3UC/4UC for VP: Project Coordination Thread

[adan_eslavo]

Making citadels and other improvement to be non adjacent is probably impossible to do. Standard non adjacent thing is 0-1 (boolean) based table value. Does hacienda need another bonus? It is now little bit more powerful than chateau.

Monolithic church is indeed underpowered comparing to those two above (it is also medieval) so adding some military bonus orveven better heal to it would be good. Kampug on the other hand has good yields when compared to terrace farms f.e. and imo it doesnt need any boost.

Corrections to the file: mchurch: yield culture should be Ma (4); Oppidum doesnt give bonus defense to city (it is 10 hp instead). For hacienda you mentioned +2p +1g 2 times (yield and ua). Same with moai. To be clear you should split base yield from those added on techs and put numeric values there.

Monolithic churches only hill requirement UI, are nigh-incapable of food (only UI that is almost guaranteed to be food-negative)

Terrace Farms are also on-hill ui but it gives a lot of food instead. Do we need to change mchurch to no to give negative values? How is it possible (when you cut forest it drops down to 0)?

What about other civs flavors? Do you think we should adjust them to new units?

 

[Hinin]

I'll make some adjustements to take into account what you just said.

The idea I had for the Hacidenda is, I think, difficult to code but possible. However, and this thruth hit me when I went to bed, unless we make the Hacidenda and the Citadel impossible to remove (which would be ludicrous for various reasons), this mechanic is far too exploitable and could lead to ridiculous situations which don't have their place in VP (you build an Hacidenda, you begin building a farm on the tile of the Hacienda, then you build another Hacienda next to it if it's possible, and so you eat the territory of other players continusly ; you can also exploit this mechanic with the Citadel, but at least it costs you one GGeneral per cycle). So, at the end, I drop the idea.

... I still think the Hacienda needs nomething more though.

 

[Hinin]

The document has been updated.

Some new suggestion concerning the Oppidum :
- I think you should increase the Hp gained by the city from 10 to 20, simply because, for a great person unique improvement, it doesn't bring much Hp at all (10 hp corresponds, in my mind, to one ranged attack of medium power to a city with a garrison).
- I also think you should give the Oppidum the same bonus the cities, forts and citadels have : when an allied melee unit kills from the tile, it shouldn't advance but instead stay on it (if it were me, the Chateau, the Encampment, the Kasbah and the Feitora would also benefit from it).

Thank you once again for your feedback.

 

[adan_eslavo]

We could boost it but I think feitoria is far too complicated to be compared with.

Yeah small tweaks to oppidum but meaningful. I will add them. But it is unique ability of citadel and city. GP improvement ok. But rest? Im not sure.

 

[Hinin]

I vote to keep the picture you have. Lastsword's picture doesn't really give much sense of what a Barbican is supposed to look like in relation to the rest of the walls; it's disorienting.

I also vote for keeping the current picture : it is a good one, and the other, as pineappledan said, is less good at expressing what it represents (if you know what I mean).

Yeah small tweaks to oppidum but meaningful. I will add them. But it is unique ability of citadel and city. GP improvement ok. But rest? Im not sure.

It was simply a suggestion once again.

 

[Hinin]

Also, adan_eslavo, the recent modifications you did for the Shotelai didn't mention a diminution of its CP to 22. Pineappledan and me aggreed on the fact that 25 CP was too much. What do you think ?

 

[FoxOfWar]

Day off. Playtesting time. Feeling like going super-wide on a big map 'cause I just doubled the amount of memory on my machine, so Russia is a go. I've already been curious about Pogost anyway thanks to it showing on tech tree with other civs ;P

 

[pineappledan]

I was going to repost my civs but something seems to have gone wrong. Indonesia and Sweden's UCs are no longer being added, so I will debug that tonight

Oppidum
Oppidum gives 50% defense on tile defense on the tile. I think the idea of having units occupying the tile immediately retreat, like a fort, is a great idea.

