Getting Started

[Thalassicus]

Many of the important topics are linked from the Goals thread. You can find most of the details you're curious about in the CivVModding.xls spreadsheet located in the mod folder:

a) Tech cost comparison - Techs tab in spreadsheet
b) SP costs - Policy Costs tab
c) XP thresholds - XP tab
d) Building & unit purchase and unit upgrade formulas - Purchase Mod tab
e) GS / GE bulb formula - Specialists tab
f) City growth foodbox thresholds - Expansion tab
g) RA formula - 3% of combined research - ingame on the Diplomacy Overview: Trade screen
h) CS relationship management changes - not sure what you mean by this

 

[Mustakrakish]

I've read the "Goals" threads, and one thing I would like to say about "combat roles"... I think vanguard units are a little too powerful to perfectly fulfill your idea of their role/purpose. They should be a little weaker I think. More powerful when near friendly unit makes them ridiculously hard to kill off. Easier is to ignore them since they can't do much damage either...

Whenever I get DoWed and my lands get swarmed with enemy units, the best way to kill off the invasion, I found, is to completely ignore vanguards and focus on other unit types. It's much much easier to kill more expensive strategic resource units than vanguards. I do next to nothing damage to vanguards, so best way to deal with them is to leave them alone and allow them to kill off themselves (while they take little damage when attacked, they also can't deal much damage when attacking > dying , hence the strategy).

 

[bwoww78]

Whenever I get DoWed and my lands get swarmed with enemy units, the best way to kill off the invasion, I found, is to completely ignore vanguards and focus on other unit types. It's much much easier to kill more expensive strategic resource units than vanguards. I do next to nothing damage to vanguards, so best way to deal with them is to leave them alone and allow them to kill off themselves (while they take little damage when attacked, they also can't deal much damage when attacking > dying , hence the strategy).

Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but that sounds like exactly the type of strategic thinking that makes combat with VEM more fun. I might agree that the friendly bonus might be a little strong (maybe it could get knocked down 5-10%?), but it can certainly help the tall player who only really aims to have a small, defensive force...

 

[Thalassicus]

Here's a comparison of Medieval-era units (just to pick an era):



Levies are the least-powerful units in the medieval era. With the adjacency bonus they're 1 point higher than pikemen on defense, but don't have a bonus against mounted units. If we nerfed their strength I suspect levies would not be useful.

@bwoww78
Vanguards are better for wide conquerors than tall empires, for several reasons:

• Archers are better for defending cities than vanguard units.
• Vanguards can see further than other units, more helpful in enemy territory than defending home lands.
• Conquerors typically max out strategic resource usage quickly, and still need more units. Vanguards fit the role of cannon fodder well.
• Tall players have the Oligarchy policy, which removes garrisoned unit maintenance, reducing the vanguard's low-cost advantage.
• Wide-conquerors have Military Caste, but usually not Oligarchy, so they need a cheap unit to stick in cities for the garrison bonus. Vanguards work well for this due to their low cost.
• Tall players can get their army from militaristic CSs and skip barracks/armory/etc altogether. Random unit rewards makes it less likely to get a large army of vanguards.

 

[ifinnem]

Many of the important topics are linked from the Goals thread. You can find most of the details you're curious about in the CivVModding.xls spreadsheet located in the mod folder:

a) Tech cost comparison - Techs tab in spreadsheet
b) SP costs - Policy Costs tab
c) XP thresholds - XP tab
d) Building & unit purchase and unit upgrade formulas - Purchase Mod tab
e) GS / GE bulb formula - Specialists tab
f) City growth foodbox thresholds - Expansion tab
g) RA formula - 3% of combined research - ingame on the Diplomacy Overview: Trade screen
h) CS relationship management changes - not sure what you mean by this

Thanks Thal - I think this is one of those time where you have been building / staring at that spreadsheet for years so it makes instant sense - to a fresh set of eyes its mostly a large jumble of numbers

Have been through the xls and the goals threads and definitely feel like I have my head around it more.

