3rd and 4th Unique Components for VP - Official thread 88.10

[pineappledan]

Github link is third from the top on the OP. That's a pretty hilarious bug.

 

[ridjack]

So currently doing a playthrough with Assyria - their toolkit feels way too powerful in my hands. I built two cities, a Warrior and then spammed nothing but Iron Chariots and my two Siege Towers. With literally just the Chariots and Towers with plenty of horses but no iron, I was able to remove China from the game and take Attila's capital plus enough cities to render him obsolete. Neither civ even had walls up by the time I stormed them with 5-6 Chariots + 2 towers; by the time they did start getting walls up, I was already building my first Knights. The only thing that stopped me from immediately steamrolling into Rome and Spain was distance. Rome has nothing that can slow me down; I might have to wait on Spain to get an answer for Conquistadors, but there are enough other cities in the areas to keep my techs moving right along.

I think the extra CS from nearby units might be a little too much for the Chariots. Again, I didn't even have Iron; Attila had his Tarkhans and Horse Archers up but they were just free exp for my Chariots. I think I might have lost one, maybe two Chariots to Horse Archers from the fog.

EDIT: King difficulty.

 

[pineappledan]

Congratulations on wrecking house! Maybe we could adjust the fury promotion to 5% per adjacent foes, but then why even have it? The main thing it is supposed to do is mitigate enemy flanking bonuses. I think it needs to stay in some capacity, however, since the chariot movement penalty is such a harsh trade. It's possible you did so well more because of terrain advantages than any inherent imbalance in the unit.

How does the wall replacement feel? Is it noticeable?

 

[ridjack]

Congratulations on wrecking house! Maybe we could adjust the fury promotion to 5% per adjacent foes, but then why even have it? The main thing it is supposed to do is mitigate enemy flanking bonuses. I think it needs to stay in some capacity, however, since the chariot movement penalty is such a harsh trade. It's possible you did so well more because of terrain advantages than any inherent imbalance in the unit.

How does the wall replacement feel? Is it noticeable?

That's definitely possible; the terrain was more or less in my favor. Although Attila should have had the same advantage as far as that goes.

They haven't been noticeable in this game, but then most of my cities weren't even building Monuments for the first while; everything was focused on pumping out my Chariots, Siege Towers and then workers to recover from the unhappiness spiral I was working towards. Attila and China were my only nearby neighbors; China was taken out before anyone was out of Ancient and Attila just got mowed down. I wasn't concerned with walls until I was looking at getting my happiness back.

 

[pineappledan]

Attila's changes actually favor rough terrain with lots of rivers. His horse archers can attack if ending turn adjacent to an enemy, so rough terrain lets them capitalize on that hard. His new Tarkhan actually has no real combat bonuses, it's just slightly cheaper and has some unique utility for support. Attila's got enough early mojo without us boosting him even harder

 

[ridjack]

His horse archers can attack if ending turn adjacent to an enemy, so rough terrain lets them capitalize on that hard.

This explains a few... questionable decisions he was making. It seems like he might be prioritizing using that ability a little too much; he kept ending turns with his HAs essentially surrounded by Chariots.

Attila's got enough early mojo without us boosting him even harder

Right! This is why I was a little shocked at how easily he went down. He's always been a pain in the ass as my neighbor even when playing other warmongers, but in this game he could have been Austria or Germany for all the fight he put up in Ancient/Classical.

 

[pineappledan]

The shooting when out of moves is done in lua, so the AI doesn’t have a clue that it exists. If Attila has been depending on it too much then I would say that’s a case of our mod salvaging a catastrophically dumb decision by the AI

I’ve played 2 games with Attila as a neighbor. Once as Egypt where I decked him early and wiped him out by mid classical, another with my 4UC Israel, where I beat him and Bismarck in a joint war during classical. My experience is the AI just isn’t that good at Attila.

 

[Tekamthi]

hey played a 43-civ game to late industrial w/ this. Great work! game is way more interesting and dynamic. I didn't really have an eye out for bugs necessarily, and mostly kept to myself all game, but everything seemed to flow smoothly fwiw.

Curious what led to America getting the "monitor" as new UU? For w/e reason I was sure that I wouldn't be worried about seeing a UU from George til modern or atomic.. something about ww2 era says america to me.. anyway nice surprise, shoulda checked pedia.

thanks again!

 

[pineappledan]

The freedom tenet took the B-17, and Hungry took the P-51. I'm actually pretty happy with it. The monitor was a massive innovation in naval technology, and was the beginning of the end for British Naval supremacy. Monitors were some of the first ironclads, and were a major step forward in naval warfare. The design didn't really become obsolete until the 1890s

 

[Tekamthi]

The freedom tenet took the B-17, and Hungry took the P-51. I'm actually pretty happy with it. The monitor was a massive innovation in naval technology, and was the beginning of the end for British Naval supremacy. Monitors were some of the first ironclads, and were a major step forward in naval warfare. The design didn't really become obsolete until the 1890s

Makes sense. I like the addition; it makes a coastal Washington very strong in industrial -- along with some top notch VP deity spam, and well-timed, well-focused AI tech bee-lining, it caught me off guard. For the sake of discussion, though, was the monitor truly a US innovation? Best I recall, it was manufactured by US from european design, then adopted more ubiquitously afterwards? Am I off?

