Acularius' GEM for Caveman2Cosmos

[Acularius]

Preliminary thoughts.
Scaled City limits to the map size seems to work splendidly in keeping me, the player, in check.
I'm managing 5 cities on Chiefdom, as Greece (Alexander) and I can expand more, however needing to keep my happiness up in the newly founded cities slows me down enough that be 6700 BC I have yet to discover writing. I'm keeping around 60% in research and expanding my army to go conquer somewhere is a costly endeavor.
I was the first to reach Sedentary.

I am on Noble though, just to see how balanced it was without ramping up the difficulty.
On Gigantic map size, GEM is classed as. (Only looking at base values) [SVN 4569]
Anarachy - +3 (Unhappy) in every city, +2 for every city over the limit of 1.

Chiefdom - +2 in every city, +1 for every city over the limit of 1.

Despotism - +3 in every city (However +1 for every military unit stationed in a city), Settling over 2 cities causes +1 for every city over the limit.

Monarchy +1 in every city, settling more than 3 cities will cause +1 for each one over the limit.

Republic +3 in the 10 largest cities, settling more than 2 cities will cause +1 in every city over the limit.

Theocracy Settling more than 1 city over the limit cause +1 in each one.

The other forms of governments have no city limits.

 

[Little Abigail]

2. Civ becomes 1st place, stays 1st place for rest of the game

Possible solutions:

- and - for #1 civ due to "decadence"
Increased barbarian activity around #1 civ's borders (Sadly, the great wall would nerf this)
Increased REV due to "decadence"

I don't know about you, but when I start getting penalized for playing well then I either edit said penalties out or, if I can't, just stop playing that game. Because that's dumb.

 

[strategyonly]

I don't know about you, but when I start getting penalized for playing well then I either edit said penalties out or, if I can't, just stop playing that game. Because that's dumb.

If your playing with an option for "Final Five/High to Low" or something like that, fine, but for a NORMAL game No way is this viable to use this way.

 

[Lexotan_sedlex]

Hello,

Where is the new maps with updated resources?

THe uploaded map in SVN dont have the recents resources.

I play with Mali, in Africa and dont have indigo. The mediterrain dont have the shells to make dye too.

 

[Little Abigail]

If your playing with an option for "Final Five/High to Low" or something like that, fine, but for a NORMAL game No way is this viable to use this way.

Yeah, point on that.

 

[Acularius]

I don't know about 'playing well', but I wouldn't catagorize it as penalize the player... I would like to think of it 'providing an additional challenge', similar to how a mod 'Magni Mundi' would continuously throw challenges at the player in order to keep the game interesting. Granted it should affect the AI in more limited circumstances.

What I would like to happen, is to stop the 'steamroller' effect from occurring... which is usually when I find the game boring.
Sometimes I purposely throw myself into a protracted losing war (if any AI got to a point where they can 'challenge' me), JUST for the challenge.
Most of the time, I'm clear ahead of the AI by mid-Ancient, early Classical. Custom maps usually delay this, but in the end the AI is too far behind.

In my custom game with Japan, I was in the early Renaissance and the AI was learning 'Iron Working'. I am no longer playing this one...
Currently playing a GEM game with Greece, and its slowly turning out to something similar.

From that, I can't really say I've experienced that later parts of the tech tree... the game is usually 'done' by then.

 

[Little Abigail]

I don't know about 'playing well', but I wouldn't catagorize it as penalize the player... I would like to think of it 'providing an additional challenge', similar to how a mod 'Magni Mundi' would continuously throw challenges at the player in order to keep the game interesting.

I wouldn't call the Barbary Pirates or Framed events fun. Well, basically anything Ubik himself did is all horribly unfun.

 

[Acularius]

I wouldn't call the Barbary Pirates or Framed events fun. Well, basically anything Ubik himself did is all horribly unfun.

I didn't mind the frame events so much as they added a little spice. (Although sometimes they might occur more than once throughout my gameplay, but that is how the cookie crumbles)
Barbary pirates weren't suppose to be fun, but to be fair I'm pretty sure the Mediterranean states didn't like them either. I didn't really play those guys though, aside from France... Most of the time I was somewhere in Germany, British isles or Russia.

