New Version - January 17th - CP 66.13.6, CBP 13.4.9

Bugs:

• Fixed bug that gave Askia the railroad bonus early
• - Adjusted Askia river UA to trigger at Wheel
• Fixed YNAEMP bugs (should load as custom map, but do not use resource-related advanced options).
• Fixed Complete Kill bugs.

Changes:

• Indonesian UA change: Every time you found a city, Cloves, Pepper, or Nutmeg will appear next to or under the City. No Unhappiness from Isolation.
• Indonesian UB change: Candi: Unique Indonesian Garden replacement. +2 Food from Citrus and Wine. A Clove, Pepper, or Nutmeg Resource will appear near or under this City when built. +25% Great People generation in this City, and +2 Faith for each World Religion that has at least 1 follower in the city. Unlike the Garden, the Candi does not have to be built next to a River or Lake.
  
• Adjusted Gold purchase cost down a bit more.

DLL Additions:

Added five new functions to the DLL:

• -- Creates a resource unique to this civ (i.e. Indonesian Candi) in the territory around the city. To make this work with a civ, you'll need to create a new resource modelled on the Indonesian resources and assign them to the civ. Value is indicative of the number of resources that will be granted.
• ALTER TABLE Buildings ADD COLUMN 'GrantsRandomResourceTerritory' integer default 0;
  
  
• -- Allows you to define a building needed by this building (similar to BuildingClassNeeded, but can use UBs) -->
• ALTER TABLE Buildings ADD COLUMN 'NeedBuildingThisCity' text default NULL;
  
  
• -- Grants resource to improvement
• ALTER TABLE Improvements ADD COLUMN 'ImprovementResource' text default NULL;
  
  
• -- Grants obsolete tech to build (tie to improvement below for function) - obsoletes a build at a certain tech
• ALTER TABLE Builds ADD COLUMN 'ObsoleteTech' text default NULL;
  
  
• -- Grants obsolete tech to improvement (tie to build above for AI) - lets the AI know that a build is obsoleted
• ALTER TABLE Improvements ADD COLUMN 'ObsoleteTech' text default NULL;
  
  
• AI given rudimentary training to use improvement updates (uses flavors from resources to weigh them) and to understand obsoleted improvements (AI will value those improvements less once the tech is researched that obsoletes them). More training may be applied in future if needed.

Version will be online at 10pm EST.

G

Not one hundred percent sure of the Candi-change but the rest looks solid.


Btw if I may drop some suggestions about the freedom ideology, because I actually managed to finish a game yesterday .
First of all, the tenent that gives you 4+ yields on your Great tile-improvement, I feel like it would be more fitting if the Customhouse recieved half food, half gold from it instead of all gold as it currenty is. Mostly because customhouses isn't all about gold anymore.
Second, the tenent adding +1 food to farms, plantations and pastures(I think) should probably add its bonus to some of the UIs aswell. Terrace farm is the first that comes to mind but some of the others would probably make sense aswell.
And by that logic the tenent buffing mines/quarries in order should probably affect some UIs aswell, I honestly have no idea if there is some improvementbuffing tenent in autocracy because I still haven't had the opportunity to try the tree, but if there is that one should probably be included aswell.


Btw did you fix the issue that causes crashes when starting games on shuffled western europe?

Funak said:

Not one hundred percent sure of the Candi-change but the rest looks solid.


Btw if I may drop some suggestions about the freedom ideology, because I actually managed to finish a game yesterday .
First of all, the tenent that gives you 4+ yields on your Great tile-improvement, I feel like it would be more fitting if the Customhouse recieved half food, half gold from it instead of all gold as it currenty is. Mostly because customhouses isn't all about gold anymore.
Second, the tenent adding +1 food to farms, plantations and pastures(I think) should probably add its bonus to some of the UIs aswell. Terrace farm is the first that comes to mind but some of the others would probably make sense aswell.
And by that logic the tenent buffing mines/quarries in order should probably affect some UIs aswell, I honestly have no idea if there is some improvementbuffing tenent in autocracy because I still haven't had the opportunity to try the tree, but if there is that one should probably be included aswell.


Btw did you fix the issue that causes crashes when starting games on shuffled western europe?

Click to expand...

I wasn't aware of a bug regarding shuffled western europe.

The Candi is pretty strong now, but the caveat is that your UA exists on the land around you, so losing a city hurts more. A fair trade-off, I think. Also, the fact that the Candi/UA resource drop is 'random' (i.e. one of the three each time) makes it harder to game Indonesia's UA.

I'll look at the GP improvement and other improvement buffs - the UI inclusions make sense, as does the GP change (I haven't messed with the ideologies in some time).
G

Gazebo said:

I wasn't aware of a bug regarding shuffled western europe.

Click to expand...

I think I mentioned it in the bugreport thread while you were talking about nyaem or whatever that map is called.

The Candi is pretty strong now, but the caveat is that your UA exists on the land around you, so losing a city hurts more. A fair trade-off, I think. Also, the fact that the Candi/UA resource drop is 'random' (i.e. one of the three each time) makes it harder to game Indonesia's UA.

Click to expand...

