8 Ages of Pace v2.1.0 Release

[Olleus]

Lord Olleus submitted a new resource:

Installation instructions
Download v1.1 (link to right of this page) and unzip into your mod folder (if you have a previous version of the mod, delete that folder first). The file path should be read
.../My Documents/My Games/Sid Meier's Civilization VI/Mods/8 Ages of Pace/8AgesOfPace.modinfo
When creating a new game go to additional content and click 'enable mod'. When loading games afterwards, this is not necessary.

Description
Do you find the pacing of the game feels off? Eras rush pass you at break neck speed? No time for wonders, buildings or districts until they're no longer needed? Units move so slowly on roads the war is over and they are obsolete by the time they get anywhere? Borders full of holes even in the modern era (which begins in 1500)?

Then 8 Ages of Pace is the mod for you! This mod addresses many of the imbalances in the pace of the game such that it feels complete from the Ancient to the Information era. Changes made so far include more significant road upgrades with passing eras, faster border growth, and techs/civics that get significantly more expensive with later eras.

Once I'm more familiar with the game I plan to release more compatible mods such as 8 Ages of War that will address balance and playability in other aspects of the game

Compatibility
This mod has been written in a way to be as compatible as possible. This means it should work with mods that modify the tech tree mods, add maps/great people/civilizations/leaders, modify the interface and so on. However it is likely to clash with mods that affect how much culture is required to grow borders, speed on roads, and how much food is needed to grow pop. The mod, surprisingly, does not disable achievements; I suspect this is on oversight from Firaxis/Steam.

Clashes with Gedemon's mod that also affects tech speed reported for v1a

Known Issues
Interface problems where the distance that a unit can move in one turn is sometimes not displaying properly when moving on roads. Happens more often when using roads not in one's own territory. Edit: This issue comes up in unmodded Civ6 too, and so is not caused by this mod. I will wait for Firaxis to fix this bug rather than go hunting for it myself.

Change log
The mod is currently in v1.1 Beta: I am confident that it is stable, but I haven't tested it enough to be 100% certain of this, and the values picked are not final yet. See below for some (minor) known issues.

EDIT: Latest change was updating to v1.1 Beta. Savefile compatibility maintained, but I recommend you start a new game or things won't be balanced.

Spoiler :

v1.1 Beta
Added readme.txt to mod download

Population Growth
CITY_GROWTH_EXPONENT changed from 1.5 to 2.1. This increases how much food large cities need to grow. Makes no real difference to small cities (6 pop or smaller) but the increase is noticeable once they hit their teens. This is to compensate for there being more turns for cities to grow in before housing increases.

Roads
Classical roads cost 0.625 moves (used to be 0.666)
Renaissance roads cost 0.375 moves (used to be 0.333)
Using binary fractions solves some of the rounding issues. This means that there are fewer interface problems and that changes toUnitPanel.lua are no longer needed.
Renaissance roads are now called so in game (used to be industrial)
Civilopedia description of roads updated

Eras
Modern Era scales by 2.7 (was 2.6)
Atomic Era scales by 3.3 (was 3.2)
Great People cost increase has been reduced to half the increase of techs and civics. I.e. Industrial techs cost 2.2 times as much as vanilla, but industrial great people only cost 1.6 times as much.
Great people actions that give a one-off boost to science or culture have had that amount increased in line with eras.
Changed the sql code which does this, makes it easier for users to change the values themselves.

v1a Alpha
Missing tag fixed in file. Saveplay compatibility maintained.

v1 Alpha
Roads
Roads give increased movement, more marked in later eras
Classical roads - tiles cost 2/3 of a move
Industrial roads - moved to the renaissance, tiles costs 0.4 moves
Modern roads - tiles cost 1/4 of a move
Changes to UnitPanel.lua to deal with decimal to binary rounding errors

Borders
Border growth rate significantly increased, eg: 50% faster to pop second ring.
CULTURE_COST_LATER_PLOT_MULTIPLIER halved to 3
CULTURE_COST_LATER_PLOT_EXPONENT increased to 1.4

Eras
The cost of technologies and civics has been increased in later eras (cost of great people increased by the same amount to compensate longer duration of eras)
Ancient - no change
Classical - cost increased by 1.25
Medieval - cost increased by 1.5
Renaissance - 1.8
Industrial - 2.2
Modern - 2.6
Atomic - 3.2
Information - 4
Thanks to Gedemon and alpaca for the idea and code template for this

But what does game play look like?
Forum user HadrianLP has a let's play series 8 Ages of Rome featuring this mod, have a look through the videos if you want a flavour of what it looks like!

