1.16 released

[Howard Mahler]

I do not like that ordinary roads now provide no movement bonus at all.

The larger the map the bigger the effect.

Roads were important for moving armies as well as for trade at least as far back as 400 BC (for example the Persian Royal Road.) Delaying paved roads, and thus the first movement bonus, until Engineering seems somewhat too late in history. (Engineering does seem like a good tech for paved roads.)

From a game standpoint, now pre-Engineering the invader and the person being invaded move at the same rate. This makes it harder to defend against an invasion than it was before when the CIV being invaded had a movement advantage. Not sure that this is either desirable or planned.

This also makes the Aggressive Trait with its free commando promotion not useful in early wars.

I don't mind the small cost for building each road.

I do not believe that early paved roads used fancy stone.
So I agree that the Stone requirement is at best iffy.
Having some sort of advantage for stone when building paved roads, such as with building forts and castles makes sense.

Not sure what if anything should or could be done on the whole road issue, but I am providing some preliminary feedback.

By the way this worrying about road spamming is misplaced in my opinion. This is a strategic level map with spaces about 200 miles across. Most spaces in areas that have been civilized for a long time would have a road running though them.
Now only a few spaces benefit from a road pre-Engineering, where roads are needed to tie resources to cities and cities together in the absence of coasts or rivers.

I've found the Stone requirement to be somewhat of a pain also. It slows down continent-focused maps a lot, and makes redeploying early militaries really tedious and slow. Is it possible to provide a road movement bonus for possessing Stone? Perhaps 1/3 movement for basic roads and 1/4 if one has Stone?

 

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah I'm certainly not adding that requirement for any strict engineering or historical necessity. I feel that a resource requirement for paved roads is an appropriate game mechanic that fits in well with some other design choices. After all, Highways certainly don't need Rubber but it is a nice way to tie in an otherwise underutilized resource. However, if it ends up being more frustrating than interesting then it's not a big deal to remove it altogether.

I won't have an opportunity to play for a while, but it looks like hands down, the current system is more frustrating.

Think about it: making roads confer no movement bonus in ancient and much of classical times means that for 150-200 turns, workers have less to do and defending even a small empire against a concentrated invading army is almost impossible. There's no corresponding benefit. It's not even very realistic, because it implies that it's as difficult for armies to advance through civilized countryside as it is for them to advance through a trackless, howling wildnerness. Which is simply not true.

As to resources- stone isn't underutilized. There's no reason to make it a prerequisite for even more things than it is already, to the point where you can't even move your armies through your own territory at a reasonable pace without it.

I guess a lot of such masonry could theoretically be made from brick but, regardless, I agree that the Stone resource represents a high quality source rather than the only source.

Yes.

Mesopotamian cities built huge city walls in ancient times out of brick and adobe, despite having almost no good building stone whatsoever.

 

[Xyth]

Thanks for the feedback all. I agree that I have underestimated the effects of the change on large landmasses and I'll address it for 1.17, or sooner should a patch be needed.

The obvious and easiest solution would be to make normal roads give 1/2 movement cost again, and make Paved Roads grant 1/3 movement cost (and the bonus at Cartography removed or increased to 1/4). This would make Paved Roads a 'nice to have' rather than a 'need to have' - in which case it wouldn't hurt if the Stone prerequisite was retained.

How does everyone feel about this as a solution?

Roads were important for moving armies as well as for trade at least as far back as 400 BC (for example the Persian Royal Road.) Delaying paved roads, and thus the first movement bonus, until Engineering seems somewhat too late in history. (Engineering does seem like a good tech for paved roads.)

Engineering is a Classical tech and the Classical Era in HR is meant to be c.1000 BCE - 500 CE so this is not too late in history at all. I'd say it's about right in fact.

 

[Howard Mahler]

If you put regular roads back to the way they were, the time at which Engineering is first researched is moot.

Thanks for the feedback all. I agree that I have underestimated the effects of the change on large landmasses and I'll address it for 1.17, or sooner should a patch be needed.

The obvious and easiest solution would be to make normal roads give 1/2 movement cost again, and make Paved Roads grant 1/3 movement cost (and the bonus at Cartography removed or increased to 1/4). This would make Paved Roads a 'nice to have' rather than a 'need to have' - in which case it wouldn't hurt if the Stone prerequisite was retained.

How does everyone feel about this as a solution?



Engineering is a Classical tech and the Classical Era in HR is meant to be c.1000 BCE - 500 CE so this is not too late in history at all. I'd say it's about right in fact.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Xyth-

Yes to giving Paths at least some movement bonus.

Not so sure about not keeping the Stone prerequisite for Paved Roads. Again, Stone isn't supposed to be an absolutely vital resource the way Iron is, you should be able to compete in the game without it. And I think you need some 'modern' transportation improvement other than "1/2 move per square" roads that can be built by the modern era without costing resources. Otherwise, movement in a civilization that rolls poorly on resources may be disastrously slow, at best two thirds of what it would be in vanilla. I'm not sure that improves the game.

Decently constructed roads (and improvements like grading, properly constructed bridges and viaducts, and the like, which have a lot to do with the difference between an unimproved trail and a real road) are just not that hard to build- they do not require high quality building stone, the way giant monuments arguably do.