Monolithic Church
As for the Monolithic church being food negative, I meant that each citizen consumes -2 food, so if one is working a MC, which is on a hill and produces no food, then it is not offsetting its own consumption. This is already "fixed" in-game by the liberty ideology, which gives +2 food on UIs. That was a conscious design choice on my part; a "feature" if you will. I have no problems with the MC having no real special abilities, there's nothing wrong with some straight yields. If I were to add some sort of feature I would stick to religion though, they are churches after all. Here are some alternatives, obviously don't use them all at once:

• +5% religious pressure on city for every MC worked (The monolithic churches are often pilgrimage sites. Lalibela is sometimes referred to as the "New Jerusalem")
• Religion spreads 10% farther for every MC worked by city
• +1 Faith on MC for every Great Artifact in city (then remove all faith from techs, and leave only base faith)
• Missionaries from other civs cannot be on a tile with a MC (considered impassable terrain like a Mountain)
• Missionaries from other civs who end their turn next to or on an MC take -250 religious attrition (up from -250 per turn for ending in enemy territory)

My favorite proposal:

• MC provides No Base Faith. Instead:
  • +1 Faith on MC for every religious tenet on Majority Religion in City (does not include pantheon, max of 5 with reformation)
  • In addition to faith, +2 Culture on MCs for City with Enhancer Belief, and +1 Culture for Reformation Belief

"Thus saith the LORD, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me? and where is the place of my rest?
For all those things hath mine hand made, and all those things have been, saith the LORD: but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word."
-Isaiah 66:1-2 (KJV)

MC scales with religion rather than technology. Only small prod and gold buffs on tech tree. Synergy with Ethiopian UA, who gets free tech for each religious tenet adopted. This could add a new meta, where human players can intentionally target Ethiopian cities for conversion with their less advanced religion, and sabotage Ethiopia's tile yields. Makes resilience a very attractive reformation belief.

Hacienda:
Actually, the +2g on haciendas for every adjacent luxury was not what I originally meant, I intended luxury tiles each to get +2g. When Adan coded it how he did and I realize how it works, i realized his interpretation is much more interesting and historical if the hacienda gets the gold. So I kept my mouth shut till now

I like the Hacienda as is - it concentrates and extracts wealth, that's its deal. The Haciendas were categorically NOT Encomiendas; the land had already been conquered, so a land-grad mechanic would be at odds with history (and the civilopedia entry I wrote ).

My problem with trying to 'gamify' the encomienda system is that Conquistadors already do that. Conquistadors, if successful in their overseas conquests, received Encomiendas from the crown. This is reflected in their ability to settle cities. Essentially, cities founded by Conquistadors ARE encomiendas, and they grab 8 tiles just like you wanted.

Kampung
Personally I would keep the Kampung as it is. Because of its tile requirements the Kampung is, in my opinion, already the single most unique UI in the entire game. I don't like the idea of giving Indonesia any leg-up in military conflicts, their niche in the game is to be a fattened calf for those daring enough to take it; a mercantile equivalent to a wonder-whore. Any bonuses they receive to their military capability should be an indirect result of a powerful economy, IMO

This is precisely why I deviated from TPangolin's original Kampung, which gave 5% to naval unit construction for each adjacent workboat. That is overtly militaristic, so I replaced it with +1 prod on adjacent workboats, which is more general

 

[adan_eslavo]

We decided to delete earlier tech bonus from Shotelai and it had 22 CP so I decided to recompensate him it by simply giving more CP (25). If you think it is too much I can lower it to 23 (one less than Samurai). 22 Seems to low for me.

Picture stays then.

Oppidum has defense on tile and hp on city. Hinin in file described defense on tile and on city.

MC provides No Base Faith, for the Spirit of the Lord does not dwell in lifeless stone, but in the hearts of men. Instead:

• +1 Faith on MC for every religious tenet on majority religion in city (does not include pantheon, max of 5 with reformation)
• In addition to faith, +2 Culture on MCs for City with Enhancer Belief, and +1 Culture for Reformation Belief

MC scales with religion rather than technology. Only small prod and gold buffs on tech tree. Synergy with Ethiopian UA, who gets free tech for each religious tenet adopted

Possible to do. Require lua tortures. But what if Ethiopia don't get religion. There's small posibility it happens because hey have Stele. Then MC would not give faith and culture. Same thing like with Celtic new UA. Generally I like the idea.

