Crazy Spatz's Alpha Centauri Mod

[Spatzimaus]

I was immediately swimming in Gold and Happiness, and so I immediately selected the SP which provides a free Settler in order to found my 4th city (not something I've been able to do while playing your mod).

Funny thing, pre-patch I'd usually try to get that policy early on in my own games; depending on my start area, I might have just enough luxuries. Not a turn 1 start in the Industrial, but it'd be the first policy I'd buy after my starting Settlers are placed.

I tried that again today, post-patch, and it didn't work too well, but a big part of that was that my starting area had a ton of Wine (5 deposits) and a couple Marble, but really no other luxuries within easy reach.

All in all I'd say that Firaxis still needs to do some fine-tuning for Industrial era (or later game) starts.

I don't think they can, because it's inherently linked to how they did it. Firaxis' late-game starts are horribly unbalanced, and there's no easy way to tweak the numbers to get around this; the underlying mechanism they use is just not a good one. Here comes the math:

Basically, look at tech costs as an indicator of this. In the Ancient Era, tech costs ramp up steeply, because your cities will be growing quickly, and you'll be settling more cities periodically. As you get into the Classical to Renaissance, this pace slows down a bit, because while you'll still be settling new cities, your older ones (which have +research buildings and so dominate your science output) will have slowed their growth. Once you're into the Industrial, the tech tree costs were almost flat, because you've settled all available area, your core cities have all of the buildings and steady populations, and so your science output is nearly flat as well.
(NOTE: in this patch they made the tech costs suddenly ramp up sharply again as you got into the Modern Era, because it's supposed to be the endgame. I've partially undone this change in my mod, for obvious reasons.)

But if you start in the industrial, that trend no longer holds. While your cities will all start with Libraries and at size ~3ish, their science output will rise quickly as they grow and you place Universities/Public Schools. And while you might start with 3 cities, that's not nearly enough to fill the available area on most maps, so your science output will quickly rise that way as well. So it's basically the same progression curve as you saw in the Ancient, just starting at a higher value.

Given the above, you can see where Firaxis went wrong. They figured to fix the problem by simply making all techs cheaper; in an Industrial start, every tech costs 20% of the listed amount for the rest of the game. (Modern Era is 12%, Future Era is 5%.) It won't work because the SHAPE of the curve is the problem; they're trying to match a rapid increase onto a nearly-flat cost curve by scaling linearly, and it just won't ever match up. You'll get tremendously long research times for the first few techs, but by the time you're into the Modern Era and HAVE filled your available area, you'll be researching everything incredibly fast. Reduce or increase the percentage to make it match up better at one end of the game and it'll be that much worse at the other.

That's why in my mod I reduced the percent discount (in an Industrial start every tech costs 60% of its listed value), but added the Head Start buildings: the idea is that I give massive early bonuses to the cities, to get them closer to the correct outputs, but then taper off the bonuses as time passes. Effectively, this counteracts the near-exponential increase in science output you get naturally from expansion and growth, more closely mimicking the relatively flat cost curve. So in number of turns per tech, it'll more or less follow the pattern of an Ancient start, where it quickly stabilizes to a relatively constant number of turns with a slight decrease as you start conquering other nations.

My system could still use some tweaking, of course.

unless there's something you want me to look at specifically (let me know)?

Nothing specific, just the usual general balance stuff and any crashes. Well, except that the Happiness balance is likely to be significantly off, so you should probably start there and keep an eye out for it, both in your empire and in the AIs (FireTuner print statements help here). I don't want everyone to be going negative, but you shouldn't generally have a massive surplus either.

 

[Spatzimaus]

After playing a half-game (Industrial start, currently in mid-Nuclear), here's what I've found:

1> Money is far too plentiful. At first I thought it was the various +10% buildings (Stadium, Research Lab, Broadcast Tower), but then I realized that there was too much money even before I reached those. It's not about trade routes, it's just that too many maintenance costs were lowered in the early eras. I might get around that by making a couple more building types (Barracks, University, Water Mill, etc.) be auto-built in cities in certain eras.

2> A couple of my custom policies need entirely new effects as they now duplicate other policies. I had fixed most of those, but it looks like I missed a couple.

3> Happiness is a bit too plentiful, but it's not as bad as I thought. What it looks like is that no matter what strategy (Policy progression, etc.) you pick you'll still have ways to get adequate happiness, but it's a bit overdone at present.
The main culprit seems to be that so many policies now give +1 happiness per (building), many to more than one building type. And, the new Stone Works is also +1 Happy, just like my Monastery and Mint, so it's all adding up a bit faster than I'd like.

4> There used to be a policy in the Order branch that made all city-state relations decay faster for other players. This was moved to one of the other branch's Finishers. Unfortunately, that policy was the main thing holding Greece and Siam in check; in my test game there's a Greece but no Siam, and Greece has bought up almost all of the city-states already.