 

[davidtylr]

a little something that always kinder annoy me i sometimes like to make up my own name for cities. some times my names are too short. do you think you could tweak the next version so you can put in longer names. If its really simple i could do it but i don't know the first thing about programming.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Er, do you want the ability to make city names longer, or the ability to make them very short? I'm confused.

 

[Xyth]

a little something that always kinder annoy me i sometimes like to make up my own name for cities. some times my names are too short. do you think you could tweak the next version so you can put in longer names. If its really simple i could do it but i don't know the first thing about programming.

I've had a look but I can't find where the code for this is. I guess it's locked away somewhere inside the DLL or the application itself, meaning there's no way I change it sorry.

 

[Howard Mahler]

F.Y.I.
In the first game I am playing with this version of HR,
the first Civs discovered Engineering in 160 B.C.
Odyssey speed, Giant map, Archipel., Monarchy, no tech brokering.

Clearly this depends on many things including playing style and settings.

 

[Simon_Jester]

How many turns in is that?

 

[Xyth]

F.Y.I.
In the first game I am playing with this version of HR,
the first Civs discovered Engineering in 160 B.C.
Odyssey speed, Giant map, Archipel., Monarchy, no tech brokering.

Clearly this depends on many things including playing style and settings.

How many turns in is that?

On Odyssey speed that is turn 468. The Normal speed equivalent would be turn 156. Just over halfway through the Classical Era (measured in turns, not years).

 

[Howard Mahler]

So far it seems to be going well with the new speed, which works a little better with a Giant map than the old maximum speed. This is my first game, and I am only in 400 A.D., but so far so good. (It is not for everyone, as things progress more slowly.)

I believe you have mentioned before there is no easy way to have golden age length scale with speed. In any case, the (normal) golden age length is still 16 on Odyssey speed, the same as on the old Marathon speed. This is an even shorter length compared to the total game length; put another way you get less done in 16 turns than on slower speeds.

When you get a chance, can you please look again into whether it is possible to scale the length of golden ages with speed. If not, is there some way to way them more golden per turn on slower speeds, or require fewer great people on slower speeds?

 

[Howard Mahler]

Playing a game with the normal reefs setting.
The reefs now looks reasonable in this revised version of HR.
Good work.

 

[Xyth]

I believe you have mentioned before there is no easy way to have golden age length scale with speed. In any case, the (normal) golden age length is still 16 on Odyssey speed, the same as on the old Marathon speed. This is an even shorter length compared to the total game length; put another way you get less done in 16 turns than on slower speeds.

When you get a chance, can you please look again into whether it is possible to scale the length of golden ages with speed. If not, is there some way to way them more golden per turn on slower speeds, or require fewer great people on slower speeds?

I can adjust this easily so if I did say before that I couldn't, I was wrong

Currently its set so that it's 6 on Quick, 8 on Normal, 10 on Epic, 12 on Sage, 14 on Marathon, 16 on Odyssey. I'm using the same scale as BTS, which doesn't scale the same as number of turns for some reason. I meant to go back and review this but I forgot.

If I made Golden Age Length scale the same as number of turns it would be 4 on Quick, 8 on Normal, 12 on Epic, 16 on Saga, 20 on Marathon, 24 on Odyssey. Seems reasonable to me.

Playing a game with the normal reefs setting.
The reefs now looks reasonable in this revised version of HR.
Good work.

Good to hear.

 

[Howard Mahler]

I must have misremembered.

Making this change for the next edition would be great.

I can adjust this easily so if I did say before that I couldn't, I was wrong

Currently its set so that it's 6 on Quick, 8 on Normal, 10 on Epic, 12 on Sage, 14 on Marathon, 16 on Odyssey. I'm using the same scale as BTS, which doesn't scale the same as number of turns for some reason. I meant to go back and review this but I forgot.

If I made Golden Age Length scale the same as number of turns it would be 4 on Quick, 8 on Normal, 12 on Epic, 16 on Saga, 20 on Marathon, 24 on Odyssey. Seems reasonable to me.



Good to hear.

 

[Lirvan]

What file has the road movement setting in it? I'm interested in experimenting with some of the proposed changes.

 

[Xyth]

I've attached the relevant file with some of the proposed changes to routes. It needs to replace the version at /History Rewritten/Assets/XML/Misc/. As always, finish your current game before applying this file, it will probably break saved game compatibility.

If you're wanting to make your own changes the tags you need to adjust are <iMovement> and <iFlatMovement>. The first handles reduction of movement cost (roads, paved roads, highways), the second handles flat movement ignoring unit movement rate (railroads). The lowest value for the two will always be used. 1 unit movement = 60 movement 'points', the number in these tags is a divisor. For example, an iMovement of 12 would reduce tile movement cost by 1/5 (60 divided by 12 is 5).

 

[Simon_Jester]

Er... which changes did you make to this file? As in, what did you change the numbers to exactly?

 

[Xyth]

Er... which changes did you make to this file? As in, what did you change the numbers to exactly?

Roads are reverted to 1/2 movement cost, Paved Roads to 1/3 movement cost (1/4 with Cartography). No changes to resource requirements.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Thank you.