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

[pineappledan]

No? They are a horseman replacement, so they should obsolete at horseman --> knight --> Lancer.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

On your point, I like the earlier reformation of the TO, but I still would prefer Stele/Bazaar/etc anyway. That 5% would be easily overcome by founding and getting to spread much earlier like those two, but it is a decent UNW I'm having fun with nevertheless, even if it sort of feels like it's on the weaker part of decent-good. I think its base yields could safely use a boost. Besides the Faith it has, maybe +2 +2 instead of just +1 like regular HE? Or a boost to Castles on top of Barracks because that's the single most Teutonic thing there is. Cool looking castles.

I like how Morale is seemingly given to converted post-TO Barbies anyway if you build any Barracks anywhere after they're converted even if TO is already built, nice fix (if it didn't work that way to begin with). It's nice to get a (soon to be) Composite Bowman who moves fast on Hills or Forests, it made me keep some upgraded Slaganz in hopes I find some good units on islands with Astronomy. I even saw an archer with hillwalkers and forestwalkers which'd make him a beast after some adjustments, but he resisted germanisation and died

I'm trying something cool out - God of Protection > Veneration > Orders > Prophecy > Holy Land. At 20+ cities every kill is almost a missionary/building which is just very cool, and Prophets are easy to make. Tons of Faith per turn and per kill, and boy am I killing. It turned out a sweet idea since in Renaissance everyone and their mother declared war on me regardless of distance excluding Japan who probably isn't sending XX Caravels near me for no reason. Genghis and Pocatello didn't even have many caravels so they decided to just spam tons of Explorers at my lands. I think I've killed ten and they keep coming from both of those dastards. Then Indonesia from my continent also declared war when I asked about his troops, apparently sensing an opportunity or realising it was an inevitable conflict. I'm having fun

 

[pineappledan]

I don’t think a small boost to castles would go amiss. Maybe 2?

I’m thinking of upping the bonus to universities on UCoimbra to +3 as well

@infidel88 @Hinin @adan_eslavo @Blue Ghost @Enrico Swagolo, we have gotten repeated complaints re: Riad and Waag. Im wondering what you guys might think regarding an overhaul of these 2 buildings?

Riad: the 222 on city for every trade route overlaps with the UA, which isn’t great. It also requires a loop through all TRs every turn, which is computationally intense.

Proposal: replace with 15% gold generation in city is converted to GMerchant points every turn. +1/, scaling with era.

Reasoning: Riads are private estates for upper class merchants and nobility. In recent times, many Riads have been converted into tourist attractions, hotels and restaurants. The change unstacks the Riad from the UA, but retains the GMerchant flair. It also allows the Riad to be more useful for wide play, since there was a complaint that TRs restricted most of the Riad’s power to 1-2 trade hub cities.

Waag: The and bonus overlaps with the UA too much. With distress replacing crime, the defence bonus isn’t felt as much, and none of it feels terribly impactful.

Proposal: replace with +5 base defence and +1% distress reduction and % GP rate in city for every unique luxury on empire.

Reasoning: Defense is only useful in combat now, so having it depend on trade relations with foreign powers is counterproductive. This proposal also returns the needs reduction, which reflects the waag’s role in reducing fraud. Scaling the bonuses on any luxury that the Netherlands has access to makes the building less reliant on trading to be useful, and rewards players for unique luxuries that they control, not just ones they import. This unstacks from the UA and makes the bonuses more reliable.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

Both ideas for TO and UCoimbra seem fine to me. Brownish yield for the brownish Teutonic castles is fine.

Concerning Riad, it seems like it'll be very good with free Merchants late game, and the culture adds some staying power. I'd also look at the Corsair, though. It could at least get for free that pillage heals fully promotion, there's not that many sea tiles anyway.

