bal's gameplay mods (naval supply, reduced supply, simple promotions etc.) 1

[balparmak]

Updated Custom Farm Resource Placement to v3, includes recent VP changes to Natural Wonder placement.

 

[TadhgEomonn]

Using No Lake Navy (which automatically gives Dock building to coastal cities) with VP 3.04 and found that my Dock(s) had disappeared; replaced by Fortress (Mil) building. Result: naval units cannot be built.

 

[Rekk]

No Navy by Lake Cities
Download here
Prevents lake cities from producing naval units. By default, it blocks all naval units (including workboats&cargo), but can be easily customized to disallow just melee&submarines (or any combat class you like), instructions are in Buildings.sql. It works by creating a new Dock building which is granted to all coastal cities upon founding. Naval units are locked behind the Dock, hence lake cities cannot produce them.

This mod should be unnecessary now. Locking units and buildings behind ocean (or any other "minimum amount of water tiles" value you can think of is accessible purely via changing a column in SQL.

 

[Zerazar]

Thank you for making the Reduced Unit Supply Mod. It makes VP much more manageable and enjoyable. I did have one question, though. The map generation does not seem to have reduced strategic resources, and I can't find where that line is in the mod. Could you point me to it?

I too would really like to know where it is in the mod.

 

[Zerazar]

I also can't get skirmishers(horse archer types) to promote at all. Don't know where to start troubleshooting.

 

[y10]

I don't have that problem, and I am currently using reduced unit supply and group movement mods, so it is probably not either one of those.

 

[qwerty4429]

Don't know if it's mentioned somewhere - "Reduced military supply" doesn't affect barb spawn, poor Assyria literally died to barbs... 2 of 3 cities at 1 hp and I just walked over and took them.

 

[y10]

I adjust the turn that barbarians are released from every 2 turns, to every 4. It seems to balance out the barbarians pretty well. The value is called AI_TACTICAL_BARBARIAN_RELEASE_VARIATION. The file you want is the barbarians folder in the balance changes folder in Vox Populi files in case you are interested.

 

[simasonas123]

The weaker cities for vox populi doesen't seem to work

 

[Rcon]

Hello Balparmak and thanks for a very interesting mod (reduced supply)!

I did a post in the general forum on my ongoing Zulu run. I think Zulus might be OP in the reduced supply mod due to their UB granting 2 supply. I can have more units than the AI at immortal and I sure would not like to have Shaka as my opponent in this mod. Don't have a very constructive solution to suggest unfortunately. Maybe either actively pick civs to exclude Zulus or go for your optional version in which barracks dont give flat supply (is the Zulu UB adjusted to give more supply in that version?).

I also think the mod reduces the difficulty quite a lot. However as authority it has the balancing aspect of lowering the hordes of AI-untis to kill which in turn means somewhat lower yields from policies and Terracotta. I still hope some parts of the mod could make its way into the main mod if you would be interested to suggest that. I would at least vote for suggestions lowering (especially late game) supply if it was put to a vote in congress. I also like the weakened cities as the few times I was on the defense early on one of my many fronts it actually felt like I could've lost a city rather quickly if I hadn't moved an army there fast enough. Maybe a slightly smaller reduction in HP and defense could be suggested for the main mod? I'm not experienced enough with warring to suggest the right balance but I think it sits somewhere between main VP and your mod (probably closer to your numbers). In main VP the AI is of course vastly superior to BNW but a city on a hiill with walls and an archer can still stay alive almost forever in most cases and sieging the AI can take longer than reasonable too.

Regarding this: "Reduced Supply mod no longer doubles strategic costs of units. Instead strategic resource quantity spawned on the map is halved." On the Communitu map I played all iron/horse deposits hade only 1 resource but there were a lot of instances spawned. If it was halved you would expect a range 1-3 or something but its only 1. Also I think the many instances might make it less likely to spawn bonus resources as I have 0 cattle with Shaka and don't see that many anywhere on the map. I think I activated the option to add more resources in the advanced start so that might have something to do with it too.

When I'm finished with this game and the next patch drops I'm going to check out more of your mods. This one especially caught my eye and I was wondering if you can enable just this without the other tweaks and if it could possibly be save game compatible so that I could add it to my ongoing game?

