7/12 Release - CP (v.5) and CBP (v. 55.1)

Alright, I've got a new one coming down the pipe. Codename: Classical Jeans.

New features:

• Added era-contextual messages for cultural influence over a civ (or a civ's cultural influence over you). No more blue jeans and pop music in 80AD. (I'm excessively excited about this)
• Added modifiers to all elements of the cultural influence reward system, including adding gold to trade routes and modifying the bonuses of each tier of reward (siege % reduction, spy est. rate, science from trade, etc.).
• Happiness system now based on a system of global yield averages of all major civ cities. Only mod-controlled variable is the % increase rate for yields based on the number of techs you have researched.
• Additional work done on naval escort model, including greater attempts by the AI to find escorts, and better understanding by the AI to maintain escorts.
• Embarked units now receive a % of their base combat strength as additional embarked defense. This value can be tweaked in the CP, and is largely designed to help the AI with naval invasions and/or pathfinding failures.
• AI values its original three cities much more, and will be much less likely to trade them away for peace.
• AI will not make peace if it is in an offensive or almost-victorious war stance. This should cut down on the number of erratic peace deals made by the AI.
• AI will avoid specialists if its empire is unhappy, and will respond more quickly to sources of unhappiness in cities by changing city specialziations.
• Specialists once again create unhappiness. Full specialists are 1:1 unhappiness, whereas unemployed specialists are at a 2:1 ratio.
• Barbarians now spawn regularly from conquered cities (CSD)
• AI values regarding capitulation and peace treaty offers less generous - the AI will not offer cities or other important assets (such as vassalization) so quickly.
• AI's procilivity to desire maps and/or offer vassalization generally reduced (Civ IV DF thing).
• Test Trait modifications for Indonesia, Brazil, Byzantium and Attila - see mod for details
• Dropped unhappy war % penalty from 2% to 1% per unhappiness point
• LUA and tooltips/text for happiness system adjusted for new system.
• Tooltips for trade routes show new sources of gold due to influence.

This new version is still being tested for stability - I will be releasing it very soon (probably around 11pm ET on 7/12.

Cheers,
G

The latest version is now uploaded. Will be on the github repo shortly.
G

uh... I thought this was supposed to be 55.1? the zip is named v55

It is (look in mod details in mod window).
G

Gazebo said:

It is (look in mod details in mod window).
G

Click to expand...

Still, the file name being the same as the last version confused me a bit!
Moved the changelog to your repo, and updated the latest version.

Awesome. Yeah, Modbuddy doesn't like decimals in versions, and I don't want to get ahead of the dll's version.
G

Can you share the new influence messages? I don't think I'll ever see them in a game.

Sure! I threw them together pretty quickly – I'm sure we could do better ones if we wanted.

Gazebo said:

Sure! I threw them together pretty quickly – I'm sure we could do better ones if we wanted.

Code:

<Language_en_US>
		<!-- Human over AI -->		
		<Row Tag="TXT_KEY_GENERIC_INFLUENTIAL_ON_AI_CLASSICAL_1">
			<Text>Your culture has overawed my coarse and barbaric people. Our culture will be ground to dust under the weight of your mighty influence, however others surely remain who will contest your dominance.</Text>
		</Row>
		<Row Tag="TXT_KEY_GENERIC_INFLUENTIAL_ON_AI_RENAISSANCE_1">
			<Text>I lament that the traditions of my ancestors are being swept away by the powerful force of your influence. Is this the beginning of an age of cultural darkness, or are you the bringer of enlightenment?</Text>
		</Row>
		<Row Tag="TXT_KEY_GENERIC_INFLUENTIAL_ON_AI_MODERN_1">
			<Text>We were once a proud, independent culture, but now all that remains of our former glory rests on dusty shelves. Someday you too will join us in the archives of history...but today is not that day.</Text>
		</Row>
		<!-- AI over Human -->
		<Row Tag="TXT_KEY_GENERIC_INFLUENTIAL_ON_HUMAN_CLASSICAL_1">
			<Text>I am happy to see that you have finally abandoned your miserable, barbaric customs. Do not despair, as it is far better for a culture to die by choice than by the sword...though yours, perhaps, may succumb to both.</Text>
		</Row>
		<Row Tag="TXT_KEY_GENERIC_INFLUENTIAL_ON_HUMAN_RENAISSANCE_1">
			<Text>Do not fear the new way of life that has enthralled your people. You will soon forget all about the backwards and rude traditions you laughably called 'culture.'</Text>
		</Row>
		<Row Tag="TXT_KEY_GENERIC_INFLUENTIAL_ON_HUMAN_MODERN_1">
			<Text>There is little space now for the diverse traditions of bygone eras. Unfortunately for you, it seems that your culture has been pushed out. Don't worry, I plan on dedicating a large section of our new antiquities museum to you.</Text>
		</Row>
	</Language_en_US>

Click to expand...

Made a little GitHub PR to improve some of the grammar!

Quick question: what is the reasoning on specialists producing unhappyness?
Unemployed citizens I can understand, but specialists is a bit beyond my grasp thematically.

The global average thing might be a bit back-breaking for the players on the back of the track in any given field, and might favorise tall vs wide, no?
I will have to play to be sure about this!

Great work otherwise!
Looking forward to the new leader bonuses, the buildings affecting yields policies and beliefs.

If there are policies that would reduce specialist unhappiness and cost later (freedom), then I don't see the problem.