There were a lot of arguments going on around the Cothon, UB for Carthage in CEP because it gave you a copy of 'Tyrian purple'(I think), people were complaining that it was too powerful, others that it was too dependant on mapsize and so on. And that was just one unique luxury, this is three different ones.
And while I personally see what you're planning to do with the one luxury for settling and one for building the candi, I can also see how this would make people feel like the civ is less unique.

I might aswell explain how I'm thinking or this won't make sense. The problem with a UA and a UB giving the same ability is that it makes both of them seem less unique, it makes you feel like the UB is just an extension of the UA. Kinda like how how the old slinger felt less unique just because its power came from the UA, not the UU itself. Or how keshiks and SotL made the mongolian/english UA seem boring.

I can see your point in how locking both the UA and the UB into it makes 3 unique luxuries seem less overpowered while also making massexpansion seem less of a necessity. I just don't really know how it translates ingame and atm I'm too tired of indonesia to try it out .

I'll look at the GP improvement and other improvement buffs - the UI inclusions make sense, as does the GP change (I haven't messed with the ideologies in some time).

Click to expand...

One problem with it is that it might force a specific ideology on a civ, which isn't really something you want. I'm not really sure of the best course of action would be.


Edit: also the 'bug' with the overly cheap goldrushbuy-thing is back. I haven't seen any notes about it so I'll assume it's a bug.

Gazebo said:

Bugs:

• Fixed YNAEMP bugs (should load as custom map, but do not use resource-related advanced options).

Click to expand...

Thank you! Hail to the King Gazebo! I works, I can load the map!

Funak said:

I think I mentioned it in the bugreport thread while you were talking about nyaem or whatever that map is called.


There were a lot of arguments going on around the Cothon, UB for Carthage in CEP because it gave you a copy of 'Tyrian purple'(I think), people were complaining that it was too powerful, others that it was too dependant on mapsize and so on. And that was just one unique luxury, this is three different ones.
And while I personally see what you're planning to do with the one luxury for settling and one for building the candi, I can also see how this would make people feel like the civ is less unique.

I might aswell explain how I'm thinking or this won't make sense. The problem with a UA and a UB giving the same ability is that it makes both of them seem less unique, it makes you feel like the UB is just an extension of the UA. Kinda like how how the old slinger felt less unique just because its power came from the UA, not the UU itself. Or how keshiks and SotL made the mongolian/english UA seem boring.

I can see your point in how locking both the UA and the UB into it makes 3 unique luxuries seem less overpowered while also making massexpansion seem less of a necessity. I just don't really know how it translates ingame and atm I'm too tired of indonesia to try it out .


One problem with it is that it might force a specific ideology on a civ, which isn't really something you want. I'm not really sure of the best course of action would be.


Edit: also the 'bug' with the overly cheap goldrushbuy-thing is back. I haven't seen any notes about it so I'll assume it's a bug.

Click to expand...

I reduced gold costs for this build. They should scale well enough. We'll see.
G

Estebanium said:

Thank you! Hail to the King Gazebo! I works, I can load the map!

Click to expand...

Hooray!
G

Gazebo, this is a completely terrible place to ask this completely irrelevant question, but since this question needs to be answered before creating a thread about it would be relevant I'll ask it here anyways.

How much of a control do you have over worker automation and citizen automation? I mean the easier workaround would just be to manually control everything(which I do most of the time) but from my understanding the AI pretty much uses basic automation, which at the moment is completely horrible.
So again how much control do you have over it, and if you have any how hard is it to change it=

Funak said:

Gazebo, this is a completely terrible place to ask this completely irrelevant question, but since this question needs to be answered before creating a thread about it would be relevant I'll ask it here anyways.

How much of a control do you have over worker automation and citizen automation? I mean the easier workaround would just be to manually control everything(which I do most of the time) but from my understanding the AI pretty much uses basic automation, which at the moment is completely horrible.
So again how much control do you have over it, and if you have any how hard is it to change it=

Click to expand...

That depends on what you want the workers to do, and what you feel they are or are not doing correctly.

G

Gazebo said:

ALTER TABLE Builds ADD COLUMN 'ObsoleteTech' text default NULL;

ALTER TABLE Improvements ADD COLUMN 'ObsoleteTech' text default NULL;

Click to expand...

GREAT!!!! I thought about this for a long time! You could use some of the Leugi's UIs for ancient improvements!

Gazebo said:

ALTER TABLE Buildings ADD COLUMN 'NeedBuildingThisCity' text default NULL;

Click to expand...

Clever. Personally I'm not a fan of "Uniques" mechanic, but this entry could open interesting scenarios...

Gazebo said:

ALTER TABLE Buildings ADD COLUMN 'GrantsRandomResourceTerritory' integer default 0;

Click to expand...

Fair enough, indonesian resources needed a physical space in the world.
(also, this open new scenario for further modding too...)

Gazebo said:

AI given rudimentary training to use improvement updates (uses flavors from resources to weigh them) and to understand obsoleted improvements (AI will value those improvements less once the tech is researched that obsoletes them). More training may be applied in future if needed.

Click to expand...

Are you referring to 'Improvement_ValidImprovements' table and 'RequiresImprovement' entry in the 'Improvements' table?
What do you mean by "flavors from resources"?

Gazebo said:

ALTER TABLE Improvements ADD COLUMN 'ImprovementResource' text default NULL;

Click to expand...

