3UC/4UC for VP: Project Coordination Thread

[Ziad]

Glad to see the Tophet changes in effect. I appreciate the compromises done in the name of flavor.

A question though that just came to mind, before you actually implement the code.

Wouldn't 5 culture on purchase in that city be relatively low impact overall given the amount of unit purchases done in any particular city, and given how you tend to purchase all your military units in the same place (usually capital with heroic epic).

As of now I assume it would work for both gold and faith unit purchases. How about extending it to any and all purchases (such as buildings) so that it may be more universally useful per city? It would also carry on the same flavor or investment and prosperity that inspired the culture to begin with and would fit with expansionism.

It could use the same code used to provide science from investments in banks, if that helps.

You could cut the base 1 culture to compensate, making it somewhat neutral of an effect in ancient/classical to prevent it from being too strong.

An alternative would be to provide culture in all cities, but I think that might be nonsensical and possibly broken no matter what you tune it to be (would affect puppets too).

What do you think @pineappledan. I'd like to hear your insight on this, if it's not too much additional effort.

 

[Ziad]

TFW I'm starting to feel like a Carthage ambassador.

 

[Ziad]

Well to branch out a bit from Carthage, is there a reason the Celtic Oppidum doesn't provide bonuses to nearby Lumber Mills? That's the only missing improvement buff.

With the incoming nerfs to Forest tiles, Lumber Mills may fall behind in strength if not buffed by this building, encouraging players to cut them down. This would be odd given the Celtic fascination with nature, and the general synergies afforded from the Cernunnos pantheon.

I also wonder why it doesn't affect fishing boats? As far as I know, Oppidums were also constructed on the coast.

Also Banks will affect Towns with +2 gold according to Gazebo. Will you afford a similar bonus to Oppidum?

Side note: The UI is messed up in civpedia if you try to look it up. The bonuses don't fit or something.

 

[Ziad]

I would think it's a balance issue. Being able to give a debuff on both offense and defense makes attacking them hurt you more than them.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Just saw the changes ingame. Two things to say :

- The Pracinha needs a lot of corrections : it is now a Rifleman replacement, but the page of the unit in the civilopedia says that the unit replaces Infantry ; the unit has six attributes compared to the Rifleman (cheaper ; +1 MP ; +5 CP ; Amphibious ; Tourism from killing ; bonus for each tile away from capital city), which is too much ; I think the unit should drop the +5 CP bonus, since the "bonus in foreign lands" already makes it very powerful in combat (by the way, I think we should put a maximum to the effect of this promotion, maybe 30 % CS ?) and the Pracinha where more lightly equipped than their European counterparts.

You’re totally right. I forgot to update the text for the Pracinha. And it does have too much going on. I’ll remove the Amphibious and possibly the +1 MP, and play around to find the right CP for it. It should currently cost the same as the base rifleman, does it not?

@adan_eslavo : I’m seeing the “Bison created” popup for the Shoshone before I’ve met them or uncovered their land.

 

[adan_eslavo]

• @Ziad I was wrong about that promotions. Descriptions were written wrong, but promotions were ok and worked only on Attack.
• @Blue Ghost I suspected that. Every pop up will be shown for everyone. I need to find way to restrict that only to one civ. Do you know how? You are first who noticed that. Congratulations!

 

[Hinin]

It should currently cost the same as the base rifleman, does it not?

From what I saw, the Pracinha costs 800 Pr to produce, while the Rifleman costs 900 Pr : I'll double-check.

@Blue Ghost I suspected that. Every pop up will be shown for everyone. I need to find way to restrict that only to one civ. Do you know how? You are first who noticed that. Congratulations!

I noticed it also for the "Maim" effect and the "Scythed" effect a good way to tell where your "not-so-friendly" Ethiopian and Celtic rivals. Maybe the solution is within the code for the "Grenadier" promotion of the Carolean ?

 

[adan_eslavo]

Unfortunately everything for grenadier and other (Aztecs faith on kill, Pictish Warrior's faith on kill) promotions is dll build-in. I wrote this part in lua using

Events.AddPopupTextEvent

so I wrote message in main vp thread. Maybe someone (Gazebo) will tell me how to restrict that.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Unfortunately everything for grenadier and other (Aztecs faith on kill, Pictish Warrior's faith on kill) promotions is dll build-in. I wrote this part in lua using

Events.AddPopupTextEvent

so I wrote message in main vp thread. Maybe someone (Gazebo) will tell me how to restrics that.

You can check if the triggering player is a human player. I believe the function is IsPlayer().

 

[adan_eslavo]

Nice idea. I will do it to reduce computer work. But still if we have 2 human players and one is @Blue Ghost and second is Shoshone and second will spawn Bison then he will see that even if he didn't meet him.

 

[Ziad]

Is there no function to check if the player is you?

Relevant side note: Reading about the work you guys have done on this mod has inspired me to get started on modding so I'll be asking you for help getting started soon I'm about to graduate so I'll have a lot of free time til I start work. That way I'll be less of an armchair critic

 

[pineappledan]

Pracinha now a Rifleman replacement

Not super jazzed about this change. I think having a UU that’s a cultural-closer through warmongering works much better as a modern era replacement. If you are moving it that far up, I think you should reduce the amount of tourism on kills

The Corsair lost its ability to enter rival territory completely... I still think that the solution was to give the unit the same type of ability as the Chinese UM2 (full access) while also giving the new bonus (barbarians appear when plundering TR) of the "Barbary pirate"

My vote has been for your “convert to Barbarian in disbanding” idea, @Hinin. With that you don’t need open borders because the barbarian will wander in by itself. You can harass cities and disrupt infrastructure on enemy coastal cities without declaring war.

