AND SVN Build Thread

[SteelWheels]

Hi. Roughly, what sort of changes are going to be made to the Tech Tree? Simplification? More Techs. More factors? More resources used?

 

[JosEPh_II]

See this thread listed below.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=493470

JosEPh

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

I'm getting "antsy" over wanting to see Vokarya's tech tree revision implemented.

JosEPh

I'm doing some tests before we release it; I don't know if Vokarya is also experimenting himself.

 

[Vokarya]

I'm doing some tests before we release it; I don't know if Vokarya is also experimenting himself.

I'm not really. Part of it is that I've been waiting so long that I've lost some interest, and the other part is that the little playing that I have done with 660 has been profoundly disappointing for me. I don't like the current balancing level, as I feel that it's so overbalanced in favor of the AI in the early eras that I don't care at all about getting to the later eras. I think if we do some more testing, then we can reel back the handicaps to where they don't feel artificial.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

I'm not really. Part of it is that I've been waiting so long that I've lost some interest, and the other part is that the little playing that I have done with 660 has been profoundly disappointing for me. I don't like the current balancing level, as I feel that it's so overbalanced in favor of the AI in the early eras that I don't care at all about getting to the later eras. I think if we do some more testing, then we can reel back the handicaps to where they don't feel artificial.

I'm working on it, but it's really hard; problem is that AI behaves differently on different mapscripts; some revisions ago people were complaining that AI wasn't expanding in early eras; now it's better but maybe a bit overpowered. In the latest changes I'm experimenting and that will be up in the next revision I've removed that "step" in iGrowth that I placed some time ago in Ancient Era. But there's another thing: what do you feel it's overbalanced in favor of the AI in the early eras? I ask because some Erainfos values are affecting all eras, while others just affect the era you're currently in. So if you tell me that "overbalanced" means that AI builds too many units, then that's probably true for ALL eras; but if you tell me that "overbalanced" means that AI cities grow too fast, that's something that can be fixed for early eras without affecting later eras.

Edit: Not to mention that "AI builds too many units" or " AI cities grow too fast" might depend on handicap level...

Edit2: One more thing: since reaching a "perfect" balance requires a long time and since people here (myself included) are waiting for the new tech tree since months, I'd suggest that the next revision is the last one for AND2.1, one way or another. Changes will have to be made anyway when the new tech tree is introduced and a testing period will follow. What do you all think?

 

[JosEPh_II]

I would like to see the Tech tree addition asap and then use the players for feedback on balancing. You've taken a Mighty task upon yourself 45* to try to balance the game all alone. And that is probably starting to tell on you. Don't be overly concerned about the complaints of balance as imho that will always be a subjective issue and will Never satisfy everyone.

You also being the Main and in many instances the Only AI/major mod repairman will take it's toll on you if the work isn't portioned out somewhat more. It did for Afforess (as a college student) and he was not supporting a family with a new one on the way like you. I apologize for my lack of skills but I can at least tryto be a help. Getting Vokarya re energized will help too. And adding in his tech tree changes now instead of later is better for the Mod.

JosEPh

 

[Vokarya]

I'm working on it, but it's really hard; problem is that AI behaves differently on different mapscripts; some revisions ago people were complaining that AI wasn't expanding in early eras; now it's better but maybe a bit overpowered. In the latest changes I'm experimenting and that will be up in the next revision I've removed that "step" in iGrowth that I placed some time ago in Ancient Era. But there's another thing: what do you feel it's overbalanced in favor of the AI in the early eras? I ask because some Erainfos values are affecting all eras, while others just affect the era you're currently in. So if you tell me that "overbalanced" means that AI builds too many units, then that's probably true for ALL eras; but if you tell me that "overbalanced" means that AI cities grow too fast, that's something that can be fixed for early eras without affecting later eras.

Edit: Not to mention that "AI builds too many units" or " AI cities grow too fast" might depend on handicap level...

Edit2: One more thing: since reaching a "perfect" balance requires a long time and since people here (myself included) are waiting for the new tech tree since months, I'd suggest that the next revision is the last one for AND2.1, one way or another. Changes will have to be made anyway when the new tech tree is introduced and a testing period will follow. What do you all think?

I think it's the AI tech pace that is the biggest issue for me. On Noble difficulty/standard speed, AI's are getting Writing before I can even start it (and it's just about every AI that I contact in the Ancient Era, so I don't think it's a matter of which starting techs the civilization gets) and I've seen myself fall 8-10 techs behind several AI's before the beginning of the Medieval Era. The near-universal beeline that I see to Writing also bothers me, because it suggests that something isn't right. I think the benefits of Writing need to be diluted somewhat, because it has so many good things (coming out of minor status/establish embassy/tech trade/Explorer unit/School of Scribes) that it's too good compared to other Ancient techs.