What else can I say? LINK

Cheers, Ulixes

Gazebo said:

That depends on what you want the workers to do, and what you feel they are or are not doing correctly.

G

Click to expand...

I guess I'll just write it here then, I was hoping of making a seperate topic, but I wouldn't want to create one only to realize it was impossible in the first place.

First of all, when you're at negative happiness cities automatically enters "avoid growth/food" mode and seem to prefer normal unimproved foresttiles (1hammer 1 food) over farmed wheat (4 food 1 hammer). With the current happiness-system that doesn't really seem to be necessary. Even choosing food-focus in the cityoption doesn't seem to actually change this. Had a city working 1 food marsh-tiles over 6 food lakes, in my current game forexample.

If possible adding a mix between food and production focus for cities would be nice, as it is now cities sometimes chooses to work gold-tiles over production when you're foodfocused (something you rarely want).

This kinda brings me to my third point, tradingposts just feels too bad, workers prioritize them everywhere over improving actual resources(those that aren't luxuries or strategic, cows, wheat and so on), unless you manually control your workers, they are going to prioritize building tradingposts outside your actual cityrange (4 or 5 tiles from the city) to improving actual useful tiles. Some resources never seems to be improved at all actually, I purposely left a deer tile unimproved in a game I played as Egypt, just keeping all my workers at automation and by the time I won a culturevictory in 1950 the tile was still unimproved. I've had simular situations with bison aswell. Normal mines seems to be really far down the prioritylist aswell as I've had cities with 10+ unimproved hills by modern era.
Workers also seem to replace landmarks with farms/tradingposts for no reason at all (mostly in puppeted cities from what I've noticed).


Personal dream would be if one managed to create a system where I can quickselect what improvements i want in some places and then have automated workers carry it out. Something like a constructionqueue would be nice aswell, but that would be an unrealistic idea.


Feels like I should mention this again, but I really feel like tradingposts are underwhelming, I mostly just don't want to build them, ever.

Well, I have another nitpicky question about the Iroquois

How come the Mohawk Warrior was moved back to Metal Casting? Is it because strategic resources are more valuable now, making the Mohawks a better UU via the transitive property? Iron is still needed to upgrade eventually, but I would understand the reasoning.

If this is the case, would it be too weird to push them back even further and make them a proper replacement for the Longswordsman? They could be available at the same time (Steel) as the Longswordsman and have equal strength, but with the forested advantage and no iron still. No iron for a Longswordsman is especially sensible since iron will never be required for unit upgrades.

Edit: Just realized the Longhouse is also at Steel. I don't like the idea of making Steel an all-important tech for the Iroquois nation, so I (mostly) take back my suggestion. I still think Mohawks replacing the Swordsman and coming at Metal Casting is a bit too weak, though.

joosegoose25 said:

Well, I have another nitpicky question about the Iroquois

How come the Mohawk Warrior was moved back to Metal Casting? Is it because strategic resources are more valuable now, making the Mohawks a better UU via the transitive property? Iron is still needed to upgrade eventually, but I would understand the reasoning.

Click to expand...

In short, it was probably a mistake They were supposed to be early longswordsmen (from what I remember) now they are just pushed back swordsmen with the same mediocre promotion.

joosegoose25 said:

If this is the case, would it be too weird to push them back even further and make them a proper replacement for the Longswordsman? They could be available at the same time (Steel) as the Longswordsman and have equal strength, but with the forested advantage and no iron still. No iron for a Longswordsman is especially sensible since iron will never be required for unit upgrades.

Edit: Just realized the Longhouse is also at Steel. I don't like the idea of making Steel an all-important tech for the Iroquois nation, so I (mostly) take back my suggestion. I still think Mohawks replacing the Swordsman and coming at Metal Casting is a bit too weak, though.

Click to expand...

Yeah I don't exactly remember how Gazebo had it planned out (I'm pretty sure however that this was a mistake ).
I have Four suggestions for the Mohawk and I will state them now.
1. Keep them as they are(statvise) and move them to bronzeworking(Unique), makes them an early rushforce that unlocks early and doesn't require iron (Synergy )

2. Make them Longswordsmen replacements(Samurai, Berserker, Maori Warrior)
that unlocks at metalcasting(Berserker, Maori Warrior). Problem with this is a lot of overlapping.

3. Keep them as Swordsmen that unlocks later and are more powerful(promotion and CS-vise), the beauty of this is that you can pick any tech to place them at, and since I'm no expert on native americans or when/how they did things so I'm not going to even attempt to place them on a tech. If they are placed late enough one could have them skip the longswords-step when upgrading them so that they can go straight to muskets.

4. Make them Longswordsmen replacements that unlock later in the techtree, and are more powerful(promotions and CS), make them skip the musketman(that step is really minor in the first place, I mean samurai lose 4 CS when upgraded) step and go straight to fusiliers. Once again you can pick the tech that suits the Iroquois best.


On a sidenote I'd also suggest moving the Longhouse to metalcasting, mostly per personal preference (which kinda makes suggestion 2. seem silly(which it already is)
Personally I would Make the UU unlock at Bronzeworking and the UB at metalcasting, but that's just me.