5> They changed the math on city attacks in a somewhat unfortunate way. As a result, I'm attacking the Aztecs and their capital is the easiest thing to reach; but, it's got a 92 strength, so my Infantry would die instantly if they were to attack it, meaning I have no way to capture the city until I get to Modern Armor. (Granted, it's a capital, with the Kremlin and the full array of defensive buildings, but it's still a bit much.)

6> I'm looking at switching a few effects around. For instance, in the Patronage tree, there's:
Cultural Diplomacy: +100% amounts of Strategics from allies, +50% happiness from ally-provided Luxuries
Free Market: +100% Influence from completing quests
Now really, given those names, shouldn't they be the other way around? The only catch is that Free Market requires a tech in the future eras, meaning that that effect won't be seen in the earlier eras.

7> I'm getting more crashes than I used to. Trying to nail that one down ASAP.

 

[dinobot386]

This patch is horribly unstable, for one, the stone texture isnt loading. I cant even figure out if the patch downloaded properly and I think I need an SDK update but I cant find it

edit: Nevermind, I got the stone texture working, but every senario forces me to play as the civ designated as player 1

 

[dezuman]

I'm playing a game with the mod from Ancient to about Nuclear era now, and so far haven't had any crashes or discovered any gamebreaking bugs. Being quite a noob and playing on Immortal, I went on a wonder-building spree and profited a LOT from the added gold income from those. Himeji castle, Oligarchy and the home field bonus of the mod helped me fend off the plentiful early "backstabs" I got. Even after I, assisted by porcelain tower and rationalism research agreement bonus, had gotten a significant tech and military advantage (relative, I had 1 city) they kept on "backstabbing" me. However, the instance I sent a punitive expedition and killed a few units they offered REALLY generous peace settlements, on the scale of ~3000 - 7000 gold on Marathon. Firaxis HAS to have messed something up in the AI xD

Currently I have infantry, while the AI got rifleman at worst, and a huge gold income (Looks huge to me anyway, something like 100 GPT + from my single city...)

Did I mention the mod is awesome? I've yet to actually get the new techs, but I love the balance changes already

 

[Spatzimaus]

I went on a wonder-building spree and profited a LOT from the added gold income from those. Himeji castle, Oligarchy and the home field bonus of the mod helped me fend off the plentiful early "backstabs" I got.

Well, Oligarchy's been changed now to not be quite the same effect as before. But generally yes, the reason for that Home Field Advantage boost is exactly what you've described.

In the game I just played, I was lucky: I had a nice-sized island to myself, the Aztecs had their own island (but a significantly smaller one) on the next isle over, and the last four civs were all lumped onto a huge continent. So no one ever attacked my home territory; I was busy invading the Aztecs, and the other four were in a free-for-all (with China and France conquering Greece and Songhai in the Industrial). But I did notice a lot of backstabbing going on.

More importantly, there was one major change: AIs declaring war on city-states without declaring on the CS's ally (me). For the first few it wasn't a big deal, I'd just call them up and tell them to knock it off. But then France got flagged as a repeat offender, and suddenly half of the city-states declared permanent war on THEM. There was nothing I could do to stop the war, and of course France rolled over the city-states one at a time. Nearly every one on that big continent was conquered by the time I started fighting China.

Because of this, a diplomatic win was never really a possibillity (although by chance I actually DID win through Diplomacy, in the mid-Fusion, after liberating all of those city-states and pushing France back to Paris). So I'm thinking of reducing the vote percentages needed, since I'd raised it very high previously.

However, the instance I sent a punitive expedition and killed a few units they offered REALLY generous peace settlements, on the scale of ~3000 - 7000 gold on Marathon. Firaxis HAS to have messed something up in the AI xD

I've noticed this. One turn the AI offers me a massive amount to declare peace, a few turns later they call back again and this time they're demanding tons from me to stop a war that I'm winning easily, and then after that it's always pure peace, no deals. Something's seriously wrong.

Currently I have infantry, while the AI got rifleman at worst, and a huge gold income (Looks huge to me anyway, something like 100 GPT + from my single city...)

That's way too much. Even a full-sized empire shouldn't be getting 100gpt outside of a Golden Age until you're in the Digital Era, and even then I'm trying to keep it below that line. My rule of thumb is that a non-GA empire should be in the 20-50 gpt range (once your empire is set up), and a Golden Age should take you up to 100-150. Something in this patch really threw off the monetary balance, especially in the Industrial Era, and I'm trying to figure out what.

