Crazy Spatz's Alpha Centauri Mod

[Spatzimaus]

it dident just make happiness easier to deal with, it became almost a non issue.

Yeah, same here. The -25% population unhappiness policy took me from +2 happiness to +33. It's just way too strong; since I've boosted the effectiveness of the base Piety policy, I think I'm okay with reducing it to -20% right now (given the x1.2 component of the unhappiness it's modifying), and eventually trying to make it something like -10% with some other effect as well. Even at -10%, you'd still usually get more happiness from it that you would from Planned Society. But if I did that, I'd have to readjust Thought Control as well, not that anyone ever takes that one.

To make up for this, I was considering adding another of those "+1 happy if you have building X" effects to one of the Piety policies, either replacing the missing 10% or added to the Reformation policy (the Golden Age one). If there was a cathedral or something then it'd be the ideal choice, given the name. Since Theocracy is the policy in question, something government-related would be possible; not the Courthouse, though. Hologram Theater would probably be the best choice, given the lore for it, but I'll need to assess that a bit first. On one hand I dislike having an early-era policy boost a future-era building, but on the other hand, that sort of split effect is kinda nice for balance purposes. And it works in the Happiness progression I've been tweaking; that era needed a bit more happiness.

The only question is whether Piety and Rationalism would still balance each other.

 

[dinobot386]

Another thing is that fundamentalist is kind of weak, the + happiness for broadcast towers is ok, but the + 2 culture per kill is very insignificant by the time you'd actually get the policy. I played Montazuma for a reason while looking at this, and with sacrafical captives he gets about 6 culture per warror, 25 culture per riflemen, and it just keeps growing.

Now, I like that on him, and i think that maybe fundamentalist should be boosted up to a slightly weaker version of that, that is if it will stack properly

 

[Spatzimaus]

Now, I like that on him, and i think that maybe fundamentalist should be boosted up to a slightly weaker version of that, that is if it will stack properly

Well, remember that right now the +happiness is bugged, to where it's giving +2 per tower instead of +1. If they fix that, so that it's only +1, then I'll boost the culture up a bit further (to +5, probably), but if I do that right now then it'll be seriously overpowered.

 

[Spatzimaus]

All right, 24A is now in the first post. Only the Content mod was replaced, because there were no changes to the Balance mod. I tried to verify that it works better now, but it was hard to double-check.

The changes:

> If the AI gets stuck to where it's not picking policies, then it'll randomly select one of the available policies and force adoption. If it thinks there are no possible policies to unlock, it'll try taking either Tradition or Liberty. If it can't do those, then you're hosed.
> Disabled several of the "cheat" print messages I was using for debugging. For instance, previously there were print statements each turn counting down until the Breakout; since this is supposed to be a hidden process, it needed to be disabled once I was sure it was working.
> Added gameplay alert messages for nuke interception, the Breakout, demanded resource re-selection, etc. to make it more obvious to the player
> Changed the base policy cost from 5 to 10, so that people playing on lower difficulty levels wouldn't get the first policy for free (since it rounds down to the nearest multiple of 5).
> Gravships will go back to not being able to carry Missile units, just fighters. It was causing a problem in the game validation.
> Fixed several Civilopedia entries that used outdated numbers.

I'll try to verify this in the morning, so if you find some crippling bug within the next few hours then there'll be a 24B. But I'm going to bed now.

 

[Sjru]

No, it just means that in your particular combination of game settings, map layout, computer hardware, etc., it was close enough to the previous version that it wasn't killed by the discrepancies in array sizes and addressing and such.

Wow, I'm must be really on a lucky streak, as after your latest patch, I was able, to resume again my save with no further problems.
Even I'm not crashing anymore!.-

Why just me and not everybody else?

 

[Spatzimaus]

After an hour of testing this morning, I've determined that 24A does all of what it was supposed to. Additionally, 24 savegames ARE compatible with 24A, or at least compatible enough that I didn't get any obvious crashes. So you should be okay with continuing whatever games were in progress.
(Sjru: in this particular case it's because I didn't change any XML between 24 and 24A, it was all Lua-side. Memory-wise, everything's still in the same places it was before, so savegames are compatible. But that's almost never been true of other versions, so on those it'd depend on other things, including some machine-specific settings.)

One thing I have found is that the game is considerably more stable in the DX9 executable, presumably because many of the more advanced graphical features are turned off by default. A lot of my crashes have come when the graphical engine is clearly overworked by too many things happening at once. This also explains why crashes are more common during the AI turns, because without the fast movement animations turned on, the AI will have to move all of those units and then decide if they were visible to the active player.
Before I upgraded my OS a couple weeks ago, I only ever used the DX9 executable. Since I upgraded I've mostly played DX11, but I'm now switching back to the DX9 just for the stability.

