Minor suggestions

[AnotherPacifist]

I'm starting this thread to allow people to put in their 5 cents.

Bonedog has asked whether it's possible to change leaders for the preset scenarios. Is it possible to create a dialog box that would pop up at appropriate times in mid game to choose a different leader? E.g. When Sun Ce dies in 200 (in history at least), a box could pop up allowing Sun Quan to assume leadership, with his attributes. This would be like Europa Universalis where different sovereigns have certain strengths and weaknesses.

Or just allow the various leaders to be available in the starting menu.

 

[Agent327]

Two (very) minor suggestions:

- the "Talented-hiring Bureau" building should read "Talent-hiring Bureau" (or perhaps just Talent Bureau/Office)
- the Imperial Court proposal "Establist a new empire" should read "Establish..."

 

[Dknight99]

I think that's a great idea about being able to change leaders mid game. It can affect other leaders attitudes toward you. I am concern how much work it'll be for the coding team to implement this though or if it's possible at all.

 

[mtagge]

FFH lets you change leaders mid game. It causes crashed if playing multi-player, but if you are going for single player you can check out code from there.

 

[stmartin]

Actually, making changing leader happen in the middle of the game is not that hard. jdog's ChangePlayer which comes with Better AI can do that with ease. You can do it during the game too, using ctrl-shift-P if I remember right.

If we really do that, we need to make sure how this will happen. Do you really like the idea that Sun Ce will die in 200AD and be replaced by a less competent little brother? I love Sun Ce and am not very fond of that.

And the 'coding team' is actually...not many people. I need to recruit some new heroes to come on board.

 

[xxhe]

Two (very) minor suggestions:

- the "Talented-hiring Bureau" building should read "Talent-hiring Bureau" (or perhaps just Talent Bureau/Office)
- the Imperial Court proposal "Establist a new empire" should read "Establish..."

Thanks a lot.

 

[Shiggs713]

And the 'coding team' is actually...not many people. I need to recruit some new heroes to come on board.

well I'm no pro but I could help if you need it. Anything to do with XML or 2D art I can do. I've even made a few rough models of new units with nifskope and blender. Oh and did I mention I'm in school currently for computer programming. I already use Visual Basic 05' Express like 20 times a week.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Zheng's Academy needs some incentive for the human to build, e.g. easier with marble. Right now I never build it but aim for Tianlu Library because if you get the 7 school event, you can either get a free early tech (besides the one you got building the library), libraries are worth more science or get a free scientist. Zheng's takes way too long and isn't worth it.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

It's often confusing what the various civ traits mean. (I only found out after playing Liu Zhang that they have the Incan power of terraces, and whatever Wang Lang's "educative" means just eludes me). Rhye's opening screens are useful because they tell you what the unique power is (even though it still takes playing the game to discover that certain ones are harder to implement than others, e.g. Mongols). Maybe having an explanation pop up when you mouse over the trait would help.

Also, for the non-ROTK fan who would like a little guidance as to which civs to start with, we can have on the menu 1-5 stars for
starting situation (Cao Cao and Yuan Shao being the best, Shan Yue and Gongsun Zan the worst)
economy (Zhang Lu's shrine makes him potentially 4 stars)
culture (Liu Biao and Liu Zhang would be at least 4 stars)
production (Zhang Yang isn't bad, at least 4 stars)

 

[xxhe]

Zheng's Academy needs some incentive for the human to build, e.g. easier with marble. Right now I never build it but aim for Tianlu Library because if you get the 7 school event, you can either get a free early tech (besides the one you got building the library), libraries are worth more science or get a free scientist. Zheng's takes way too long and isn't worth it.

I plan to make Zheng's to get 50% marble bonus and 100% stone bonus. This bonus may seem to be a bit high. But considering that Zheng's can be built very early and at that time normally no one can have both marble and stone, I think it would be Ok and give more civs the possibility to build it.

Also I think there are too many now in the game. So I plan to reduce the happiness bonus. i.e. Some buildings will produce less happiness bonus, and Despotism will give 1 face at every city.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

The difference between the different maps is striking. On the regular (mid size) map, the AI will storm Yijing without bombardment of the 150% defence, since it can routinely wipe out that starting army (I'm lucky if Zhao Yun doesn't get killed or captured the first move). On the other hand, the large map I actually can keep Yijing, and can even capture one of his cities because my swift riders don't get killed.

The main difference is that in the large map, Yijing is on a hill and across the river, so that the AI doesn't dare to attack. Why not do the same for all 3 maps so that Gongsun Zan can be playable? Another thing that might help is to place Yuan Shao's army a little farther away from the action so that you have time to actually prepare your Zhao Yun for more defense.

 

[ono-neko]

If I may suggest, I've seen mod that allow the player to increase/decrease culture/research/spy in 5% increment/decrement instead of 10%. I found that's quite useful where I can have more freedom in adjusting those settings.