I'd post on the newest version, but these are things I noticed from this version. I've made a couple other comments in other threads today (re: mounted bowman and unit upgrades), but here are some mostly random thoughts:

1) Circus seems beyond pointless unless you have Ivory, and even then it's probably not worth building unless you have multiple copies. -2 maintenance, and only +1 culture if you have no Ivory, that's a net negative. If you have one copy of Ivory, then it essentially becomes spending 200 hammers to gain +1 culture at no gold cost.

This may be intentional, but I was under the impression that the CPP attempts to make all buildings worth having if given infinite time, etc, so I'm mentioning it.

2) I'm not sure I like the balance between siege and ranged units atm. Take the Trebuchet and Crossbowman for example: Trebuchet is barely more expensive (10 hammers) and gets +2 ranged strength over the Crossbow while maintaining its bonus against cities. It can't move and attack and costs iron, but feels weird to be better at anti-personnel as well as sieging.

I would rather see siege units possess a lower ranged strength and higher city bonus to compensate, but this really just goes with my philosophy of highly specialized units. I may be alone in this thinking.

3) Also think mounted units might be buffed a little too much. A spearman should dominate a horseman if able to initiate combat, but check this:


Not counting the spearman's bonus vs mounted, each unit is receiving +55% in combat bonuses here. Despite this, and the horseman receiving no defensive terrain bonuses, the horseman is actually (very slightly) favored. If the very unit designed to counter the horseman cannot actually counter it effectively, then what can?

4) This one has nothing to do with things that have been changed in the CPP, but it's an AI suggestion (with the caveat that Civ 5 AI is a mess and difficult to improve). AI seems to have little regard to unit positioning when declaring/ending war.


Here's a deal Harald offered me to end a war. It was a joint war I entered with the Aztecs because Monty was much closer to me than Harald and I wanted to become better friends with little downside. I never fought a single one of his troops, had probably the smallest military, and never sent a single troop near his land even. I understand his wanting to end war with me (would actually dislike it if he didn't), but it seems a bit silly to offer me a fortune (especially as early as this was) when I wasn't threatening in any way.

I also had Rome DoW me out of nowhere when they were no position to do so. It was actually 1-2 turns after ending a war with America when Washington was about to take Rome (Rome was actually at less than half health when he DoW'd me!). Caesar's troops (at least the ones nearest me) were nonexistant, yet he DoW'd and sent no offensive force. I went and took Rome for myself incredibly easily.

5) The AI seems to value production tiles too much.



You can see here, regardless of default or food focus, that the AI wants to work those production tiles pretty badly. Unimproved hills are valued over farmed plains, and an unimproved plains tile is valued over farmed grassland. This can always be controlled on the player's end by manually locking tiles, but I suspect it's preventing AI civs from growing at anywhere near the rate they should be.

joosegoose25 said:

I'd post on the newest version, but these are things I noticed from this version. I've made a couple other comments in other threads today (re: mounted bowman and unit upgrades), but here are some mostly random thoughts:

1) Circus seems beyond pointless unless you have Ivory, and even then it's probably not worth building unless you have multiple copies. -2 maintenance, and only +1 culture if you have no Ivory, that's a net negative. If you have one copy of Ivory, then it essentially becomes spending 200 hammers to gain +1 culture at no gold cost.

This may be intentional, but I was under the impression that the CPP attempts to make all buildings worth having if given infinite time, etc, so I'm mentioning it.

Click to expand...

A circus also reduces boredom, it is in the boredom reducing building-line, Colosseum, Circus, Zoo, Stadium. While I personally find that entire buildingline pretty boring(Ironic, right?) it does fill a purpose.

2) I'm not sure I like the balance between siege and ranged units atm. Take the Trebuchet and Crossbowman for example: Trebuchet is barely more expensive (10 hammers) and gets +2 ranged strength over the Crossbow while maintaining its bonus against cities. It can't move and attack and costs iron, but feels weird to be better at anti-personnel as well as sieging.

I would rather see siege units possess a lower ranged strength and higher city bonus to compensate, but this really just goes with my philosophy of highly specialized units. I may be alone in this thinking.

Click to expand...

I'm not one hundred percent sure how it worked with trebuchets and catapults, but cannons and artillery were extremely powerful anti-personell weapons and were pretty much the the deciding factor in that times warfare.

Out of a gameplay-perspective I LOVE the trebuchet changes, it is less mobile, it requires a strategic resource and is weaker to meleeattackers, it doesn't really need any other weaknesses imho.

3) Also think mounted units might be buffed a little too much. A spearman should dominate a horseman if able to initiate combat, but check this:

Spoiler :

Not counting the spearman's bonus vs mounted, each unit is receiving +55% in combat bonuses here. Despite this, and the horseman receiving no defensive terrain bonuses, the horseman is actually (very slightly) favored. If the very unit designed to counter the horseman cannot actually counter it effectively, then what can?

Click to expand...

Again, a horseman requires a strategic resource and costs 50% more hammers than a spearman. In my opinion a horseman should crush a spearman unless the spearman is fortified, strategic resource-units should should be the go-to option for warfare if you have them available while the no strategic resource units should be your last option/cannonfodder.