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

Anyway, to the testing, here's what I've found in my own test game:

1> I'm finding resource distribution to be a problem. On my current map, for whatever reason, there are almost no omnicytes, no dilithium, no uranium, and no aluminum. (Plenty of oil, though.) Note the "almost"; the game clearly IS placing a few of them on the map, just in rarities so low as to cause major issues. I mean, there were a grand total of three uranium deposits in the entire world, and two happened to be within the territories of my main rivals, while the third was under a city-state. This has made it VERY hard to field uranium-using units, meaning Nuclear Submarines, Plasma Artillery, and of course nukes. It hasn't helped that while I locked up that city-state (as well as one that had one of the two 8-unit aluminums in the world), two of the other civs are Greece and Siam. Siam's basically wiped out Greece now, but they've still got most of the city-states AND a 4000-gold cash reserve to bribe with. (I'm in the late Digital, in a golden age, making ~500 per turn.)
The strange thing is that omnicytes and dilithium are supposed to have hard overrides for this, so I don't see how there could be that little of each. I'm going to have to debug this in detail.

2> The AI seemed awfully reluctant to use his nukes too near his own areas. The Songhai had an area shaped like a U, and I'd invaded the city at one end; it made a great beachhead, due to the land bottleneck. I took his city pretty easily, but the next city along the land was his capital, with a city strength over 100 and an artillery inside, so this was going to take time. I had a good 20 units stacked on that spur of land, and the obvious move was to hit it with an A-bomb (or two) to wipe out my invasion force. He even had two of them sitting in his capital, right there. And yet, ten turns later I took the capital and auto-destroyed the bombs.
The AI needs to either use them, or rebase them away. It's strange because I KNOW the AI has an algorithm in place to play defensively; if you stack your units up on the border (to where the AI asks you if you're threatening him), the AI will respond by pulling his units back to safer spots. But it doesn't do the same for air units, including nukes.

3> Piety is just way too strong, mainly because of Theocracy (-25% population unhappiness). I'm going to drop it to -10% and add some other effect, as I've mentioned above. For now I'll also give it +1 (meaning +2) happiness per Hologram Theater, but I'm looking into other possibilities. Suggestions are welcome, but understand that it has to be something either in the current XML or something I can easily add in Lua without unbalancing the AI. Thematically, whatever it is will either go at Theocracy, Reformation, or Fundamentalist, and should involve either happiness or culture.

4> There's one minor bug I found. Wall Street gives you one unit of every strategic. The strategic totals at the top of the screen will only show the ones that have unlocked so far, which is good, but as it turns out, the game still knows you have them; you'll get +5 Happiness for having Neutronium, despite it still being three eras away. And it's tradeable as a result, too, which was a bit disconcerting.
Now, other than that happiness bit there's really no problems; existing units in those eras don't require resources that aren't at their prereq techs. But in the future eras this wasn't quite true; you can get to Gravtanks, which need Neutronium, without taking Subatomic Alloys.
So, I'm going to remove the 1 free unit of neutronium from Wall Street, and leave the others. This means that in the Nuclear and Digital Eras, you'll have about 5 less Happiness than you do now.

5> Something's seriously wrong with the spaceship. While all of the AIs were comparable in techs, I'm the only civ that's made the Apollo Program. Obviously this led to an easy spaceship; in fact, I sat on the final component for five turns while I destroyed Askia, because I didn't want the auto-peace to kick in until I was done with him.
So I need people to watch for this in their own games: does the AI build a spaceship in v.24/24A for anyone else?

6> The Breakout happened last night, and five towers spawned in my area. Four died on the first turn; not only did I get the fifth on the second turn, I managed to clear out several towers from nearby city-states. Simply put, air power is just too good against them, even with the mutation system I put in place. So I'm going to give them an explicit anti-air promotion instead of just the generic Cover.

7> In the next version, Titans will get an explicit Titan promotion, analogous to the Psi promotion that psi units get. This promotion will, at first, do two things: First, it'll heal the unit by 1 HP every time it enters combat (so you can't whittle a titan down with 1 HP bombards), and second, <NukeImmune>. (I'll probably also put the "can attack twice per turn" flag in that promotion, since it's something every Titan has already.) The nice part is that this helps with the Nessus Worm, since it's both a Psi and a Titan. And really, Godzilla should always be immune to nukes. (I might just make all Psi units immune to nukes, while I'm at it. Right now the Troll is the only unit immune to nuke damage.)
Spore Towers will now get the Titan promotion once they reach the Fusion Era. (Previously, I was giving them Logistics at that point, and they already regenerate, so it's not a huge change.) I could do it earlier, but attacking twice at the Breakout might be a bit much; they need defense at that point more than offense, IMO.