Feedback about balance or bugs greatly appreciated, as are suggestions about future changes!

 

[zuna1111]

Is it possible to get boost to e.g. 25%, 50% is too much specially now with longer research times.

 

[RemonKewl]

Is it possible to get boost to e.g. 25%, 50% is too much specially now with longer research times.

Yes. Add "UPDATE Technologies SET Boost = 25;" in SlowerEras.sql. Probably do the same for Civics as well.

What Ryika said.

 

[Olleus]

I was thinking about changing that. I decided to leave it as it is so that the importance of Eureka's/Inspirations are the same, ie: they cut down your research time by the same about.

What's the reasoning to reduce it? Why do you want them to be less important? It's not that I'm against the idea, I just dont quite see the need to change it.

 

[Leyrann]

I feel like you're supposed to research that which you have eureka's for, and if remotely possible no other technologies, as they don't, so to say "fit" what you're doing. So imo they should not be made less important.

 

[Ryika]

Yes. Add "UPDATE Technologies SET Boost = 25;" in SlowerEras.sql. Probably do the same for Civics as well.

No, boosts are maintained in the Boosts-table, not in Technologies.

Therefor it's:
UPDATE Boosts SET Boost = 25;

Or, to add the ability to change them separately:
UPDATE Boosts SET Boost = 25 WHERE TechnologyType IS NOT NULL;
UPDATE Boosts SET Boost = 25 WHERE CivicType IS NOT NULL;

But I agree that Eurekas should remain as they are.

 

[Grotius]

I'd also leave Eurekas alone, at least for now. Let people play your mod and see how it goes.

So I suppose one benefit of this mod is that production (hammers) will now seem more in line with one's progress up the tech tree?

Also, does this (or any) mod disable Achievements?

 

[Olleus]

All mods disable achievements, which I guess is fair enough.

For what it's worth, I think this mod actually makes the game harder by making beelines more expensive and helping the AI with it's chronic lack of buying tiles.

I'll leave Eurekas alone for now, will wait for more feedback before making changes.

 

[AriRina]

Thank you, I will try it out in the next game. Really curious as to how it affects the game experience. And btw I personaly love the eurekas and prefer the option to leave them as they are since they do make so much sense

 

[sresk]

So it's funny I'm working on a mod with a number of balance changes that do almsot exactly what this does

here's the values I used for border growth Why did you increase the CULTURE_COST_LATER_PLOT_EXPONENT?

<GlobalParameters>
<Update>
<Where Name="CULTURE_COST_FIRST_PLOT" /> <Set Value="7"/> <!-- Original 10 -->
</Update>
<Update>
<Where Name="CULTURE_COST_LATER_PLOT_EXPONENT"/> <Set Value="1.2"/> <!-- Original 1.3 -->
</Update>
<Update>
<Where Name="CULTURE_COST_LATER_PLOT_MULTIPLIER" /> <Set Value="4"/> <!-- Original 6 -->
</Update>
<Update>
<Where Name="DISTRICT_POPULATION_REQUIRED_PER"/> <set Value="4" /> <!-- Original 3 this is good to test if its working -->
</Update>
<Update>
<Where Name="SCIENCE_PERCENTAGE_YIELD_PER_POP" /> <Set Value="50"/> <!-- Original 70 -->
</Update>

But in the SCIENCE_PERCENTAGE_YIELD_PER_POP it's having no impact at all.... all pops still make .7 science can you give me any insight?