Waag - while the idea is good it seems like a nerf to be honest, Tall Netherlands will be getting much less out of the building because tall seems like it doesn't have happiness problems this late in the game on this version, and all the other features are very likely to be weaker for them. - distress might be good, but that will likely be at 7-16% unless you have already balled and spent some Great Admirals. It's going to be slightly better for wide, though. I suggest adding 1 to the Merchant specialists so they're worth being considered over Polders or alternatively a removal of the bonus Merchant and giving it something else could be considered.

I have an idea. Is it possible for all the Waag to double city's luxury resources like the East India Company does? It'd make the Dutch a very valid target to remove because they'd be getting monopolies far easier while being extremely unique. The problem is they might be annoying by stealing the monopoly you should have, but you can always just kill them or steal their land with citadel/take relevant cities and get the monopoly they stole. It'd be easier to sell luxuries there's a scarcity of as well.

 

[infidel88]

I have an idea. Is it possible for all the Waag to double city's luxury resources like the East India Company does? It'd make the Dutch a very valid target to remove because they'd be getting monopolies far easier while being extremely unique. The problem is they might be annoying by stealing the monopoly you should have, but you can always just kill them or steal their land with citadel/take relevant cities and get the monopoly they stole. It'd be easier to sell luxuries there's a scarcity of as well.

I would limit to 2 tiles around the city instead of 5 like EIC has. My idea would be - for every caravan passing through city with Waag, city gets +3 scaling (your caravan) or 1 random luxury resource of major civ that has caravan passing through your city. Double that if those are sea routes. Now explanation - I don't remember how Waag's worked (wasn't very focused when visiting Amsterdam), but in my Polish city there was also Waag (or whatever HRE name of such building is) and trader couldn't just come to city, stay overnight and move out. If he came to city, he had to sell all of his stuff (or part of it, depending on kings edict). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staple_right).

Now I checked on wiki and was first serving as city gate, but in XVI century it was switched to weigh house. I don't know which one you're aiming at.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

I would limit to 2 tiles around the city instead of 5 like EIC has. My idea would be - for every caravan passing through city with Waag, city gets +3 scaling (your caravan) or 1 random luxury resource of major civ that has caravan passing through your city. Double that if those are sea routes. Now explanation - I don't remember how Waag's worked (wasn't very focused when visiting Amsterdam), but in my Polish city there was also Waag (or whatever HRE name of such building is) and trader couldn't just come to city, stay overnight and move out. If he came to city, he had to sell all of his stuff (or part of it, depending on kings edict). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staple_right).

Now I checked on wiki and was first serving as city gate, but in XVI century it was switched to weigh house. I don't know which one you're aiming at.

I bet it's new code, and if it isn't the AI won't be able to understand. It'd greatly favour land routes and making snaky road connections to maximise the amount of cities a route goes through would be almost mandatory to maximise the potential. If played right, that +3 gold would be OP, affecting very many of your cities each route. I don't like this idea myself.

 

[FoxOfWar]

I like the proposed changes, though can only really comment from a gameplay perspective with the Riad since I haven't rolled Netherlands in months. Definitely like anything that makes Morocco less directed towards tall (though admittedly I am always tempted to go wide just so I can cover the landscape in Kasbah, so I AM biased...).

 

[pineappledan]

I would limit to 2 tiles around the city instead of 5 like EIC has. My idea would be - for every caravan passing through city with Waag, city gets +3 scaling (your caravan) or 1 random luxury resource of major civ that has caravan passing through your city. Double that if those are sea routes. Now explanation - I don't remember how Waag's worked (wasn't very focused when visiting Amsterdam), but in my Polish city there was also Waag (or whatever HRE name of such building is) and trader couldn't just come to city, stay overnight and move out. If he came to city, he had to sell all of his stuff (or part of it, depending on kings edict). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staple_right).

Now I checked on wiki and was first serving as city gate, but in XVI century it was switched to weigh house. I don't know which one you're aiming at.

this would be possible.