 

[Sjru]

(Sjru: in this particular case it's because I didn't change any XML between 24 and 24A, it was all Lua-side. Memory-wise, everything's still in the same places it was before, so savegames are compatible. But that's almost never been true of other versions, so on those it'd depend on other things, including some machine-specific settings.)

Is that so? Aww, I thought it was luck. Well...


I've stumbled upon a crash, the log returned this;

[30076.516] ERR: Missing argument 4. ({4_Num} de Infelicidad [ICON_HAPPINESS_4] en total por todas las fuentes.)
[30076.531] ERR: Failed to evaluate parameter 1. {4_Num} de Infelicidad [ICON_HAPPINESS_4] en total por todas las fuentes.

BTW; I've noticed that city-states are on tech top along with the tech-leader, dunno if normal, but they are pretty advanced.

 

[dinobot386]

I think you should do something with culture for theocracy, perhaps population based.

I don't really like the concept of a policy you can get in the classical era getting something specifically for a building MUCH later in the game

 

[Spatzimaus]

I think you should do something with culture for theocracy, perhaps population based.

There are two unused culture-based stubs in the Policies table:
1> CulturePerTechResearched
and
2> CultureImprovementChange

CulturePerTechResearched has some obvious uses, but I don't like that it doesn't scale with empire size. Nearly every other possibility would scale with map size, at least indirectly; this'd be incredibly strong in a OCC, and very weak on huge maps with lots of cities.

CultureImprovementChange apparently boosts the culture of +culture improvements. The complete list of which includes: the Landmark, and now my Monolith. Not exactly the most useful stub they've ever added. Or maybe it boosts EVERY improvement, in which case it's horribly overpowered; maybe I should test it, but either way, I wouldn't use it except as part of a package effect.

There are other options, though:
3> the Policy_BuildingClassCultureChanges table. It's currently only being used to give the Palace +3 culture at Tradition, but you can easily use it to give, say, +2 culture per Theater.

4> Add a custom promotion that a policy gives to all units, or to all units of a specific combat class. While this would be extremely flexible, there's a limit to how many custom promotions the game can handle (about 60, IIRC, across all mods running at a time), so I don't want to add more of these if I don't need to.

5> The final option would be to simply have a policy that gives free units of some kind. The problem here is that other than my tech-gated future policies, you couldn't give any kind of military unit at an earlier policy. That's why this is currently only used for Workers, Settlers, and Great Generals on existing policies.

I don't really like the concept of a policy you can get in the classical era getting something specifically for a building MUCH later in the game

If that was the only benefit of the policy then I'd absolutely agree. But consider the Republic policy; in my version, it's +1 production in every city and +10% to trade route income. In the early game the first effect dominates and the second is almost worthless, but in the late game it's the production boost that's negligible. I actually sort of like that transitional system.

And if they ever fixed the +happiness to not double, you could split it. Like, +1 Happiness per Temple, -10% population unhappiness, +1 Happiness per Hologram Theater. One early-game, one that kicks in in the midgame, and one that comes near the end.

But generally speaking, yes, I agree that it'd be problematic to tie part of the effect to a later building.

I've stumbled upon a crash, the log returned this;

Looking through the vanilla database and the UI files, there are no files that use {4_num} that deal with unhappiness. (And why you'd have 4 arguments when the text message clearly only uses one? Maybe they meant 1_num.)
It's not in the free Mongol DLC either, and I don't have any of the others. And it's definitely not one of mine; for one thing, it's not in English.

So whatever's causing that problem, it isn't me. I'm assuming you're using no mods other than mine; if you are, then you'll need to check those for yourself. What you can do is go into your XML database, search for that exact line, and tell me which file it's in and the text key name. It'd be easy then to see whether Firaxis just made a mistake in one specific localization.

 

[MouseyPounds]

That's the Spanish version of TXT_KEY_TP_UNHAPPINESS_TOTAL in Civ5GameTextInfos_Worldview.xml and it does indeed look like a Firaxis typo since the English version uses {1_NUM}.

 

[Sjru]

That's the Spanish version of TXT_KEY_TP_UNHAPPINESS_TOTAL in Civ5GameTextInfos_Worldview.xml and it does indeed look like a Firaxis typo since the English version uses {1_NUM}.