The big problem here however is that horsemen are stronger than swordsmen for some reason, even if they both have a strategic resource requirement, a swordsman requires more tech and more hammers to build, have less CS and less movespeed than a horseman.
I guess this could be balanced out by the swordsman having access to defensive bonuses and doesn't deal reduced damage to cities, but it still feels pretty weird.

4) This one has nothing to do with things that have been changed in the CPP, but it's an AI suggestion (with the caveat that Civ 5 AI is a mess and difficult to improve). AI seems to have little regard to unit positioning when declaring/ending war.

Spoiler :

Here's a deal Harald offered me to end a war. It was a joint war I entered with the Aztecs because Monty was much closer to me than Harald and I wanted to become better friends with little downside. I never fought a single one of his troops, had probably the smallest military, and never sent a single troop near his land even. I understand his wanting to end war with me (would actually dislike it if he didn't), but it seems a bit silly to offer me a fortune (especially as early as this was) when I wasn't threatening in any way.

Click to expand...

It happends from time to time, honestly not sure if it is solvable at all but atleast it feels like it happends less in CPP than in vanilla.

I also had Rome DoW me out of nowhere when they were no position to do so. It was actually 1-2 turns after ending a war with America when Washington was about to take Rome (Rome was actually at less than half health when he DoW'd me!). Caesar's troops (at least the ones nearest me) were nonexistant, yet he DoW'd and sent no offensive force. I went and took Rome for myself incredibly easily.

Click to expand...

That's usually someone either paying them to dow you or making a deal to attack you, most of the time it doesn't make sense at all.

Funny story I found two AI (Denmark and Songhai, both at the 16th turn and both of the declared war with me during their turn after that, honestly no clue why as I was on one pretty fortified city and they didn't even bother moving units toward me. Songai however used the opportunity to place a city 3 tiles from my capital that I took from him 2 turns later.

5) The AI seems to value production tiles too much.

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

You can see here, regardless of default or food focus, that the AI wants to work those production tiles pretty badly. Unimproved hills are valued over farmed plains, and an unimproved plains tile is valued over farmed grassland. This can always be controlled on the player's end by manually locking tiles, but I suspect it's preventing AI civs from growing at anywhere near the rate they should be.

Click to expand...

That's the issue I've been arguing for the past while, if you're in negative happiness the city auto-focus will always ignore food and purposly try to ignore growth, even going to far as to work 1food marsh-tiles over 4 food farms. This by itself is extremely stupid considering growing cities doesn't necessarily increase unhappiness while starving cities(which luckily doesn't happen too often anymore) actually increases unhappiness.

Funak said:

A circus also reduces boredom, it is in the boredom reducing building-line, Colosseum, Circus, Zoo, Stadium. While I personally find that entire buildingline pretty boring(Ironic, right?) it does fill a purpose.

Click to expand...

This leads me to another question. Does the Circus reduce boredom in the sense that it provides +1 culture, or does it provide +1 culture and reduce boredom by some additional amount? You could apply the question to every building that does something similiar (like Walls which increase city strength and reduce disorder).

I'm not one hundred percent sure how it worked with trebuchets and catapults, but cannons and artillery were extremely powerful anti-personell weapons and were pretty much the the deciding factor in that times warfare.

Out of a gameplay-perspective I LOVE the trebuchet changes, it is less mobile, it requires a strategic resource and is weaker to meleeattackers, it doesn't really need any other weaknesses imho.

Click to expand...

I can't comment on cannons and artillery since I haven't played too much that far into any games yet. Before then, though, I don't really like them being superior in nearly every way. Both ranged and siege units get one-shotted by melee attackers, and the only advantage ranged units have is being able to move and shoot on the same turn. This advantage isn't as strong now that city bombard isn't nearly as strong as in the base game.

Yes, a strategic resource is required, and I'll get to that in a bit.

Again, a horseman requires a strategic resource and costs 50% more hammers than a spearman. In my opinion a horseman should crush a spearman unless the spearman is fortified, strategic resource-units should should be the go-to option for warfare if you have them available while the no strategic resource units should be your last option/cannonfodder.

Click to expand...

Spearmen and pikemen have literally one purpose--to counter mounted units. If they are going to get dominated by them (they're essentially equal in combat, but mounted units are much more mobile giving them a large advantage) then what's the point of even having them in the game? There could always be a generic melee unit that's weaker than swordsman for those without strategic resources if that's what the goal is.

The big problem here however is that horsemen are stronger than swordsmen for some reason, even if they both have a strategic resource requirement, a swordsman requires more tech and more hammers to build, have less CS and less movespeed than a horseman.
I guess this could be balanced out by the swordsman having access to defensive bonuses and doesn't deal reduced damage to cities, but it still feels pretty weird.

Click to expand...

Agree here, mounted units advantage over their non-mounted counterparts should be the increased movement points and ability to move after attacking imo. I wouldn't mind seeing mounted combat strength decreased and their flanking bonuses increased to make them more niche (that's just my general philosophy with Civ combat though, I love each unit line to have a niche). This would also change the Spearman situation so that a Spearman would have an advantage in the situation where they can actually go on the offensive against a Horseman. IMO, if a Spearman is actually in a position to attack a Horse (easier said than done due to mobility) it should have a large advantage.

