1.5 Feedback

[WarKirby]

what's changed in 1.5.4 from the main 1.5 ? I can't find any release notes..

 

[Ahriman]

Main changes: terrain very different, war AI significantly improved.
Slavery whipping and drafting temporarily removed (it was weakening the AI too much)
Religion in the process of being changed.
Terraforming in the process of being changed.
Changes to the homeworld screen.
Economy tweaks
Some new units, and art changes, and bugfixes.

1.5.1 here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8481268&postcount=373
1.5.2 here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8487413&postcount=384
1.5.3 here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8492530&postcount=394
1.5.4 here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8498554&postcount=412

The "incremental changes" thread has the latest patches.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8498554

 

[davidlallen]

The thread is updated; 1.5.4 is announced at the end of the thread.

I cannot control the first post of that thread. We can ask the mods to unsticky it and then create a new thread.

 

[WarKirby]

I cannot control the first post of that thread. We can ask the mods to unsticky it and then create a new thread.

You really should.

A good rule to go by for any mod, there should be a "Download this mod here" thread, posted by the leader of a mod team, kept up to date with every new release and it's changelog. And should there ever be a change in leadership, or disappearance of a leader, as sometimes happens, that thread needs to be urgently replaced by whoever is in command at the time.

 

[WarKirby]

I have a little complaint about improvements.

As I can see, there are a few improvements which have multiple stages:
Shallow Well/Deep Well
Surface Mine/Deep Mine
Solar Farm I/Solar Farm II
Turbines I/Turbines II

etc.
These are kind of annoying to work with. Especially since the old one stays visible cluttering up the options menu.
Would it be poissible to make older versions obsolete when you gain the ability to make a better one, since they are better in every way. Or perhaps even, not have multiple stages at all, and just have techs which would give a better stage, increase the yields of the base improvement instead.




Also, some thoughts about spice. I haven't played incredibly far into a game yet, so perhaps there are things I'm not aware of. But my overall impression so far, is that Spice doesn't seem to be as important as it should be.


"He who controls the spice, controls the universe"
but in practice, it seems more like
"He who controls the spice, controls slightly more wealth than others"
which isn't quite as epic.

Spice is hard to get. This is mainly because it only appears in areas of desert where you can't build cities. Almost like sea, really. The only way to get it is to build cities on the "coast" and expand culture far enough to reach the spice. Desert Waste gives relatively little in tile yields, and I believe Deep desert gives nothing at all, so there's an opportunity cost there, in sacrificing workable tiles in a city radius to get more spice.

To add to that, spice is temporary. I know more can be spawned by blows, but that doesn't seem to be happening to me so far. My experience of spice is building a city next to it for some temporary prosperity,, and then that city sinks into mediocrity once the spice expires and it's left with a poor city site.. Decent, sustainable city sites rarely contain any desert tiles, and so no spice.

Also, I'd like to ask, why was spice nerfed? I started playing this mod on v1.5, and a spice tile with a harvester on it gave 7 then*. While that is a LOT in absolute terms, it's not really that great when you consider the opportunity cost of building a city in a poor location, as well as the temporary nature of spice, and the frustration of rebuilding harvesters constantly when sand worms attack. I was already planning to suggest that even 7 wasn't enough. But when I updated to 1.5.4, I found that spice had been nerfed, to give only a total of 4 with a harvester. There are normal, eternally sustainable, resources in base BTS, that give more than that. Resources that don't randomly vanish after a few turns, and that don't get constantly raped by str20 sandworms.

On a related note, the Arrakis Spice civic. It gives +1 per spice harvester, which is "nice", but that's all it is. It hardly seems worth the effort. Production is easy enough to get from mines on the ridiculously common Crystals resource, that +1 from a tile you never really expected to get production from at all, doesn't make a lot of difference.

In short, I'm finding in the recent verson, that there doesn't seem to be a lot of reason to care about spice. The opportunity cost of placing a city in a bad location just to gain an ultimately temporary commerce boost from spice, (until it vanishes) doesn't seem worth the maintanance costs you pay for it. Not compared to placing a city farther "inland" next to a few groundwater/crystal resources, and growing a big, productive, sustainable city.