Really? Now I crashed again, this time in the localization.log there are more errors like that:

Spoiler :

[6026.484] WRN: A resource bundle lookup returned a result from the root locale (not an error).
[7923.031] ERR: Missing argument 1. (Has encontrado artefactos culturales que asombran a tus ciudadanos. ¡Has recibido {1_Num} de Cultura [ICON_CULTURE]!)
[7923.046] ERR: Failed to evaluate parameter 1. Has encontrado artefactos culturales que asombran a tus ciudadanos. ¡Has recibido {1_Num} de Cultura [ICON_CULTURE]!
[7923.078] ERR: Missing argument 1. (En las ruinas encuentras los tesoros de un antiguo imperio. Has recibido {1_Num} de Oro [ICON_GOLD].)
[7923.078] ERR: Failed to evaluate parameter 1. En las ruinas encuentras los tesoros de un antiguo imperio. Has recibido {1_Num} de Oro [ICON_GOLD].
[8127.031] ERR: Missing argument 1. (Has encontrado artefactos culturales que asombran a tus ciudadanos. ¡Has recibido {1_Num} de Cultura [ICON_CULTURE]!)
[8127.031] ERR: Failed to evaluate parameter 1. Has encontrado artefactos culturales que asombran a tus ciudadanos. ¡Has recibido {1_Num} de Cultura [ICON_CULTURE]!
[8127.031] ERR: Missing argument 1. (En las ruinas encuentras los tesoros de un antiguo imperio. Has recibido {1_Num} de Oro [ICON_GOLD].)
[8127.031] ERR: Failed to evaluate parameter 1. En las ruinas encuentras los tesoros de un antiguo imperio. Has recibido {1_Num} de Oro [ICON_GOLD].
[8548.187] ERR: Missing argument 1. (Has encontrado artefactos culturales que asombran a tus ciudadanos. ¡Has recibido {1_Num} de Cultura [ICON_CULTURE]!)
[8548.187] ERR: Failed to evaluate parameter 1. Has encontrado artefactos culturales que asombran a tus ciudadanos. ¡Has recibido {1_Num} de Cultura [ICON_CULTURE]!
[8548.187] ERR: Missing argument 1. (En las ruinas encuentras los tesoros de un antiguo imperio. Has recibido {1_Num} de Oro [ICON_GOLD].)
[8548.187] ERR: Failed to evaluate parameter 1. En las ruinas encuentras los tesoros de un antiguo imperio. Has recibido {1_Num} de Oro [ICON_GOLD].
[8698.515] ERR: Missing argument 4. ({4_Num} de Infelicidad [ICON_HAPPINESS_4] en total por todas las fuentes.)
[8698.515] ERR: Failed to evaluate parameter 1. {4_Num} de Infelicidad [ICON_HAPPINESS_4] en total por todas las fuentes.
[8729.750] ERR: Missing argument 1. (Has encontrado artefactos culturales que asombran a tus ciudadanos. ¡Has recibido {1_Num} de Cultura [ICON_CULTURE]!)
[8729.750] ERR: Failed to evaluate parameter 1. Has encontrado artefactos culturales que asombran a tus ciudadanos. ¡Has recibido {1_Num} de Cultura [ICON_CULTURE]!
[8729.750] ERR: Missing argument 1. (En las ruinas encuentras los tesoros de un antiguo imperio. Has recibido {1_Num} de Oro [ICON_GOLD].)
[8729.750] ERR: Failed to evaluate parameter 1. En las ruinas encuentras los tesoros de un antiguo imperio. Has recibido {1_Num} de Oro [ICON_GOLD].
[8729.750] ERR: Missing argument 1. (Has encontrado artefactos culturales que asombran a tus ciudadanos. ¡Has recibido {1_Num} de Cultura [ICON_CULTURE]!)
[8729.750] ERR: Failed to evaluate parameter 1. Has encontrado artefactos culturales que asombran a tus ciudadanos. ¡Has recibido {1_Num} de Cultura [ICON_CULTURE]!

Where I can report those?

 

[Spatzimaus]

Now, those other errors are different, those are clearly the "get culture from ruins" and "get gold from ruins" messages, and the fact that they use {1_Num} SHOULD work. Which makes me ask: are you using any other mods besides mine? Any DLCs besides the free Mongols one? (I know you had Polynesia, but any others?)

--------

I've got a decent-sized list of things I'm considering adding. Many tie back to today's topic of discussion:
Probabilities
Generally speaking, randomness is seen as bad for the player, since the AI has little ability to plan ahead anyway. Very little of the existing game is random, as a result, which is a big advantage to the player.

In this mod, I've added a larger number of randomized effects. The KGB, which gives a small chance of stealing techs, is of course very random (as are the other two buildings with the same effect); contrast with the constant increase in beakers from the Tech Diffusion mod, which has no randomness to it at all but fulfills a similar goal. The Breakout's timer is semi-random, the spore towers spawn in random hexes, and the units they spawn are random. The Jump Gate can randomly start a 1-turn Golden Age. The Doppelganger, Troll, and Ranger all have one special ability that has some randomness to it. Psi units get a random mutation, nukes get randomly intercepted, and so on. A LOT of my new content involves randomness as a way to have something happen rarely without needing to store variables. (It's also a good fractional method. If I want the Troll to heal after sustained combat, I put it as a 10% chance of +5, which averages to +0.5, a number that normally wouldn't work.)