Question: Are you playing an actual OCC? The reason I ask are the National Wonders; four of my custom ones are mutually exclusive in a normal game, and I don't know if OCC disables that. Your income could be VERY different depending on whether you chose to build Wall Street, Hollywood, Red Cross, or the Three Gorges Dam in your one city. (I'd assume most people would go Wall Street, given that it comes first in the tech tree. It's also probably the most universally useful of the four, which is WHY I put it first.)

Did I mention the mod is awesome? I've yet to actually get the new techs, but I love the balance changes already

What's funny is that my general idea for how to improve the balance (spread the effects out more, so that more buildings add +1 Happiness or a little bit of gold) is exactly what the devs did in this patch, at least in terms of Happiness. And yet, it's caused me more problems than any previous patch as a result, because I don't think they did a very good job balancing it.

Unfortunately, my balance changes don't seem to be quite doing what I want. I'd wanted to make it so that conquest was just plain HARD outside of a couple specific tech windows (Rifleman-Cannon, Infantry-Artillery, Tank-Bomber, and the Fusion Era), but it's not quite working out in practice. I was able to conquer the Aztecs using only artillery and infantry, because I made sure there was plenty of rough terrain between us, set up three artillery screened by infantry, and then let him throw his units at me uselessly.

I think part of the problem, then, is related to an issue I've mentioned before: Mobility. Specifically, part of the reason the AI sucks so hard at mass warfare is that it doesn't plan ahead in a 1UPT environment. Too often, especially in rough terrain, the AI just can't move the unit it needs up front through an occupied hex. So it stalls movement, and you're left with an enemy artillery unit in an easy-to-kill spot while his infantry are stuck behind them.
This is a big part of why I gave so many future-era units the Scout's "1 MP per hex" movement ability; with them no longer getting stuck on terrain, the AI's units become a lot more dangerous. But there's nothing like this in the earlier eras. So here's what I'm thinking:
1> Add a new Explorer/Conquistador unit in the middle ages, to be placed between the Scout and the Paratrooper. 3 MP and 1MP/hex, and a bit weaker combat rating than contemporaneus units but still respectable. This'd have to go in the Content mod, most likely.
2> Change the Paratrooper to have 1MP/hex as well, in addition to its paradrop.
So it'd go Scout - Explorer - Paratrooper - Scout Powersuit, all of which would be highly-mobile "skirmisher" units. These'd be the things you send sneaking through the rough terrain to take out the other side's artillery (at least until Plasma Artillery, which have a more respectable defense rating).

--------------------

I'm trying to track it down now, but there looks to be an error somewhere in AssignStartingPlots. It's not placing the correct amount of water-based resources, especially Dilithium, which tells me the Lua is aborting before that point. Assuming I can confirm an error, I'll try to make a v1.03 over this weekend with a few minor balance changes.

For Policies, for instance, there are now two policies whose effects are too similar to ones already in the game, and one other that just really needs an overhaul. I'm going to try to get those into the 1.03 as well.

 

[Sjru]

Dunno if it has been reported before, but CS seems to ask me for Great Empath veryy early on game (They're supposed to be a GP from the future, no?).

Asking about that, also the CS gave me one as a gift (From the policy) before the time.
Also how I can normally get one?

Another thing I've noticed: On my game, the indians declared war on me and nuked me, but only my mains cities, while leaving my main army alone.That allowed me to steamroll him, with few losses, and destroy him (sort of revenge), I didn't have nukes at the time. It was fair since I was bordering with Gandhi and I think he though I was a direct menace for me.
But then when the war ended, the Romans, which they were almost at the bottom of the scoreboard, with most cannons and some artillery, declared war on me. Of course I've guttered their "invasion" army hastily, but I still don't get why they do that. I wasn't bordering with them and since I gutted their main army possibly they're defenseless now (I won't attack them since I got low happiness). Question is: What determines the AI to do that sort of thing? They knew they went kamikase, but what for? They haven't achieved anything, where's the logic?

 

[Spatzimaus]

Dunno if it has been reported before, but CS seems to ask me for Great Empath veryy early on game (They're supposed to be a GP from the future, no?).

Not a lot I can do about that, really. It was worse before the patch, when the Meritocracy policy let you pick a free Great Person and you could get an Empath at the start of any game.
I've tried setting the Tech Prerequisite for the unit to Centauri Empathy, but it doesn't seem to affect those other methods. Great People just have follow a different set of rules than normal units.

If it's too problematic, I can try putting in the same type of override that I did for when cities demand Neutronium, but the city-state demands are a lot more intricate. I'll look into it.

Also how I can normally get one?

Same way as any other great person: slot Empath specialists in the appropriate buildings, and build up the appropriate Great Person points. Since Empaths add +1 Happiness and +2 food, they're useful to use, so you should build up points pretty well.
Empath slots can be found in buildings at any tech that depends on Centauri Empathy. So starting with the Empath Guild and moving out from there, there are 7 buildings with Empath slots and a handful of Wonders that produce points.