I think spice needs to be a LOT more valuable. but this is just my opinion

 

[Deliverator]

Thanks for the feedback, WarKirby, your opinions are valued. Your feelings about the importance of spice and the averageness of the Arrakis Spice civic are shared by myself and a number of others. There is some discussion in the modpack thread and most recently in the Arrakis mapscript thread. It is not a straightforward problem to fix, but we are discussing possible changes.

 

[Ahriman]

Also note that there are some "hidden" benefits from Arrakis spice civic; for example, it radically reduces the chance that a spice resource will disappear when you harvest it, so it will lead to a longer average lifetime of a harvester, and so more spice tiles within your borders.

I didn't notice that spice tile yields had been reduced, that seems strange to me.

But I agree with you in general.

I don't think there is any way to obsolete worker improvements.

 

[davidlallen]

I didn't notice that spice tile yields had been reduced, that seems strange to me.

Polar desert waste yield was reduced from 2c to 1c. That is the only change.

I don't think there is any way to obsolete worker improvements.

One thing I have not taken the opportunity to explore is "linking" the stage 1-3 improvements the way hamlet-cottage-village-town are linked. This may reduce the number of buttons. It should also allow a storm/worm to reduce the improvement by one level instead of destroying it all at once.

But there are several things to look out for. I am not sure they can be prevented from *automatically* upgrading. Also, even with a high tech level, you may be presented only with the worker action for the lowest one. (There is no way you can directly build a town.)

Another possibility is to just get rid of the II and III improvements, and give additional +hammer, etc bonuses through techs. This would also reduce the amount of new improvement art which is needed; the current selection of buildings is kind of random.

What do you think?

 

[Deliverator]

Cottages upgrade to the next level after a fixed number of turns defined by the iUpgradeTime tag. I don't think that's really the behaviour we want for Mines, Wells, etc. There seems to be no way to trigger the upgrade in another way e.g. discovery of a tech.

Another possibility is to just get rid of the II and III improvements, and give additional +hammer, etc bonuses through techs. This would also reduce the amount of new improvement art which is needed; the current selection of buildings is kind of random.

On balance, perhaps we should go for this option.

 

[davidlallen]

Cottages upgrade to the next level after a fixed number of turns defined by the iUpgradeTime tag. I don't think that's really the behaviour we want for Mines, Wells, etc.

I suspect that setting iUpgradeTime to -1 would link them without ever upgrading, or else it would be an easy sdk mod to accomplish that. This meets one specific goal, of downgrading the improvement one level after a sandworm/sandstorm attack. It does not meet the other new goal, of reducing the number of worker buttons. I am kind of surprised that there is no way to obsolete worker buttons, or to avoid displaying ones for which the tech is not yet available.

Thinking about it a little more, I guess removing the II building and giving +1 hammer via the tech is not really equivalent. The Deep Mine on crystal, for example, gives +2 hammer more than the Surface Mine on crystal.

I haven't taken the opportunity to explore what can be done with linking the improvements or dynamically adding/removing buttons. It's on the list of things to do.

 

[Deliverator]

Thinking about it a little more, I guess removing the II building and giving +1 hammer via the tech is not really equivalent. The Deep Mine on crystal, for example, gives +2 hammer more than the Surface Mine on crystal.

You can enter increases of more than +1 at multiple different techs via TechYieldChanges, so you can give +2 hammer at what ever tech currently enables Deep Mine, but you can't have different increases for different bonuses correct.

 

[davidlallen]

My example was not very complete. Today the surface mine gives +1h on mesa, +2h on crystal. So a surface mine on mesa-only gives +1h, mesa/crystal gives +3h. The deep mine today gives +2h on mesa, +4h on crystal. So a deep mine on mesa-only gives +2h, mesa/crystal gives +6h. If we remove deep mine and have Desert Industry add +1h on surface mine, the mesa/crystal yield will go down from +6h to +4h. If we have DI add +3h on surface mine, then mesa-only yield goes up from +2h to +4h.

Perhaps these changes are minor compared to the reduced player confusion from getting rid of all the extra buttons.

 

[Ahriman]

Polar desert waste yield was reduced from 2c to 1c. That is the only change.

You also reduced polar desert waste from 2w to 1w.

It was an over-nerf.

One thing I have not taken the opportunity to explore is "linking" the stage 1-3 improvements the way hamlet-cottage-village-town are linked. This may reduce the number of buttons. It should also allow a storm/worm to reduce the improvement by one level instead of destroying it all at once.

