PlayWithMe

[alpaca]

Also, PWM_CityStates.xml has an error making maritime CS give 100/200 food instead of 1/2.

I doubt the mod works without the latest patch. On a Mac, the latest patch is unavailable afaik and PWM can be expected to cause problems there. The maritime CS, for example, use these high numbers since one of the hotfixes, and they are divided by 100 later. This was introduced to fix Siam getting twice as much food as other civs rather than 50% more

The UI files might suffer from similar problems.

 

[palazzo]

I doubt the mod works without the latest patch. On a Mac, the latest patch is unavailable afaik and PWM can be expected to cause problems there.

I suppose my frequent CTD's while setting up the game may be traced to the lack of the latest patch. Perhaps also the marsh appearing as checkerboard unless AssignStartPlots is commented out. Other than that, the mod has been perfectly playable on my Mac.

 

[Sneaks]

For those interested, I created a chatroom to discuss Civ V Modding in general, as well as a place to get faster feedback from Modders when they are online:

http://www.meebo.com/room/civmod/
password is fanatic

You do need to create a meebo account(or possibly use AIM, MSN, etc) to get in.

 

[Deep_Blue]

Well done Alpaca for this mod , this is one of the mods that I classify as Quality rather than quantity Mods. Many interesting ideas and approaches in your mod and they are really appreciated.

I didnt test your mod before, I just downloaded it yesterday (I rarely play or test mods)

Anyway I have few notices to consider:

Great Scientists now yield a number of beakers that depends on the number of techs you researched rather than granting you a free tech (500 + (number of techs)^2). Note: This is added to your currently researched tech instead of popping up an interface to choose one.

This one is risky , I had the intention before to do Custom Missions but I canceled this Idea because I know I cant make the AI use the new mission. Now if you replace the Mission effect in lua for ActivePlayer do you expect that the AI will be able to use it? of course not.

So for example, the Great Scientist gives beaker instead of discovering tech, but the AI mission for great Scientist is still discover tech, which will lead to great advantage for the AI. Similarly if the new Mission is stronger that the default it will be Great Advantage for the Human player.

For any change in Gameplay you must guarantee that the AI can use the new gameplay elements otherwise it will be a flaw.

I re-introduced a City Maintenance cost that increases non-linearly with the number of cities. It is quite simple at this point: The nth non-capital city you found costs you n gold per turn.

City maintenance is a great addition I had similar idea before. I think you need to reduce the maintenance cost though, if like I understand the maintenance = N, then at city number 20 it will be 20 Gold, and total maintenance for all cities will be 210 Gold per turn which is way too much.

Unit Maintenance
Unit maintenance now doesn't change with time anymore. Instead, maintenance is now a unit attribute. This change has, in my opinion, a lot of interesting effects: Workers are now not so expensive to maintain anymore, you have considerations of quantity vs quality (the most extreme example of this is the Knight), Great People don't cost maintenance, it makes sense to keep old units as garrisons for Military Caste, and you don't have invisible unit maintenance creep anymore even though you don't change your army at all.

May become imbalanced at late Eras, I noticed some high units maintenance in your mod at modern age (like 15 gold for modern armor) I think that units maintenance should be lower than vanilla so I suggest that max maint for any unit do not exceed 8 gold.

Thats what I have for now.

 

[alpaca]

Well done Alpaca for this mod , this is one of the mods that I classify as Quality rather than quantity Mods. Many interesting ideas and approaches in your mod and they are really appreciated.

I didnt test your mod before, I just downloaded it yesterday (I rarely play or test mods)

Anyway I have few notices to consider:



This one is risky , I had the intention before to do Custom Missions but I canceled this Idea because I know I cant make the AI use the new mission. Now if you replace the Mission effect in lua for ActivePlayer do you expect that the AI will be able to use it? of course not.

So for example, the Great Scientist gives beaker instead of discovering tech, but the AI mission for great Scientist is still discover tech, which will lead to great advantage for the AI. Similarly if the new Mission is stronger that the default it will be Great Advantage for the Human player.

For any change in Gameplay you must guarantee that the AI can use the new gameplay elements otherwise it will be a flaw.



City maintenance is a great addition I had similar idea before. I think you need to reduce the maintenance cost though, if like I understand the maintenance = N, then at city number 20 it will be 20 Gold, and total maintenance for all cities will be 210 Gold per turn which is way too much.