The current proposal has that serious issue that you already described: the barbarian’s first action as soon as you plunder a trade route is going to be to attack your own ship. That’s a serious drawback, in fact it makes the unit WORSE, not better. It basically hurts itself by plundering

I made the area larger, made it less regular and smudged the edges a lot.

Look great @hokath! Thanks!

For now I merged all text files into one (lots of copy-paste thing) and rest of xml crap merged into sql. This should make loading times and compiling much faster.

Yay! When we get all that together and merged with BG’s stuff, we will have to make a big file for all the art atlases as well

Wouldn't 5 culture on purchase in that city be relatively low impact overall given the amount of unit purchases done in any particular city, and given how you tend to purchase all your military units in the same place

It’s a small buff, yes. But it’s a small buff that will have a noticeable benefit in the early game. In the late game, the full XP on purchase is going to be way more important.

It certainly could trigger on all purchases, but I don’t think it has to or should. It will be the deciding factor in pumping your city’s work boats out with gold. I like the +1 faith and +1 culture on early game as well. Carthage is the only civ that can invest in turn 1, so if it gets a forest cleared on settle it could have double the culture of other civs on turn 3, and 1.5x culture until classical. That’s big. The faith game is also made strong enough that they are almost guaranteed a religion, but with a buff small enough that they aren’t a “faith civ”.

TL;DR I’m happy with it just staying on unit purchase, having that diminish in importance, and having the XP overtake it

As of now I assume it would work for both gold and faith unit purchases.

That’s a good point. @Blue Ghost, can it trigger the culture of faith purchases of units too?

Well to branch out a bit from Carthage, is there a reason the Celtic Oppidum doesn't provide bonuses to nearby Lumber Mills? That's the only missing improvement buff.

I think that was an oversight on both mine and @adan_eslavo’s part. That’s actually 2 different improvements: jungle and forest lumber mills
Maybe +1 / on forest lumber mill
And. +1 / on jungle lumber mill?

Also Banks will affect Towns with +2 gold according to Gazebo. Will you afford a similar bonus to Oppidum?

we will deal with that when it happens, but I think so, yes

 

[Ziad]

It’s a small buff, yes. But it’s a small buff that will have a noticeable benefit in the early game. In the late game, the full XP on purchase is going to be way more important.

It certainly could trigger on all purchases, but I don’t think it has to or should. It will be the deciding factor in pumping your city’s work boats out with gold. I like the +1 faith and +1 culture on early game as well. Carthage is the only civ that can invest in turn 1, so if it gets a forest cleared on settle it could have double the culture of other civs on turn 3, and 1.5x culture until classical. That’s big. The faith game is also made strong enough that they are almost guaranteed a religion, but with a buff small enough that they aren’t a “faith civ”.

After the recent round of changes which happened after our previous discussions, I find using gold on buildings far more efficient than on units, at least in the early game. You must have felt that right?

So what's happening here is that we're promoting buying units in the early game when usually that's something you want to do later. It feels as if a little countersynergy is in play here as the culture benefit is mostly strong in the early game when you don't want to buy units, particularly now that building investment is 1:1 and unit is like 3:1.

You also didn't address the issue of the typical activity of purchasing units in the capital in the early game, and even throughout the game due wonders like Heroic Epic, Alhambra, etc... Wouldn't that somehow effectively minimize the bonus to the capital only as well unless you need units NOW?

That's why I mentioned possibly including buildings (maybe at a smaller amount) just to make it more universally useful while fitting the flavor of the building.

Anyway the issue isn't that significant as the +1 culture is effectively the same as investment for buildings in ancient/classical unless you have godlike production. The issue was mostly for its scaling. However if you feel you want it to be just for the early game and late game, then that's fine too.

Side note: You mention fishing boats, but most people will just buy fishing boats immediately from the capital or city with tophet as to not lose out on some culture. So the effect will often be shifted to another city. Not a big deal, but something to note.

I think that was an oversight on both mine and @adan_eslavo’s part. That’s actually 2 different improvements: jungle and forest lumber mills
Maybe +1 / on forest lumber mill
And. +1 / on jungle lumber mill?

Looks good. Possibly look into science somewhere since only the quarry provides it?

 

[adan_eslavo]

Few questions:

• what tiles should Nilometer spawn on? Some restrictions?
• code has 1 maintenance for Nilometer, but excel says 2,
• should require River?
• can be build if well is built?

 

[Ziad]

Aren't all unique buildings generally exempt from location requirements? A river would make sense but it would be inconsistent with VP.

I think Flax should prefer to spawn on Flood Plains, but other than that be free to do whatever (possibly Flat > Hill).

 

[adan_eslavo]

That's why I'm asking. I think both requirements should be thrown.

 

[Ziad]

Both requirements?

 

[adan_eslavo]

requirement of River and restriction of no Well in the City.

 

[pineappledan]

particularly now that building investment is 1:1 and unit is like 3:1

This is getting changed next patch, G has stated he’s going to rescale buildings

Looks good. Possibly look into science somewhere since only the quarry provides it?

good idea. Science and gold on jungle it is!

As for the unit purchase bottlenecking, I don’t think that’s so bad. I also like it is an equal/opposite to the Polynesian Fale Tele, which gives yields on construction

 

[Jarula]

What about slaganz finished?