[MOD] Ultimate Strategy

[Yakk]

Tech trading suggestions.

Being able to advance without doing any research seems cheesy. On the other hand, backwards civ's should be able to "catch up" by stealing/trading for ideas from other cultures.

1> If you have contact with a technology, it should be cheaper to develop. If you are in contact with someone who has a tech, you should have the first ~10% of the tech free[1]. If your borders are "butting up with" someone who has techs that you don't, possibly your border cities will lose culture and turn it into "soaked up tech" beakers for that tech (up to a certain limit)[2]. Other forms of trade might also leak tech.[3]

2> "Trading" techs should be replaced with "half-trading techs". Instead of getting 100% of the techknowlegy, you should get 50%. If you already have more than 50%, you can't trade for the rest.

3> Conquest. When you take a city, the cities culture is converted into beakers at a 10:1 ratio. Then the cheapest tech that the civ you are fighting has that you don't at least have 30% of is selected, and the beakers are poured into it.

Then your beaker-supply is halved, and another tech is chosen, until you run out of stolen beakers, or you run out of techs to steal.

Both of these encourage lagging behind technologically.

To encourage being a pioneer, when you are the first person to get a tech, give a bonus. 10% of the research required for all of the tech's uncovered by your research?

This should cap out at 50% of the tech (same as "volentary" tech trading)

All of this means that you have to do some research in order to tech up.

Possibly low-level techs (like alphabet) will allow 30% trading, while higher techs (like guilds or education) would allow 50% tech trading?

[1] How about 5% + 20% * (# of people in contact with you with that tech / # of total players in the game)

[2] If one of your cities "culture radius" overlaps another city who has tech you don't, culture should be drained out of your city at a rate of 2 culture per beaker, turned into research into that technoledgy. Every 10 culture your city loses should be given to the opponent.

[3] Trade-leak cap of 20%. For every 2 coins that change hands, 1 beaker leaks. For every resource that changes hands, some fraction of the sum of the two side's economies leak.

How are those ideas?

 

[naf4ever]

Tech trading suggestions.

Being able to advance without doing any research seems cheesy. On the other hand, backwards civ's should be able to "catch up" by stealing/trading for ideas from other cultures.

1> If you have contact with a technology, it should be cheaper to develop. If you are in contact with someone who has a tech, you should have the first ~10% of the tech free[1]. If your borders are "butting up with" someone who has techs that you don't, possibly your border cities will lose culture and turn it into "soaked up tech" beakers for that tech (up to a certain limit)[2]. Other forms of trade might also leak tech.[3]

Something along these lines is what im aiming for but I still want to tie it in with something, not just having contact. Thats why the first state of the new tech trading model will be tied in with open borders. As for the other parts with culture, ill be honest, technically i dont know how to do that at the moment. In the python code its much more feasible to alter things if I can link them to either game events, like end of turn or end of combat or in this case if they have an open border agreement. I wouldnt know what event to tell the code to interrupt or check for with your suggestion.

2> "Trading" techs should be replaced with "half-trading techs". Instead of getting 100% of the techknowlegy, you should get 50%. If you already have more than 50%, you can't trade for the rest.

This is definitely something I think can be done. I had an idea somewhat along these lines in an earlier version of my mod that wasnt released. In it I made it so only certain techs were tradable. Ones that seem more applied. The idea for my tech trading model is far from done so I'll add this in the open ideas section for it.

3> Conquest. When you take a city, the cities culture is converted into beakers at a 10:1 ratio. Then the cheapest tech that the civ you are fighting has that you don't at least have 30% of is selected, and the beakers are poured into it.

Then your beaker-supply is halved, and another tech is chosen, until you run out of stolen beakers, or you run out of techs to steal.

Both of these encourage lagging behind technologically.

You actually lost me a bit here, I dont quite get what your saying. But here is the current formula for techconquest and way it works when you take over a city: (The % refers to the percentage of the tech in terms of research points you get.)