Colonies (Colonies.sql)
- Pioneers and Colonists found puppet cities that can be annexed at a later date.


Anyway thank you again and keep up the great work!

 

[FinMc]

Is "dynamic battle lines" safe to add/remove mid save?

Has anyone played with it?

 

[Yerltvachovicic]

Is "dynamic battle lines" safe to add/remove mid save?

Has anyone played with it?

If you remove or change it game crashes when loading a save, happened to me.
Heavy Charge promotion in my opinion is fantastic, fights are more mobile and the role of citadels/forts is greater (before this mod I rarely build them).
Tested Attrittion and I'm personally not liking it very much, while annoying for the player I think its more harmful for the AI causing imbalance.

 

[Psilonemo]

I think fortified units shouldn't be "pushed" back even if the combat against them is victorious. Units would become incapable of holding a position without a fort, and while this would make for some devastating "trench warfare" in the modern era onwards, it really makes it difficult for defensive players to try to wage a war of attrition against stronger invaders who will win most battles even against their fortified units.

 

[Enginseer]

I think fortified units shouldn't be "pushed" back even if the combat against them is victorious. Units would become incapable of holding a position without a fort, and while this would make for some devastating "trench warfare" in the modern era onwards, it really makes it difficult for defensive players to try to wage a war of attrition against stronger invaders who will win most battles even against their fortified units.

But they're not exactly fortifying on something that lets them settle in.

 

[Psilonemo]

But they're not exactly fortifying on something that lets them settle in.

That's true, but in the early game when building forts are unavailable and difficult to maintain, civilizations that have to defend themselves against early rushes from threats such as horse archers, hoplites, or jaguars would be completely unable to hold their ground even to a slow death. Those units would easily "push" ever so slightly weaker units off off their tiles and surround enemy cities in a relatively short period of time. This is all I'm worried about from a purely gameplay perspective, not the particular realism of the feature. I think it would be a bit more interesting if it was somehow possible to make it so fortified units have a less % likelihood of falling back despite a "defeat" in recent combat, or perhaps a flat hp% threshold above which fortified units will not retreat and rout from their positions. I'm guessing it's tough to code such a design but I'd imagine it could help taper the overwhelming advantage given to early rush strategies.

 

[Enginseer]

That's true, but in the early game when building forts are unavailable and difficult to maintain, civilizations that have to defend themselves against early rushes from threats such as horse archers, hoplites, or jaguars would be completely unable to hold their ground even to a slow death. Those units would easily "push" ever so slightly weaker units off off their tiles and surround enemy cities in a relatively short period of time. This is all I'm worried about from a purely gameplay perspective, not the particular realism of the feature. I think it would be a bit more interesting if it was somehow possible to make it so fortified units have a less % likelihood of falling back despite a "defeat" in recent combat, or perhaps a flat hp% threshold above which fortified units will not retreat and rout from their positions. I'm guessing it's tough to code such a design but I'd imagine it could help taper the overwhelming advantage given to early rush strategies.

That just sounds like Heavy Charge needs to be available after Forts are unlocked then (or available to Medieval+ Era Units!)

 

[Psilonemo]

That just sounds like Heavy Charge needs to be available after Forts are unlocked then (or available to Medieval+ Era Units!)

That sounds more reasonable from a balance point of view, and adds a whole new level of incentive to build citadels and forts rather than having more military units with that gold instead and keeping a great general. Another way would be to preserve the dynamic offered by heavy charge from the get go, and simply tweak forts so they are available sooner in a weaker and cheaper form, but improve over time (start with only border expansion points, then gain +1 production at engineering, for example). Simply making it so this "heavy charge" has a generally low percent chance of occurring would also help balance the mechanic and prevent it from overly favoring early warmongers with a guaranteed advantage. After all, it's more fun if the outcome of a combat is not always completely predictable, and it's harder for humans to take advantage of being able to always predict how his units will charge through where. I just want to help brainstorm, please don't get me wrong. I love your mods!

 

[Ryoichi]

Is the Reduced Military Supply mod compatible with the latest version of VP 4.6? This mod proves invaluable during late-game warfare, particularly when managing an excessive number of military units.