The question is, has this gone too far already, or should I go further? For instance, consider the Elite promotion that the Military Academy gives; I could easily make it so that units that kill a unit have a small chance of gaining this promotion if they didn't have it already. There'd still be three reasons to build the Academy (+production for military, +XP for air units, and not having to wait to get that promotion), but it'd now help civs that build large numbers of units before that tech (i.e., the AIs).
Conversely, take that Troll. 10% chance of +5. A 50% chance of +1 has the same average result, but is generally better because you can almost depend on it coming up occasionally. But I actually LIKE the randomness on some of these, like the Ranger; a 10% chance of +5 means you have a chance, however slim, of taking out a somewhat wounded Titan in one shot, while a +1 half the time wouldn't be enough to do the same.

Do people find the existing randomness too much of a negative, to where you wouldn't use something like the Doppelganger even if you knew that it was more powerful than its mundane counterparts, like the Skimmer?

 

[MouseyPounds]

[7923.031] ERR: Missing argument 1. (Has encontrado artefactos culturales que asombran a tus ciudadanos. ¡Has recibido {1_Num} de Cultura [ICON_CULTURE]!)
[7923.078] ERR: Missing argument 1. (En las ruinas encuentras los tesoros de un antiguo imperio. Has recibido {1_Num} de Oro [ICON_GOLD].)

These are TXT_KEY_GOODY_CULTURE and TXT_KEY_GOODY_GOLD respectively but I think they are broken in all languages as I just checked and the English versions appear in my localization logs too. Those two have never caused me to crash though (in the unmodded game.)

I guess the Bug Report forum is the place to post those.

 

[dinobot386]

Well, the AIs are picking polcies again, but they seem to be picking both SMAC polcies and completing the branch as well, good thing I have cultural victory turned off

 

[Spatzimaus]

Well, the AIs are picking polcies again, but they seem to be picking both SMAC polcies and completing the branch as well, good thing I have cultural victory turned off

Sigh. I was afraid of that; it looks like the AI has a hard override that staying within a single tree is a good idea no matter what flavor values are involved. (Seriously, that second policy has THREE -999s.) That's also why I'd disabled the branch unlock, which led to the previous problems. (The policy system is REALLY designed poorly.) I'd had the branch unlock in the transcendence era, but apparently that wasn't enough of a limitation.

What I'm going to do is create a custom tech, disable it, hide it, and have it be a prerequisite for that policy so that there's no way a player or AI can ever take it. In the interim, you can get a similar effect by simply putting the policy at a transcendence era tech. (Probably not good to put it at the repeatable tech, though.)

Of course, I'm going through all of this effort and the devs are eventually going to fix the Buildings table to allow negative happiness values for buildings and there'll be no need for it any more. And you know what, I'll be incredibly happy.

 

[Sjru]

Now, those other errors are different, those are clearly the "get culture from ruins" and "get gold from ruins" messages, and the fact that they use {1_Num} SHOULD work. Which makes me ask: are you using any other mods besides mine? Any DLCs besides the free Mongols one? (I know you had Polynesia, but any others?)

Nope. I just have your mod + balance. I have all the DLC activated.

Do people find the existing randomness too much of a negative, to where you wouldn't use something like the Doppelganger even if you knew that it was more powerful than its mundane counterparts, like the Skimmer?

I believe randomness when it's not overused, is a good feature.
The problem with that is that people which is used to predict and use strategies will see a wall on everything that is random. Because of that, huge game-changing event shouldn't be completely random (There aren't any, I think).

[7923.031] ERR: Missing argument 1. (Has encontrado artefactos culturales que asombran a tus ciudadanos. ¡Has recibido {1_Num} de Cultura [ICON_CULTURE]!)
[7923.078] ERR: Missing argument 1. (En las ruinas encuentras los tesoros de un antiguo imperio. Has recibido {1_Num} de Oro [ICON_GOLD].)

These are TXT_KEY_GOODY_CULTURE and TXT_KEY_GOODY_GOLD respectively but I think they are broken in all languages as I just checked and the English versions appear in my localization logs too. Those two have never caused me to crash though (in the unmodded game.)

I guess the Bug Report forum is the place to post those.

If that's so, then It's likely that my random crashes aren't caused by that.
I'll see if I report the error there, but I don't think somebody would give a dam after all.

EDIT: Now I'm stumbling upon a repeatable crash, 1 turn after the russians complete the Manhattan project, and after Soliman's turn. If requested I'll upload the save.

 

[Darsnan]

Have been playing Germany/ Great Plains/ Emporer/ (Standard/Large Maps) for the last few games. Observations are as follows:

1) haven't experienced a single crash on Great Plains, even when I switched to a Large Map this evening.