Edit:
If I leave the Spanish and Vikings alone, they might provide a challenge, given time.
The Koreans are already at 18 cities, open Siberia and the waltzed through the Mongolians... this might prove to be a good game so long as I am generous in giving out techs for awhile.

 

[Lexotan_sedlex]

Acularius, do you see my posto?

I wanna play and i'm waiting for the updated map with new resources.

 

[philipschall]

Latest updated map:
Added Vanilla
Added Caves
Changed Default Gamespeed to Marathon
Added Elephants to North Africa
Added Fish, Copper, Spices, Cow to Oman

Included is pre-1500 and 5 civs

Edit: DON'T PLAY the 5 civs. I goofed somewhere, fixing it later.

 

[Acularius]

Acularius, do you see my posto?

I wanna play and i'm waiting for the updated map with new resources.

Philipschall is pretty much in control of it, he's on the ball.

I will, update the first post though.


Edit: Updated first post, with a link to Philip's latest version.
Furthermore, changed the title of the post to better reflect the my lack of updating.
Kudos to Philip!

 

[philipschall]

Here's an edited version of the spawninfos to match the GEM. Extract into assets/xml/units. No more african flamingos among many, many other changes to animal location spawns. Works with latest SVN. I'll try to keep this up to date.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Here's an edited version of the spawninfos to match the GEM. Extract into assets/xml/units. No more african flamingos among many, many other changes to animal location spawns. Works with latest SVN. I'll try to keep this up to date.

Flamingos are found all over Africa why don't you want them there? I tried to make sure that all spawns match their Earth locations. I suppose it depends on where longitude zero is, I assumed it was in the middle of the map and 180 degrees was the edge of the mini map. Which is where I think it is defined in Civ but maybe not in GEM. I will compare your file and mine.

edit Yes on the GEM map zero longitude does not go through Europe/West Africa but through East Asia. So a different spawn infos is needed.

 

[philipschall]

I guess I'm an idiot in a couple of my placements, but I believe I did it right (if anyone finds stuff off, please tell me).

 

[Sgtslick]

thx for doing this philipschall, i've started a new game as Hittites on your new version with the new spawninfos. I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[Sgtslick]

I've pretty much finished ancient era and I have killed the Huns, Israel, Assyrians, & Goths as Hittites on deity. These are the only AI dead - for some reason AI tends to just get stuck in stalemate wars on this map. They never progress past 2 or 3 cities and fight there neighbour who would also have 2 or 3 cities.

I think you need to remove more AI to make them more competitive. Its not just the map of course, I think the AI is a bit dumb still when it comes to war but them being less cramped would definately help.

Assyrian, Summeria, Goths all should be removed in my opinion.

 

[philipschall]

I've been adding and removing civs these last couple days to try and make things more balanced. I'll post a new map (hopefully) in the next couple days.

 

[strategyonly]

I've been adding and removing civs these last couple days to try and make things more balanced. I'll post a new map (hopefully) in the next couple days.

If it wold only have between 30-35 civs that would be alot better IMHO. Especially for turn times on that size of a map. (I would only use about 20 if i were doing it).

 

[Sgtslick]

Is there still siam & khmer? If so, definately get rid of 1. Maybe 1 civ in north america - like america (since they weren't really around then anyway). Even getting rid of france seems viable coz rome and france never do any good.

One huge problem with AI I noticed is they never improve there land properly in lots of cases. This is because they must feel really threatened by there neighbour - who is too close and they don't feel safe enough to move gathers/workers onto there surrounding tiles. This hurts them immensely. It was one of the main reasons I was able to out produce assyrians & israel imo, they basically had maybe 1 or 2 improvements max whereas I had literally every tile improved. They still had a bigger population than me, but my tiles were way more productive.

Africa seems fine, except that Carthage could use even more of a buff in terms of land imo, some floodplains or something.

England seems to be doing quite well in my game which is nice for a change. Ragnar is no. 1 (who has half of russia and some of europe) in score followed by Yu and then cholia or whatever they're called and then ethiopia i think, then me. So the games by no means over, but its just disapointing to see so many languishing civs and for me to have such an easy time conquering so many civs - on diety too..

 

[strategyonly]

- on diety too..

That is why i discourage playing on Deity, i believe it is way to whack. . .