 

[pineappledan]

Because of their UA, Ethiopia already loses 5 free technologies if they don't found. If Ethiopia doesn't found they may as well kill themselves. If anything, the MC would mitigate this, because it would provide those yields to a city regardless of the religion, so you could just spread someone else's and hope they improve it.

Wouldn't it be possible in SQL? You would have to edit every belief in the game to add +1 faith on MCs, and then +1 faith and +2 culture on enhancer, etc. It would be a ton of lines, but I don't think you would have to touch .lua

 

[adan_eslavo]

Ahh, I will check that. Thank you.

 

[pineappledan]

Monolithic Church
I was thinking more about what I proposed for the Monolithic Church. What if we could make every tile yield increase on the MC attached to completing policy trees and religious tenets, and remove the MC from the tech tree entirely, except the prereq tech to build it?

Spoiler :

Monolithic Church: Available at Theology
Must be built on stone, marble, or hills
+2, +2
+1 for every Follower and Founder belief on majority religion in City
+1 , +2 for Enhancer Belief on majority religion in City
+1 , +1 for Reformation Belief on majority religion in City

+1 for every Ancient Era policy tree completed on Empire
+1 for every Medieval Era policy tree completed on Empire
+1, +1 for every Industrial Era policy tree completed on Empire
+2 for unlocking your first Ideology on Empire

So a standard game, you would get +4-5 and + 2-3 from Beliefs, and +4/+2 from Policies and Ideologies, roughly comparable to what the current MC gives from techs, but more if you get a reformation belief.

These proposed changes would mirror the Ethiopian UA which gives a free tech for every completed policy tree, adopted belief, and for choosing your first ideology

To add the yield increases, you could just add the yields as a bonus to each policy finisher, in addition to their normal benefits using SQL

For the ideology one, I think it would require a simple .lua to check if you have an ideology or not:
If Autocracy/Order/Liberty is present on empire
Then +2 on MCs
It doesn't need to check if this is your first ideology or not, just whether or not you have one

What do you guys think?

Shotelai
I don't think 22 or 23 makes much difference. As I said I would be perfectly okay with it being 20. I keep saying this, but I think people are really underestimating how good that maim promotion is. If you attack a 2 move unit it would have 1 move on its turn; it's effectively locked down. All your archers can move and shoot at it in 1 turn, and if the shotelai that hit it is the only adjacent unit, hitting your shotelai on its turn is the only thing it can now do. That's brutal

Entemananki
Is the 10% food and 10% of city's science too low on the Entemenanki?

The original proposal was 20/ on investment, then scaling to 40/ in the medieval. In order to get comparable yields from the current system , you would need 400/ on a medieval city, which is unheard of. This actually makes me think that the original proposal was much too generous, but maybe increasing the and to 15% of city's yields? What do you guys think?

SPAD
The current SPAD has 7 range as a base (up from 5). I not using the range promotion creates 2 unintended problems:

• the increased range will not carry forward, so the SPAD will have MORE range than a fighter (range of 6 base)
• The SPAD can take advantage of its quick learner and get the real 'Range' promotion quickly, increasing its range to 9. That's more range than any base aircraft except the strategic bomber.

I think the SPAD should get the base "range" promotion so that it can carry forward and not be, in some aspects, better than its replacements.

 

[FoxOfWar]

While tying Monolithic Church's yields to faith/policies instead of techs are nice, they do feel like the kind of 'extra goodies' we should worry about once we have this thing mostly up-and-running with most civs, depending how hard it is to code up. I'd leave it for now, see what further playtesting says about th' church. On my playtest, just an improvement that can give extra faith is pretty darn powerful and relatively unique (Kuna, I think, is the only other UI that gives faith).

 

[adan_eslavo]

I was thinking more about what I suggested for the Monolithic Church. What if we could make every tile yield increase on the MC attached to completing policy trees and religious tenets, and remove the MC from the tech tree entirely, except the prereq tech to build it?