If you can clarify a couple of things I'm happy to compile some simple reference tables

d) Building & unit purchase and unit upgrade formulas - Purchase Mod tab
Don't follow this one without data labels - as far as I understand in vanilla there is a purchase forumula with penalties for certain era buildings etc. Can you provide the vanilla vs VEM forumals or a list of the costs for each actual building somewhere?

Upgrading - vanilla is like difference *2 + 10 or something right? What is the VEM upgrade cost calculation?

e) GS / GE bulb formula - Specialists tab
I think I recognize the GE formula of 300 + 30*pop, is that unchanged in VEM?
The label says era though?
Can you explain the GM calculation for a trade mission and also how the GS bulb is calculated (no mention on specialists tab)

g) RA formula - 3% of combined research
So there is no bonus at the end of the RA (I thought I saw that mentioned somewhere). Also does this correspond to 3% of the number shown by infoaddict? It did not seem to match for me.

h) CS relationship management changes - not sure what you mean by this
Sorry wasn't clear
1) Ways to gain influence with CS - has the amount of influence for gold / quests been changed?
2) How has the CS response to DoW, capturing other CS etc changed from vanilla?

Additional questions

i) Also the 1% open border gold - does that have a floor of 2? I noticed I was getting that even when our combined GNP was like 50 only

j) What does the tooltip mean when it says policy rate is slowed by war?

k) Is there a table / formula for the happiness GA thresholds vanilla vs VEM?

l) Is there a table / formula for CS culture and food yields by era

m) Questions / observations from the civilopedia

• Does the Iroquis UA still grant trade routes via forest/jungle? (unclear if this is changed from vanilla)
• Is the paper make supposed to lose the 0.5 science / pop that the regular library has (not shown as attribute for paper maker)
• Does the panzer actually have less visbility than tank (Text says less, no promo tho)
• Does the NC raise science by 50% or 25% (Text says 50%, attributes say 25%)
• Does the Moai now give a straight +3 culture with no bonus for near other Maoi?
• Can the Spanish UU no longer found cities?

Sorry for the laundry list!

 

[Txurce]

Levies are the least-powerful units in the medieval era. With the adjacency bonus they're 1 point higher than pikemen on defense, but don't have a bonus against mounted units. If we nerfed their strength I suspect levies would not be useful.

After many months of play with vanguard units, I pretty much never build pikemen or musketmen. I've always thought that weaker and cheaper would make Vanguard units even more distinct, more like cannon fodder or scout extensions, and maybe even more of a viable choice.

When suddenly attacked by a large enemy and with only a small army, I need more than one archer - I need bodies to absorb punishment. And I want them as quickly as possible. That's when I really wish I had a (cheaper) Vanguard unit available.

 

[Seek]

@ifinnem - I can answer a few of these for you.

d) I think Thal sets these by hand.

e) The GE formula is unchanged from vanilla. The GS formula is ((1.1n)^2.2)+650 where n=number of researched techs. GM gets (600*era)+300 (note, ancient era=0).

g) RAs grant 2% of combined research, doubled with a DoF (see the Research page). There is a boost on completion. I'm not certain about IA.

h) See the Diplomacy page.

i) I think this has a floor of 1, unless it was recently changed (and undocumented). The only recent change was the move to gross income, rather than profit.

k) Should be unchanged from vanilla. Edit: Missed recent change (on v154): "300 base cost for a Golden age, and +300 more for each additional GA"

m)

• "Does the Iroquis UA still grant trade routes via forest/jungle? (unclear if this is changed from vanilla)" Yes.
• "Is the paper make supposed to lose the 0.5 science / pop that the regular library has (not shown as attribute for paper maker)" It should have the same effects of a regular library, if it doesn't, it's a bug which you can report.
• "Does the panzer actually have less visbility than tank (Text says less, no promo tho)" Unsure.
• "Does the NC raise science by 50% or 25% (Text says 50%, attributes say 25%)" It should be 25%, the text probably needs to be updated.
• "Does the Moai now give a straight +3 culture with no bonus for near other Maoi?" It gets the bonus for other Moai.
• "Can the Spanish UU no longer found cities?" It should, does it not for you?