I thought that having the buildable mines and wells was deliberate, so that you had to invest worker time in upgrading your buildings, rather than just getting improved yields for free. It was one of the things I liked about this mod - always something for workers to do.
I don't think that having lots of buttons is that big a problem.

I suspect that setting iUpgradeTime to -1 would link them without ever upgrading, or else it would be an easy sdk mod to accomplish that. This meets one specific goal, of downgrading the improvement one level after a sandworm/sandstorm attack

This sounds good to me. I think the downgrade after pillage or sandstorms is a good feature, but that the button issue is unimportant.

I think the forcing workers to build the upgrade is important, I don't think that players really get very confused by multiple buttons, they can figure that out pretty fast, and the buttons have numbers on them. So its obvious that 2 is better than 1 and 3 is better than 2.

 

[davidlallen]

You also reduced polar desert waste from 2w to 1w. It was an over-nerf.

WarKirby's comment was about commerce per tile apparently decreasing from 7 to 4. The only change I made *for that* was reducing polar desert waste commerce by one.

The economic tuning will apparently go on without end, but several people have commented that one can race through the tech tree too fast and that early expansion is too easy. I feel this is because commerce income is too high. I also feel that the cities on polar terrain are too big and too wealthy. You clearly disagree, but those were my reasons for reducing yields on polar desert waste.

 

[WarKirby]

Also note that there are some "hidden" benefits from Arrakis spice civic; for example, it radically reduces the chance that a spice resource will disappear when you harvest it, so it will lead to a longer average lifetime of a harvester, and so more spice tiles within your borders.

Well, hidden information is a bad thing. This really needs some text in there to mention it, I think.


Personally, I'd like to see spice yields increased massively. I wonder how it would play to have a spice tile yield 20 per turn. I think that would be fun, given the temporary nature of them, andthat cities near spice often don't grow much since they're surrounded by desert.

maybe commerce yields of other resources could be reduced to compensate, so as to make spice more valuable. As is, it just seems "nice to have" rather than "your sole reason for existence" which I was under the impression is what it's supposed to be

 

[WarKirby]

Oh, also, I agree with comments about techs being too easy. But this isn't because of commerce income, it's because the cost of techs is set so low, and also the cost of settlers is low.

I don't see easy expansion as a problem, though. Since it's supposed to be representative of a wealthy existing galactic power setting up on a planet, rather than a group of cavemen starting from scratch ala civ. It makes sense that they'd expand much faster, from bringing in offworld labour, resources, etc.

 

[Ahriman]

But this isn't because of commerce income

It is partly, commerce can be much higher than vanilla because of trade routes (every city is coastal), spice corporation yield and high tile yields.
Increasing tech costs probably can't hurt though.

and also the cost of settlers is low.

I'd like to see the settler cost increased significantly, but apparently this isn't easy.

It makes sense that they'd expand much faster, from bringing in offworld labour, resources, etc.

Our sort of "backstory" is that there was some kind of disaster that wiped out civilization on Arrakis and cut off trade for a while, and you are basically starting from nothing and have no contact with the rest of the galaxy, at least until the offworld trade tech. Its a bit of a fudge, but it basically works.

Personally, I'd like to see spice yields increased massively.

Keep in mind that the main benefit from spice comes not from tile yeilds, but from the corporation which you can build as soon as you have a single spice resource. This can easily end up giving 100+ commerce in your capital, which gives a huge economic advantage (commerce gets multiplied by beaker and gold modifiers, like universities and banks).

I agree that you aren't getting enough spice on Arrakis mapscript at the moment (try out Duneipegalo).

I find the game plays best on Epic speed at the moment.

 

[WarKirby]

I'd like to see the settler cost increased significantly, but apparently this isn't easy.

yes it is.

1. Open Unitinfos.xml
2. Find the Settler
3. Change iCost to a bigger number

 

[WarKirby]

I get a python exception when I press left shift.

This is annoying because I use this to select multiple units

 

[WarKirby]

how does the tlelaxu plague mechanic work?

I attacked them, and somewhere along the way noticed that all my troops had the plague, which doesn't seem to go away. made it impossible to continue a war. and it's still on them now. is there any way to get rid of it, or be immune to it ?