The problem, of course, is that you're starting from zero on points, while your established cities will have hundreds of Merchant, Engineer, etc. points already accumulated. To make up for this, an Empath produces 5 Great Person Points instead of the usual 3, and the buildings that add points directly add more than normal as well.

To help with this, I've changed the Empath Guild so that instead of giving the city a free Empath specialist (which didn't work), it now spawns a free Great Empath upon completion. So you'll get at least one of them.

Question is: What determines the AI to do that sort of thing? They knew they went kamikase, but what for? They haven't achieved anything, where's the logic?

As far as I can tell, the AI has a bunch of different triggers for war: if you're getting too successful, if your army is too weak, if you've been too evil in general, if you're too close to them, if you're too close to winning, etc. So any one of those could cause them to go to war, despite the horrible odds, especially for the AIs rated as highly aggressive (which, yes, includes Rome. Also Songhai, France, and of course the Aztecs.)

 

[dinobot386]

Did you put the city state kill quests back in? Because im getting them again

 

[Spatzimaus]

No. I didn't. It's possible that the file containing them just isn't loading, but that declaration was put in the GlobalDefines, so if you're getting the 4 unhappiness per city and such, you should be getting that disable... unless they removed it from the base XML. It's still in the file itself, but if it's not being checked any more...
What I can do is also set the weighting for that mission to zero, which should in theory keep it from ever being offered.

I've noticed some generally flaky behavior from the game after the patch. For instance, I saw the barbarians capture a Settler, and it DIDN'T immediately convert to a Worker (which it should have), and only turned into one once I captured it. Not saying that that's related to your problem, but I wouldn't be surprised.

 

[dezuman]

That's way too much. Even a full-sized empire shouldn't be getting 100gpt outside of a Golden Age until you're in the Digital Era, and even then I'm trying to keep it below that line. My rule of thumb is that a non-GA empire should be in the 20-50 gpt range (once your empire is set up), and a Golden Age should take you up to 100-150. Something in this patch really threw off the monetary balance, especially in the Industrial Era, and I'm trying to figure out what.

Question: Are you playing an actual OCC? The reason I ask are the National Wonders; four of my custom ones are mutually exclusive in a normal game, and I don't know if OCC disables that. Your income could be VERY different depending on whether you chose to build Wall Street, Hollywood, Red Cross, or the Three Gorges Dam in your one city. (I'd assume most people would go Wall Street, given that it comes first in the tech tree. It's also probably the most universally useful of the four, which is WHY I put it first.)

Ok, I had like 120 GPT in golden age (got like 3 in a row somehow) and ~80 ish otherwise. But that was on a single city, and pre-industrial!
I assume it was a combo of some gold-yielding terrain (3 gems, 2 fish with Colossus, a one great merchant tile improvement too), 2 or 3 gold-giving wonders and some multipliers. Despite constantly settling research agreements with some 5 peeps constantly, and often giving them quite a lot for them to afford it, I always had a few thousand to play around with. Granted, I basically had no army until I got riflemen (Those pesky backstabbing Persians really needed their ass handled by then)...

I dunno really ... but I think the issue lies with the Firaxis patch, not your mod. I suppose I really have no reason to post, but as you can tell from my post count I have lurked in the shadow a bit too much anyways

All these Psi-creatures sounds interesting, but for now I'm stuck on a stone-age laptop in the country house so I can't check them out ... I hoped they could like build a hive and rove around, like future-era barbarian substitutes ... Would be cool if weaker civs were "sadly" wiped out by the horrors unleashed "on accident" by their advanced neighbors ...
Actually I would generally like more destructive forces in Civ, especially related to powerful weapons.
Nukes flying around? Radioactive downfall over half the continent if the winds are wrong *cought*
Horror creatures fighting your battles? Maybe they desert to settle down and do what we all love: Reproduce =D
umm ...
FATAL ERROR: END OF THOUGHT STREAM. ABORTING...

Edit: Naw rilly, I had to do something real quick. Likez da mod, kthxbyez!

 

[Spatzimaus]

I assume it was a combo of some gold-yielding terrain (3 gems, 2 fish with Colossus, a one great merchant tile improvement too), 2 or 3 gold-giving wonders and some multipliers.

I had a similar thing in my last game, where by luck I had Gibraltar (2 food, 5 gold) and Cerro Potosi (+10 gold) within my borders, so I had plenty of cash.

Note that the fact that you only had one city probably helped you quite a bit; railroads are not cheap to maintain, and building costs don't scale in any way, so any reasonably connected empire will often have LESS gold to spare. But the one-city approach will suffer in terms of research and production, so generally it's not in your best interests.

I dunno really ... but I think the issue lies with the Firaxis patch, not your mod.