 

[rfxmills]

"Can the Spanish UU no longer found cities?" It should, does it not for you?

Conquistadors can settle cities, but I couldn't find any mention of it in the civilopedia when I last played as the Spanish.

 

[Thalassicus]

@ifinnem
When I created the spreadsheet it was just my personal notes, and I didn't anticipate releasing it to the public. That's why it's so hard to decipher.

b) The production table is the multiplier of vanilla costs. So for example, the "old" column had 120% vanilla cost, and the "new" column has 140% vanilla cost. The "multiplier" and "exponent" numbers on the gold table are part of the gold cost formula. Buildings do not have individual purchase cost modifiers in vem; they only use the global formula.

e) The reason the specialist spreadsheet says "base" and "era" is I thought all specialists scaled by era. I only later learned that engineers depend on population, not era.

g) Infoaddict shows inaccurate values for gold/science/culture rates because it uses the vanilla functions, not the vem functions. I tried improving the cross-mod compatibility a few months ago but ran into problems.

h) Influence from citystates is different in VEM, but Firaxis created hundreds of individual variables to control citystate influence instead of using tables. It's much too disorganized to list all the variables in a logical way.

i) Open border gold combines income, not profit (income-expenses).

j) Policy rate is slower for conquerors because warfare diverts resources away from science/culture towards military/production. Annexed cities also put a drain on culture costs, and take a while to recover those costs with new income.

k, l) I use tables for comparing things or calculating complex formulas. Stuff like golden age rate has nothing to compare it to and is a simple formula, so I didn't need to create tables for it. You can find the values in these files:

GA rate: vem/cities/VEC_SpecialistsandGP.xml
CS exports: vem/diplomacy/VED_General.xml (MinorCivTrait_Yields table)

m) Strategy text in the civilopedia is not kept up to date, because it would require a lot of work for not much gain (most people probably rely on just the tooltip and help text).

 

[Seek]

Conquistadors can settle cities, but I couldn't find any mention of it in the civilopedia when I last played as the Spanish.

Confirmed. Also, it appears the Satrap's Court is still located at Currency, not Trade (which might be okay for game balance, I haven't tried Persia for a couple months).

Also, site is now updated (for VEM, not CiVUP yet).

 

[Thalassicus]

Also, site is now updated.

Good job keeping this up to date.

 

[ifinnem]

Been noticing some changes wrt to trading gpt and wanted to find out how its supposed to work
a) Sometimes the AI gpt is greyed out and not available - what are the criteria for when this happens?
b) Occasionally the AIs gpt is not greyed out but cannot be added to a trade deal (nothing happens when clicked - is this a bug?)
c) Is the option to give the AI gpt in return for gold totally removed or was it just because of my game situation that I couldn't offer gpt in a deal?

 

[ifinnem]

d) Building & unit purchase and unit upgrade formulas - Purchase Mod tab
Don't follow this one without data labels - as far as I understand in vanilla there is a purchase forumula with penalties for certain era buildings etc. Can you provide the vanilla vs VEM forumals or a list of the costs for each actual building somewhere?

Upgrading - vanilla is like difference *2 + 10 or something right? What is the VEM upgrade cost calculation?

b) The production table is the multiplier of vanilla costs. So for example, the "old" column had 120% vanilla cost, and the "new" column has 140% vanilla cost. The "multiplier" and "exponent" numbers on the gold table are part of the gold cost formula. Buildings do not have individual purchase cost modifiers in vem; they only use the global formula.

What about the era penalties (e.g. ancient era buildings have a penalty to buy in vanilla - have you changed this? I notice early buildings are very cheap vs vanilla

What about unit upgrade costs in VEM?

i) Also the 1% open border gold - does that have a floor of 2? I noticed I was getting that even when our combined GNP was like 50 only

i) Open border gold combines income, not profit (income-expenses).

I realize its income not profit but can you confirm the floor?

g) RA formula - 3% of combined research
So there is no bonus at the end of the RA (I thought I saw that mentioned somewhere). Also does this correspond to 3% of the number shown by infoaddict? It did not seem to match for me.

g) RAs grant 2% of combined research, doubled with a DoF (see the Research page). There is a boost on completion. I'm not certain about IA.