Back to strategic resource units. I get that those resources are important, but I don't think lacking them should mean a complete inability to field a competent military. No iron should mean you're going to miss out on the strongest melee units and cities will be much tougher (or close to impossible) to take without siege units. Not having horses makes open battle much tougher as you completely lose out on hit-and-run tactics and a lot of flanking possibilities.

Right now lacking strategic resources doesn't mean you miss out on key parts of a balanced military, it means you are forced to build units that are inferior in almost every way. I get that historically this isn't completely inaccurate, but this is also a game. Right now a start without iron or horses is nearly a death sentence.

It happends from time to time, honestly not sure if it is solvable at all but atleast it feels like it happends less in CPP than in vanilla.

That's usually someone either paying them to dow you or making a deal to attack you, most of the time it doesn't make sense at all.

Funny story I found two AI (Denmark and Songhai, both at the 16th turn and both of the declared war with me during their turn after that, honestly no clue why as I was on one pretty fortified city and they didn't even bother moving units toward me. Songai however used the opportunity to place a city 3 tiles from my capital that I took from him 2 turns later.

Click to expand...

Yeah, this wasn't exactly a complaint or anything on my part. I just know a lot of wonderfull dll and AI work has been done and wanted to mention this in the off chance it hadn't been looked at, in case it could be improved.

That's the issue I've been arguing for the past while, if you're in negative happiness the city auto-focus will always ignore food and purposly try to ignore growth, even going to far as to work 1food marsh-tiles over 4 food farms. This by itself is extremely stupid considering growing cities doesn't necessarily increase unhappiness while starving cities(which luckily doesn't happen too often anymore) actually increases unhappiness.

Click to expand...

Ah, I didn't even consider the negative unhappiness. That's especially funny since it was extremely temporary--my garrisons were absent (I went Might) due to the war with Rome. The way happiness works now I pretty much want to constantly grow in the early game. At the very least food focus shouldn't be assigning unimproved hills.

joosegoose25 said:

This leads me to another question. Does the Circus reduce boredom in the sense that it provides +1 culture, or does it provide +1 culture and reduce boredom by some additional amount? You could apply the question to every building that does something similiar (like Walls which increase city strength and reduce disorder).

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They reducde boredom in the same way an aqueduct reduces poverty (No idea how exactly as that seems to be a Gazebo-secret) Probably percentually lowering the per citizen requirement. A wall doesn't work the same way. The buildingline for disorder is baracks armory constabulary policestation (maybe military base aswell but that isn't mentioned in the civpedia).

I can't comment on cannons and artillery since I haven't played too much that far into any games yet. Before then, though, I don't really like them being superior in nearly every way. Both ranged and siege units get one-shotted by melee attackers, and the only advantage ranged units have is being able to move and shoot on the same turn. This advantage isn't as strong now that city bombard isn't nearly as strong as in the base game.

Yes, a strategic resource is required, and I'll get to that in a bit.

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The crossbow advantage over trebuchet is that the crossbow is able to chase units while attacking, it isn't a huge advantage, but effectively a crossbow is always better at defending.

Spearmen and pikemen have literally one purpose--to counter mounted units. If they are going to get dominated by them (they're essentially equal in combat, but mounted units are much more mobile giving them a large advantage) then what's the point of even having them in the game? There could always be a generic melee unit that's weaker than swordsman for those without strategic resources if that's what the goal is.

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That's how I see them, as the Vanguard unit in CEP kinda, in my opinion they could have used any other type of weapon and not had the the anti mounted promotion. They are cheap and resource-free, they are cannonfodder and a defensive line.
But still if they are fortified, covering strategic locations they can stop enemy horseunits from getting anything done, because they sure as hell can't attack into a fortified spearunit on rough terrain. Generally spears and pikes have been the go-to weapon for large relatively untrained groups of soldiers/militia, using a spear as a unit is easy, you just stand there in formation and you poke.

Agree here, mounted units advantage over their non-mounted counterparts should be the increased movement points and ability to move after attacking imo. I wouldn't mind seeing mounted combat strength decreased and their flanking bonuses increased to make them more niche (that's just my general philosophy with Civ combat though, I love each unit line to have a niche). This would also change the Spearman situation so that a Spearman would have an advantage in the situation where they can actually go on the offensive against a Horseman. IMO, if a Spearman is actually in a position to attack a Horse (easier said than done due to mobility) it should have a large advantage.

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You kinda misunderstood me here, a horse gives you HUGE advantage over non-mounted enemies. In fact civ5 knight is probably way undertuned if compared to actual history. A knight in is basically a medieval tank/gunship, there just weren't anything non-mounted units could do against them. Sure they couldn't charge a pikeline, but why would they charge a pikeline? a Pikeline sure as hell couldn't charge them, they could just run off(something that is really hard to represent in civ without giving all mounted units automatic withdrawal vs non-mounted units). Likevise a heavily fortified unit of longswords would be a hard target, but a non-fortified group of couldn't touch the knights. I personally think that swordsmen could be buffed to maybe 15 CS and longswords to maybe 24 or 23(and in that way skip the upgrade to musket step, mostly because it is generally a small jump for normal longswords and a step back for samurai)

Back to strategic resource units. I get that those resources are important, but I don't think lacking them should mean a complete inability to field a competent military. No iron should mean you're going to miss out on the strongest melee units and cities will be much tougher (or close to impossible) to take without siege units. Not having horses makes open battle much tougher as you completely lose out on hit-and-run tactics and a lot of flanking possibilities.