Spoiler :

Monolithic Church: Available at Theology
Must be built on stone, marble, or hills
+2, +2
+1 for every Follower and Founder belief on majority religion in City
+1 , +2 for Enhancer Belief on majority religion in City
+1 , +1 for Reformation Belief on majority religion in City

+1 for every Ancient Era policy tree completed on Empire
+1 for every Medieval Era policy tree completed on Empire
+1, +1 for every Industrial Era policy tree completed on Empire
+2 for unlocking your first Ideology on Empire

So a standard game, you would get +4-5 and + 2-3 from Beliefs, and +4/+2 from Policies and Ideologies, roughly comparable to what the current MC gives from techs, but more if you get a reformation belief.

These proposed changes would mirror the Ethiopian UA which gives a free tech for every completed policy tree, adopted belief, and for choosing your first ideology

To add the yield increases, you could just add the yields as a bonus to each policy finisher, in addition to their normal benefits using SQL

For the ideology one, I think it would require a simple .lua to check if you have an ideology or not:
If Autocracy/Order/Liberty is present on empire
Then +2 on MCs
It doesn't need to check if this is your first ideology or not, just whether or not you have one

What do you guys think?

Policy and ideology should be easily obtained by sql, but there will be a major problem with the rest. I don't know function which check what tenets we have in the city.This cannot be obtained by sql and without proper lua function it cannot be done there too. I wanted earlier modify Celtic UA to give +1 GMP in every city that has pantheon. That would mean something. But I only found how to check founding pantheon.

Re Shotelai, I don't think 22 or 23 makes much difference. As I said I would be perfectly okay with it being 20. I keep saying this, but I think people are really underestimating how good that maim promotion is. If you attack a 2 move unit it would have 1 move on its turn; it's effectively locked down. All your archers can move and shoot at it in 1 turn, and if the shotelai that hit it is the only unit in melee, hitting your shotelai on its turn is the only thing it can now do. That's brutal

Life is brutal.

I cannot find SQL value for unit staying on improvement after attack and killing other one. I made lua instead. If you have an idea how to simplify this, tell me.

Entemananki
Is the 10% food and 10% of city's science too low on the Entemenanki?

The original proposal was 20/ on investment, then scaling to 40/ in the medieval. In order to get comparable yields from the current system , you would need 400/ on a medieval city, which is unheard of. This actually makes me think that the original proposal was much too generous, but maybe increasing the and to 15% of city's yields? What do you guys think?

I changed this to make my life easier and really didn't calculate whole thing. I just banged 10% so we can change that if it is too low.

 

[pineappledan]

While tying Monolithic Church's yields to faith/policies instead of techs are nice, they do feel like the kind of 'extra goodies' we should worry about once we have this thing mostly up-and-running with most civs, depending how hard it is to code up. I'd leave it for now, see what further playtesting says about th' church. On my playtest, just an improvement that can give extra faith is pretty darn powerful and relatively unique (Kuna, I think, is the only other UI that gives faith).

Tying the MC's yield increases to policies and beliefs instead of the tech tree will significantly change the timing, of the upgrades. Buffs tied to the tech tree are also comparatively passive, so I would want to see if there are ways that people can "race" to those minimum requirements faster than intended. That's what I would want to test, and that's what I'm worried about, because I suspect making the MC that interactive would make the player that much better than the AI at using it. On the other hand maybe that's a good thing

The thing that makes Kuna so potent is it is a faith improvement that comes early enough that you can use it to get your religion. If you are Ethiopia and you haven't founded by Medieval then you are sucking hard.

Policy and ideology should be easily obtained by sql, but there will be a major problem with the rest. I don't know function which check what tenets we have in the city.This cannot be obtained by sql and without proper lua function it cannot be done there too. I wanted earlier modify Celtic UA to give +1 GMP in every city that has pantheon. That would mean something. But I only found how to check founding pantheon.

I'm not really sure I understand the problem.
-all tenets of a certain type buff the MC in an identical way
-All religions (except one founded by Byzantium) get exactly the same number of possible tenet types (1,2,1,1), so any religion would buff an MC in the exact same way.
-if there is no variation, in how specific tenets affect MCs then there is no need to check what tenets are being used.