Thal can you confirm the boost details for the end of an RA.

 

[Txurce]

Been noticing some changes wrt to trading gpt and wanted to find out how its supposed to work
a) Sometimes the AI gpt is greyed out and not available - what are the criteria for when this happens?
b) Occasionally the AIs gpt is not greyed out but cannot be added to a trade deal (nothing happens when clicked - is this a bug?)
c) Is the option to give the AI gpt in return for gold totally removed or was it just because of my game situation that I couldn't offer gpt in a deal?

Grayed out means the gpt is already committed elsewhere. Not grayed out seems like a bug that I've had as well. you can trade in those circumstances almost all of the time.

 

[Zaldron]

After many months of play with vanguard units, I pretty much never build pikemen or musketmen. I've always thought that weaker and cheaper would make Vanguard units even more distinct, more like cannon fodder or scout extensions, and maybe even more of a viable choice.

When suddenly attacked by a large enemy and with only a small army, I need more than one archer - I need bodies to absorb punishment. And I want them as quickly as possible. That's when I really wish I had a (cheaper) Vanguard unit available.

I don't build a lot of pikemen but I absolutely build muskets in quantity, because they're (I recall) two columns earlier in the tech tree than skirmishers are.

 

[Txurce]

I'm not looking at a tech tree right now, but...

I research to Theory of Evolution before circling back to the gunpowder line on a Replacement Parts beeline (that skips Rifling), so I reach Skirmishers first. I often don't go back for Rifling, etc, until I've researched Plastics.

 

[Thalassicus]

@ifinnem
AI trades are not something we can control much with our current modding tools. The capability to trade gold per turn is decided by the game core.

There are no era penalties for purchasing buildings or units. There's only the individual unit/building purchase cost modifier... and in vem, I set most of those modifiers to zero. Unit upgrade costs are much higher in VEM than vanilla. It encourages us to sometimes build new units instead of always upgrading all our old ones. This helps prevent steamrolling, as leaders with early-game success at war upgrade experienced units.

Mutual open borders provides a minimum 1 gold per turn. Research Agreements give science upon completion, which is not intended, and can't be fixed with our current modding tools. I raised their cost at one point to compensate for this unsolvable bug.

@Zaldron, Txurce
As a conqueror I get Gunpowder early because it's on the path to Cannon, an important unit for midgame warfare. It sounds like you pursue a more peaceful path.

 

[Txurce]

@Zaldron, Txurce
As a conqueror I get Gunpowder early because it's on the path to Cannon, an important unit for midgame warfare. It sounds like you pursue a more peaceful path.

I understand, and don't have a major issue with this. That said, a different way of looking at it is that I don't feel the necessity toresearch Metal Casting (and later Gunpowder) because my military purposes are better served by taking Civil Service. Even when going on offense, I use Levies (and later Skirmishers) to protect my ranged/siege units. For me the ideal would be to feel some pressure to veer off into the lower tech paths. One way to do this would be to further differentiate Vanguard units from Melee, and my suggestion was to make them cheaper and weaker.

 

[ifinnem]

@ifinnem
AI trades are not something we can control much with our current modding tools. The capability to trade gold per turn is decided by the game core.

So you are saying that if I couldn't trade MY gpt for AI gold its a bug?

Unit upgrade costs are much higher in VEM than vanilla. It encourages us to sometimes build new units instead of always upgrading all our old ones. This helps prevent steamrolling, as leaders with early-game success at war upgrade experienced units.

Can you provide the exact formula or reference table otherwise its kinda hard to plan a strategy accordingly

Research Agreements give science upon completion, which is not intended, and can't be fixed with our current modding tools. I raised their cost at one point to compensate for this unsolvable bug.

Is this boost the same as you get from vanilla RAs?

Thanks Thal

 

[Txurce]

So you are saying that if I couldn't trade MY gpt for AI gold its a bug?

Is this boost the same as you get from vanilla RAs?

Yes on both.