What I could do is set a lua trigger on construction of a waag. You could set an improvement under the city tile that uses the same code as villages to give bonus yields when a caravan passes through. This would mean, however, that the bonus gold on caravans would stay on conquest, and the extra gold would appear as a tile bonus rather than on the building.

As for balance. The Waag already gives a bonus 3 gold to markets, in addition to the 3 gold to caravansaries and custom houses from the base bank. That’s a total of 9 gold. If people liked the caravan idea, I could simply drop the markets bonus

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

this would be possible.

What I could do is set a lua trigger on construction of a waag. You could set an improvement under the city tile that uses the same code as villages to give bonus yields when a caravan passes through. This would mean, however, that the bonus gold on caravans would stay on conquest, and the extra gold would appear as a tile bonus rather than on the building.

As for balance. The Waag already gives a bonus 3 gold to markets, in addition to the 3 gold to caravansaries and custom houses from the base bank. That’s a total of 9 gold. If people liked the caravan idea, I could simply drop the markets bonus

If it stacks, it'll be OP (easy to stack 6-7 TRs on long routes, getting easy hundreds of gold), and if it doesn't it's just a worse version of what it is now.

What happens if there's already an improvement underneath the city?

 

[pineappledan]

If it stacks, it'll be OP (easy to stack 6-7 TRs on long routes, getting easy hundreds of gold), and if it doesn't it's just a worse version of what it is now.

What happens if there's already an improvement underneath the city?

It doesn’t stack on villages, so it wouldn’t stack here either. Personally, I think it sounds like a good idea. I would make it 33 to match the village’s 22 if a caravan runs through it. Then the waag makes cities work like big villages. This is especially nice because we took the +1 to adjacent villages from polders, so it would be nice to return some village flavour to them.

How could there be an improvement below the city? City founding clears improvements on settle. Maybe you are thinking of resources?

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

It doesn’t stack on villages, so it wouldn’t stack here either. Personally, I think it sounds like a good idea. I would make it 33 to match the village’s 22 if a caravan runs through it. Then the waag makes cities work like big villages. This is especially nice because we took the +1 to adjacent villages from polders, so it would be nice to return some village flavour to them.

How could there be an improvement below the city? City founding clears improvements on settle. Maybe you are thinking of resources?

Yeah I didn't even know there can be an improvement below the city, I thought you meant resource. I like the idea more now, even if it means caravans will be far better than cargo ships for the civ and small island cities (often settled for rare resources for the UA) will be heavily disadvantaged. I don't think even at +3 it will be much better than what it is now because it requires effort and not all cities will be affected, but it'll be nice. Production's far better than Gold and if it's an improvement that doesn't "go away" if the TR stops existing, I can just vary my TRs so eventually every city will be affected. Nice mini-game, though late-game it just won't be worth it to make a worse route just so one city benefits from Waag's benefits and the AI probably won't understand it could be beneficial to vary route targets and origin places to maximise Waag yields, which is a minus.

Will the beginning of a trade route count as caravan/cargo ship going through it? Like, I send a land route from Amsterdam on the coast through Groningen to Rotterdam. A-dam and R-dam both benefit, yes? I think they should, otherwise cargo ships won't proc the Waag at all, meaning purely coastal cities won't ever get the bonus. The only other real problem I see now is that there's already a ton of civs that benefit/strengthen trade routes and this one will join them, but it will do so in an unique way.

 

[pineappledan]

Yes. Trade caravans’ routes include the beginning and ending tile, I am almost positive this won’t cause an issue. This will take a bit of effort to get working, since it requires that I code an entirely new dummy improvement, but it is doable.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

The problem is - will the AI understand it's important to have city tile itself go through and that the route targets should be varied for the Waag to have good yields? If a city is on a "crossroad", like
(gold is road, star is city)
__

__
It's possible a route from city going from the west to the south will avoid the city tile, going aslant from a road to a road avoiding it. The route will theoretically be going through the city, but not really because hexes. This won't be a problem to a route from north to south which won't seek the shortest road. The optimal play would be sending west-east, north-south whenever possible in such situations, but only once because the improvement will be made. It'll be annoying even for the player, though, having to recheck which city really has it. Will the yields show on the Waag or somewhere in the UI so it's clear if a caravan affected it?

