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

[HungryForFood]

I think it's too much emphasis on trade routes and it wouldn't really change much. How many trade routes can you even have in industrial era, how many of the statecraft, petra, colossus and sea WC resolution with the wonder did you get? This seems pretty boring, by that point those yields are going to be hard to spot. I could see something like "originate all TRs to capital/send them out of it to get a slight help with wonders" as this way it'd be a noticeable 20~ Prod there, but it's not convincing. Better than what it is now, but if it was given on top of a slight base yield increase, it'd be fine I guess.

Bonuses are related to trade routes because of Victoria's UA, which lets you send gold trade routes to yourself, so both the starting and destination city gets the bonus.

If you think an effect is weak, you can always increase its strength, so the question you should be asking is: is this bonus interesting or fun?

I suggested +2 production per trade route, scaling with era. So, when Steam Mills are unlocked, that would be ~8-10 production per trade route. Alternatively, perhaps no era scaling but a larger value would work, since number of trade routes already scales with era.

Another possibility is to grant a modifier instead of just raw production. Perhaps 5% per trade route, capping at 50%.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

Bonuses are related to trade routes because of Victoria's UA, which lets you send gold trade routes to yourself, so both the starting and destination city gets the bonus.

If you think an effect is weak, you can always increase its strength, so the question you should be asking is: is this bonus interesting or fun?

I suggested +2 production per trade route, scaling with era. So, when Steam Mills are unlocked, that would be ~8-10 production per trade route. Alternatively, perhaps no era scaling but a larger value would work, since number of trade routes already scales with era.

Another possibility is to grant a modifier instead of just raw production. Perhaps 5% per trade route, capping at 50%.

Yeah, that's what my next post acknowledged. From what her UA appears to be, Victoria can have about 2x the number of Trade Routes Elizabeth has by the time Steam Mill is unlocked. Let's assume standard map, 8 civs, 4 each continent - Victoria conquers hers leaving 3 vassals with one city, has 30 cities by this point = total 8 bonus trade routes. That's pretty much two times more, and each of these procs the Steam Mill. For the TR-focused Steam Mill to be good for England, it'd be broken for Britain because you'd effectively get twice the benefits as there's just more TRs.

 

[HungryForFood]

Modifier makes sense then, have it ramp up quick but limited by a cap.

 

[pineappledan]

Careful though. Germany got his modifiers nerfed pretty good. Not saying it's a bad idea, but they can be pretty balance-sensitive.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

Modifier makes sense then, have it ramp up quick but limited by a cap.

That still doesn't seem to fix the problem I think. One civ has up to two times more Trade Routes than the other and both get an UB that benefits from Trade Routes which only one of the civs has more of, I can't see a way they'll stay balanced no matter how you do this. It's going to be much better for Victoria no matter how you change this, unless it's basically Hanse with a limit that's reached in 6-8 Trade Routes sent anywhere. I don't see one UB mostly focused on TRs being balanced for both a civ with potential Venice-tier TR count and one with no bonus ones.

Another problem besides one having two times as many TRs with the same, TR-focused UB, is that Victoria appears naturally inclined towards internal routes (fealty) which she has more of, and Steam Mill will further increase their usefulness. On the other hand, Elizabeth doesn't have anything that pushes her towards internal trade routes up to this point unless she took Fealty. In fact, she has nothing about trade routes anywhere in her kit and if she goes Statecraft, she'll have to sacrifice a part of Steam Mill's power or part of a policy (she can go Fealty too though, both seem fine). She's more flexible in a way, and this will sort of take away choice.
If there's a limit of SM's modifier, will the AI understand when it's been reached and it should avoid sending routes to or from the particular city?

 

[pineappledan]

I think an easy to reach limit would be necessary or else Victoria would go completely out of control very quickly. It’s too much min-max on trade, and would compound itself to make her completely unstoppable if she managed to get some conquests going

A main UB is an opportunity to expand to another victory condition or a secondary competency; it doesn’t need to reinforce the UA that hard.

 

[Cat-du-fromage]

AH i finally understand!, by trying to unpack your V43.ZIP i got all the element of more unique coponent seperated!

i originally pack them into a folder but it seems to make the momod for modpack bug...

Is there a way to Pack them without using the SDK^^'?

 

[black213]

Is it intended for the Iziko to be possible to be bought with faith without Faith of the Masses? That's not mentioned in its tooltip, and I'm able to buy them for 200 faith without the appropriate belief.

 

[pineappledan]

Nope! Forgot to add the UnlockedByBelief to it. That will be fixed next version

 

[Kim Dong Un]

Is it fine to start a new game with the mod in it's current state, or should I just wait for an official update? I assume there's nothing game breaking (I just won't use Lizzy yet)?

 

[pineappledan]

Nothing game-breaking. I failed to remove a dummy building entirely, so there's a database validation failure. There also might be a syntax error in 1 file, but I haven’t isolated where that problem is exactly; it might not even be in 4UC...

 

[Kim Dong Un]

there's a database validation failure. There also might be a syntax error in 1 file

I have no clue what any of that means, and it's made me even more hesitant to start hahhaaha! Screw it, I'm goin' in Boys!

 

[HungryForFood]

I do get @Enrico Swagolo's concerns, so before I do any further work, here are some other Steam Mill ideas:

• Go for a Great Engineer focus. +3 GE points, Engineers cost -1 food to work. This is also quite simple to do.
  
• Or, GE points from constructing buildings, as suggested earlier, but perhaps we can preempt the 'not constructing buildings' cheese by only granting it for Industrial or later buildings.
• Strategic resource focus. Give the +3 gold from Coal to all other Strategic Resource. +5% production for each source of Strategic Resource in the city. Downside of this is it slightly steps on Ostrog's toes.
  
• Keep the trade route focus as mentioned previously.

 

[Valvts]

atm playing with the mod gives text error on all the unique units and building's texts. So far it seems like the only problem!

 

[pineappledan]

you're using v42 or earlier then. Use v43.

 

[Valvts]

CA

you're using v42 or earlier then. Use v43.

Can I load it into an ongoing game? Thanks!

 

[pineappledan]

Definitely not. v43 removed the white tower and replaced it with a completely new UB for England. It's not going to be save compatible

 

[Dimmy]

you're using v42 or earlier then. Use v43.

Please update OP. Just went throught the same issue, only to loose 30 minutes ^^
Mod is great anyway, not complaining, only suggesting to make it easy for people that dont follow every post on the thread...

 

[Valvts]

Definitely not. v43 removed the white tower and replaced it with a completely new UB for England. It's not going to be save compatible

Oh boy I am 150 turns in with a good game on Deity. I think Ill stay with the error then

 

[pineappledan]

Please update OP. Just went throught the same issue, only to loose 30 minutes ^^

I can't. @adan_eslavo manages the updates.
He's been delaying an official release because there's a syntax error somewhere in the code that I haven't been able to locate. I haven't been able to find the UC that is affected by the databasing error, so sit tight and use the unofficial release for now.

EDIT: New version can be downloaded here