 

[isau]

Is there by chance a missing <GameInfo> opening tag in the XML for borders? Here is what the code is in the version I downloaded.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!-- Created by Olleus for 8 Ages of Pacing (23 Oct 2016) for v1.0.0.26 -->
<!-- Drastically speeds up the rate at which culture makes borders expand -->
<!-- Little change for first few tiles, the 2nd and 3rd ring should pop in about 2/3 the time -->
    <GlobalParameters>
        <!-- Unchanged, here for reference-->
        <Update>
            <Where Name="CULTURE_COST_FIRST_PLOT" /> <Set Value="10" />
        </Update>
        <!-- Used to be 1.3 -->
        <Update>
            <Where Name="CULTURE_COST_LATER_PLOT_EXPONENT" /> <Set Value="1.4" />
        </Update>
        <!-- Used to be 6 -->
        <Update>
            <Where Name="CULTURE_COST_LATER_PLOT_MULTIPLIER" /> <Set Value="3" />
        </Update>
    </GlobalParameters>
</GameInfo>

 

[Olleus]

Ooops, well spotted! Bizarrely my local version doesn't have this problem... OP is being edited. Apologies for the mistake.

 

[rkade8583]

Grabbed. Watching. Looking forward to what you come up with.

 

[Olleus]

So it's funny I'm working on a mod with a number of balance changes that do almsot exactly what this does

here's the values I used for border growth Why did you increase the CULTURE_COST_LATER_PLOT_EXPONENT?

But in the SCIENCE_PERCENTAGE_YIELD_PER_POP it's having no impact at all.... all pops still make .7 science can you give me any insight?

I increased the exponent to prevent tiles being too cheap later. Similarly I find the time to pop the first tile is fine, the problem is that the second tile takes twice as long.

For reference, the cost for gaining new tiles is:
new_tile = base + (mult_cost (num_tiles_gained - 1))^exp_cost

Note the strange placement of the brackets, the mult_cost is raised by the exp_cost. Why? Who knows? This was tested for 1 city on prince, no idea if difficulty affects it or theres a penalty for having several cities.

 

[sresk]

So I've started a mod that is VERY similar to this but does a bunch of extra thigns as well and uses slightly different values than yours. But I hadn't thought about the road speed and I really like it, Can I steal that from you to incorporate into mine as long as I credit you?

Also I've run into a weird bug where it seems like the order matters see here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/psa-wtf-order-matters.601691/

PS what do your UI changes do?

 

[Olleus]

Sure, use whatever parts you want . I'm always happy to exchange ideas and work out the best way of polishing this game.

The UI changes are tiny, it just rounds the movement points when using fractions that aren't powers of 2. For example on classical roads each tile costs 2/3 of a move, so a warrior that's moved 1 tile has 1.33/2 moves left. The UI changes just ensures this displays as 1.33/2; without it the UI says something like 1.3327568.... due to converting from decimals to binary and back.

 

[sresk]

Well honestly I'd love to have someone to work with and will probably be posting my mod in a few more days here's kinda the design doc I'm working off of...
Here is a list of changes and things that need worked on:



Diplomacy changes - The actions the player take don't seem to have an effect on diplomacy so need to change the following:
Needed Easier to make friends
Needed Less Upfront Warmonger for war but more warmonger for war weariness
Needed More Impact to relationship from actions like gifts and declare friends
Needed AI more willing to accepts gifts and embassies
Testing more war weariness to discourage long wars and to simulate bad boy penalty for other civs to not like you
Done More War weariness and it doesn't decay as long as you are at war - need to test this

Pace Changes - I feel that techs come too fast and production is too low so the following changes are needed
DONE Increase costs to science by era (may need balance)
DONE Match the increase For civics
DONE Reduce production costs (may need balance)
Done less culture and science per pop
Done Barbs Are stronger in the early game and fall off in later eras
NEEDED bonus and adjacency for bonus resources they feel strong early game and weak late game
NEEDED future tech for civics - there is no benefit to maxing out the civics tree and its easy to do

NEEDED At the founding of a new settlement give a 1 time boost to production that scales with era (look at tree chopping to make this work?)

