New Game Speeds

[Thunderbrd]

The Unit costs is T-brd's puppy. Last time I changed anything he was not really happy. He knows there are revisions needed, but wants impo to do them himself to met his criteria. Mine does not match his most of the time.

Not that I've been working on it much lately. The base costs are an issue as it stands now, yes. But it does take a thorough review, noting what upgrade lines they are a part of and what % modification those lines get against the base costs as assigned by the base cost chart compared to the unit's accessing tech.

What this comment suggests is that workboats probably should be fairly cheap in comparison to most unit types on that chart and I would agree considering they are one shot units mostly. But it will be a WHILE before I can find the bandwidth to work on unit costs as a general whole.

@Joe: Just as a footnote... you mentioned elsewhere that you were playing Developing Leaders. It might be interesting to know that I'm passively working on the traits designs to fill gaps in my time. I'm making some progress and I hope to have a complete workup in place by the next version.

 

[TrippedOnACloud]

Multiple production should still happen, just not as early as it has been.

It's not actually the early multiple production that I have concerns about, but the possible lack of late multiple production. As I've mentioned, my capital generally winds up as a ridiculously overpopulated, hyperproductive, slave-powered megalopolis, so again, edge cases, but the general trend is as follows (Large/Snail): A few to several turns per unit for most of the early to mid Prehistoric, major boost to production once Slavery is reached and I can start settling captives to where 3-4 inexpensive units per turn is possible, generally increasing trend of units per turn capable of being produced from here on out. However, beginning around the Industrial era, there's an extremely steep climb in the costs of units, especially noticeable in the costs of Law Enforcement units. Bearing in mind the nature of my city, several modern era units would take an extremely long time to produce. The issue can probably be summed up as "many unit costs scale exponentially beyond a certain point, but production remains more-or-less linear with occasional spikes". I've run into situations again and again where the most effective unit to produce is one that's obsolete, simply because I can produce several times as many for the same cost.

If I'm understanding the nature of the changes you made correctly, all you're doing is applying a scaling factor to production, research, costs, etc by era globally by era, without making any changes to individual units, yes?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Also, something that I feel should be brought up in regards to unit costs, the cost of upgraded Workboats is a bit absurd, especially in later eras, considering they're consumed when used for Fishing Boats.

The upgrade cost is determined from the cost of the old and the cost of the new. There are two ways to reduce the cost

1) Have the more modern unit cost a lot less. Which makes sense in this case but means the unit does not fit the pattern and will probably get put back up the next time a review is done.

2) add in more intermediate work boats. We just had the few, mostly to see if the idea worked for work boats as it did for workers. If we add more in then we need to consider the various attributes

• movement speed
• what improvements it can do
• when doing those improvements does not consume the ship

 

[JosEPh_II]

It's not actually the early multiple production that I have concerns about, but the possible lack of late multiple production. As I've mentioned, my capital generally winds up as a ridiculously overpopulated, hyperproductive, slave-powered megalopolis, so again, edge cases, but the general trend is as follows (Large/Snail): A few to several turns per unit for most of the early to mid Prehistoric, major boost to production once Slavery is reached and I can start settling captives to where 3-4 inexpensive units per turn is possible, generally increasing trend of units per turn capable of being produced from here on out. However, beginning around the Industrial era, there's an extremely steep climb in the costs of units, especially noticeable in the costs of Law Enforcement units. Bearing in mind the nature of my city, several modern era units would take an extremely long time to produce. The issue can probably be summed up as "many unit costs scale exponentially beyond a certain point, but production remains more-or-less linear with occasional spikes". I've run into situations again and again where the most effective unit to produce is one that's obsolete, simply because I can produce several times as many for the same cost.

If I'm understanding the nature of the changes you made correctly, all you're doing is applying a scaling factor to production, research, costs, etc by era globally by era, without making any changes to individual units, yes?

No individual unit changes, and yes to the rest. The overall training time for new units per GS was increased.

JosEPh

 

[strategyonly]

More details please. How many turns to research tech and in Which Era?

What Difficulty level?

Just sayin too much does not help me.

And you were the one that said "dates" don't match Era.

Thanks

JosEPh

Dont know for sure if i need to start a new game to get the full effect, but the current game the techs went waaay up in turn times to get them, they used to be around 10-15 turns, now around 40-50 per turn, see pic, again i dont care about year dates . . also i just like to "b-itch" lol

 

[JosEPh_II]

Thanks for the screenshot that helps a bunch.

