Another History (design phase / initial test)

This is the initial balance version for my Dynamic History project

At this moment, it's only a small balance component for Historical Spawn Date, but I will add new components step by step.

Historical Spawn Date and the Brave New World expansion are required.

This thread is to discuss the early balance, and the design of the larger picture.

I'll edit the first post to add more information on what's planned for diplomacy, combat and economy later.

download here

Looking good, will try tomorrow. Any chance you could update all of your mods through steam, just noticed most of mine were outdated haha.

Heres my list of mods that I think work well with your setup GED (if anyones interested):

RFE Colonies
RFE Gameplay Enhanced
City Limits
Emigration
Era Settlers
Historical Religions
RED Modpack
34 Civ DLL

Here are my ideas for spawn dates, based on BNW and RFE Unofficial Exp. Just adapt them as you can I was based on the date of "foundation" of the culture and not the empire. For instance, indonesia begins when the Mahajapit appeared and not after the colonial empire of netherlandas. It was the time when the "indonesian country" and culture (even with another name) appeared:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Apsz--Hvqa-_dEI3WFEtMDNqRm5HRkU1cG42WUlVbUE&output=html

I hope this Project gets released soon. For RFE I would like to use an adapted version (New Concepts, Buildings, Units and Civilizations) but the Philosophy is pretty much the same. Thank you Gedemon for this Awesome Project (a lot of Effort and Lua, it seems (plus some awesome SQL)

Gedemon, do you want us to post all of our problems (or balancing issues) that are related to all of your mods in here?

If so, here's what I got so far:

(The only thing I have edited out thus far is the unique palace thing that boosts future civs production and other things, it creates an unfair advantage, in my eyes, for them. I've also messed around with the spawn dates, more so like lp04s)

The ancient civs use their first settler and that's it. I am to 1000 AD and I haven't seen a single 2nd city out of them while Rome has 2, France 3, Celts 2, Carthage 3, Persia 2, ect ect. I think settler cost could be toned down a bit.

What determines how many free settlers a civ gets as well?

Sweden still has every plot full of barbarians, why is this?

That's all I can think of atm, if any updates are released I will start a new game and report back. Thanks!

Design Philosophy

Civilization 5 is a very good came since G+K, with solid mechanisms, but it still lacks an important element of the Civilization franchise: Immersion.

I'm not talking about "realism", that's not the point, I'm talking about the feeling that you are leading your people through different ages, to "pass the test of time".

In civ5 you're competing against AI leaders that try to simulate a human opponent in MP. And they fail at it, of course.

Don't get me wrong, there is no problem in AIs trying to win the game, but there is one in AIs trying to win the game in a way they can't, and make you remember in the process that you're playing a game, not leading a Civilization.

So that's my goal here, transform the nice hexagonal chessboard of civ5 into a tool allowing you to simply write Another History.

(reserved)

Acoustic said:

Gedemon, do you want us to post all of our problems (or balancing issues) that are related to all of your mods in here?

Click to expand...

The other mods components are designed to work alone, without changing much of the balance and gameplay to be compatible with most mods.

So problem with each of them should be adressed in their own thread.

But balance and problem that arise when they are used together with this mod should be posted here.

Acoustic said:

(The only thing I have edited out thus far is the unique palace thing that boosts future civs production and other things, it creates an unfair advantage, in my eyes, for them. I've also messed around with the spawn dates, more so like lp04s)

The ancient civs use their first settler and that's it. I am to 1000 AD and I haven't seen a single 2nd city out of them while Rome has 2, France 3, Celts 2, Carthage 3, Persia 2, ect ect. I think settler cost could be toned down a bit.

Click to expand...

(that for example should be posted in the HSD thread, because you're not using the balance component of Another History)

This could also be linked to the fact that you use the raging barbarians option, the AI may loss more Settlers to them than in my test game. (Egypt had 3 cities, Babylon 4 in middle age)

Acoustic said:

What determines how many free settlers a civ gets as well?

Click to expand...

Starting units are in HistoricalSpawnDates.sql

Acoustic said:

Sweden still has every plot full of barbarians, why is this?

Click to expand...

raging barbarians.

it make sense to use it to balance early civs advantage, but that's not the way I plan to balance that here.

now, I may add an option to caps the number of converted units.


and thanks, here or on the other threads, I'll need reports

So just to check, all these mods are in the 'pack':

- Historical Spawn Dates
- Custom Start
- Revolutions
- Cultural Diffusion
- R.E.D. Modpack
- YNAEMP
- YNAEMP City States for G+K

I'll try a game with all of these tonight. Greatly looking forward to it!

As an aside, consider putting some of the cosmetic tweaks of CivUP in your pack - I find it so frustrating playing with the remarkably poor vanilla topbar and tooltips.

EDIT: Was looking through the Revolutions thread and saw this post:

Gedemon said:

That's one of the reason that make me pondering the merging of all parts of the project into one using the DLL (much faster) instead of Lua. The con being that you'll have to follow my choice of game design and can't use the mods separately anymore without taking the time to recompile a DLL for each part (or each combination) of the mods.

Click to expand...

Is this still possible?

I'm waiting for BNW before starting any DLL related work.

I've also attached a small mod I'm using in my games in the third post of this thread, it makes the Huns "OCC", they can't build settlers at all, but all their melee units gain a bonus against cities.

Are you sure the tech diffusion you included in this is working? I see no "you have gained so and so science from people" thing whenever the next turn is up?

Question, what does create balance table from unique palace mean? Does that means civs will be different even more?

Acoustic said:

Are you sure the tech diffusion you included in this is working? I see no "you have gained so and so science from people" thing whenever the next turn is up?