AI production of too many units is not necessarily bad. That depends on how well the AI can use them. I've noticed the AI is overproducing Warriors, which isn't so much overbalanced as ridiculous because of how useless they are later on. At most, I have seen Warrior stacks march on my first city but then mill around because they can't do anything to the city itself.

I agree that balancing is very difficult. I also agree with Joseph that it's time to get more people involved.

 

[Sgtslick]

I think it's the AI tech pace that is the biggest issue for me. On Noble difficulty/standard speed, AI's are getting Writing before I can even start it (and it's just about every AI that I contact in the Ancient Era, so I don't think it's a matter of which starting techs the civilization gets) and I've seen myself fall 8-10 techs behind several AI's before the beginning of the Medieval Era. The near-universal beeline that I see to Writing also bothers me, because it suggests that something isn't right. I think the benefits of Writing need to be diluted somewhat, because it has so many good things (coming out of minor status/establish embassy/tech trade/Explorer unit/School of Scribes) that it's too good compared to other Ancient techs.

AI production of too many units is not necessarily bad. That depends on how well the AI can use them. I've noticed the AI is overproducing Warriors, which isn't so much overbalanced as ridiculous because of how useless they are later on. At most, I have seen Warrior stacks march on my first city but then mill around because they can't do anything to the city itself.

I agree that balancing is very difficult. I also agree with Joseph that it's time to get more people involved.

Personally, I don't like trying to balance the game through the civ4erainfos.xml at all. Would much prefer we did it through the handicap.xml. For instance, i'd much prefer lowering aitrain in handicap rather than individual eras, same with igrowth. It makes it too complicated when u break it down to individual eras & between ai/human, then have handicap values on top of that. Too much room for error imo.

A couple of points I wanted to make about balance and recent thoughts people have been having.. Firstly regarding early on, if you have goody huts OFF you definately need to start will some gold imo. I usually play with goody huts on but I think perhaps everyone should start with some money, like 150 gold +/- depending on, difficulty level. This would help alleviate some of the 'cramped' feeling in the early game imo.
Also perhaps increase the 'starting free units' slightly too for everybody (this all includes ai of course). From memory i think its like 8 free units, so maybe make it like 12. It just generally restricts play style too much if you can barely support enough units to cover happiness (thanks to monarchy), let alone be able to maintain any army/exploring parties early on.

Regarding the AI reaching writing first on noble Vokarya, I don't think this is a bad thing at all. If you have tech trading on, (generally i have it off), you can abuse tech trade so much and just generally catch up very easily as the game progresses. Keep in mind that the AI also gets free techs, such as agriculture (not sure about noble, but certainly on higher difficulty levels). They get certain free techs throughout the game. Perhaps this is something you might consider changing, I don't know. Personally I like AI to be ahead in techs, otherwise game is way too easy.

I think the benefits of Writing need to be diluted somewhat, because it has so many good things (coming out of minor status/establish embassy/tech trade/Explorer unit/School of Scribes) that it's too good compared to other Ancient techs.

School of scribes could be pushed back to literature? Explorer to Athletics?

I agree about the warrior problem, AI needs to have less aiweight on warriors (not sure if that is how it works)? Since they cost gold, anything above the 'free' limit is an absolute waste.

One other thing that might help with making the early game more fun is to actually lower to cost of individual ancient era techs. In C2C they did this for prehistoric era and it helped tremendously imo. I used to manually speed up techs, then slow them down after prehistoric, now that isn't necessary. It culminated with a problem of 'not much going on', not much to do/build, units too crap & not worth producing and therefore couldn't get out of the era quick enough, spamming end turn as fast and as much as possible. All this was fixed by speeding up the individual techs and they also added some early game content.

Some of Vokarya's early game techs like Woodworking are prime candidates for adding early game content.

I was thinking another way to address the issue early on is maybe a building that allows more 'free' units? Like an early barracks that can 'maintain' some units for you? Like 4 or 5 of them or something?

Finally, considering Itrain in erainfos.xml in ancient applies for the entire game, as i've said previously, I think 45 needs to be increased to like 55-60.

I was also thinking, rather than trying do something severe like a 70% reduction in growth costs, why not do something like a 'special unit' that can build a couple (2-3) bonus food tiles in your empire and give them to each civ at game start. By bonus food tiles I mean like +2 food on tile for 100 turns (scaled to game speed) something like this. Or even easier, give a civic some early game growth bonus similar to what I described, like a short-term 'growth boom' or something. Trying to make big changes to eras is a bad approach imho.