I scaled the Tech Cost by Era pretty hard to start. I may have to reduce the scale for the Late Eras.

By the way what Difficulty level is your game?

But I guarantee that you wont be starting Modern Era at 500AD anymore.

Need more players with developed games to chime in too.

EDIT:
@ SO,
In CIV4EraInfos.xml (Assests/xml/GameInfo) find this line under Modern Era:

<iTechCostModifier>125</iTechCostModifier>

Reduce the 125 to 60. Play a few turns and then report back how the Tech time has changed, okay.

JosEPh

 

[TrippedOnACloud]

The upgrade cost is determined from the cost of the old and the cost of the new. There are two ways to reduce the cost

1) Have the more modern unit cost a lot less. Which makes sense in this case but means the unit does not fit the pattern and will probably get put back up the next time a review is done.

2) add in more intermediate work boats. We just had the few, mostly to see if the idea worked for work boats as it did for workers. If we add more in then we need to consider the various attributes

• movement speed
• what improvements it can do
• when doing those improvements does not consume the ship

Er, note that I'm not referring to the unit upgrade cost in , but the production cost in . I don't really see the need for more intermediate work boats, since unlike land workers, there's basically only two improvements they can build aside from Fishing Boats, only one of which has a meaningful construction time (Beacon/Lighthouse). The problem with the much higher cost for later workboats is that new coastal cities or less-developed coastal cities find it prohibitively expensive to access their nearby seafood in later eras. IIRC the issue only really comes up starting at the Modern Workboat, with the Construction Ship being far worse. Mind, giving Construction Ships the ability to build Fishing Boats without being consumed would probably justify their extremely high cost.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Er, note that I'm not referring to the unit upgrade cost in , but the production cost in . I don't really see the need for more intermediate work boats, since unlike land workers, there's basically only two improvements they can build aside from Fishing Boats, only one of which has a meaningful construction time (Beacon/Lighthouse). The problem with the much higher cost for later workboats is that new coastal cities or less-developed coastal cities find it prohibitively expensive to access their nearby seafood in later eras. IIRC the issue only really comes up starting at the Modern Workboat, with the Construction Ship being far worse. Mind, giving Construction Ships the ability to build Fishing Boats without being consumed would probably justify their extremely high cost.

The upgrade cost in is worked out based on the cost of the old unit in and the cost to build the upgrade unit in .

My naval city builds all the work boats for my nation. It always has 2 extra in it on automate. As soon as I see that it is below 2 I build more. If I know that I will be building or expanding into areas with resources I send the work boats off ready for quick use.

@Joe With the one tile start for cities, should it change to the full 9 at say Colonialism? We can do that you know, Platyping catered for it in his code to fix the Advanced Settlers problem. We can set the initial culture level of a city.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

With the latest changes I am now going bankrupt after Sedentary Lifestyle (edit) at least up until I get Mining.

 

[JosEPh_II]

With the latest changes I am now going bankrupt after Sedentary Lifestyle (edit) at least up until I get Mining.

Is this on Noble Difficulty or Higher?

Also have you noticed any slowdown on the AI for building new cities and units?

About the Colonialism suggestion, that is a possibility. Remind me what Era does Colonialism get researched? Ren Era?

Thanks

JosEPh

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I was playing Noble/Snail/Huge. As soon as I got the Metals civic I started making money again. I am playing with Rev on which means that sci+esp+culture must be 60 or more otherwise your nation will go into revolt. I went from 55%/5% and -35 to 90%/10%:espionage and +20 just from changing to Metals and building the Mining building in most cities.

I have not noticed, in my current game I started on a continent all by myself.

Colonialism is either late Ren or early Indust. I am considering having the extra pop from the Great Bath go obsolete then. It is then that cities start with 2 pop if I remember correctly.

 

[Taxman66]

Using SVN 9309 with the modified file (added around turn 490) last posted by Joesph at Monarch Difficulty on Snail.

Reached Sedentary Lifestyle first at turn 505/4940. Didn't beeline it and picked up Boat Building, Obsidian Weapons and Tengrii before hand.

I have 4 cities (though looking to expand to about 7 soon), am making 200 beakers a turn and am at near 0 gold a turn (some turns low negatives some low positives).