2) Once ODPs become available, they become all the rage!

3) Because of my emphasis on gaining the SDI, why I am usually not the first to get the Spaceship victory, and two games ago I was cut off from the spaceship by three turns!

4) Questions concering Geosynchronous Survey Pods: 1) are they supposed to be able to move, and 2) if I can move them, should I be able to gift them to C-S or other civs? Note per the pic below that I can move them into territories controlled by other civs, so like a normal unit shouldn't I be able to then gift it?

5) Why don't C-S AC attack civilians? I've flagrantly left civilian units out there, and the AIs never attack these.

6) Concerning the French situation this evening: they obviously went for the military victory early, as they attacked me several times in the early game, and attacked Persia once (that I was aware of). Not that this is your concern, but I think if the AI is going to focus early on the Conquest theme, then they should at least select the Collective Rule SP, so that they can gain another city to produce military units from to advance this agenda.

7) On the Large Great Plains maps I find my Engineers have lots of room to chop forests. Uncontested and in one turn they can chop a forest, then move on next turn to repeat the process.

8) Concerning the "tenuous balance" pic: I don't know if its because of my defensive stance or not, but I seem to have found a sweet spot in my production builds where the AIs won't attack me. It seems if I keep slowly builkding my military, they (i.e. multiple AIs) won't attack. They just sit there in regards to me. This goes on for 40-50 turns.

D

 

[Spatzimaus]

1) haven't experienced a single crash on Great Plains, even when I switched to a Large Map this evening.

Again, be aware that Great Plains is one of the three incompatible map scripts. (Lakes and Highlands being the other two.) It won't have the correct amount of Omnicytes, Dilithium, or Neutronium on it, because it has its own resource distribution code that overrides mine. You might still see a small amount of Neutronium, because it's placed through three different bits of code (two of which are overridden by the map script), but it'll still be screwed up.

2) Once ODPs become available, they become all the rage!

Meaning? Are they too cheap, is the AI building too many of them, or what? You're allowed to have 10 per empire, but their cost is low enough that 10 should cost what a single Project in that era would normally require.

4) Questions concering Geosynchronous Survey Pods: 1) are they supposed to be able to move

Yes, that's the whole point of them. You move them wherever in the world you want visibility, and at the end of the turn (note: AFTER the AIs have had a chance to kill them, depending on where you ended their movement), they'll snap back to the city they were built in.

I honestly don't know on gifting; they're an Air unit, and I'm not sure you can gift those, although the fact that they can leave cities might make the difference. And they have 0 strength, which I think would put them in the same "noncombat" category as workers, settlers, and great people, which you also can't gift.

I seem to have found a sweet spot in my production builds where the AIs won't attack me.

This'll depend heavily on the Aggressiveness ratings of the AIs you're playing against, which are somewhat randomized each game. A game against Napoleon, Askia, and Montezuma will balance very differently on this than one against Wu Zetian and Gandhi.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Okay, I should warn everyone. I'm still on track to have v.1.0 on 6/6 (naming suggestions still accepted!), instead of just continuing the current trend to v0.25, and I expect to spend most of this holiday weekend cleaning up the mod a lot. But as I do this, I'm finding more and more things to change/tweak. My changelog is getting pretty large, and while I will play a couple test games first, I'm still going to expect problems.

What this means for the few people who haven't given up on Civ5 is that I fully expect the balance of v.1.0 to be a bit... questionable. I'd like to think I've gotten pretty good at eyeballing the game balance, but this is going to be hard.

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

For instance, take the Head Start bonus for late-era starts. Right now, at the end of each turn, each city gets N/3 food and production, where N is the number of "discounted" techs remaining (starts at 2*Era and counts down; an Industrial start, for instance, discounts 8 techs). There's also a massive research boost, scaling up to (1.0 + 0.6*Era). Note that the food and production are not modified by any building multipliers (Watermill, Factory, etc.), there's no +gold added, and the research modifier is purely multiplicative. Also, since it's an after-the-fact addition, the game will get confused and think a city is starving when it's actually got enough food.

What I'm going to do is alter this to be more user-friendly. Instead of the Lua-hack addition of food and production, I'll instead just simply add a series of hidden buildings to each city:
> Each city gets N/3 copies of a building that gives +2 food, +1 production, and +2 research. (Note that because these are buildings and not a lua hack, city multipliers DO apply, especially on research.) A bit more food than before, a bit less research than before, which is better in the long term.
> Your capital gets N/2 buildings that each add +1 Happiness
I'm also thinking of adding a small gold increase, like having the first option give +1 gold per 4 population or something.
So this sort of change is going to take some serious time to evaluate.