Right now lacking strategic resources doesn't mean you miss out on key parts of a balanced military, it means you are forced to build units that are inferior in almost every way. I get that historically this isn't completely inaccurate, but this is also a game. Right now a start without iron or horses is nearly a death sentence.

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Here is the thing, you can always defend without strategic resources, both archerunits and spears/pikes/muskets do fine on defense. Your offense however will be crippled, which in my opinion is totally fine, you usually get atleast one source of one strategic resource, and if you really need iron to get some siegeweapons you can either trade for it, found a crappy city near some iron or ally a citystate. The only real issue I currently have is that at one era(after you get ironclads) you have no access to any naval-units without strategic resources, which means you can't defend yourself against enemy fleets unless you've kept some wooden ships around.

Ah, I didn't even consider the negative unhappiness. That's especially funny since it was extremely temporary--my garrisons were absent (I went Might) due to the war with Rome. The way happiness works now I pretty much want to constantly grow in the early game. At the very least food focus shouldn't be assigning unimproved hills.

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You constantly want to grow all game I finished a game with a 85 pop Thebes a few nights ago, I think I had like 30 unemployed citizens, was still awesome

Funak said:

They reducde boredom in the same way an aqueduct reduces poverty (No idea how exactly as that seems to be a Gazebo-secret) Probably percentually lowering the per citizen requirement. A wall doesn't work the same way. The buildingline for disorder is baracks armory constabulary policestation (maybe military base aswell but that isn't mentioned in the civpedia).

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Thanks, it makes a lot more sense now. Granted boredom never seems to be as much of a problem as many others, but it does make the buildings a little more useful.

The crossbow advantage over trebuchet is that the crossbow is able to chase units while attacking, it isn't a huge advantage, but effectively a crossbow is always better at defending.

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How is a crossbow always--or ever--better at defending? When defending a city there's no need to move and shoot, and the trebuchet is flat out stronger than the crossbow.

That's how I see them, as the Vanguard unit in CEP kinda, in my opinion they could have used any other type of weapon and not had the the anti mounted promotion. They are cheap and resource-free, they are cannonfodder and a defensive line.
But still if they are fortified, covering strategic locations they can stop enemy horseunits from getting anything done, because they sure as hell can't attack into a fortified spearunit on rough terrain. Generally spears and pikes have been the go-to weapon for large relatively untrained groups of soldiers/militia, using a spear as a unit is easy, you just stand there in formation and you poke.

You kinda misunderstood me here, a horse gives you HUGE advantage over non-mounted enemies. In fact civ5 knight is probably way undertuned if compared to actual history. A knight in is basically a medieval tank/gunship, there just weren't anything non-mounted units could do against them. Sure they couldn't charge a pikeline, but why would they charge a pikeline? a Pikeline sure as hell couldn't charge them, they could just run off(something that is really hard to represent in civ without giving all mounted units automatic withdrawal vs non-mounted units). Likevise a heavily fortified unit of longswords would be a hard target, but a non-fortified group of couldn't touch the knights. I personally think that swordsmen could be buffed to maybe 15 CS and longswords to maybe 24 or 23(and in that way skip the upgrade to musket step, mostly because it is generally a small jump for normal longswords and a step back for samurai)

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Spearmen aren't going to successfully charge Horsemen because they're much less mobile. The movement points and ability to move after attacking means Horsemen will rarely ever be in a position to be attacked if managed properly. If someone actually does manage to corner a mounted unit and get an attack in, do you really think they shouldn't have a weakness? I get that mounted units use strategic resources but should they really be all-powerful without a counter?

Here is the thing, you can always defend without strategic resources, both archerunits and spears/pikes/muskets do fine on defense. Your offense however will be crippled, which in my opinion is totally fine, you usually get atleast one source of one strategic resource, and if you really need iron to get some siegeweapons you can either trade for it, found a crappy city near some iron or ally a citystate. The only real issue I currently have is that at one era(after you get ironclads) you have no access to any naval-units without strategic resources, which means you can't defend yourself against enemy fleets unless you've kept some wooden ships around.

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Agree that no strategic resources should mean no offense. Siege and strong melee (Swords line) should be pretty much required to take cities in a well-balanced combat system, and no strategic resources means no access to these.

However, can you really defend that well? You can defend with Spearman/Pikes, but to the same extend that you can defend with anything non-mounted. They're flat out weaker than the Swords line to the point without even a small niche advantage (mounted bonus doesn't really make up for their overall weakness so it doesn't count).

Same applies to ranged units. Their only advantage over siege is negated by defending, so you will have a weaker military than everyone else in every aspect. They have absolutely zero combat benefit over mounted ranged units as well, so you'll be slaughtered by them too. Not only are you missing key branches/tactics, you are just flat out weaker.

Missing out on certain strategic resources/military units should mean missing out on effective strategies, or the ability to go on any sort of offensive. Right now it feels too much like missing these things just means losing the game if someone else wants to go to war.

joosegoose25 said:

How is a crossbow always--or ever--better at defending? When defending a city there's no need to move and shoot, and the trebuchet is flat out stronger than the crossbow.