I was neighbour to america and germany; had been hoping to watch shermans vs panzers. Musta confused w/ another mod. Alas game never made it that far.

 

[pineappledan]

Ironclads as a concept had their nascency with the French. They constructed what amounted to armoured bouys with cannons to take down Russian forts during the Crimean War. The French then constructed the first full ironclad the "Gloire" in 1859, 3 years before the monitor. John Ericsson expounded on the French idea, and proposed his own design to the union. The monitor was the first ship design with a swiveling turret. The design for the monitor was so innovative that it constituted its own class of ship, which is just generally called "monitors". These designs were used mainly for river and harbor defense up until the 1920s.

I guess we could have gone with something like the Sherman Tank, but much of the US' dominance in the modern era has been sea power. Both the Battleship and Carrier are American designs, however

 

[adan_eslavo]

Another thread changes:

• " Production cost scales with number of Cities" is not necessary in the descirption. All wonders have the same.
• E-temenanki has +2 Faith in game, but not in the thread description.
• SPAD has no underlined content.

 

[adan_eslavo]

One more thing to underline in SPAD: 6 Intercept Range. In code there's +1 for this ability.

 

[adan_eslavo]

Some new texts on Github, and important fix to Intihuatana.

 

[FoxOfWar]

Minor thing: playing as Greece. Can't locate anywhere where 'Philhellenism' gives the production to. It seems to be the capital, but some mention of this somewhere would probably not be amiss.

The amount gained seems also relatively small compared to the era of the game, roughly 1/4th of my capital's per-turn production and gold, when I have five CS allies and seven friends. How is the amount exactly calculated - is this unit mostly meant to be good if you're BFF's with most of the city-states on the map (I mean, not exactly impossible as Greece, but...)

...the above with the caveat that it feels small, but that might be me being utterly spoiled by getting 3000 culture from each kill thanks to a lot of Acropoli...

 

[pineappledan]

@adan_eslavo, you've made a bit of a mess w.r.t. the text, I'm currently combing through your changes. Many of the text adjustments you made to buildings strip the building descriptions of critical information. The help section needs to be as concise as possible, but contain all relevant information. Please refer to already existing VP units for future text changes. We need to try to be consistent with what has already been laid out.

For example, you took out all of the references for any building with a population scaler, and deleted all mentions for unique wonders' build costs and population requirements scaling with the number of cities. Those are both required information.

Some of the changes you made really are improvements, and I made further changes to some things based on the issues you found. Some of the changes, however, I had to completely reverse.

two steps foward, two steps back.

Minor thing: playing as Greece. Can't locate anywhere where 'Philhellenism' gives the production to. It seems to be the capital, but some mention of this somewhere would probably not be amiss.

The amount gained seems also relatively small compared to the era of the game, roughly 1/4th of my capital's per-turn production and gold, when I have five CS allies and seven friends. How is the amount exactly calculated - is this unit mostly meant to be good if you're BFF's with most of the city-states on the map (I mean, not exactly impossible as Greece, but...)

...the above with the caveat that it feels small, but that might be me being utterly spoiled by getting 3000 culture from each kill thanks to a lot of Acropoli...

You are right, the production is in the capital. I have made the text fix for the new version. The production boost scales for each attack is calculated as such:

Production/Gold Bonus = 1.25*(#CSfriends + #CSallies + 1)*Gamespeed
So, if you attack something with a klepht on Standard Speed, and you have 5 CS friends/allies, thats:
1.25*(1+5)*1 = 7.5

That does seem small, doesn't it? It's on every attack, so you can abuse it on cities and stuff, but still, even raising the multiplier to 3 probably wouldn't be unfair. What do you think, @adan_eslavo?

 

[adan_eslavo]

@pineappledan I don't agree.

• I mentioned population scaler where it is modified by our mod. If I missed one or two forgive me, my bad,
• I decided to put ALL more valuable information than scaling cost for wonders which is the same text for every wonder that takes 3 lines of text on screen and is not visible anyways. Remember that we have limited screen size (especially I on my laptop) and almost all wonders now contain all valuable information and what is most important fit the screen,
• My goal was to put all info not strip one or two unique info because if something is replacing arena I want to know what arena does + what our ucs does. Without that I need to look into wiki or thread. Thats what help is for.
• If building has changed required building I mentioned it (barbican - walls). If not theres no point of that.
• Same with technology,
• When I can I try not to put exact values for yields or bonuses. It is not necessary and when you update values you dont need to change text.
• I tried to put some overall info about base yields - which is also overall focus of building. Sometimes it is worth mentioning that building gives base faith especially if theres no faith in other its abilities.
• I tried to group information into parts. Fe in White Tower theres part for spying and contains all building spying abilities and sachems council has part for diplomacy. I didnt want to miss any ability.
• I added many icons and capital letters, text is now more colorful, and unique things are easier to catch.
• Added spaces between paragraphs. One line space doesnt do much and this was frequently used.
• I dont think it is 2 steps back, because before informations were cut, chaotic and not so condensed if I didnt saw half of wonder info because production modifier was on half of screen. Sorry. More condensed should be strategy info which is sometimes what help should be.