Balance Changes - There are a number of balance problems that I'm not sure how to classify them such as:
Jungles and coasts are weak to the point that it's always a benefit to clear jungles and its a poor choice to settle on the coast
Roads and trade posts don't seem impactful
There is still a huge amount of empty land at the end of the game
so the following changes should address these issues
Done +1 movement all units?
Balance May need to add more movement to scouts
Done + food on water tiles
Testing Fishing Boats can be built on all coasts but they don't scale the way farms do - should make coasts stong early and moderate late game
NEEDED + ability to build improvements on water
Done + appeal and faith for rain forest
May need to add another improvement for them as well?
Done Better roads credit to 8 Eras by Lord Olleus
Done +1 gold from trading posts both internal and foreign
Done Need less culture to expand borders
NEEDED Reduce the scaling costs to builders and settlers
Needed Balance pass on civics
Needed Balance pass on Civs bonus double Calvary is too strong some other feel too weak need to go through them all and differentiate them

Tall VS Wide is not balanced well right now so the following changes are designed to address this and encourage large well developed cities and have some penaltied for ICS
NEEDED + %bonus to all yields for districts
NEEDED + more adjacency bonuses
NEEDED + % costs to tech and culture for more cities (look at the builder costs) encourage tall
NEEDED + more scaling for happiness
Done More religious pressure from holy sites and large cities
Done Need 4 pop per district instead of 3

Changes that just feel right to me

NEEDED Manpower cap
NEEDED + range bonus for districts
NEEDED + adjacency from district to tiles (faith culture and gold to neighbor tiles
NEEDED + hamlets/trading posts improvements to simulate villages
NEEDED + more things to spend faith on and cheaper faith costs
NEEDED + great prophets that spawn apostles for all ages after religions are founded
Needed more production and gold per pop (+/-0.2 each)
NEEDED + more scaling +/- 10% bonus and malus to encourage tall vs wide
NEEDED + easier to make friends more positive influence from gifts more liklely to accept embassy and friends less warmonger from declare and more warmonger from war wearyness
NEEDED + slightly stronger trade routes / much stronger trading posts
Needs Testing + faster border growth
NEEDED + more ways to gain envoys
NEEDED + trade districts + gold based on appeal
NEEDED + culture districts + tourism based on appeal
NEEDED + double legacy bonus speed
NEEDED + purchase naturalist with gold
NEEDED + National parks provide gold and culture
NEEDED + production minor civs are way strong double the bonus outputs of the other minor civs
Done Add +1 to all resource yields to make them feel better

I'm likely going to go overboard buffing things and then will need to scale it back to make everything feel right... but does that look at all appealing to you to help with or are you going in a different direction?

the one that I'm going to have the most trouble with is trying to implement any sort of manpower requirement similar to how eu iv works... my thought it haveing a manpower resource that each city center generates that is consumed for every military unit that exists... this would have been easy in civ v but the resource requirement is totally different now

 

[Olleus]

Wow, that is a lot of changes! Sounds like a very ambitious mod.

I'm not sure I'd want to make this many changes at once, keeping this balanced would be very difficult. There's also the risk that a mod will become a way to make your favourite strategy stronger or add complexity for it's own sake, rather than improving the game.

But I'm happy to discuss any individual change here. But you should start a new thread if you want to discuss all of them in bulk.

 

[rrrwww]

my only problem with this mod is it will make the game too easy with the braindead AI.

theres a reason the developers made low production. because if there is any production for the player, it would mean more fights, more opportunity for the player, and with a braindead AI it would make the game way too easy. similar goes for movement


the devs dont want you to produce units or move too much without incurring a substantial cost, simply because they know they cant design an AI that can do that as well


more production=more power to the player, substantially

 

[Olleus]

Partially true. More production gets multiplied more by the AI bonuses. In my current game they're actually capable of competing for wonders. More over, this mod makes beeling far less attractive. Considering most player strategies revolve around a beeline in one way or another, this makes life significantly harder for the player. Similarly having tiles poop faster is probably more help for the AI who is generally more reluctant that the player to buy tiles.

Taken together, I;m not sure it's easy to say if this makes the game easier or harder (FYI: I'm playing on King at the moment. Nice difficulty to explore the game)