I distinctly remember an old forum thread where the game mechanism was 'researched' and stated that 1 food = 2 hammer ~ 3 or 4 commerce. Indeed, a farm improvement gives +1F while a mine +2H, at least during the early & mid game. In another thread, slavery was investigated and is said to produce an even better rate than 2:1 if the city is sized 6 or less. So the changes are messing with this conversion flow.
Even if 1 food were supposed to be worht 2 production as a rule of thumb, instant conversion should come with a significant penalty. Sort of how production is considered to be more valuable than research, but the Research process only yields 1 research per 1 production. (Which I still consider to be too generous; it's part of the reason why most buildings aren't worth considering in BtS.) But I also don't think that food should be twice as valuable as production in the first place; food is too abundant for that in the early game. One result being, in BtS, that (non-resource) Mines are pretty unattractive and Hills don't really matter for city placement. In a nutshell (just from a couple of days ago):
The reason why you don't need mines is because you can whip. Also, many of the buildings are rather weak and you are better off building wealth. Space victory can be a bit different surely, you'll need to industrialize and get a lot of
from workshops.
I suppose it's true that the Slavery changes make non-resource Farms even more unattractive than they are in BtS. Working a River Mine will usually be preferable to a River Farm and a non-River Mine to a Lake Farm. But, in BtS, you don't want 3-food Farms either, so this isn't terribly consequential; and a Flood Plains Farm still beats a River Mine. (A Flood Plains Cottage may be better yet but isn't available as early.) The mod does buff Farms through +1 commerce from Serfdom.
Thanks for the savegame. Seems that you've played this, so far, as if it were an Always-Peace game. I'm somewhat surprised that the AI hasn't attacked you yet ... Charlemagne is Pleased, Mansa Musa not very warlike, Ragnar not that close. Anyway, at this point, AD 125 I think it was, I'd be anxious about Ragnar and Mansa Musa, perhaps even Charlemagne – so long as your military is just 1 Axe and 1 Spear. Your cities are imo well-placed; those good spots happen to have relatively little production, in particular no River Hills. This strikes me as fairly uncommon. (Not uncommon when starting in the Small region of Big & Small, but you're on the Big continent.) In such a situation, knowing the balance and AI changes in the mod, it would've been prudent to look for ways to mitigate this lack of production. Not a great many opportunities here, I'll admit. I guess the Rice city could've gotten a Grassland Hill for a total of 3 workable hills. Plains perhaps should've been preferred over Grassland when improving tiles,
and a couple of Watermills, maybe. (I rarely build those myself, but they might be worthwhile here.)
I agree that starting a war anytime soon is not opportune in this situation – e.g. by finishing Music, bulbing, I guess, Code of Laws and then researching Construction for Catapults + Swordsmen. I think you do have enough production (3 cities with >10 production if citizens are reassigned a bit) to produce a much needed defensive army, then some Catapults to take the Barbarian city. In the meantime, there is still some land to settle (which, generally, is and should be much cheaper than conquering land). And those military units could be a starting point for attacking a neighbor once you get to Macemen. An opportunity for a dogpile war might also open up by then (Ragnar vs. X or someone might attack Mansa Musa or Gandhi from the east). And it wouldn't have to be a war that defeats a neighbor entirely; annexing a city or two is already a big prize.
Anyway, my point is, there are 2 ways to do the "civ4 alchemy" in early games: slavery and chops. Both are nerfed quite heavily in ADVCiv. Without the tools, players can rarely wage wars early, if at all, which makes the game kinda follow the same trajectory every time.
I'm confident that wars can be waged, but there is a (somewhat) higher opportunity cost, so the conditions need to be right to make the endeavour worthwhile, e.g. early access to a strong offensive unit, high-production terrain, a weak/ close neighbor (or just a single lightly defended city).
IMO a big appeal of Civ4 is that it allows players to proceed with whichever style they want, be it peace or war. Taking this option away and it robs Civ4 of flexibility, which is also a characteristic that encourages modding in the 1st place
The style that they want is peace until a nice tech lead has materialized and then war for as long as that lead lasts. Not appealing to me. You saying e.g. that you'd rather start a war against Mansa Musa than settle the Barbarian-beridden land to the west is a different matter; there should be tough strategic choices like this, the more the better. I guess you would've had to plan for a full-fledged war earlier. And whatever is lost by making yields less fungible, what about the new considerations that come into play, such as Hills and Mines, or, if the Wealth and Research processes were nerfed (to 85% conversion or so), how buildings would become more relevant? Moreover, by encouraging more opportunistic warfare, more uncertainty enters the player's planning. There's not much uncertainty in teching to Construction and then attacking whoever looks weakest.
But if it's only worth fiddling around with Slavery, say, half as often as in BtS, then that should be a win for everyone.
In my limited experience, it's way less than half of BtS
Judging from your savegame, you still seem to whip nearly as often as the anger counter allows. Which makes sense to me, because, with Inca Terraces everywhere, populations still small and few high-production tiles, 24 hammers is a very good deal.