Similarly, I'm also trying to get a final placeholder effect for the All-Terrain promotion, since it looks like there's no easy way to get the effect I want from straightforward Lua and XML edits.
One possibility I was looking into was to have these units still embark, albeit with the Songhai defensive embarkation, and that when they embark/disembark it doesn't end their turns. Even if I end up using something better, the idea of an improved "amphibious" embarkation appeals to me; I might give that promotion at the Command Nexus or something.

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

Anyway, on to a few questions I had:
1> Dawn of Man screens. How attached are people to those graphics? Specifically, if I were to leave the audio intact but replace the leader-specific pictures and maps with a mod-specific infographic/tutorial screen, a scenario-like introduction explaining the key features of the mod, would people complain? Or should I just leave it as Civilopedia fodder?

2> Nuke notifications. Right now I announce when a nuke has been intercepted, with the message changing if it was YOUR nuke. Do people want:
A> Notifications when ANY nukes launch, regardless of whether they were intercepted (with different messages, obviously), so you can know who's throwing nukes around.
B> Only notifications when nukes are either launched by you or target your units (it's a little work but I can do this). A simpler way would simply be to check if the launching player is at war with you.
or
C> What we have now.

3> The Breakout. It currently spawns a number of Spore Towers, which while annoying aren't a real threat unless they survive for a couple turns to spawn worms. Should it instead just spawn a larger number of mindworms directly, without any Spore Towers (which will spawn on their own in future turns)? Possibly spawning a single Spore Tower near the capital of whichever civ launched the first spaceship?

4> Resources. So much of this game's strategy is defined by which strategics can be found within your own territory. Unfortunately, it's easily possible to have no deposits of many resources in the world. I'd previously added minimum overrides to Coal, along with my future resources; the question is, should I do the same for the existing strategics? Should there always be at least a few Uranium deposits in the world, or does the possibility of a world without nukes appeal to people?

5> Nuke Immunity. Right now, the only unit immune to nuke damage is the Troll; every other unit is damaged by A-bombs and destroyed instantly by nuclear missiles, including Titans, Orbital units, and Psi units with Troll-like total regeneration.
What I was planning to do was some combination of the following:
> Make Titans immune to nukes. This'd also include the Nessus Worm and Spore Tower.
> Make Orbitals immune to nukes, since they're not actually located in the cities they base in.
> Make the Doppelganger, Golem, and Ranger (the other "semi-Psi" units) immune.
> Psi units, maybe. Not that I think people will throw A-bombs at mindworms, and the larger Psi units will be immune through the Titan promotion.
I obviously don't want to take it TOO far, but right now one well-placed nuke slipping past SDI can obliterate an entire army. This way, the tanks, infantry, etc. will still be nuke-vulnerable, but you'll have other options. And even if every unit was immune to nukes, and all cities were protected by Gravity Shields, they'd still be useful for the Improvement destruction and Fallout generation.
Related question: should "Immune to Nukes" be a promotion that normal units can select, or should this effect be inherent to certain types of units and unavailable to others?

 

[Sjru]

Okay, I should warn everyone. I'm still on track to have v.1.0 on 6/6 (naming suggestions still accepted!), instead of just continuing the current trend to v0.25, and I expect to spend most of this holiday weekend cleaning up the mod a lot. But as I do this, I'm finding more and more things to change/tweak. My changelog is getting pretty large, and while I will play a couple test games first, I'm still going to expect problems.

Take your time. As for the name; what about something like "Clash of the Worlds" or "UC: Unforeseen Consecuences"?

What this means for the few people who haven't given up on Civ5 is that I fully expect the balance of v.1.0 to be a bit... questionable. I'd like to think I've gotten pretty good at eyeballing the game balance, but this is going to be hard.

I prefer stability over balance. As long as I don't crash so much often (Every 40 turns maybe?) I'm fine.
---------------

For instance, take the Head Start bonus for late-era starts. Right now, at the end of each turn, each city gets N/3 food and production, where N is the number of "discounted" techs remaining (starts at 2*Era and counts down; an Industrial start, for instance, discounts 8 techs). There's also a massive research boost, scaling up to (1.0 + 0.6*Era). Note that the food and production are not modified by any building multipliers (Watermill, Factory, etc.), there's no +gold added, and the research modifier is purely multiplicative. Also, since it's an after-the-fact addition, the game will get confused and think a city is starving when it's actually got enough food.

Cool, but I'll watch out for the AI, as they already got bonuses and extra cheat.

> Each city gets N/3 copies of a building that gives +2 food, +1 production, and +2 research. (Note that because these are buildings and not a lua hack, city multipliers DO apply, especially on research.) A bit more food than before, a bit less research than before, which is better in the long term.
> Your capital gets N/2 buildings that each add +1 Happiness
I'm also thinking of adding a small gold increase, like having the first option give +1 gold per 4 population or something.
So this sort of change is going to take some serious time to evaluate.