Probably a little of both. One thing I've noticed is that Great Merchants come up more often, because the game is slotting Merchant specialists more than it used to. That means more Customs Houses, which really add up fast.

I suppose I really have no reason to post, but as you can tell from my post count I have lurked in the shadow a bit too much anyways

Posting is good. I'm trying to collect as much feedback on the balance as possible, and having hundreds of people download without saying a word doesn't help. It's especially important after patches like this last one, where the game's balance gets thrown out the window.

All these Psi-creatures sounds interesting, but for now I'm stuck on a stone-age laptop in the country house so I can't check them out ...

Well, there's no graphic for them yet, it just uses a placeholder unit, so they're no more or less impressive than the rest of the units. Of course, you need to get to the Digital Era to unlock them, so if you're still going through the Industrial then it might be a while. (Building a spaceship, especially, is going to be hard for you in a one-city environment.)

I hoped they could like build a hive and rove around, like future-era barbarian substitutes ... Would be cool if weaker civs were "sadly" wiped out by the horrors unleashed "on accident" by their advanced neighbors ...

That's exactly what they already do. The Psi units are the future-era Barbarians, spawning Spore Tower hives that then spawn mindworms and such randomly. The fact that you, as a player, can make somewhat inferior copies of them for your own use doesn't change the fact that they're balanced primarily as a barbarian unit.

However, they're unlikely to wipe out any civs. Spore Towers are strong but they're immobile, and Mind Worms don't really pack enough punch to hurt a city; they're just a harassment unit, pillaging improvements and pinning your workers inside your cities. Once you get to the Nanotech Era and the barbarians start spawning Nessus Worms, THEN there's a real danger of being wiped out, but that's the endgame.

Nukes flying around? Radioactive downfall over half the continent if the winds are wrong

If you want to see lots of nukes flying around, that's what the game was often like in the Digital Era before I added the SDI. But the spread of radioactivity, while it might be somewhat realistic, goes against one of the recurring themes I've put into the lore for this mod: that the future is going to be a series of narrowly-averted catastrophes. An AI gains sentience, but it's shut down in time and the lessons learned are instrumental in the development of cybernetics. A pandemic starts, but scientists find a cure just in time, a cure that also happens to give near-immortality. Psionic lifeforms escape from the lab, but they very quickly integrate into the food chain and become just a part of the environment. A nuclear war happens, but nearly every major power has missile defense systems so very little damage is done. A robot uprising fails because they're consumer electronics, and are generally made of light materials that can't stand up to a bullet. That sort of thing.

So I don't want to add any truly catastrophic systems to the mod. No worldwide fungus infestations, no zombies overrunning civilization, no nuclear apocalypse. These might be good ideas for a scenario, if someone wants to make one, but it's not something I'm really interested in doing.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Feedback time!

Today I've been working on the Policy overhaul I'd previously mentioned. Specifically, it'll now work like this:

The 10 custom policies I created are no longer actually part of the 10 branches. Instead, they're all contained within my custom 11th branch, and each one requires two things: a specific tech (same as before), and the Finisher for one of the 10 branches. Basically, they're sort of "Super-Finishers"; you get the basic Finisher for free, and then this extra policy adds even more.

Because they're not part of the 10 branches, the 10 new policies do not count towards cultural victories; a branch is complete BEFORE taking these policies now.
As a result, the Utopia Project now requires 6 complete branches, AND the Homo Superior tech (although I might move it a bit earlier). If you're going for a Cultural win, then you won't want to take these policies, but they're stronger than a normal policy so it's a hard choice.

I had to overhaul the UI; attached is a screenshot. I haven't moved any of the other policies around, yet, so it doesn't look right, and there's obviously something still wrong with the banner for the center box, but I'm hoping this gives a good idea.


So, feedback:
1> Is that UI readable enough? Each policy is placed closest to the branch it keys off of, so it should be fairly straightforward.
2> Balancewise, does it make sense? I made each of my future policies a bit stronger than before to compensate, so they're really significantly better than a normal policy to make up for their semi-superfluous nature.
3> The background picture I used is from the title screen graphic for SMAC; the second sun is behind one of my policies (Green), unfortunately, so I'm going to remake the image tomorrow. Or should I go with something a bit more artistic, to try to fit the way the images for the other branches look?

 

[dinobot386]

I love that policy screen, and im glad you changed the cultural victory to 6, since it would have been very early on compared to the rest of the game

On a less happy note, im getting crash after crash after crash, about every 50 turns, maybe less

 

[markusbeutel]

Looks good - maybe do a hideonmouseover for the middle portion of the screen until a specific Branch is adopted to avoid any confusion over which policies belong to which branches.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Looks good - maybe do a hideonmouseover for the middle portion of the screen until a specific Branch is adopted to avoid any confusion over which policies belong to which branches.