Click to expand...

It's working in my current game.

How far behind are you in tech ?

MrL567 said:

Question, what does create balance table from unique palace mean? Does that means civs will be different even more?

Click to expand...

Different, but not "more" as the default traits are removed. Late spawning civilizations get bonuses in production, science, culture, etc... to compensate with ancient civs already developed.

Semi far. I am England so its not too terrible considering I spawned in Medieval.

look at the lua log, and post it here if there are errors in it please.

only 2 errors:

[9303.275] Runtime Error: [string "C:\Users\Sam\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's..."]:1112: attempt to index local 'connectorcontrol' (a nil value)
[9303.275] Runtime Error: Error loading C:\Users\Sam\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\MODS\InfoAddict (v 19)\Lua\InfoAddictCivRelations.lua.

not related.

search for "TechDiffusion" in the log, it should tell you if it's working.

[10854.643] TechDiffusion: -------------------------------------
[10854.643] TechDiffusion: Tech Diffusion...
[10854.658] TechDiffusion:
[10854.658] TechDiffusion: Techs Behind Lead Team: 1
[10854.674] TechDiffusion:
[10854.674] TechDiffusion: Techs Behind Lead Team: 0
[10854.705] TechDiffusion:
[10854.705] TechDiffusion: Techs Behind Lead Team: 4
[10854.721] TechDiffusion:
[10854.721] TechDiffusion: Techs Behind Lead Team: 0
[10854.736] TechDiffusion:
[10854.736] TechDiffusion: Techs Behind Lead Team: 2
[10854.752] TechDiffusion:
[10854.752] TechDiffusion: Techs Behind Lead Team: 3
[10854.783] TechDiffusion:
[10854.783] TechDiffusion: Techs Behind Lead Team: 4
[10854.799] TechDiffusion:
[10854.799] TechDiffusion: Techs Behind Lead Team: 1
[10854.814] TechDiffusion:
[10854.814] TechDiffusion: Techs Behind Lead Team: 5
[10854.814] TechDiffusion: 0.75 teamExp From England
[10854.814] TechDiffusion: 1.5 teamExp From Greece
[10854.814] TechDiffusion: 0.75 teamExp From Carthage
[10854.814] TechDiffusion: 1.5 teamExp From Rome
[10854.814] TechDiffusion: -1 teamExp From France
[10854.814] TechDiffusion: 0.25 teamExp From The Ottomans
[10854.814] TechDiffusion: 0.75 teamExp From Russia
[10854.814] TechDiffusion: 1.5 teamExp From Germany
[10854.814] TechDiffusion: 0.75 teamExp From The Celts
[10854.814] TechDiffusion: Free Beakers for Sweden for TECH_THEOLOGY: 11
[10854.814] TechDiffusion: 0.75 teamExp From England
[10854.814] TechDiffusion: 1.5 teamExp From Greece
[10854.814] TechDiffusion: 1.5 teamExp From Rome
[10854.814] TechDiffusion: -1 teamExp From France
[10854.814] TechDiffusion: 0.25 teamExp From The Ottomans
[10854.814] TechDiffusion: 0.75 teamExp From Russia
[10854.814] TechDiffusion: 1.5 teamExp From Germany
[10854.814] TechDiffusion: Free Beakers for Sweden for TECH_METAL_CASTING: 10
[10854.814] TechDiffusion: 0.75 teamExp From England
[10854.814] TechDiffusion: 1.5 teamExp From Greece
[10854.814] TechDiffusion: 1.5 teamExp From Rome
[10854.814] TechDiffusion: 0.75 teamExp From Russia
[10854.814] TechDiffusion: Free Beakers for Sweden for TECH_COMPASS: 11
[10854.814] TechDiffusion: 0.75 teamExp From England
[10854.814] TechDiffusion: Free Beakers for Sweden for TECH_EDUCATION: 9
[10854.814] TechDiffusion: Total Free Beakers for Sweden: 43 in 4 tech(s)
[10854.845] TechDiffusion:
[10854.845] TechDiffusion: Techs Behind Lead Team: 2
[10854.861] TechDiffusion:
[10854.861] TechDiffusion: Techs Behind Lead Team: 4
[10854.877] TechDiffusion:
[10854.877] TechDiffusion: Techs Behind Lead Team: 1
[10854.892] TechDiffusion:
[10854.892] TechDiffusion: Techs Behind Lead Team: 2
[10854.908] TechDiffusion:
[10854.908] TechDiffusion: Techs Behind Lead Team: 3
[10854.939] TechDiffusion:
[10854.939] TechDiffusion: Techs Behind Lead Team: 4
[10854.955] TechDiffusion:
[10854.955] TechDiffusion: Techs Behind Lead Team: 4
[10854.970] TechDiffusion:
[10854.970] TechDiffusion: Techs Behind Lead Team: 2
[10854.986] TechDiffusion:
[10854.986] TechDiffusion: Techs Behind Lead Team: 3
[10855.017] TechDiffusion:
[10855.017] TechDiffusion: Techs Behind Lead Team: 2
[10855.033] TechDiffusion:
[10855.033] TechDiffusion: Techs Behind Lead Team: 2
[10855.048] TechDiffusion:
[10855.048] TechDiffusion: Techs Behind Lead Team: 1
[10855.064] TechDiffusion:
[10855.064] TechDiffusion: Techs Behind Lead Team: 3
[10855.095] TechDiffusion:
[10855.095] TechDiffusion: Techs Behind Lead Team: 4

The game never notified me of such and didn't seem as though I was getting any free techs either.

you don't, you're not far behind.

in your current game only Sweden is getting free