My further plan was to make some improvements to vp texts as well. If I have time. For now I have 8 civs to revise and eecompatibility texts.

What people think about that? We have somewhat opposite sites.

 

[Jarula]

Latifundia is waaay too weak.

60 turns to build... Only a yield of +2 that's less than a Kuna and 3 times more restrictions...

 

[pineappledan]

This won't be exhaustive, since I didn't make it through everything and I'm about to head to bed.

I mentioned population scaler where it is modified by our mod. If I missed one or two forgive me, my bad,

You deleted any mention of the population scaler from the Teutonic order and from the Nilometer, for example, both of which are different from the base building they replace.

I decided to put ALL more valuable information than scaling cost for wonders which is the same text for every wonder that takes 3 lines of text on screen and is not visible anyways. Remember that we have limited screen size (especially I on my laptop) and almost all wonders now contain all valuable information and what is most important fit the screen

If people have issues with the amount of text on any given building then the civilopedia has all the help and strategy text in a format that can be scrolled through.
Consider the current VP feitoria, or the base harbor descriptions. The way you shortened the Laguna text description it was even shorter than the building it replaces.

It's not really really up for debate, what is and is not pertinent information. The function of each building HAS to be defined fully, and in precise amounts, or else new users will get confused, or even make bad decisions.
On average, I actually shortened more descriptions than I lengthened. The aformentioned Laguna one, however, was just hacked to pieces. It said that Venice got boosts to its buildings from the Laguna. It didn't say what those buildings were, or how many of them. It might be implied that it boosts the unique wonders, but the Laguna only boosts 3 of 4; it does not boost the Palazzo San Marco. It also didn't say what yields, how much, etc. For every person who is inconvenienced by having too small a screen for the information in each building, we are inconveniencing more for hiding critical information about what the buildings actually do.

My goal was to put all info not strip one or two unique info because if something is replacing arena I want to know what arena does + what our ucs does. Without that I need to look into wiki or thread. Thats what help is for.

Some of the buildings were missing some base information, yes. You caught the Agora, I also noticed the Waag is missing the boosts to gold/silver/gems too. I'll go through carefully and make sure all that is in there.

If building has changed required building I mentioned it (barbican - walls). If not theres no point of that.

Yes there is. People would want to know that information.

Same with technology

That's covered by EUI. I don't think there was any instances of the technology being mentioned in the help text, was there? If so, I agree it should be removed.

When I can I try not to put exact values for yields or bonuses. It is not necessary and when you update values you dont need to change text.

That is important information that people trying the mod for the first time will be upset if we don't include. Worst offender I found was the Riad, since you removed the numbers for what the bonus on trade routes was, but that is applied via lua. Without mentioning the amounts in the description users have no way of ever getting that information unless they dig through the lua themselves.

I tried to put some overall info about base yields - which is also overall focus of building. Sometimes it is worth mentioning that building gives base faith especially if theres no faith in other its abilities.

Base yields on buildings is never mentioned in the help section. Faith is no exception, the only one I can think of is tourism, which is mentioned in the Arena description.

Check the Siamese Wat, or the Seowon, for example. Neither of them mention the faith yields that the building has

I tried to group information into parts. Fe in White Tower theres part for spying and contains all building spying abilities and sachems council has part for diplomacy. I didnt want to miss any ability.

Right, that's one of the things that has definitely been improved with your edits. I left that intact.

I added many icons and capital letters, text is now more colorful, and unique things are easier to catch.

That's definitely better, yeah. I added a few more.

All the needs modifiers I also replaced with the symbol. There were instances where it would say stuff like "reduces boredom", which isn't consistent with the rest of VP.

Added spaces between paragraphs. One line space doesnt do much and this was frequently used.

Yup. definitely an improvement

 

[adan_eslavo]

Ok.

• I will add pop and building requirements. As I said I could miss smth like TO.
• I will make some info more detailed. I agree I tried to cut Riad and Laguna too much. Thats what debates are for.
• I will cut base yields info where it is really not necessary. But sometimes I feel it should be mentioned.
• I planned to suggest unhappines reduction icons to be changed in vp. In my version they showed clearly what is reduction focus.
• Nilometer has pop requirement?
• When tech is different I added "available earlier".
• I didnt look at base vp to make outr desc exactly the same like those. Vp ones looks ugly sometimes. Thats why I wanted to help gazebo with that if I can.