calculations to verify one free technology every 30 turns is less than a 10% tech rate increase? Consider fewer players are willing to agree to a DoF than a vanilla RA, as well. It would be helpful to have some empirical data to determine how to shift things up or down.

If you can come up with an alternative solution that solves all these problems with one simple and feasible answer, I'm willing to hear it:

• Conquest results in a tech lead
• DoFs have little value
• The free tech exploit, and overpowered free tech beelines in general
• Avoid penalizing isolated starts

One free tech per 30 turns? Hah! I often have rolling free techs, 3-5 RAs outstanding. Conservatively let's say one free tech every 10 turns.

Edit - On large+ mapsizes

I'm just comparing for a single pairing between two players, for simplicity's sake. Map size doesn't matter since both the free-tech and constant-bonus systems scale with # players.

Does anyone have an active game saved from the medieval era or later, and if so what's your empire science per turn? I haven't really looked too closely at my research rate in the past to compare.

4x games are about more than just warfare. I know it's personal preference, but for me, if one aspect of the theme outweighs the others (explore/expand/build/conquer) I just don't find the game as enjoyable. Civ 5's warmonger focus is a noticable change from Civ 4's more balanced approach, and some people like it. If you do prefer Civ 5's conqueror focus that's an understandable opinion. I've enjoyed quite a few games like StarCraft focused on warfare. However, many things I do are designed to shift Civ5 to the balanced approach of Civ 4. It's been an important motivating force of these mods from the start.

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4X games are about more than warfare, but they are also always in part about warfare.

You have made *many* changes in this mod that makes conquest less profitable; puppet nerf, boosts to buildings, cities harder to conquer, etc.

I think that locking warmongers potentially permanently out of 30%+ *free* research boosts is too much of a bias against conquest.

to verify the statement this is a faster tech rate than one free technology every 30 turns

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I don't see how this is a relevant question. In vanilla or this mod before this mechanism was added, you don't get free technology; you have to pay gold for it. [And a fair amount of gold with your other balance changes (varying by era). I think you had managed to balance RAs pretty well.]

This is the core of my objection; you're adding free tech here, not tech-for-gold.
And unless you're disabling research agreements, its not an either/or issue.

If you can come up with an alternative solution that solves all these problems with one simple answer, I'm willing to hear it:
DoFs have little value
The free tech exploit, and overpowered free techs in general
Avoid penalizing isolated starts
Conquerors have both higher quantity and higher quality troops

Click to expand...

I don't find that DOFs have little value.
I find with DoFs, as long as they are part of an intelligent diplomatic strategy that:
a) People I have DoFs with don't attack me, as long as I consistently agree to my requests.
b) People I have DoFs with don't seem to get pissed off by things (settling, taking cities of mutual enemies) that would annoy them if we didn't have a DoF.
Further diplomacy engine tweaks could probably emphasize this.

I don't see why isolated starts being weaker is a problem - not every start position needs be equal (this has been the case in every Civ game). And an isolated start means you have more space to expand.
I don't understand why you think a Conqueror has higher quantity of troops; they can have more troops, but they get that by building troops rather than infrastructure. They don't get those troops for free simply through conquest. Indeed, conquest normally costs you some troops, so a conqueror has a smaller army given their hammer investment in soldiers than a player who invests the same hammers but doesn't lose troops in war. And its easier to preserve your army in a defensive war than an offensive war.

And they don't necessarily have higher quality troops; a builder can get by with a small army if they want, and can easily construct or buy their troops in a city with barracks+armory and eventually military academy, whereas a conqueror who is building units in most of their cities will find it hard to produce experienced units because barracks + armory is a big investment to make in lots of cities.
To the extent that you get higher quality troops by fighting; sure, but that's as it should be.

The free tech exploit from RAs is a bug. Bugs should be fixed.
Free techs in general are too powerful, but I think you did a decent job in balancing them with scaling gold costs. If you still don't like the free tech nature, then use the same kind of fix that you used for great scientists, where the RA gives X beakers to whatever tech you are currently working on.
So, invest Z gold now, wait 30 turns, get X beakers later. Where X ~3Z or so?

I agree with Ahriman, there should be some cost involved with the research bonus. DoFs need to be cancellable in this scenario though.