# Base Points: will be 5% per population in city (City size 20 will always grant full tech)...

# Extra Tech points: will be random up to 50% the total tech cost

So in essence:

# The least you could get would be 10% (from city size 2)
# City size 5 would give 25-75%
# City size 10 gives 50-100%
# City size 20 guaranteed 100% (a full tech)

These numbers are easy to modify and work with if there arises a need to alter it a bit later. I might tone down the bonus points so that the amount you get is predominantly based on pop. That will discourage real early wars where you tend to wipe out someone with small cities.

To encourage being a pioneer, when you are the first person to get a tech, give a bonus. 10% of the research required for all of the tech's uncovered by your research?

This should cap out at 50% of the tech (same as "volentary" tech trading)

All of this means that you have to do some research in order to tech up.

Possibly low-level techs (like alphabet) will allow 30% trading, while higher techs (like guilds or education) would allow 50% tech trading?

[/QUOTE]

I would like to attach more tangible benefits to some of the techs right when getting them, plus its a good way to balance the tech tree if one path seems too strong. I'm unsure about adding too many bonuses to the first person who gets there though. It seems like it would just reward whoever is already dominating the game and put them that much further ahead.

Ya and I eventually want to make the tech trading bonus based on certain techs like you were saying such as alphabet etc.... At the moment the first step is to get the new model up and running, then it will be easier to modify the numbers and such of it.

Good thoughts.... I hope to hear more from you on other issues too.

 

[naf4ever]

The new technology trading model has been implented. This is the first big change to a game mechanic in this mod, yet hopefully not the last. Let me know how it plays for you all. -Naf

 

[dh_epic]

Technology from Conquests is a pretty dangerous addition to gameplay, IMO.

When you conquer a city, you already get a city -- the fundamental building block of a Civilization that's HUGELY valuable. There's already a slight snowball effect from being a good warmonger.

Adding free research to that, even in small portions, tends to reward people who ignore peaceful techs. Why research something peaceful when you can research something violent and kill for the peaceful tech? Moreover, you can drastically turn down your research and turn up your cash, so you can make huge upgrades to your army. And there's no real risk to doing so -- you have very little chance of falling behind in the tech race.

I think you're running down a path where war is clearly the best strategy in your mod. Just my opinion, not having played it.

 

[naf4ever]

Technology from Conquests is a pretty dangerous addition to gameplay, IMO.

When you conquer a city, you already get a city -- the fundamental building block of a Civilization that's HUGELY valuable. There's already a slight snowball effect from being a good warmonger.

Adding free research to that, even in small portions, tends to reward people who ignore peaceful techs. Why research something peaceful when you can research something violent and kill for the peaceful tech? Moreover, you can drastically turn down your research and turn up your cash, so you can make huge upgrades to your army. And there's no real risk to doing so -- you have very little chance of falling behind in the tech race.

I think you're running down a path where war is clearly the best strategy in your mod. Just my opinion, not having played it.

I see what you're getting at but first off Ive already changed techconquest some in the last update and plan to probably modify it more in the future. Also keep in mind unless you are attacking huge cities you arent going to be getting a tech every time. But most all your points are valid but I think your assuming war against a real person is just as easy and profitable as it is against the AI. From my experiences Id have to say its a total 180 going to war against a person. So much that its anything but profitable. Ive seen skilled players waste 50+ turns of production trying to attack each other and the end result is maybe 1 city changing hands that ends up draining more in city maintence than it gives back. The AI is stupid when it comes to fighting and even more so when it comes to seeing an attack before it happens. I wrote this next piece in my alteration analysis and is typical of how a human responds to being attacked:

First off they will be monitoring your troop buildups before you even attack and match your
units gathering on your side of the border with an equal amount on theirs. They will realize
that putting tons of units in their cities inst the best defense. Archers will be fortified on hills
near your border along with chariots to form mini-defensive points where they can
counterattack units walking by and prevent your attackers from even getting to their city in the
first place. They will attempt to alter your attack parties path forcing you to fight through units
fortified in forests and across rivers. Once war has begun they will instantly reallocate all their
unneeded units located in far off cities to the critical ones under attack. They will rush
defenders with slavery and stop all production of anything not related to defending themselves.
In addition they will triage cities, purposely withdrawing from weaker less developed ones to
focus defense on their main ones. Lastly they will click on the diplomacy screen and start
making offers to see if they can get anyone else to join in the war with them and attack your
backside......