 

[Kalimakhus]

This is a small modification in GlobalDefines.xml. You can actually do it yourself if you like. You will need to open Beyond The Sword\assets\XML\GlobalDefines.xml file in notepad and find the following lines:

<Define>
         <DefineName>COMMERCE_PERCENT_CHANGE_INCREMENTS</DefineName>
         <iDefineIntVal>10</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>

Copy these lines to The History of Three Kingdoms\assets\xml\GlobalDefinesAlt.xml. You can put them in the end of the file before the last line. Change 10 to 5 or even 1 if you like.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Just a thought: Jianye (which is the name that most people are familiar with) is actually the same as Mo Ling, so maybe after a certain date it can change to it (e.g. after 222)? Or may be even start with Jianye?

 

[Evalis]

In the three kingdoms era treaties and pacts were often made over the exchange of coin. As it stands, requests to stop trading or go to war are not programmed to include a trade - they are always demands. It would be flavourful if the computer made these requests in the same way they calculate "what do you want for this" when you ask them to go to war or make peace as a player.

Requests for gifts are also somewhat troubling in that the relation penalty is permanent wheras the means of reaching the point of 'friendly' may be composed of factors that will degrade over time. Perhaps the 'you gave us help' modifier could be permanent, and serve to illiminate (or reduce) each count of 'you refused to help us'. It would also be extremely cool if the computer had a chance to contact the player to return the favour once the gift counter got so high or even just to placate the other nation into not attacking.

Anyhoo
my 2 cents ^^

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Actually, I've had several offers of "free" resources from friendly AIs. I.e. when you ask for a resource and ask them for they want, sometimes they don't ask for anything back. So it's not a peace treaty but a free resource. Of course this is in monarch and you have to have a pleased or friendly AI to do this. Cao Cao never does this (he always asks for an extra resource when trading) while Liu Zhang and a really friendly Sun Ce did it to me.
Yuan Shao, cocky bastard that he is, also sometimes gives me free techs early on, especially if I'm at war with the same enemy. Maybe this is their way of reciprocating without breaking the current Civ 4 AI.

On the other hand, I agree with Evalis. There's no way to overcome the -10 and -5 negative modifiers between certain civs (Sun Ce vs. Liu Biao, Yuan Shao vs. Gongsun Zan, Cao Cao vs. Lu Bu). I tried very hard to placate them but the AI still eventually attacks. Maybe these "preset" bad humors can dissipate in time?

 

[Shiggs713]

yea, I was just thinking something along these lines earlier today. By the end of the game, usually any civs with different beliefs than me usually end up hating me. Sometimes even if they (or I) switch beliefs they still hate me for a long long time if not forever. Granted this is a problem that CIV4 BTS has introduced, not the HotTK team, but it would be a nice improvement to have these negative events or whatever erode slowly with time.

In my Zhang Yang game, I switched to Revival a long long time ago. Any civs using Revival love me (I've force converted all my vassals though now a couple have switched to indifference but they still like me), Liu Biao and his vassal like me (cause I've been tech whoring with both of them), and everyone else absolutely hates me. There is no grey area, no cautious leaders, they all either love or hate me.

Luckily for me I field the largest army in ancient China so they can't do much about it even if they do hate me

 

[Shiggs713]

oh and I just remembered why I stopped by. I wanted to discuss the cost of upgrading units. To me it seems ridiculous. I forget all the names, but to upgrade the strength 10 cavalry unit to the strength 14 cost like 600 something gold. I can produce said 14 strength cavalry unit in 1 turn in a few different cities (even on epic speed). I know for a fact none of my cities can produce anywhere close to 600 gold in 1 turn by itself. Put that into perspective.

Its actually more efficient to just keep pumping out newish units than to upgrade older ones. Hence, I end up deleting or sending to the slaughter all my old units. If I get huge surpluses of gold then I just run over budget till I run out again (playing turns losing 100 something gold per turn just to keep from wasting the gold, in the late game gold becomes very plentiful, I guess from demanding tribute and capturing cities somehow I amassed a few thousand).

I do not like to save gold. I like to spend it to improve my empire, but not as inefficiently as it is spent to upgrade old units. Its painful to spend 600 gold to upgrade a unit, its painful to send it to slaughter, just to let it die so I don't have to pay maintenance on it, and its especially painful to just delete it cause its costing me more than its worth.

This in fact hurts the AI's more than you would like to know. When the AI's get a new military tech, they basically set they're science spending to 10% or even 0% until they have upgraded all their old units. They really waste alot of science and gold doing this.

sorry for my little rant

 

[AnotherPacifist]

I was re-reading my Chinese history and the term Princedoms rang a bell in my head: didn't the Jin Dynasty crash because of the War of the 8 Princes?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Eight_Princes
It weakened the central government enough for the 5 Wu tribes to basically take over northern China.
So maybe after knowing Princedoms, have it built in so that there is a small but finite chance for any unhappy cities to become barbarian. This will allow smaller civs who don't know Laws of Jin to have a fighting chance.

 

[xxhe]

That's a good idea, but barbarians are weak in late game. Maybe they could receive some defence units as the city converts.