What will the AI do with those? Wouldn't they get confused and think that they get a boost or wathever, or try to demolish these?

Similarly, I'm also trying to get a final placeholder effect for the All-Terrain promotion, since it looks like there's no easy way to get the effect I want from straightforward Lua and XML edits.
One possibility I was looking into was to have these units still embark, albeit with the Songhai defensive embarkation, and that when they embark/disembark it doesn't end their turns. Even if I end up using something better, the idea of an improved "amphibious" embarkation appeals to me; I might give that promotion at the Command Nexus or something.

Wouldn't be better that once the unit sails (And lose the movement), automatically regains movement, allowing you to move it again (Of course if it had movement remaining before that).
------------

1> Dawn of Man screens. How attached are people to those graphics? Specifically, if I were to leave the audio intact but replace the leader-specific pictures and maps with a mod-specific infographic/tutorial screen, a scenario-like introduction explaining the key features of the mod, would people complain? Or should I just leave it as Civilopedia fodder?

I dunno was that... whatever it is, is better leave on the civilopedia. Those who want it get it, and those who don't at least don't get annoyed by it.

2> Nuke notifications. Right now I announce when a nuke has been intercepted, with the message changing if it was YOUR nuke. Do people want:
A> Notifications when ANY nukes launch, regardless of whether they were intercepted (with different messages, obviously), so you can know who's throwing nukes around.
B> Only notifications when nukes are either launched by you or target your units (it's a little work but I can do this). A simpler way would simply be to check if the launching player is at war with you.
or
C> What we have now.

Notifications on any nuke, is better; and you should want to know who is throwing them (I believe the AI automatically realises that).

3> The Breakout. It currently spawns a number of Spore Towers, which while annoying aren't a real threat unless they survive for a couple turns to spawn worms. Should it instead just spawn a larger number of mindworms directly, without any Spore Towers (which will spawn on their own in future turns)? Possibly spawning a single Spore Tower near the capital of whichever civ launched the first spaceship?

That would make more sense, punish the civ who reached Centauri first with increased spawn (Anyways chances are that civ who launched is topping the scoreboard).

Spore towers could be handled like Barbarian camps, that become some sort of fortress where there randomly spawn some psi units.
Psi units should be spawned more near special resources (Dunno, it attracts them?; say they spawn more randomly near uranium, neutronium or wathever the like).

Also, Psi units, also of being immune to nukes, they could get stronger each time they get hit by one, while recovering health and other bonuses (...).

4> Resources. So much of this game's strategy is defined by which strategics can be found within your own territory. Unfortunately, it's easily possible to have no deposits of many resources in the world. I'd previously added minimum overrides to Coal, along with my future resources; the question is, should I do the same for the existing strategics? Should there always be at least a few Uranium deposits in the world, or does the possibility of a world without nukes appeal to people?

That would be cool. But it won't really make much sense; aren't there some buildings that generate uranium???

I believe that there should be other projects that help againts nukes; In the civ4 rise of mankind there were many, including National Railguns, National AA defenses (Which was planned to build on Europe and generated some crisis). Those should give a small chance, but cumulative, of nuke interception. Overall with all those build the % chance should be like now (So players could get some projects to defend themselves from nukes before SDI; while at the same time nerfing the SDI).

5> Nuke Immunity. Right now, the only unit immune to nuke damage is the Troll; every other unit is damaged by A-bombs and destroyed instantly by nuclear missiles, including Titans, Orbital units, and Psi units with Troll-like total regeneration.
What I was planning to do was some combination of the following:
> Make Titans immune to nukes. This'd also include the Nessus Worm and Spore Tower.
> Make Orbitals immune to nukes, since they're not actually located in the cities they base in.
> Make the Doppelganger, Golem, and Ranger (the other "semi-Psi" units) immune.
> Psi units, maybe. Not that I think people will throw A-bombs at mindworms, and the larger Psi units will be immune through the Titan promotion.
I obviously don't want to take it TOO far, but right now one well-placed nuke slipping past SDI can obliterate an entire army. This way, the tanks, infantry, etc. will still be nuke-vulnerable, but you'll have other options. And even if every unit was immune to nukes, and all cities were protected by Gravity Shields, they'd still be useful for the Improvement destruction and Fallout generation.

Related question: should "Immune to Nukes" be a promotion that normal units can select, or should this effect be inherent to certain types of units and unavailable to others?

Nuke resistant appeals more to me, say it reduces the chances of the unit to be destroyed by the nuke and if it survives, reduces the damage taken overall.
Of course should be targeted to veteran unit you do not wish to be obliterated by the blast, and not available to non-armored units (No, I don't think nano-suits would save you).
Titans should not be completely immune by nukes, perhaps they could only be damaged partially by them, but no chances of being obliterated with a single blast.

Cheers.