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It got higher CS, it recieves defensive bonuses, it can move and attack, it doesn't need to set up before attacking, it doesn't have limited visibility.

Spearmen aren't going to successfully charge Horsemen because they're much less mobile. The movement points and ability to move after attacking means Horsemen will rarely ever be in a position to be attacked if managed properly. If someone actually does manage to corner a mounted unit and get an attack in, do you really think they shouldn't have a weakness? I get that mounted units use strategic resources but should they really be all-powerful without a counter?

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They have 4 movementpoints, not 12. even on flat terrain without any rivers you're not going to be able to attack and still stay out of range of anything. Also as mentioned before, they stink at attacking cities and they stink at attacking fortified units, they can't fortify themselves, those are plenty of weaknesses.
Honestly the difference in power between the spearman and the horseman is about equal to the difference between the lancer and the musketman, and the musket doesn't have any bonuses against mounted units.

Agree that no strategic resources should mean no offense. Siege and strong melee (Swords line) should be pretty much required to take cities in a well-balanced combat system, and no strategic resources means no access to these.

However, can you really defend that well? You can defend with Spearman/Pikes, but to the same extend that you can defend with anything non-mounted. They're flat out weaker than the Swords line to the point without even a small niche advantage (mounted bonus doesn't really make up for their overall weakness so it doesn't count).

Same applies to ranged units. Their only advantage over siege is negated by defending, so you will have a weaker military than everyone else in every aspect. They have absolutely zero combat benefit over mounted ranged units as well, so you'll be slaughtered by them too. Not only are you missing key branches/tactics, you are just flat out weaker.

Missing out on certain strategic resources/military units should mean missing out on effective strategies, or the ability to go on any sort of offensive. Right now it feels too much like missing these things just means losing the game if someone else wants to go to war.

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Is that your personal experience? Because I've never had any problems defending with weaker units. In fact I've had no problem defending against fusiliers with muskets, that's how strong the defenders advantage is. However if you really feel like you can't possibly play without iron/horses then you can just research animal husbandry and bronzeworking early on before you're initial expansion, the techs are so early on that you're pretty much guaranteed to be able to land some iron.
Realizing that you're missing oil/coal/aluminum is way worse since you're so far into the game that your ability to find some and grab it is limited.

Funak said:

It got higher CS, it recieves defensive bonuses, it can move and attack, it doesn't need to set up before attacking, it doesn't have limited visibility.

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To this I say: their higher CS is largely meaningless--both units are getting one-shotted if left vulnerable to a Longswordsman (at least in my experience). Same goes for the defensive bonuses. Using an entire turn to attack is really no consequence when you're defending your cities, and the same goes for limited visibility. On defense I'll take a Trebuchet every time, any slight advantage the Crossbowman could possibly have there is negated by the large advantage Trebuchets rightfully have if you ever go conquering.

They have 4 movementpoints, not 12. even on flat terrain without any rivers you're not going to be able to attack and still stay out of range of anything. Also as mentioned before, they stink at attacking cities and they stink at attacking fortified units, they can't fortify themselves, those are plenty of weaknesses.
Honestly the difference in power between the spearman and the horseman is about equal to the difference between the lancer and the musketman, and the musket doesn't have any bonuses against mounted units.

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I have had plenty of instances where I've been able to avoid open conflict due to 4 movement points, and if not I can usually pillage enough to keep health up long enough to escape. They are weak against cities, have to give them that. With regards to fortified units--do they have a nerf there I'm not aware of? Otherwise they stink at attacking them to the same extent that every other unit in the game does. Not being able to fortify/get defense bonuses is a slight weakness but not so bad when you can either say out of danger or run away as long as you escape the current turn. I see one obvious weakness--the penalty against cities/their inability to be parked and used as meat shields when sieging.

Interesting you picked the Musketman/Lancer comparison when they really don't have much to do with each other imo. The Musketman has no mounted bonuses since that is in fact the Lancer's job. The Lancer (at least this is what I believe the intention was) is a niche unit that specializes in chasing down enemy mounted units. The base game did a terrible job at accomplishing this, putting Lancers at an awkward spot on the tech tree and making them obviously better than Knights but not really up to snuff with Cavalry--but in practice I believe they are supposed to be upgraded Spearmen/Pikemen for a reason. That whole line exists as anti-mounted units.

Is that your personal experience? Because I've never had any problems defending with weaker units. In fact I've had no problem defending against fusiliers with muskets, that's how strong the defenders advantage is. However if you really feel like you can't possibly play without iron/horses then you can just research animal husbandry and bronzeworking early on before you're initial expansion, the techs are so early on that you're pretty much guaranteed to be able to land some iron.
Realizing that you're missing oil/coal/aluminum is way worse since you're so far into the game that your ability to find some and grab it is limited.

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No, I can't say I've gone into a game and been unable to defend my cities, although I think that has more to do with the inherent limitations of the AI. I do feel that on a reasonable difficulty an early (and competent) DoW by a civ with resources the other doesn't have will mean a sure death, though. Granted, this can made a complete non-factor by enabling "strategic balance" starts so I can't really complain too much.

Sorry if I seem argumentative, I actually really like getting to have discussion like this. It's interesting to see how others feel about these sort of things