I'd thought that QuickSave was just providing a shortcut (ie, no need to pick a name) for the regular Save-function.
So did I, although I'd known that the quicksave wouldn't unload and reload the entire database, whereas a normal save would. I realized the missing piece: the values that are being restored when I load the Quicksave are
the values from the most recent autosaved turn. That is, I've got my preferences set to autosave every 5 turns, so when I restore a game on turn 3, it's using the turn 0 autosave's values, restoring on turn 8 gives me turn 5's autosave, and so on. It's way too coincidental that this was happening, so it looks like the ScriptData (which is what I'm using for data storage) cheats on quicksaves by going to the last autosave.
For now, I'll just put a disclaimer not to use quicksaves too much. In the long term, I'll either change the data storage from ScriptData to the replacement system the devs provided, or find some more persistent way to store the information.
If you're going to redesign the Pick your Diety screen, I'd personally go for a separate Random button, so the player doesn't need to do the Select/No step, which won't be really clear to new players I'm afraid.
I get that. It's just that I still need to decide whether I should add a pantheon-specific Random, a global Random, both, or neither. It's looking like I'll absolutely need a global Random, and may or may not need the pantheon-specific one. The problem is that I never use a random option personally, because I'd get fifty turns in and think "you know, I really wish I had picked X instead." So I'm just not the ideal person to decide whether it's a needed function, and I've been trying to get feedback.
I've been aching to get a Church asap, but that might just be me wanting to try the stuff out.
No, it's not just you. You see, once upon a time, back in v0.01ish, cities started at level 0 with no religious buildings and no way to gain any. Shrines in your Primary unlocked at Mysticism, Shrines in your Secondary at Spirituality, and Shrines in your Minor at Mythology. You wouldn't get to Churches until the Classical. The reason was that in my original concept, religion was something you transitioned into; the start would play basically like in standard Civ5, and you'd only really get started with religion by taking Mysticism.
I realized I didn't like that, that it spent too much time with no religion at all, and so changed every cap to start at 1 and your capital starting with two Shrines. But while I've moved the level 2 transition up slightly (to where your Primary in the capital reaches 2 at Mythology), it's still pretty late in the era; it might be 50-100 turns before you hit that point. So my new plan is to move the Church transition to Spirituality for your Primary (capital only) and the Secondary at Mythology, which'll allow me to spread things out a bit more in the Classical.
The initial shrine isn't much of a problem, that's something I can remember. X until upgrade would be silly given all the variables.
I should note that I realized last night that I'd accidentally broken that Favor readout in the last version. It was implemented a couple versions ago, but when I was transitioning from having 1 Mythology policy to having 5 progressive penalties, I hadn't fixed that particular one to trigger correctly.
Another side effect of this bug is that no Favor-generating buildings were showing the Favor they'd generate in their tooltips inside the city screen. Obviously there aren't many of these, though.
he fact that I still see something new every time I play adds to the feeling that I'm playing a different game then the previous one, and makes me wonder what I'll be up against next.
Right. There's no question it makes a better experience for the player, in terms of content diversity. But that's not really good for ME, because I now have to do a lot of extra work. More unit icons, models, etc. is bad enough, but think about the balance involved; take option A for instance. If I give Zeus a lightning bolt, and Poseidon gets something seen as less powerful, then I've created a serious balance issue. This is especially a problem if I need to put these at different techs. And if half of the units are never appearing in a typical game, it just becomes a lot harder to evaluate whether things are balanced poorly or not.
Option B helps this a bit, because replacing the appropriately leveled Pantheon unit means everyone's still getting one level 1.5, one level 2.5, and one level 3.5. So it's okay if Odin's UU replaces the 1.5 while Thor's replaces the 2.5. Option C is even better for this.
The pain, though, is exactly how I can implement any of this. The current Pantheon units work because you have the right Project and the right technology, so it's automatically added to the build list. I'm just not sure if I CAN do these options without adding a whole other layer of buildings/projects and the new CityCanBuild Lua GameEvent. That's why I haven't put them in yet.
If the Pantheons are more unique, I think there's more of a choice to be made, which would be a good thing in my book.
It's definitely a good thing to have more meaningful choices. The only issue, as I mentioned before, is that it could lead to one pantheon being seen as just weak all around. I'm already concerned that this'll be the case with the Shinto and maybe Sumerians, as they're a bit strange on what Foci are available, but I could easily see the Greek pantheon being seen as weak if they rely primarily on these rare Major Heroes to provide the bulk of their anti-Myth ability while the Norse and such get more accessible anti-Myth bonuses to mundane units.
While I agree with the Hero-High-events in this setup giving a hero regardless of choice, I think you'll have to make it clear in the text of the event that the Hero is the event, not an award for picking one of the four choices, as the player will get him anyway.
Not a problem. At the moment it just says something like "Hercules Event", with all four choices saying "Add Hercules". (When I say "placeholder" I mean it.) In the long term, I'd change this to just be an introduction event, where the description tells you all about Hercules and it's clear that all four options gain him. Another possibility would be to add some token secondary effect; get Hercules AND 25 Food, or get Hercules AND a weak Myth unit, and so on. It could even be better than that, like "Get Hercules AND he starts with the Shock I promotion" vs. "Get Hercules AND he starts with the Drill I promotion", to where the event spawns the unit and then adds something extra to it based on your choice.
This is something that could really be Pantheon-specific. For the Sumerians, for instance, I'm only planning to use four heroes, and THEIR events might be structured differently. So the "Bull of Heaven" event lets you pick either Gilgamesh OR Enkidu, the Flood event lets you pick Gilgamesh OR Utnapishtim (or whatever his name was), and so on; 4 heroes means six combinations of 2, which means I'd need to come up with at least two more non-Hero high events. (Several of the heroes had no contact with each other, though; Gilgamesh was really the central hero.) It's easy enough to disable overlapping outcomes, like disabling any choice that awards Gilgamesh if you already have him.
One thing I was thinking of doing, though, was making at least the Greek high events give +2 to an alignment instead of +1, to make up for the lack of choice in other effects. Besides just being nice in general, this'd give the AI a much better tool for avoiding areas of the Mandala that have fewer minor choices. So while your choice might seem inconsequential if all four outcomes basically give Hercules, you'd at least get that extra effect.
Another possibility is to change it to be more like that Sumerian design; maybe all four outcomes still award Major Heroes, but each might offer a DIFFERENT Major Hero. Something like this:
The Lawful Material high event has four choices:
L: Get Hercules (he's LM)
M: Get Hercules (again, LM)
C: Get Ajax (he's M, which is the next hero you get to if you go in the direction of chaos)
E: Get Perseus (he's L, which is the next one you get to if you go in the direction of ephemeral)
and like the Sumerian ones above, it'd simply disable each option if you'd already gained that hero from a previous Event. Possibly even have all four choices be unique, since you can't easily do the 1/2/1 thing for an axial Event.
Now, I could easily frame this in a way that reflected mythology. A "Trojan War" event aligned with the Chaos axis might let you pick between Achilles (C), Odysseus (CE), the Argos (CM), or Ajax (M). A "Fearsome Monster" event might let you pick between Hercules (LM), Perseus (L), Theseus (LE), or Bellerophon (E). This sort of thing would still give you some flexibility, as the eight Greek heroes included three swordsmen, two spearmen, one archer, one mounted, and a boat. But it'd give you a hero regardless, which'd help with the balance.
As you can see, I've gone through a ton of iterations on the design. Since there aren't many people giving feedback, it's just not easy to decide.