I started with caves, but 'only' got 4 of the wonders (note that they still count against the city maximum, which I turned off, even when they obsolete and are no longer displayed on the city screen).

Hunting has been very poor given the small land area I have access to. I'm bottled necked on a narrow snaky strip of land. I've not needed to go beyond 2 hunters. So I haven't been using any animals to gain short term culture/science boost.

Thus the rush to Tengrii as I'm going to have to eventually have a war to take out my neighbor bottlenecking my hunting and eventual expansion. Though I guess now at Sedentary I could build rafts and go around him to drop off the hunters. Very risky though with all the sharks and stuff around.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I started with caves, but 'only' got 4 of the wonders (note that they still count against the city maximum, which I turned off, even when they obsolete and are no longer displayed on the city screen).

This is normal Civ IV behaviour. The counts are of all wonders you built in the city not just the ones still active. Besides some of the things they do don't go obsolete when they do.

 

[Taxman66]

Yeah, I know that. Mostly surprised that they disappear off the Wonders tab. Might be better if they stayed and just zero or blank out the effects that go away.

 

[Thunderbrd]

For C2C, maybe we should consider having the wonder limit only apply to currently active wonders?

 

[Taxman66]

Personally, I'll never use the wonder limit until the whole culture system is reworked. While I agree with it in principal, nothing irks me more than being shut off from a culture because I have too many wonders in the only city that can build said culture.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Personally, I'll never use the wonder limit until the whole culture system is reworked. While I agree with it in principal, nothing irks me more than being shut off from a culture because I have too many wonders in the only city that can build said culture.

That's a good point as well. I suppose I don't even agree with wonder limits in principle but it does tend to make for a different kind of game.

What if there were a third option, which is to impose a penalty to the build cost of a wonder for every other wonder in the city?

 

[Taxman66]

I think you would still get the early ones clustered in your capital, and then the ancient ones clustered in your first few cities. There is too much to build and make up with your newer cities, especially as you get later and later into the game.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I think you would still get the early ones clustered in your capital, and then the ancient ones clustered in your first few cities. There is too much to build and make up with your newer cities, especially as you get later and later into the game.

Which would be why if a wonder is obsoleted it doesn't count towards increasing the cost of one you're currently building.

 

[TrippedOnACloud]

On the off chance you want more data:

Large PerfectMongoose 310 map, Snail, Monarch/Nightmare Mode/Increasing Difficulty, 12 AIs, No Tech Diffusion. No caves in starting radius, but with Stone and an Volcano in the BFC. Volcano went fully extinct (into Rocky Hills) with Obsidian in mid-Prehistoric.

Sedentary Lifestyle around turn 460 or so (11-12000 BC). I did not rush for it, and picked up all of the Domestication techs including Megafauna, as well as all the seafaring up to Sailing, before researching SL, but was still the first to reach it. First AI to reach SL was around 30-40 turns later, I think. I believe I had three cities at that point, though the two smaller cities were settled in rather resource-poor locations. I am located on what I believe to be the largest continent by far, and have encountered five other civilizations. I conquered and razed my nearest neighbor soon after getting Obsidian Swordsmen, and an attempt to do the same to the next-nearest AI failed due to insufficient forces.

Hunting-wise, there are far, far more animals than I can realistically make use of, and due to lack of caves I've avoided actively hunting any animals that aren't of immediate use as herds or other buildings. Despite this, I've accumulated sufficient animals in my capital to nearly cripple my economy through unit costs, as usual. For a long stretch I was forced to reduce my science rate and build Wealth in my capital, though with Metals I was able to return to 100% science and only perhaps every other turn spent on Wealth, and with Caste System and Trade I've been able to return to full production. I've since expanded to five cities, including conquering and keeping another AI civ.

Of particular note, this game my capital has been mired in the high negatives for education. I've built all education-providing buildings, but only stationed two Storytellers due to aforementioned economic issues. I expect I'll be trying to correct that now that my economy is back on track. The largest contacted AI is up to 6 cities, though somewhat behind in tech, and I expect I'll be sending out armies to prune them back soon. They managed to beat me to Druidism, though I got Shamanism and Tengriism, and I recently got the message that Mesopotamianism was founded by another AI, presumably on another continent, so I haven't managed quite as much of a runaway lead as usual.