The only thing that matters is the quantity of beliefs. You shouldn't have to lua check for anything, because the game already awards or denies cities any buffs from beliefs based on the exact same logic.

The only civ that can break this system in Byzantium. If you adopt Byzantium's religion you could get more yields from your UI. If byzantium conquers Ethiopian land, they could get better use from the UI than Ethiopia could. If this was Byzantium's strategy from the start they could opt for 2 enhancer beliefs to get the best use of the MC. That's an edge case though; something that would make this even more interesting

TL;DR, the specific tenets in the city don't matter, only the number.

 

[adan_eslavo]

Yes but you want to check it by the cities in which MC is located. SQL table you probably think of (Belief_ImprovementYieldChanges) is global one (probably, if i'm wrong correct me) so it checks if player has one or another belief and then adds globaly all yields to all MCs in the Empire. If I wanted to check cities additionally I need those crappy functions.

 

[pineappledan]

Yes but you want to check it by the cities in which MC is located.

Why? If a city in another empire has a belief which (covertly) also buffs MCs, but has no way of using it, why does it matter? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Belief_ImprovementYieldChanges affects cities with that majority religion, and only those cities. It does NOT affect affect cities that do not have that religion, EVEN IF that city belongs to the same empire as one which founded that specific religion.

2 ethiopian cities 5 tiles from each other
Both can work the same MC which is between them
City A has an enhanced religion (4 tenets)
City B has a regular religion (2 tenets)
If city A is working the MC it yields 4 faith
If city B is working the same MC it yields 2 faith

City A uses missionary to convert city B to its religion
MC now yields 4 faith for both cities

SQL table you probably think of (Belief_ImprovementYieldChanges) is global one (probably, if i'm wrong correct me) so it checks if player has one or another belief and then adds globally all yields to all MCs in the Empire.

I don't believe this is correct. Religions are not buffs on Empire, they are buffs on individuals cities with X religion. Tying the faith yields to tenets should make them differ from city-to-city, not empire-to-empire.

Does someone has a better understanding of this? Do we need .lua to make this happen?

 

[adan_eslavo]

The only way probably is through testing (I will buff MC from one of the pantheons and then create one MC in the city with pantheon and second in city without it. If you are right, only one of them should be buffed by let's say 100 gold). I will do some later or tomorrow to check it out. I hope you are right.

@pineappledan I beg you pardon, you were right. Imodified my plan a bit (did founder belief instead) and it boosted only one city. But, to not to oversweet too much, I found another problem during the test (lucky me ). When put to SQL all of the beliefs with their boosts to MC ALL OF THEM will be listed in its description. When I say all I mean about 40 lines of bonuses. There will not be more space for other description on screen. Forgive me, I'm a bit tired, but maybe again I missed something. I know you said about quantity of tenets, but how to check that? For testing purpose I did this:

INSERT INTO Belief_ImprovementYieldChanges
            (BeliefType,                        ImprovementType,                            YieldType,        Yield)
VALUES        ('BELIEF_CEREMONIAL_BURIAL',        'IMPROVEMENT_ETHIOPIA_MONOLITHIC_CHURCH',    'YIELD_GOLD',    1000);

 

[pineappledan]

LOL, I forgot that the tooltip will list EVERY possible bonus. The verbose information from the tooltips is thanks to PlotHelpText.lua in the EUI. I know .lua can strongarm tooltips to say exactly what you want, but I have no idea if you can make specific exceptions for one asset.

I know you said about quantity of tenets, but how to check that?

It's not necessary to have any check for quantity. The yields will work as intended simply by existing on the tenets

 

[adan_eslavo]

Uff, that was tough conversation. I'm glad we explained everything.
@Blue Ghost Any help or advise or suggestion on that?

@pineappledan Sorry to be stubborn but I asked 2 times about other civ's flavors but that question died among others. Do we need to adjust them to new units? F.e. france should be now more oriented to air and science to use new plane and grande ecole.