The AI does hardly any of this. In all the multiplayer games ive been in Ive rarely ever seen a successful offensive carried out against a well skilled player unless they were drastically outnumbered or way behind in tech. In fact in most games going to war early on is pretty much a death sentence and the result is that everyone simply stays behind their forfied cities wonder-building. Remember the goal of this mod is multiplayer and frankly conquest right now is anything but beneficial against a skilled human opponent. TechConquest was direly needed I felt to fix this imbalance.

Also notice some of the changes ive made. It makes attacking and hence conquest much harder:

Castles now available with monarchy - an earlier and quite powerful defense
Cataphract - this unit is worse at attacking archers fortified in cities than either swordsman or horsearchers. Really its main use is on defense to intercept incoming sword or axemen.
Informant - to give you a better heads up early on if your enemy is massing an assault.
Musketman bonus to city defense - gives middle age civs who are far from rifleman decent defenders that can withstand cavalry.
Bazooka - gives resource poor empires a way to mount an effective defense against tanks and modern armor.

If anything conquest is more difficult and more resource demanding in this mod. There is greater risk but TechConquest provides a greater reward.

 

[acantoni]

Looking forward to try this one

 

[nibenay]

Me and my friends will get on this, i like the approach. Its nice when there is a purpose and a goal to changes, whe often try mods and find some aspect good and others inbalanced. At first glance i like more promotions there got to be a way to figure out promotions wich the Ai are as good as human players to use.
Keep up the good work, this has the best possibilities to be a great mod since Sevos mod.
/Nib

 

[holy king]

great mod...
i like the tech model although there are some problems (like with no tech trading the techs are missing as trade option - like for peace, joining a war - , and tech trading is missing as diplo modifier...) but i couldt think of anything to solve that...


and the cavalry graphics are missing...!!!!!!!!!!!
(but hey, those three red circles look quite funny...)

 

[naf4ever]

great mod...
i like the tech model although there are some problems (like with no tech trading the techs are missing as trade option - like for peace, joining a war - , and tech trading is missing as diplo modifier...) but i couldt think of anything to solve that...

Ya i thought about that.... On the other hand it makes gold much more useful. Im working to fix the interface now for the new tech model and will ponder if i can add something later so that theres more you can do for peace and war etc,, like you were saying.,

and the cavalry graphics are missing...!!!!!!!!!!!
(but hey, those three red circles look quite funny...)

I didnt see this. Are you referring to the new cataphract graphics or the standard cavalry? I'll look into it.

EDIT: Fixed the cavlary graphic bug. Didnt realize I had messed up the art definition when cleaning out some xml. You can download a patch on the first thread to fix it. Thanks for pointing it out.

 

[Aeon221]

Just stole my civ back from my lil bro (bugger hid it in a box and wasn't even playing it ), so I will be sure to try this out again with all the new fangled updates.

By the way, your cav download is broken.

Also, I'd suggest nerfing the tech conquest mod by 50% (so that a size 40, instead of a size 20, is the only thing that gives an assured tech) just to keep warmongers from gaining too much power.

Nice balancing act, and I am a big fan of your change to the tech system. Much superior to the current "Hand it over, or bend over and take it" approach.

 

[naf4ever]

Just added a mirror for the patch. It should work now if the main one doesnt.

This is what im thinking for the new techconquest formula change:

A base of 2% times the population of the city and;
a random amount based on the population times 3.

Which means, if you take over a city size 5 you will get between 10 and 25
percent of the tech. an average of 17.5% gained

Size 10 city gives 20 to 50 percent. avg of 35%
Size 15 between 30 and 75 % . avg of 52.5%
Size 20 between 40 and 100% . avg of 70%

So going around taking over lots of small cities wont do you much good. On average you'd have to take over six cities size 5 and under to get one tech or three cities around size 10. Even a size 20 city on average wont net you a whole tech but at least gives you the chance to get one..