May become imbalanced at late Eras, I noticed some high units maintenance in your mod at modern age (like 15 gold for modern armor) I think that units maintenance should be lower than vanilla so I suggest that max maint for any unit do not exceed 8 gold.

Thats what I have for now.

Thanks for the input. As for scientists, I'm well aware that the AI still gets a free tech. However, since the AI is incredibly bad at managing great people compared to the player, it pretty much fails to leverage this. I personally consider rule asymmetry between humans and AI in games to make sense in some cases, so think of it as an additional handicap rather than a flaw.

City maintenance is fine. It's not even usually one of my highest expenses. In fact, in the beta builds, money flows much too freely and I need to find new outlets for it. I'm not really in the mood for modding these last weeks but when I get the itch again I'll get back into that.

The same goes for unit maintenance, basically. In the modern era you have a lot more money due to tech boosts and money buildings, so units have to cost more than in vanilla. I'm trying to kind of balance the different types of upkeeps so they are similar in magnitude (except for road maintenance), but as usual for modern era things, I didn't test it much.

 

[Toor]

I totally agree with Alpaca, the problem with money in your (great!) mod isn't high city/unit maintenance, but rather that you have too much money toward the end (I've been playing the v6b8 build for quite some games now, usually on immortal).

I hope you do get back the urge to mod after the patch!

Especially I like your changes to resource yield and upgrades/healing. Overall i pretty much agree with all your balancing ideas and methods The mod is wellbalanced and playable to the end, except maybe a few overpowered buildings (like public schools) and too much money toward the end, like mentioned.

Thanks again for a great mod!

 

[Antonius B]

Yep, too much money !

Played one game to completion and it was quite interesting until I got nukes and could buy 3 of them each turn and buy courthouses in any conquered city where I wanted to buy those nukes.

I like the idea of having populated puppeted cities costing plenty of happiness but once I could buy my way out I could all too easily set out to dominate the world

And with the nukes I could easily decimate ennemy armies without pausing for mine to heal

 

[Elliot]

I think there's too much money because there's too much food in the industrial and modern eras. Those +%food buildlings can give you as much as 50% extra food in every city. That is way too much. Cities then grow extremely fast because they have the 50% food carryover on growth. Just 10% food from the public school seems like a lot.

I'd prefer it if growth were easier at all eras, and remove the food carryover attribute of the hospital. Remove the exponential factor from the growth formula, and add more happiness buildings to the tech tree to allow cities to be bigger earlier. Growth wouldn't explode in the industrial era either because the food carryover buildings wouldn't be there.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

alpaca,

1) What do you want as an 80x80_Mod_Icon for your integration of PlayWithMe in LeoPaRd? Click below if necessary.

2) Is Improved Notifications being replaced by the collaborative version Custom Notifications with Sneaks?

 

[lietkynes]

This mod is awesome and I would like to thank the author for his effort.

What will happen next week when the new Civ5 patch comes out, will the mod stop working ?

 

[Mylon]

I like what I'm seeing in this mod. I would add that great people need a further buff. Basically, they should be able to build buildings just like in Civ4 in place of the existing tile improvements, meaning that they don't require a citizen to work the tile to get the benefits. In addition, they should also act like a free specialist (or super-specialist) in any city they're stationed in. So they can be put on ice for a mild bonus, burned for a huge boost, or 'settled' to make a powerful building that eventually overcomes the bonus of the huge initial boost.

 

[V. Soma]

Hi!

I have a game with the latest daily test build.
Tiny map 7 civs, 7 CSs - King level
(plus WWGD v5 and City State Diplomacy mods - as usual )
I am Germany

1.
I didn't play too well in the beginning, perhaps also didn't have a best starting place,
plus barbs were annoying... eh

I am in the middle of the score board, try to go for Spaceship

2.
AI Russia is leader, Rome and USA are also big boys.
Russia nuked England in the 1970s (king level!) /turn 250 in quick speed/ - and with many nukes at the same time - uh...
All AIs are having war vs. Russia, except me, I am neighbour and friend with Catherine...

3.
Game started to freeze and doing endless loops at AI turns around turn 200.
SOLUTION:
- turn video settings to lower graphics
AND
- turn off the real time virus check on your PC

all in all, I am having a great game

 

[alpaca]

alpaca,

1) What do you want as an 80x80_Mod_Icon for your integration of PlayWithMe in LeoPaRd? Click below if necessary.