I now found out that it's kinda quadruple-nerfed!! I just can't whip 4 pops at once, the game says 3 is the limit. Meanwhile, because of the 24H conversion rate (and the increased cost at higher diff), many things are 4 or 5, even 6 pop-expensive now.
Right. Mainly, I felt that those high population losses were (especially) bizarre in terms of realism, but that's arguably not a good enough reason for burdening new players with yet another rule change. I didn't think it would matter often; if it does, then ... maybe the 3-pop limit is actually beneficial for game balance (from my angle). I guess it gives cities with very low production from tiles a harder time constructing expensive buildings, e.g. a Forge (maybe for happiness and a little production from the Engineer). Yeah, that doesn't really sound desirable; should probably undo this change. I think I implemented that when it was still 30 production per 1 pop.
I think the developers made the civic good in-game because in real life, many of our achievements were actually built upon it. Even in the most advanced country on Earth, slavery persisted until the 19th century(!) until it was proved to be inferior to another civic. If 1 main purpose of ADVCiv is to make it as real as possible (like how you try to drive deity games to follow history's milestones), then Slavery must be powerful enough to survive until the modern era?
Regarding intentions, Soren Johnson briefly talked about Slavery in a Twitch video once (
transcript). It's not all that clear; well, seems obvious enough to me that he didn't want players to generate production primarily through food. Balance aside, it's not intuitive and very tedious to execute (especially without the BUG conveniences) - while reducing micromanagement was one of his primarily goals according to the Civ4 manual's afterwords.
I would rather not want to make any point about historical slavery through the hopelessly goofy hurry mechanism in the game. It's fine with me if it remains useful until Emancipation, and I believe that's the case, sometimes. The alternatives (Serfdom, Caste System) aren't universally useful either, and just very different from Slavery.
Both funny & illuminating. I now see why the mod's automation sometimes opts to run food deficit. But usually not intense enough. Which means, to rush production without slavery, a player would have to micro the city to the extreme, which iirc is not a goal of ADVCiv?
Maybe I shouldn't even have mentioned it; it's very rarely a good play, come to think of it. I guess that's because food mainly comes from a few very powerful tiles, so not working those tiles is generally wasteful. Not sure if it's worse micro than Slavery – reassigning a few citizens and turning automation back on when the current production has finished. Not great, sure. With Slavery, the player needs to wait for just the right moment when, say, a double-whip becomes available. There's an alert, but that thing is pretty noisy.
In 1 of my test games, it seems chopping for wonders is not allowed, or is delayed 1 turn before the lumber arrives at the city. Could you confirm which is the case?
I'm not aware of such a delay.
Delivered to a different, closer city perhaps?
In an advanced start game, when the 10 turns of universal peace ended, a barb appeared within the brightly busted area and killed my settler. I think this is definitely a bug. The settler was on a hill before, and nothing was in sight. Next turn, poof, it was killed by a 1-move warrior.
Also a mystery to me. A savegame would be great.
Or maybe an AI civ had entered a goody hut. The hostile-villagers outcome can't happen near a city of any civ, but a nearby settler wouldn't be protected; perhaps it should be.
What is the proper handicap amount for a deity huge marathon game? Is there a formula to calculate it?
For the "start points as handicap" option? My table in the manual (end of the SPaH chapter) says that the AI freebies in BtS are worth 651 points; that's the research cost of the free techs plus 1.5 times the production cost of the free units. That said, a slightly smaller amount of points might be appropriate because the free Archers (and Archery) aren't all that useful to the AI; with Advanced Start, I think, the AI spends its points a bit more effectively, e.g. on tile improvements.
It's stated in the manual at original marathon has buildings at 300% and units 240%. In ADVCiv, with the new 2.5x speed, I understand that building will be 250%, but what about units? Will they be 200% or stay at 240%?
Unit production costs are at 200% in BtS (
here's the XML) and remain at 200% in AdvCiv. Buildings are 300% in BtS (1.5 times more expensive than units), 250% in AdvCiv (still 25% more expensive than units).
Will have to get to chopping another time.
- could you elaborate? What kind of threat?
) in population, and population can be sacrificed, if not through Slavery or Nationhood, then at least through deliberate starvation. This does not seem fundamental to me. Can be an interesting thing to evaluate – will a drafted unit have enough of an immediate impact to make up for the lost production and research potential? Generally, things just grow in Civ 4, e.g. players can't sell buildings and there is no reward for deleting a unit. Perhaps those are missed game design opportunities, but there are still a great many things to decide, so it's not clear how sacrificing population is special. Well, I think it does serve an important function as a way out when a city urgently needs a one-time production boost. And also to give players something to do with the overabundant food in the early game.
Back in the recent yester-days when I thought it was triple-nerfed, I was frowning already.
for each 2 pops dead. For example, if a city whip 3, then 2 unhappy. Between them, 1 