Let me know what you think of those numbers. Im trying to discourage wiping someone out very early on but to give a decent reward for taking over large and most likely well defended cities in the industrial and modern age.
_____________________________________________

Also this is what im currently working on:

1)Fix the tech progress bar for the new opentech model. (Also im not qutie sure how to do it yet. But id like to give open borders more of a diplomacy modifier so that the AI will be more stringent on who it gives these treaties to.)

2) After that I want to work on a mod that makes religeon matter in multiplayer games. Religeons play a huge role in diplomacy in the single player game and wars and alliances are usually created around them. In multiplayer it doesnt matter at all and you fight and ally with whomever you choose. This is one aspect of the game that actually loses strategy against human opponents. So far my idea is to give empire wide unhappiness if you have too many open border agreements with nations that have state religeons different from yours. This would make religeon a factor again in games with human players and would make some diplomatic functions like "convert to my religeon" actually useful in multiplayer games. You'd also start to see games that get polarized into various alliances based on religeon since you wont get penalties for allying with someone of the same or with no state religeon.

3) Workshops seem inadequet now. The RealFort upgrade made forts much more useful and I'd like to do the same for workshops. At the moment Im going to see if I can add a +1 raw research point (not %) to the city for every workshop it has in its radius. If you got some more interesting ideas let me know. I guess I could always just give it a commerce bonus. This is definitely much easier to do but I was hoping for something a little more creative.

 

[Zuul]

I think the first workshop within city radius should give +5% hammers (and maybe the second +3% and the third +1%, same with windmill but food instead, and maybe commerce from watermill?).

 

[naf4ever]

I think the first workshop within city radius should give +5% hammers (and maybe the second +3% and the third +1%, same with windmill but food instead, and maybe commerce from watermill?).

I like that workshop idea. It would keep it more in theme with what its original purpose was and might make sense in my mod since i dont have a third tier production building,,, perhaps i could make workshops fill that role. I probably wont do anything with windmills since they seem to serve a good purpose already providing food and commerce for places with lots of hills. Watermills could use a mod though. Hard part for me with those is conceptualizing what a watermill today is! All the other improvements you can see real world examples but i dont remember the last time i saw a watermill being used or what the equivlant of it today would be in terms of the purpose served. Maybe one of those small single turbine hydroelectric facilities? Or a river/barge port?

On another note I think im close to figuring out how to fix the tech progress bars for the new opentech model. But for the life of me im not seeing how I can alter the actual numbers. The part where it says "Agriculture: 5 turns ". Anyone with some interface modding experience that knows please drop me a line. Thanks.

 

[Landmonitor]

If you're trying to base the changes on real life, one thing you should do is change the fact that in the modern era warfare, tanks are the best choice when it comes to city attacking. This is ridiculous.

The old Panzer General series reflected the dismal peformance of armour in crowded streets with "close attack" values that were high for infantry and low for essentially everything else. I know nothing about modding but I doubt that this can be done.

Having said that, in the WW2 era, the best way to take down a city was with infantry whose training and equipment were specialized to the task. I think this would be a fairly simple way to change the game, and would de-emphasize the late game uniformity of mech infantry/modern armour or tank in the armies. Also, the lack of self-propelled artillery units (modern and WW2 era) in the game is disappointing. They played an important role on both sides late in the European Theatre of WW2 and I'm sure that if an actual mobile war started now with *both* sides using "traditional" armies, then they would again be very important (notwithstanding how much more destructive air power has become since its equally improved with regard to shooting down bombers or ground attack aircraft).

Anyway, looks like an interesting mod. I don't play Civ too much, but if I get tired of Vanilla, I'll give this a shot for sure.

 

[Aeon221]

WOAH! Someone else who played Panzer General! w00t w00t! I used to play the first version religiously, and I still have a copy of it on my computer. Sounds like you played that newfangled 3D one...

That said, tanks were usually escorted with about 35 infantrymen per tank when in cities. A supported tank in a city environment is a deadly foe. It can control the street and supress enemies while its infantry support clears buildings with relative ease.

Windmills are seriously underpowered in Civ. In the real world, watermills were one of the most important buildings out there up until electricity bascially eliminated the need for them. In the Roman era, as now, a few centralized grain processing facilities are all that is really needed in a country. In the medieval period, with the total lack of long distance transport, localized facilities were needed everywhere.