 

[FinMc]

Is "dynamic battle lines" safe to add/remove mid save?

Has anyone played with it?

After playing a game with it I turned it off. I didn't find it added much to combat.

Typically units are stacked a few lines deep so in practice it just made melee unit attacks stronger.

On the rare(ish) cases where I was able to use it to push units around, I exploited the heavy charge ability *significantly* better than the AI did to me, so it basically just made the game easier and combat slightly harder to predict/more volatile.

 

[balparmak]

I was able to play a game of VP (unmodded) this week, hopefully I'll update my stuff for the current version and have another go.

I think fortified units shouldn't be "pushed" back even if the combat against them is victorious. Units would become incapable of holding a position without a fort, and while this would make for some devastating "trench warfare" in the modern era onwards, it really makes it difficult for defensive players to try to wage a war of attrition against stronger invaders who will win most battles even against their fortified units.

Honestly that's the way it should work as far as I recall, I've seen some changes to heavy charge in changelogs, maybe my code got broken. Should have added a new promo, that's what you get from laziness.

After playing a game with it I turned it off. I didn't find it added much to combat.

Typically units are stacked a few lines deep so in practice it just made melee unit attacks stronger.

On the rare(ish) cases where I was able to use it to push units around, I exploited the heavy charge ability *significantly* better than the AI did to me, so it basically just made the game easier and combat slightly harder to predict/more volatile.

Fair comment, I can see this being the usual case especially with the default supply. Still, I remember having good times with it with reduced supply modmod, but yeah it's a mechanic that favors the player.

Hello Balparmak and thanks for a very interesting mod (reduced supply)!

I did a post in the general forum on my ongoing Zulu run. I think Zulus might be OP in the reduced supply mod due to their UB granting 2 supply. I can have more units than the AI at immortal and I sure would not like to have Shaka as my opponent in this mod. Don't have a very constructive solution to suggest unfortunately. Maybe either actively pick civs to exclude Zulus or go for your optional version in which barracks dont give flat supply (is the Zulu UB adjusted to give more supply in that version?).

I also think the mod reduces the difficulty quite a lot. However as authority it has the balancing aspect of lowering the hordes of AI-untis to kill which in turn means somewhat lower yields from policies and Terracotta. I still hope some parts of the mod could make its way into the main mod if you would be interested to suggest that. I would at least vote for suggestions lowering (especially late game) supply if it was put to a vote in congress. I also like the weakened cities as the few times I was on the defense early on one of my many fronts it actually felt like I could've lost a city rather quickly if I hadn't moved an army there fast enough. Maybe a slightly smaller reduction in HP and defense could be suggested for the main mod? I'm not experienced enough with warring to suggest the right balance but I think it sits somewhere between main VP and your mod (probably closer to your numbers). In main VP the AI is of course vastly superior to BNW but a city on a hiill with walls and an archer can still stay alive almost forever in most cases and sieging the AI can take longer than reasonable too.

Regarding this: "Reduced Supply mod no longer doubles strategic costs of units. Instead strategic resource quantity spawned on the map is halved." On the Communitu map I played all iron/horse deposits hade only 1 resource but there were a lot of instances spawned. If it was halved you would expect a range 1-3 or something but its only 1. Also I think the many instances might make it less likely to spawn bonus resources as I have 0 cattle with Shaka and don't see that many anywhere on the map. I think I activated the option to add more resources in the advanced start so that might have something to do with it too.

When I'm finished with this game and the next patch drops I'm going to check out more of your mods. This one especially caught my eye and I was wondering if you can enable just this without the other tweaks and if it could possibly be save game compatible so that I could add it to my ongoing game?

Colonies (Colonies.sql)
- Pioneers and Colonists found puppet cities that can be annexed at a later date.


Anyway thank you again and keep up the great work!

Thanks a lot! Yeah all the stuff here needs another balance pass, your feedback will be very helpful. I think the city HP/def got nerfed, so I'll need to nerf my own nerf a bit. The resource change is likely to be outdated.

I don't think the Pioneer/Colonist change would work with an ongoing game though.