I thought of that, but the problem is that there are actually 11 policies in that branch; the hidden one is the starting policy, the one I use for the negative-happiness buildings. So, I have no choice but to unlock the branch at the start of every game. Otherwise, I would have had it stay locked until you launched a spaceship and/or entered the Digital Era.

I'm hoping that it shouldn't be too confusing which goes with which branch. The policies in the top row all go with the branch right above each, and the bottom row go with the ones right below them. Also, the tooltip (see the screenshot) says it explicitly in the help text for each, so I really only expect confusion during the first game after I release the new version.

im glad you changed the cultural victory to 6, since it would have been very early on compared to the rest of the game

Not as early as you might think, given the modified culture cost scalings, but yes, it was a concern. Note that in 1.02 you need 35 unlocks to win a Culture victory, and with this system you need 36 (although if you take any of my Super-Finishers you'll need even more than that). It would be VERY hard to reach those amounts before the Digital Era. But just to be safe, I've put the Utopia Project at a Fusion Era tech, so you simply can't win the Culture victory before then no matter how many policies you have. This one's still up for debate.

Now, one of the things I'd done long ago was rearranged the various policies within each branch, changing dependencies and such, to structure everything towards my custom policies. With this change, that's no longer necessary, so I'm reverting these to the vanilla game and re-assessing each of the tweaks I'd made. For instance, in the Order tree the vanilla game has two policies that stand entirely alone, while in my mod they were both changed into prerequisites for later policies. This was necessary for Planned Society to work, but now that it comes after the Finisher I don't need to do that any more, so I'm honestly not sure whether it's worth changing anything.

 

[dezuman]

The policy screen looks readable enough ... And to bring up my last post: I am AHEAD in research: with porcelain tower + Rationalism starter, I gain double research from all the plentiful agreements I settle due to the horsehockytons of gold I have piled everywhere xD
BTW awesome with psi critter as neobarbs, I'm def gonna tech rush and watch the poor suckers fight them with mere chem-driven rifles

 

[Spatzimaus]

BTW awesome with psi critter as neobarbs, I'm def gonna tech rush and watch the poor suckers fight them with mere chem-driven rifles

It won't happen that way, for a combination of reasons.

First, Barbarians don't research techs normally. They gain techs purely through osmosis, based on how many of the other civs in the game have a given tech. So if everyone else in the world is far behind you, technologically, then the barbarians will be as well.
(City-states are half-and-half. They research, albeit at a reduced rate compared to a player, but they also have the Barbarian-style tech stealing.) So the only way the Barbarians will spawn anything more dangerous than a Mind Worm is if the majority of the civs in the game are in the Digital Era; if it's just you way out ahead of everyone else, then no matter how advanced YOU are, the Barbarians will still be low-tech and won't spawn anything dangerous.

Even the Mindworms aren't very likely to happen that early. If you launch a spaceship, then 10-30 turns after that the psionic barbarians will start showing up. Of course, having only one city will significantly slow down your spaceship construction, so it'll take a bit longer than normal. Regardless, you're still looking at only Mind Worms spawning, and they're not really meant to be a military threat in that sense. Mind Worms generally can't even take down an Infantry in a straight fight*, so any reasonably competent AI should have no problem with those. Spore Towers are a lot tougher, but they're sessile and so can't conquer a city.

*- Infantry have strength 36. Mind Worms have a 50 strength, but there are four other factors:
1> Psi units get +/-25% to the BASE combat strength based on the opponent's strength. So in this case, that 50-on-36 becomes 37.5-on-36. Add in the +10% for Home Field Advantage for the Infantry, and it's advantage to the non-barbarians. Conversely, a Mind Worm scales UP to 62.5 when fighting a much stronger foe, so they'll be nearly as big a threat to the tech leader, capable of hurting your Modern Armor and such; the first land unit that isn't threatened by a Mind Worm attack is the Gravtank, and by the time you get those the AI is often getting close to Chiron Locusts.
2> Psi units get -25% when adjacent to an ally. Fine for a raider, but not so good for massed combat. If the enemy has more than one unit available to defend, then Psi units are at a major disadvantage because you can't do a 2-on-2 type thing with psi units.
3> Barbarians, like everyone else, get the Rookie promotion (-25% strength, x2 XP for the first fight) for all new units. But while your units will have long since shed that promotion, the Barbarian units generally won't have, so the first fight will be at a significant disadvantage for the barbs.
4> Depending on the difficulty level, players and AIs have an inherent bonus vs. Barbarian units.

