I hate the way base base tech tree handles food development

[Pazyryk]

Hope you don't mind comments of the nature "this is better in [other modmod]." Anyway, I really like the way Orbis tech tree deals with early food development. In the base FFH tree, there is really no choice but to pursue Agriculture. Hunting is just too far away even if you're surrounded by many game. Seafood is also 2 techs away (unless you start with exploration) so is rarely a first tech. In Orbis, you can pursue fishing, agriculture or hunting as 1st tech (the hunter unit comes later under tracking tech). I believe animal husbandry comes after either ag or hunting. Why not have all 4 food techs available at start? This would let early civs develop as hunters, farmers, fishers or herders based on specific environment, rather than everyone farming first. (I'd even include animal husbandry as 1st tech choice because there are pastoral societies that don't farm.)

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

that could be a good idea, especially adding a tech before hunting that unlocks camps since hunting is so damn expensive in the early game, which hurts a lot when you are in tundra with decent food only accessible from camps.

 

[Pazyryk]

It would sure smooth out some starting locations, especially those high game tundra starts. I almost think it is more of a flavor fix though. Doviello should be meat eaters. Wheat is for wimps.

 

[Goodgimp]

I think that's a good idea, honestly. It hurts to have a coastal start completely reliant on fish for food when you don't start with Exploration.

 

[Sephi]

How about someone makes a module for it so we can start playtesting? Everything you need for it should be in techinfos.xml Changing the prereq of some techs, maybe moving a few beakers from one tech to another, that should do it.

 

[Sephi]

A guide for how to make a module can be found here http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=344078
there are also many examples in the Assets\modules folder.

 

[Goodgimp]

I can take this one, Sephi.

In the meantime, one thing I'd like to point out is that the vast majority of the issues raised can be mostly resolved by playing with the "Improvements without Tech" gameoption (other than Fishing).

 

[Pazyryk]

Thanks for the encouragement Selphi. I'll mod this and post it in a couple days. I'll try to restrain myself, but there are a couple other things I'm going to change, mostly to delay hawks and map trading (to make map revealing not so early in the game) and delay roads a little (if I'm going to make food easier, I want to make empire building a little harder some other way).

The 4 food techs will all be first column like this:

Ag --> Calendar
Animal Husbandry --> Horseback Riding
Hunting --> Tracking --> Animal Handling, Poisons, Archery
(Hunting allows camps, Tracking allows hunters, Animal Handling allows hawks)
Fishing --> Sailing

-Delete exploration and cartography. Roads now require masonry, map trading requires optics (or maybe astronomy?), city states requires education, open borders requires writing. But where should I put Larry,Currly,Moe?

 

[Sephi]

if you only change the prereqs of the food techs, the AI will understand it.

If you go further than that and add/remove/modify the bonus of techs you also need to modify tech AI (in cvgameutils.py and the leaderhead XML files). It is possible and in many cases the changes are rather easy, but it also means that it can't be done true modular and can easily cause quite a bit of work.

If you want to keep it true modular (which means you never have to update it), I suggest this:

Ag --> Calendar
Animal Husbandry --> Horseback Riding
Exploration allows camps
Animal Handling allows hawks
Fishing --> Sailing
map trading either trade/currency/taxation, as the AI will tech these sooner or later
city states -> education (isn't cottages+city states from education a bit too much?)
open borders -> writing
reduce techcost of cartography.

 

[Pazyryk]

Good idea to put camps under exploration -- it actually fits to some extent.

However, it's weird to have roads (a very civilized invention) under the same tech as camps (more of a frontier/nature thing). Any thoughts on my putting roads under masonry? It seems more fitting to me but it would have a big impact on early development.

It's a little weird to have cartography but put map trading somewhere else (and then leave cartography with only the Pact). Will it break modularity if I don't delete cartography but move it to a much later part of game? I really don't like having the map revealed so early by trade rather than having to do hard exploration.

OK, so maybe it's too much to have education allow cottages and 2 civics (although mysticism allows a civic and 2 strong early buildings). If I don't move cartography (as discussed above), then I can leave things as they are. If I move cart, then I'll have to do something with city states.