Anastase Alex said:

Quick question: what is the reasoning on specialists producing unhappyness?
Unemployed citizens I can understand, but specialists is a bit beyond my grasp thematically.

The global average thing might be a bit back-breaking for the players on the back of the track in any given field, and might favorise tall vs wide, no?
I will have to play to be sure about this!

Great work otherwise!
Looking forward to the new leader bonuses, the buildings affecting yields policies and beliefs.

Click to expand...

Well, specialists produced unhappiness in the vanilla system, so it isn't necessarily 'new' (I disabled it earlier, and then re-enabled it for this version). The rationale is that 'specialists' are urban workers (versus those who work in the fields/mines/etc. around your city), thus 'urbanization' causes overcrowding and unhappiness. That's the theme, anyways.

I'm also going to implement a policy function (perhaps also building/trait/belief functions too) that makes all cities (or just the capital) get 'x' number of specialists without an unhappiness penalty. So there will be ways to offset this.

Regarding favoring tall v. wide, the key is that the global averages are considered via a yield-per-pop function, not a 'total city yield v. total global average' function. In other words, the global average looks at what you are producing per-citizen in a city, thus small cities are just as likely (or unlikely) to produce unhappiness as big cities depending on how well they are performing for their size. This has a few interesting gameplay aspects, as stacking lots of science/culture in one city, while beneficial, does inflate the global average yield per-pop, thus causing problems with illiteracy and/or poverty in other cities. Think of it this way: if one city is your most prosperous/smartest city, other cities in your empire, and around the world, are going to lament that they don't have the living standards of that city. Thus, unhappiness.

The one 'check' I do, however, make it that the number of cities increases the global average per citizen by x%, where x is the number of cities in your empire. A small drift upwards, but one that ever-so-slightly makes a large empire (6+ cities) a bit more unhappy.
G

Lukeroge said:

Made a little GitHub PR to improve some of the grammar!

Click to expand...

The ellipses are like that on purpose: the game doesn't understand to keep '...' together, so if they aren't attached to a word, you occasionally get situations like this:

I am happy to see that you have finally abandoned your miserable, barbaric customs. Do not despair, as it is far better for a culture to die by choice than by the sword.
..though yours, perhaps, may succumb to both.

Click to expand...

See the problem? Yes, I'm aware it is grammatically incorrect, but it is necessary.
G

Very much a long shot, but any chance the game can handle the unicode character for an ellipsis "…" (U+2026)? I highly doubt it but it might be worth a try.

No idea - we could test it, though I'm not all that concerned about the space.
G

Working on a new build of the current version that tweaks city specialization (the AI is acting a bit odd occasionally) and adds in the 'x Specialists in a city do not cause unhappiness' function for policies. I've also removed all remaining 'free happiness from x buildings' policies, replacing them with new, system-appropriate bonuses. Lastly, I separated out the 'Universal Healthcare' policies and gave each ideology a unique policy (renaming them for Order and Autocracy). Hooray. More details forthcoming once I make sure I didn't break anything.

Cheers,
G

Alright, new build posted (CP 55.2, CBP 5.1). Adds specialist policy function (see ideology policies like Capitalism for more), fixes some city specialization oddities, and ups tech rate % for global yields.
G

Gazebo said:

Alright, new build posted (CP 55.2, CBP 5.1). Adds specialist policy function (see ideology policies like Capitalism for more), fixes some city specialization oddities, and ups tech rate % for global yields.
G

Click to expand...

I literally started a game 20 minutes before this

I'm not playing on the most most recent version...just the most recent one

A few things:

1) AIs are much stringier with their deals on luxuries. They are only budging on 2 GPT for a luxury now.

I wouldn;t mind that, assuming they are just reflecting that luxuries give less now...however, they refuse even an even trade of luxuries.

To get one of theirs they are asking for like 4 resources and X GPT, even my friendly AIs are asking for 3 resources.


2) For the new happiness system, it might actually a be tad on the light side right now. I know you just made an adjustment to it so it might change it, but right now I have made all of my cities completely happy in all areas and I haven't even built any zoos.

I can say conquest is a lot less swingy now. I took over two cities early game, made them puppets. I took some unhappiness but not a crazy amount, built my courthouses and a few collesseums, everything was right as rain just as I would hope


3) A concern of mine, the time per turn seems to be increasing with these recent updates. I'm used to getting long turn times by modern, but now I'm getting 5-6 sec turns in classical/medieval.

Its not where it was at the end of CEP...but its a concerning trend.

1.) Odd. I'll look at it – I didn't mess with the Deal AI regarding luxuries this time, but perhaps there's a knock-on effect somewhere. In the test games I saw, the AI was still offering 4-6 gold per luxury...

2.) That's honestly a good thing, in that it is easier to make it more challenging than try to take away difficulty. The tech % bump I made should help that a bit. We'll see. A building nerf may be in order. Could you give me more specifics on your game? Difficulty, score, civ, policies, etc.?

3.) Really? I fixed a couple of nasty loops that were causing performance drops in the last version, and I noticed a small drop in turn times. What size map are you playing, and/or number of civs? Also, other mods? On a standard game, with standard civ amounts, I usually see around 1-3 second turn times until airplanes show up. Even with my changes to the rebase-dance, turn times double there because of unavoidable AI oddities.

All that said, the happiness system is going to be a bit slower than before, because it is doing a global average. This is the last big 'overhaul' feature we have to add from scratch, so any new additions from here on out will either be modular or a revision of what already exists.

G