So no, you're not going to see the AI get gutted by a horde of Mind Worms, unless you build some of your own and invade. They're just not designed for that; most of the Psi units are designed for less straightforward roles:
Mind Worms are designed to be a harassment unit, pillaging improvements and pinning workers inside cities.
Isles of the Deep are high-offense, low-defense sea units intended to force you to stay clear of the shorelines a bit more. They're slow, but if a Stealth Ship or Leviathan ends its movement near one without any support, it's likely to die.
Chiron Locusts are an improved Mind Worm; more mobile, a bit stronger, but still the same basic role. They're not bad at picking off wounded units, either.
Nessus Worms are city destroyers. They're the only barbarian Psi unit that you should REALLY panic about; Titan-level strength, massive regeneration, fully amphibious... it's Godzilla.

In general, the Psi units are about balance. They're the unit of choice for a civ that's well behind the tech leaders and has no other way to level the playing field, and they're nearly as big a threat to a tech leader as they are to someone far behind. They're nearly resourceless, requiring only Omnicytes (a common resource that's generated by three different buildings as well), and the Barb version obviously is resourceless entirely. Their spawn method punishes civs that have a lot of land area but don't station a token defensive force throughout the territory.
(In other words, they do the exact opposite of what you're hoping for. They punish the tech LEADER, not the folks far behind.)

Also, once the AI civs reach the Navigation tech and can build a KGB in their own cities, it'll be a lot harder for you to stay far ahead of the pack technologically. Sure, if you're playing on an easy difficulty (Prince or below) then you can generally stay 10+ techs ahead, but anything tougher than that and you're generally capped at about a 5-6-tech lead. It gets even closer once they reach the Planetary Datalinks and Nethack Terminus in the Digital Era; at that point, if you try going up one side of the tech tree, the AIs are likely to pick up the Wonders on the other side.

 

[dezuman]

Spatz, Y U ruin my dream

But really, I'm quite pleased to actually do well on Immortal ... Only problem I have is that your un-fixed super policies prevents me from getting the Freedom finisher (double yield from great improvements )

I assume you'll have a new version by the time I get home, will probably start a new game then ... Ancient start, marathon speed. Yeah, I have THAT much free time


Just one general observation: I think like the transition Musket > Rifle > Infantry is a bit too fast ... feels like I one moment got longswordmen, the next I have infantry. Dunno if one can do something about it, just thought I should say it

Edit: Actually, I feel the research speed just generally is off. I mostly play single city or very small kingdom and on high difficulty, yet I'm mostly several hundred years ahead of the "IRL" tech level... And porcelain tower + Rationalism starter combo hasn't made it any better

 

[Spatzimaus]

Only problem I have is that your un-fixed super policies prevents me from getting the Freedom finisher (double yield from great improvements

Yes. That's one of the big reasons I'm switching to the new system; now, you'll be able to get those Finishers at the same time you would in a normal game, instead of having to wait until the future eras.

That being said, the Freedom Finisher isn't as awesome as it sounds for two reasons:
1> It's not actually a "doubling"; it's a straight +6 science for the Academy, +6 culture for the Landmark, +4 production for the Manufactory, and +4 gold for the Customs House. In the vanilla game those would be a doubling, but remember that I have three separate +2 increases at various techs for every Great Improvement (while the vanilla game only has a single +2 for the Academy anad a single +1 for the Manufactory and Customs House).
I COULD boost the values to better match the newly-improved yields of these improvements, but I haven't yet.

2> You'll notice that the Citadel wasn't on that list anywhere. In v.1.02 it improves by +2 science and +2 gold with that Finisher, because I couldn't do anything to improve its defensive abilities.
And obviously, the Monolith wasn't originally boosted either. In v.1.02 it gained +4 food, but in 1.03 I'm changing that to 2 food, 2 culture. But I can't double the Happiness boost. (Actually, I know of a way I could, but I'd rather not rework the whole thing that way.)

I assume you'll have a new version by the time I get home,

Never assume. Now that we're in the post-1.0 environment, I'm generally only going to update every ~2 weeks, so that the new versions actually have some significant improvements. Unit graphics are still basically on hold, since the tools don't work right, and I've made a bunch of small tweaks here and there for balance reasons (Barracks/Kreposts now being given to all cities in a Renaissance-or-later start, the Mint being moved from Currency to Metal Casting, a fix to aquatic Omnicytes and Dilithium, a fix so that you can't get a Great Empath in early eras), but the Policies thing is the only major improvement so far. So the next version will most likely be released once I'm done with the new Policy screen.

In this particular case I'm probably not going to wait two weeks, and I had intended to release a new version today-ish if I found something significant to change over the weekend, but so far there haven't been any major bugs found. Also, I'm still trying to fix Planned Economy to a better effect, and the one I have right now is just far too weak, so until I fix that it's not getting released.