Is it possible for it to not proc if it's for the city tile, but just for it being in it's borders/certain radius to suffice? Like if not borders, then 5 tile vicinity of a city that has a Waag. That'd make it less of a pain to micromanage for me and the AI.

Spoiler :

Tbh I'm starting to think this idea is more trouble than it's worth

 

[infidel88]

You can always switch Netherlands to Red Light District (harbor) or Coffee Shops (Grocer? Constabulary? ) Especially coffee shops are way more Dutch than Waags were.

And RLD can have so many flavors. There is this church in RLD (https://www.amsterdamredlightdistricttour.com/history-of-amsterdam/old-church/), where hookers went before work and said 'forgive me father for I'm going to sin whole night' and for proper ammount of gold, they were given abolition.

As for caravans - Am I the only one, who tries to have longest routes possible and have caravan passing through every village in empire anyway?

And one more thing - I don't mind particular civ having more advantages or lan d routes over sea, although Netherlands isn't the obvious candidate here

 

[pineappledan]

The problem is more the art assets. I’d prefer to stick with the waag for that reason alone.

The issue with the AI not knowing how to handle it is overblown. The AI will understand this as well as the village bonus on roads and TRs, which is not at all, and that’s fine. The TRs will run from city to city anyways and they will get bonuses on most of them without even trying. This system has been implemented without the AI knowing how to use it well before this.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

In that case I agree as well, I didn't even realise AI doesn't know villages should be on roads because from what I see they usually put them there (excluding cases like tiny islands or tundra). I like it now but suggest slightly more yields than 3 to compensate for the effort required.

 

[Vastator]

I just got creamed in a game with Babylon and I think it at least partially has to do with the Etemenanki being kinda bad. The instant yields on purchase are very hard to raise above 10-15 per purchase, which is incredibly low, especially once Banks come online.

I'm increasing the bonus to 25% of / output, increasing base yields to 442, and increasing the bonus to monument to +2

Isn't that a bit too strong now? Getting +2 science on every city on an early tech as maths seems a bit too much, and Babylon has a lot of science already, early (walls) and late (from banks, because you are going to focus on gold to get the best of your UA, so a lot of investments). Output bonus too seems too much. I did a Babylon game some time ago with this mod and Babylon didn't feel so weak: i played only on King (started playing Emperor recently) but i had China and Rome as neighbors, with whom i had some early wars. I went progress and focused on gold, and i was able to snowball during mid/late game, thanks to the robust infrastructure i was able to build due to the gold that made me create buildings quicker. Increasing this synergy with higher instant bonuses on investment i think it's a bit too much.

Speaking about "weak" buildings I've recently played a Arabia game on Emperor, Tradition/Artistry (considering the UA, these are almost mandatory)/Rationalism, and the University replacement felt quite weak: + 2 faith on a medieval building is not so good (especially for tradition), +15% GP bonus felt very weak (capital had already a lot of % GP generation bonuses and GPP through UA, and for normal cities was "wasted" because tradition) and the instant science yields had not so much impact, despite i had a nice faith output even if i went tradition because i choose Spirit of the Desert and defender of the faith which gave me "a lot" of faith, together with unique buildings.

 

[pineappledan]

2 modding questions for @adan_eslavo or @Infixo:

Question 1:
Currently, the CBP has BALANCE_HAPPINESS_LUXURY_BASE = '1'

Does this mean that I can use pPlayer:GetHappinessFromResources() to calculate the total number of unique resources, controlled or imported, on empire? Or will GetHappinessFromResources() not give me a 1:1 number of resources, because it includes the bonus happiness from city size?

Would you calculate the number of unique luxuries on empire using a different method?