 

[Vokarya]

Personally, I don't like trying to balance the game through the civ4erainfos.xml at all. Would much prefer we did it through the handicap.xml. For instance, i'd much prefer lowering aitrain in handicap rather than individual eras, same with igrowth. It makes it too complicated when u break it down to individual eras & between ai/human, then have handicap values on top of that. Too much room for error imo.

It's being done with both, and that's where I think part of the problem is. I was thinking handicap.xml as the problem, but maybe it's the interaction of the two that is the real issue.

A couple of points I wanted to make about balance and recent thoughts people have been having.. Firstly regarding early on, if you have goody huts OFF you definately need to start will some gold imo. I usually play with goody huts on but I think perhaps everyone should start with some money, like 150 gold +/- depending on, difficulty level. This would help alleviate some of the 'cramped' feeling in the early game imo.
Also perhaps increase the 'starting free units' slightly too for everybody (this all includes ai of course). From memory i think its like 8 free units, so maybe make it like 12. It just generally restricts play style too much if you can barely support enough units to cover happiness (thanks to monarchy), let alone be able to maintain any army/exploring parties early on.

I should start checking on how much early unit maintenance costs. I find city maintenance to be pretty expensive because I'm always trying to play catchup to the AI's (which I would do anyway, but it feels desperate in the current version).

Regarding the AI reaching writing first on noble Vokarya, I don't think this is a bad thing at all. If you have tech trading on, (generally i have it off), you can abuse tech trade so much and just generally catch up very easily as the game progresses. Keep in mind that the AI also gets free techs, such as agriculture (not sure about noble, but certainly on higher difficulty levels). They get certain free techs throughout the game. Perhaps this is something you might consider changing, I don't know. Personally I like AI to be ahead in techs, otherwise game is way too easy.

It wouldn't be so bad, I think, if the AI wasn't reaching Writing so early in the game; it's also not so much that they are first as they are getting there before I start. I like Start as Minors but the beelining to Writing, which is nearly universal as far as I can see, ruins the effect. I'd like to see a little more variation.

School of scribes could be pushed back to literature? Explorer to Athletics?

I agree about the warrior problem, AI needs to have less aiweight on warriors (not sure if that is how it works)? Since they cost gold, anything above the 'free' limit is an absolute waste.

One other thing that might help with making the early game more fun is to actually lower to cost of individual ancient era techs. In C2C they did this for prehistoric era and it helped tremendously imo. I used to manually speed up techs, then slow them down after prehistoric, now that isn't necessary. It culminated with a problem of 'not much going on', not much to do/build, units too crap & not worth producing and therefore couldn't get out of the era quick enough, spamming end turn as fast and as much as possible. All this was fixed by speeding up the individual techs and they also added some early game content.

Some of Vokarya's early game techs like Woodworking are prime candidates for adding early game content.

My first thoughts were to move Tech Trading + Embassy to Alphabet. Alphabet needs more attention. Woodworking gives the Ram, Carpenter, Palisade, and Woodcutter, which I think is enough for one tech for right now.

Warriors don't have an AI weight, they're just very cheap and don't disappear from the build list until you have all of Archery, Metal Casting and Hunting and have Copper/Obsidian to get both Archers and Spearmen.

We can tweak the Ancient Era more. I started with trying to keep the total costs of the era the same so it wouldn't disrupt balance calculation too much. What I've noticed in the early game is that building costs, except for some of the earliest buildings, are so much higher than unit building costs that a new city seems to be best off building a couple of the very cheapest buildings (Elder Council, Fire Pit) and then cranking out units. Anything else isn't worth the time investment.

There are a couple more things I would like to throw in, but that's for later once the new Tech Tree is uploaded.

Something I remembered was that World of Legends requires Pottery to build Settlers. I think the AI is going Wheel - Pottery - Trade - Writing now, so that won't work. I was hoping that putting something very valuable (like Settlers) off the Writing fast track would help broaden the AI priorities out somewhat.

 

[Sgtslick]

What I've noticed in the early game is that building costs, except for some of the earliest buildings, are so much higher than unit building costs that a new city seems to be best off building a couple of the very cheapest buildings (Elder Council, Fire Pit) and then cranking out units. Anything else isn't worth the time investment.

Yes, agree totally. Excellent point. This is perhaps even more important than everything else I mentioned, early game buildings are too expensive.