Just one general observation: I think like the transition Musket > Rifle > Infantry is a bit too fast ... feels like I one moment got longswordmen, the next I have infantry. Dunno if one can do something about it, just thought I should say it

It's not that I CAN'T do anything about it, it's that I generally WON'T do anything about it.
In general, I agree with you; the unit upgrades in the vanilla game are often too close together. Tank -> Modern Armor is the most well-known of these, previously only being a single tech apart (now 2), but it happens throughout the core game.

The thing is, I've tried very hard NOT to totally rework the existing game; I want the pre-future eras to play about the same as they would in a vanilla environment. Sure, I've tweaked the city growth/food storage system, Happiness is quite a bit different, and I added five National Wonders in the later eras, but I really don't want to start rearranging tech dependencies. (Except in the Modern/Nuclear Era. That era's fair game for my changes.) I've talked for a while about adding a third mod, a mod that revises the earlier eras, making all of the changes to the earlier eras that I've held back from so far; my Balance mod is ONLY about balance changes needed to make future eras viable, and my Content mod is ONLY about adding new content in the future eras (barring those few early-game things, like the Combat Engineer, that have to be in this mod for mechanical reasons.
Now, the research changes I'd made in the Balance mod SHOULD make it take a bit longer to obsolete those units. But Musketmen are still going to have a pretty short lifespan, which sort of sucks for the civs that replace them. (Of course, the two civs that replace them? America and France, both of which have excellent second UUs.)

yet I'm mostly several hundred years ahead of the "IRL" tech level...

That's not a problem with the tech progression, it's a problem with the turn number-to-year number conversion in the GameSpeeds table. Long ago I'd adjusted those to match the way the game was at the time, but I've made many changes since then and have never fixed those tables. (I keep meaning to, but it's purely aesthetic and therefore low priority.) So yes, the year numbers are way off; don't go by those.

This is why I often ask people who play Ancient Era starts to tell me two things as they play:
1> The turn number on which they entered each era
2> The turn number on which they researched the last tech in each era.
With these numbers I'll be able to fix the scalings again. (Note: if you play on a game speed other than Standard then just say so; I'll do the conversion.) For people who start in later eras, the information is still somewhat useful, but I intend to balance the turn numbers around an Ancient start.

The way to tell if the progression is too fast is simply to see how many turns it takes to gain a new tech. My general goal is to have the game take ~10 turns per tech for nearly the entire game's duration, although you'll gain extras from RAs, Great Scientists, and the occasional Wonder effect. It'll be a bit higher than that in your first couple eras, but that should be the stable rate.

And porcelain tower + Rationalism starter combo hasn't made it any better

The Research Agreement thing really only works because you have a massive gold surplus. Since I don't intend for you to have that much income, and am looking into ways to change the balance to fix this, you might want to be careful hinging everything on that combo. I haven't made any huge changes to income yet (just a maintenance cost tweak to the Colosseum and Broadcast Tower, and an overhaul to the Planned Economy policy), but I'm still trying to figure out what changed to make gold so plentiful in the first place.

Rationalism has been made far stronger in this last patch, at least in terms of research output. But remember that it conflicts with Piety. Granted, Piety is no longer the only real source of +Happiness, but it's still by far the best source of Culture boosts (which, of course, are the way you get more Policies) now that Freedom's been nerfed in two different ways, and Piety still has excellent +Happiness (Monument, Temple, and Monastery? The first two of those will be in every city very quickly.)

-----------------

That Piety conflict is part of why the new change to a 6-branch Cultural Victory worries me. Piety and Rationalism are exclusive, and Freedom/Autocracy/Order are exclusive. That means, out of the 10 trees, you won't be able to take 3 of them depending on your choices. (Well, you CAN take them, you just won't get any effects for your policy choices if a tree is disabled.)
Given that most people treat Tradition and Liberty as being exclusive as well, going from 5 branches to 6 really limits your choices; you'll often be forced to take Patronage AND Commerce AND Honor, all of which are fairly specialized.

But I just don't see an easy way to keep it 5 branches. I COULD simply override the WinsGame flag to False, and assign the victory manually through Lua once you take my Super-Finishers, sort of like I did for Transcendence. That would allow me to keep the Finisher at its earlier place while still requiring the FULL tree, which would let me keep it at 5 branches. But I'll hold off on that change for a while.
Another thought was to make it work sort of like the spaceship; each of my super-Finishers could also provide a special unit to be sacrificed in your capital, and sacrificing enough of those could end the game. But this has all sorts of logistical issues, not the least of which is, what happens if the AI just doesn't sacrifice it right away and it gets killed?

 

[dezuman]

You write so long posts

Did I mention I was playing india? Despite only owning 1 luxury resource, it seemed quite impossible for me to run out of happiness ... My people is like

Hey, one question: What happens to Spaceship victory in the mod? I *think* I disabled it ... will it prevent me from going to the centaur and bring back the cuddly killer-worms?