2) Is Improved Notifications being replaced by the collaborative version Custom Notifications with Sneaks?

Yeah, since sneaks seems to look for additional work, I took down improved notifications.

I'm not planning to spend any time on achievements, so you're welcome to create achievements for PWM. For PWM the logo I envisioned (but was too lazy/incompetent to make yet) is a cuddly brown teddy bear with a heart on the front that says "Play With Me." Alternatively, go for the adult version

This mod is awesome and I would like to thank the author for his effort.

What will happen next week when the new Civ5 patch comes out, will the mod stop working ?

Most likely, yes. Patches aren't usually expected to work well with mods. I'll try to get it up and running again as quickly as I can.

I like what I'm seeing in this mod. I would add that great people need a further buff. Basically, they should be able to build buildings just like in Civ4 in place of the existing tile improvements, meaning that they don't require a citizen to work the tile to get the benefits. In addition, they should also act like a free specialist (or super-specialist) in any city they're stationed in. So they can be put on ice for a mild bonus, burned for a huge boost, or 'settled' to make a powerful building that eventually overcomes the bonus of the huge initial boost.

Which abilities are you comparing to which? The science from an academy, for example, can be very substantial compared to the short-time boost. Typically, you need something like 50-100 turns to break even, which, especially if we talk about 50, is none too bad. If you have it in your NC city, it becomes even better.

 

[Deep_Blue]

a cuddly brown teddy bear with a heart on the front that says "Play With Me.

Like this

 

[Zyxpsilon]

I'm not planning to spend any time on achievements, so you're welcome to create achievements for PWM. For PWM the logo I envisioned (but was too lazy/incompetent to make yet) is a cuddly brown teddy bear with a heart on the front that says "Play With Me." Alternatively, go for the adult version

Hey, that gives me an idea - consider it done from inspiration or imagination!

 

[Mylon]

Which abilities are you comparing to which? The science from an academy, for example, can be very substantial compared to the short-time boost. Typically, you need something like 50-100 turns to break even, which, especially if we talk about 50, is none too bad. If you have it in your NC city, it becomes even better.

Using your numbers, a GS will provide some 500+ beakers instantly, OR +8 beakers per turn if used on an improvement. That comes to a breakeven point of at least 60 turns. Some of the normal buildings have a better breakeven point, such as the Workshop. And they're much easier to come by!

Also keep in mind that improvement comes with a cost. By default it's at -2 food because the tile has to be worked. Subtract additional yield because that tile could have had something else on it instead. So, say, another -2 food because there's an academy instead of a farm.

On top of this all, the tile can be denied by an enemy unit on the tile, or even outright captured if the city is lost. All of these factors make +8 science per turn look like a very bad choice. A farm could support another scientist specialist to produce another great scientist for another tech rush. So you're looking at the academy is being a risk and also potentially slowing down getting another great scientist!

 

[Elliot]

Using your numbers, a GS will provide some 500+ beakers instantly, OR +8 beakers per turn if used on an improvement. That comes to a breakeven point of at least 60 turns. Some of the normal buildings have a better breakeven point, such as the Workshop. And they're much easier to come by!

Also keep in mind that improvement comes with a cost. By default it's at -2 food because the tile has to be worked. Subtract additional yield because that tile could have had something else on it instead. So, say, another -2 food because there's an academy instead of a farm.

On top of this all, the tile can be denied by an enemy unit on the tile, or even outright captured if the city is lost. All of these factors make +8 science per turn look like a very bad choice. A farm could support another scientist specialist to produce another great scientist for another tech rush. So you're looking at the academy is being a risk and also potentially slowing down getting another great scientist!

With a NC, university and observatory the +science improvement can be very powerful. I was getting a TON of science in my super science city because I settled almost every great scientist in it. Infact it may be too powerful. It kinda sucks though how you have to balance the +science improvement around the assumption that they'll be in a city with all the multipliers. If you can't find a good site near a mountain you lose out on a lot.

 

[Darkhour]

I'd like to have a crack at this mod using the latest patch, any chance of an compatibility update?

 

[alpaca]

I'd like to have a crack at this mod using the latest patch, any chance of an compatibility update?

That will have to wait until I get more time or a modding fever, I'm afraid.

 

[Darkhour]

That will have to wait until I get more time or a modding fever, I'm afraid.

Fair enough. The last patch has actually made CiV half decent imho, it'd be a shame to not see compatible mods.. maybe i'll just tinker around in the meantime..