I've never played with start as minor option in AND, I do for c2c, but not as far as AND goes. I also don't have tech trading on, I hardly ever go for writing, so I don't notice the problems your saying so much, since it makes writing far less important. I usually go for bronze working and a religion (hardly ever get one though ).

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

@Joseph, Vokarya and Sgtslick: I mostly agree with you all.
Speaking about balance, I think I started tweaking Erainfos, handicapinfo and gamespeedinfo more than one year ago when the code was different. In the latest revision I'm experimenting with now, I'd like to restore original erainfos values or at least something similar.
About Vokarya's problem with writing: I've never experienced this problem with Blitz gamespeed (which I usually play with for testing purposes): so that's probably something related to handicap. Remember that a few revisions ago I've said that the game was mostly balanced for large-noble-blitz games; other settings still had to be balanced.

That's why I was asking in my previous message:
Is that ok with you that the next revision is the last one for AND2.1, one way or another? Changes will have to be made anyway when the new tech tree is introduced and a testing period will follow, so it makes no sense to me still trying to fix things that will be changed anyway. I could release the next revision in a few days, perhaps this weekend and then we can start straight away with AND2.2 beta and the new tech tree, starting from next week. What do you say?

 

[Vokarya]

@Joseph, Vokarya and Sgtslick: I mostly agree with you all.
Speaking about balance, I think I started tweaking Erainfos, handicapinfo and gamespeedinfo more than one year ago when the code was different. In the latest revision I'm experimenting with now, I'd like to restore original erainfos values or at least something similar.
About Vokarya's problem with writing: I've never experienced this problem with Blitz gamespeed (which I usually play with for testing purposes): so that's probably something related to handicap. Remember that a few revisions ago I've said that the game was mostly balanced for large-noble-blitz games; other settings still had to be balanced.

That's why I was asking in my previous message:
Is that ok with you that the next revision is the last one for AND2.1, one way or another? Changes will have to be made anyway when the new tech tree is introduced and a testing period will follow, so it makes no sense to me still trying to fix things that will be changed anyway. I could release the next revision in a few days, perhaps this weekend and then we can start straight away with AND2.2 beta and the new tech tree, starting from next week. What do you say?

Fine with me. Let's do this.

 

[JosEPh_II]

I concur!

JosEPh

 

[krokots]

The upgrade price is soo cheap now, almost every time is 20 gold. It was changed? It feels uncomfortably cheap, i remember upgrading whole army for 6000, now i upgraded for only 1000 money.

 

[buck beach]

The upgrade price is soo cheap now, almost every time is 20 gold. It was changed? It feels uncomfortably cheap, i remember upgrading whole army for 6000, now i upgraded for only 1000 money.

I have noticed this too.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

The upgrade price is soo cheap now, almost every time is 20 gold. It was changed? It feels uncomfortably cheap, i remember upgrading whole army for 6000, now i upgraded for only 1000 money.

It's been like that for a while now; it's something I imported from C2C without noticing at first but since economy has changed a lot from early AND 2.0 beta, I feel it's better this way. I'm not yet 100% sure it will stay this way in the future, but that's how it supposed to work for the moment.

 

[krokots]

Thanks for the reply. Is it possible to rise the cost, by editing some file in the mod?

 

[JosEPh_II]

The upgrade price is soo cheap now, almost every time is 20 gold. It was changed? It feels uncomfortably cheap, i remember upgrading whole army for 6000, now i upgraded for only 1000 money.

When in the game is it too cheap? Game start? Classical, Medieval, Ren, etc? Even into Modern?

And what units? All, Warrior or archers, please when you make a report give some more detail. It really helps to track things down. Just saying units are to cheap 20 gold upgrade cost is not much detail. What gamespeed are you playing, what Difficulty level, etc. See what I mean?

And actually 20 gold for a Warrior or Javelineer or Archer is about right. After that the cost to upgrade should increase but not like it had been where upgrading an Axe cost almost 100 gold.

Thanks for the report we do appreciate it.

JosEPh

 

[krokots]

It is always cheap. I was upgrading warriors to javelineers for 20, brigantines to frigates for 20, heavy swordsmen and arquebusier to rifleman for 21. I presume in modern era this would not change by much. I did upgrade all units from ancient era to flintlock tech by one level (warriors, archers, longbowmen, crossbows, javelineers, axemen, swordsmen + heavy, triremes, galleons, frigates, and there was only one "expensive" upgrade, for 40, but i did not remember what it was. Speed = marathon (i think. The one after normal speed)
And always glad to help!

 

[JosEPh_II]

As these units represent different Eras it makes me wonder if the Era <iTrain> value is all set the same?

JosEPh