 

[Pazyryk]

Come to think about it, crafting is currently a little weird. It's a whole tech dedicated to booze. Now I'm a big fan of booze, but that seems a bit strange for a starting tech. Why not put the alcohol related stuff under festivals where it belongs? Could then delete crafting. Or maybe flip it with masonry, and give it apprenticeship. Then masonry and mining would be starting techs:

masonry (quarries, roads) --> crafting (apprenticeship)
mining (mines, reveals copper) --> bronze working

Yes, I know this breaks modularity. With all of the past tech shuffling (I think in late FFH development), we have a lot of stuff that doesn't make sense (mining --> archery?, archery allows forest clearing?).

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

you could take a look at Orbis' tech tree which is way more realistic

 

[Pazyryk]

Love Orbis for the tech tree (especially early changes; the many later additions get a little tedious) and several other things. Selphi currently has me addicted to WildMana for the AI. Other stuff is great too, but that AI keep kicking my butt and I like that.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

yeah, honestly as cool as Orbis and RifE one I don't get how one would play them instead of wild mana... imho the better AI has a much higher priority than new stuff, no matter how cool it is. I'd rather have the ai able to use what we currently has, than adding something that only the player will benefit from.

sadly, this still doesn't keep me from daydreaming about a major royal superduper uber merge of the three

 

[Medicine_Man_55]

Wildmana's strong AI is a big lure. I also like the passive training module and arcane mastery module.

My only problem with Wildmana is the memory management. It seems to be a lot worse than base FFH2 for crashing to desktop every 3-5 turns or having an illegal memory operation while loading games. The base FFH has these same problems but they became less severe around version 2.41.

 

[Sephi]

memory allocation errors seem to be a problem for all big Civ4 Mods. Some user report that playing on smaller maps helps. It seems hardware related as only some users have these problems.

Some operating systems seem to put a limit on how much memory Civ can use. See this thread for a discussion and possible tweaks. Can't really remember if it is only XP or other systems as well.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=308737

 

[arstal]

yeah, honestly as cool as Orbis and RifE one I don't get how one would play them instead of wild mana... imho the better AI has a much higher priority than new stuff, no matter how cool it is. I'd rather have the ai able to use what we currently has, than adding something that only the player will benefit from.

sadly, this still doesn't keep me from daydreaming about a major royal superduper uber merge of the three

That said, Wildmana's AI is what keeps me around (the only issue is with resource cheats it becomes too good, but without them the AI tends to get dommed by barbs unless you turn them down, and turned down barbs= cakewalk)

There are things from Orbis and especially Tweakmod (though Sephi includes most of the good Tweakmod stuff now- he's only misisng their Esus+Sidar changes which would be nice I believe)

 

[Medicine_Man_55]

memory allocation errors seem to be a problem for all big Civ4 Mods. Some user report that playing on smaller maps helps. It seems hardware related as only some users have these problems.

Some operating systems seem to put a limit on how much memory Civ can use. See this thread for a discussion and possible tweaks. Can't really remember if it is only XP or other systems as well.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=308737

Thanks Sephi. I'll do myself some reading. This is really the only bone of contention I have with an otherwise stellar mod (and modmod).

 

[Sephi]

Come to think about it, crafting is currently a little weird. It's a whole tech dedicated to booze. Now I'm a big fan of booze, but that seems a bit strange for a starting tech. Why not put the alcohol related stuff under festivals where it belongs? Could then delete crafting. Or maybe flip it with masonry, and give it apprenticeship. Then masonry and mining would be starting techs:

masonry (quarries, roads) --> crafting (apprenticeship)
mining (mines, reveals copper) --> bronze working

Yes, I know this breaks modularity. With all of the past tech shuffling (I think in late FFH development), we have a lot of stuff that doesn't make sense (mining --> archery?, archery allows forest clearing?).

yeah, a few things in the tech tree don't make that much sense. But apart from the agriculture problem you pointed out in the first post I think the tech tree is fun to play.

 

[Sephi]

yeah, honestly as cool as Orbis and RifE one I don't get how one would play them instead of wild mana... imho the better AI has a much higher priority than new stuff, no matter how cool it is. I'd rather have the ai able to use what we currently has, than adding something that only the player will benefit from.

then you will love next version. Barbarian forts will spawn scorpion clan archers instead of scouts. Scorpion archers either try to pillage stuff or do ranged attacks to gain a few xp. No suiciding by them. My plan is to give every barbarian unit a unique behavior but that probably will take a while