Question 2:
I'm looking at the Polder code and it uses a UnitSetXY for the effect it has, where it saps all movement from an enemy unit. This is incredibly taxing for the computer, and I wanted to think of a way to get a similar effect without such a taxing calculation.

Solution: On completion/removal of a polder, a Marsh feature is added/removed from the tile beneath the improvement. This creates a 3 movement penalty on the tile

Question: If I were to make this change, would I need to do anything to clear the tile of prior features? Would this interact with hills in a bad way?

 

[Infixo]

Would you calculate the number of unique luxuries on empire using a different method?

This is from one of my debug panels, you can extract all info about resources without any happiness gimmick. This code displays for all players info about a specific resource (iResID) and its sources.

function()
  local listItems = {};
  local idx = 1;
  local iResID = -1;
  if g_ResourceName ~= nil then iResID = GameInfoTypes[g_ResourceName]; end
  g_ResourceID = iResID;
 local iActive = 0;
 local iTotRes = 0;
 local iTotOwned = 0;
 local iTotMinors = 0;
 local iTotImports = 0;
 local iTotExports = 0;
 local iTotCount = 0;
 
  for i = 0, GameDefines.MAX_CIV_PLAYERS, 1 do
    local pPlayer = Players[i];
     
    if pPlayer:IsEverAlive()  then
           local str = tostring(i);
        if pPlayer:IsAlive() then
                         str = str .. " /alive;";
              else
                         str = str .. " /---;";
          end
    str = str..pPlayer:GetCivilizationShortDescription()..";";
         
           local iNumRes = 0;
           local iNumOwned = 0;
           local iNumMinors = 0;
           local iNumImports = 0;
           local iNumExports = 0;
           local iNumCount = 0;
           if iResID ~= nil and iResID > 0 then
             iNumOwned = pPlayer:GetNumResourceTotal(iResID, false, false);
             iNumMinors = pPlayer:GetResourceFromMinors(iResID);
             iNumImports = pPlayer:GetResourceImport(iResID);
             iNumExports = pPlayer:GetResourceExport(iResID);
             iNumCount = pPlayer:CountAllResource(iResID);
             iNumRes = iNumOwned + iNumExports;
           end
    iTotRes = iTotRes + iNumRes;
    iTotOwned = iTotOwned + iNumOwned;
    iTotMinors =  iTotMinors + iNumMinors;
    iTotImports =  iTotImports + iNumImports;
    iTotExports =  iTotExports + iNumExports;
           iTotCount = iTotCount + iNumCount;
         
           if iNumRes > 0 or iNumOwned > 0 or iNumMinors > 0 or iNumImports > 0 or iNumExports > 0 or iNumCount > 0 then
             str = str..iNumRes..";"..iNumOwned..";"..iNumMinors..";"..iNumImports..";"..iNumExports..";"..iNumCount;
           else
                str = "";
    end
    if str ~= "" then listItems[idx] = str; idx=idx+1; end
         
    end   -- player alive
  end -- for players
     
  --iActive = Game.GetNumResourcesActivated(iResID);
     
  listItems[idx] = "TOTAL;"..iActive..";"..iTotRes..";"..iTotOwned..";"..iTotMinors..";"..iTotImports..";"..iTotExports..";"..iTotCount;

  return listItems;
end

 

[Infixo]

I'm looking at the Polder code and it uses a UnitSetXY for the effect it has, where it saps all movement from an enemy unit. This is incredibly taxing for the computer, and I wanted to think of a way to get a similar effect without such a taxing calculation.

Always start with the most important condition that saves the most. In this case it should be pPlot:GetImprovementType() == GameInfoTypes.IMPROVEMENT_POLDER, not checking for promos.
If you have 200 units and 10 polders in the game, it will save you AT LEAST 190*4=760 promo checks each turn.
Then probably if there is war - also cuts down unnecessary checks.
And then the rest.

Going war -> polder -> promos is also good.