There was literally a watermill on every available bit of water. They were used to process flax for linen, operate heavy hammers for metalwork, and grind cereals for useage in baking. They were one of the most significant non-military buildings in the period, and larger ones were frequently fortified in order to protect such a vital asset.

Because their function (providing mechanical power) has been co-opted by power plants, we see them not at all these days.

In order to model this, give them a decent boost to food and production, and have electricity take it away.

 

[naf4ever]

I actually made a decision awhile back that I would put certain aspects of realism aside for the sake of balance and consistant, fun gameplay. Because of this I cant see myself doing any major changes to modern armor tanks.

I think i might take a look at watermills to though. They also seem not the most useful right now unless you are state property

 

[Landmonitor]

WOAH! Someone else who played Panzer General! w00t w00t! I used to play the first version religiously, and I still have a copy of it on my computer. Sounds like you played that newfangled 3D one...

That said, tanks were usually escorted with about 35 infantrymen per tank when in cities. A supported tank in a city environment is a deadly foe. It can control the street and supress enemies while its infantry support clears buildings with relative ease.

Yeah, that was a really good series, I started sleeping in class when PGI came out and went right through to coming in late during grad school when PGIIISE came out! If you've never played the third installment, you should consider giving it a shot, they introduced a leader/unit system, so that it was the leader, not the unit that got experience, allowing you to put your very best guys on Tigers when they come out instead of having to "upgrade" to them. It really was a much better system, felt almost like blurring the edges between RPG and TBS. Also, they had the specialized promotions like in Civ IV, except you couldn't pick which one you'd get. Really good game.

I knew that small numbers of tanks were locally very strong in an urban situation, but I didn't think that would translate up to a scale like in Civ IV. I'm embarassed to say I don't actually know how much (mechanized?) infantry would be in an armoured division, but I thought that a "tank" unit would be predominantly tanks with less than 35 infantry/tank, while an infantry unit may include a few tanks or armoured SPGs or whatever, and that would be more what you were talking about.

Anyway, its a moot point, since its not going in the mod!

That bit about the watermills is interesting though, I didn't know that about the middle ages.

 

[Aeon221]

Water mills don't get no lovin

I agree, I have the feeling that units in civ are meant to be single structure units, not realistic compounded units.

(and yes, the infantry escorts of tanks were usually mechanized, although that really just means they sat in the back of a big truck and drove along next to it when transferring from point to point. Nothing like today's Stryker Brigades, whose mobility and firepower make them the equivalent of light tanks)

In fact, there are some pretty sick videos of mechanized battalions moving in on Baghdad from the recent war (they were CNN stuff for the most part, so its all PG). You can see the absolutely dominant nature of tanks in urban environments quite nicely there.

In addition, the events in Somalia (portrayed in kickass style in Black Hawk Down ) back in the days of Clinton are another great example of just how dominant armor has become since WW2. An infantry assault upon a properly supported armored unit is suicide, plain and simple.

Tanks can smash or shell buildings, provide massive cover and supressing fire, and act as a mobile command center for the troops assigned to them. "Smells like... victory."

I might have to go hunt through the bargain bin if PG3 is really that sweet. I saw a demo way back when and got all weirded out!

 

[onedreamer]

sounds promising, if it wasn't for "settler religion", which is probably the worse idea the community could come up with. I don't understand why so many mods implement it. I would try this mod if there is a way to get rid of settler religion.

nevermind I saw it was removed in the last version ^^



edit: if you made this with special regard to multiplayer then there is a problem, since it goes OOS all the time. It's probably the new tech system...

 

[snv]

Hello there.
Great Mod, and great approach to making it.

But sadly there is a huge problem (the reason why we don't use the mod currently):
My friends and i tried to play it, but were very disappointed because we constantly got out of sync. It seems to happen everytime somebody finishes researching a technology for which he gets the Open-Borders-Bonus.

And as this will probably be the mod i will usually play once you have fixed this, i will ask you for another feature here :
Could you implement the possibility to change the Culture-/Science-Rates in smaller steps as 10% ? I often found i would like to set my Culture-Budget to about 25% and alternating between 30% and 20% is a rather annoying workaround.