Beta 12

[ezzlar]

A few ideas before we hit v1.0:

- Happiness needs a serious nerf, there are far too many lux resources. We could make the resources more concentrated, meaning that instead of one olive, one coffee, one wine you get 4 olives within your "natural" land.
- Some happiness buildings like brewery could give +1 happiness with barley, +10% gold, -1 health. Inn +10% gold, +1 happiness with wine, -1 health. Notre Dame, +1 happiness all cities.
- 2 unhappiness for fighting brothers of the faith
- 2 unhappiness for non-state religion in city with religious law. 1 unhappiness for non-state religion with state religion, theocracy or organized religion.
- Add sewer to compensate for health penalty, +2 health?
- Reduce bank to +25% gold
- Increase unit maintenance
- Add colloseum?

And generally I think we should move more techs to the earlier period of the mod. There are so many techs you never reach in most games since the game is already decided when you get near them. Remove some modern techs and add more medieval ones. And increase cost of late techs to compensate that year turns become shorter.

 

[Tigranes]

Reconquista was a protracted effort and human player should not be able to wipe off Cordoba with his initial stack. Defensive crusades are very cool, but I got one even though I declared the war -- how is it defensive? So on one side we have overpowered and smart human player on the other side few archer strong AI Cordoba -- and AI is not known to be smart at wars. Last time I played they even deserted the capital leaving it empty. Here are my suggestion for AI defense in general and Muslim opposition to Reconquista in particular:

1. How about we help ALL the AI civs in AI-human wars with extra hidden "power of defiance" -- when human player takes a city AI gets defenders in all the other cities? Or we could some "partisan" units (very much like in Civ 2) -- representing the involvement of ordinary people in times of national crisis.

2. Taking the capital must be an additional challenge requiring siege weapons. How about strong immobile Palace Guard units in all the AI capitals?

3. Cordoba could really use Granada as an extra city they flip on spawn. Plus Granada is a very important name that would be nice to have pre-placed on the map. Cordoban Lisbon is another possibility...

4. Taifa princes appealed for North African warriors to come fight Christian kings on at least two major occasions. The Almoravids were invited after the fall of Toledo (1085), and the Almohads after the fall of Lisbon (1147). For the sake of the game play lets limit Christian defensive Crusades only when attacked by AI Cordoba and allow AI Cordoba to get some defensive events like those mentioned above.

5. I was hoping that AI Cordoba will be stronger if I select Emperor level, but it was the opposite. Emperor means stronger Barbarians -- so every time Cordoba was collapsed by barbs by the time of my spawn. What those barbs represent in a first place, why we need them and why don't we nerf them even if we cannot part with them?

6. Reduce the original Spanish stack for Human starts.

 

[amrod]

- Happiness needs a serious nerf, there are far too many lux resources. We could make the resources more concentrated, meaning that instead of one olive, one coffee, one wine you get 4 olives within your "natural" land.

I agree, I've never had problem with happiness and didn't really have to build happiness increasing buildings. Even temples only for FPs.

- 2 unhappiness for fighting brothers of the faith

On the other hand, I think fighting among christians was common during the era. I'd say the cause of unhappiness among the population was more likely the wars themselves.

 

[AbsintheRed]

If everything goes well, we will have more wars from the next version
Lowering the general happiness is a goal we can easily achieve by increasing the unhappiness from wars

 

[AbsintheRed]

Reconquista was a protracted effort and human player should not be able to wipe off Cordoba with his initial stack. Defensive crusades are very cool, but I got one even though I declared the war -- how is it defensive? So on one side we have overpowered and smart human player on the other side few archer strong AI Cordoba -- and AI is not known to be smart at wars. Last time I played they even deserted the capital leaving it empty. Here are my suggestion for AI defense in general and Muslim opposition to Reconquista in particular:

1. How about we help ALL the AI civs in AI-human wars with extra hidden "power of defiance" -- when human player takes a city AI gets defenders in all the other cities? Or we could some "partisan" units (very much like in Civ 2) -- representing the involvement of ordinary people in times of national crisis.

2. Taking the capital must be an additional challenge requiring siege weapons. How about strong immobile Palace Guard units in all the AI capitals?

3. Cordoba could really use Granada as an extra city they flip on spawn. Plus Granada is a very important name that would be nice to have pre-placed on the map. Cordoban Lisbon is another possibility...

4. Taifa princes appealed for North African warriors to come fight Christian kings on at least two major occasions. The Almoravids were invited after the fall of Toledo (1085), and the Almohads after the fall of Lisbon (1147). For the sake of the game play lets limit Christian defensive Crusades only when attacked by AI Cordoba and allow AI Cordoba to get some defensive events like those mentioned above.

5. I was hoping that AI Cordoba will be stronger if I select Emperor level, but it was the opposite. Emperor means stronger Barbarians -- so every time Cordoba was collapsed by barbs by the time of my spawn. What those barbs represent in a first place, why we need them and why don't we nerf them even if we cannot part with them?

6. Reduce the original Spanish stack for Human starts.

Balance is absolutely off on some parts of the map, especially in the svn version.
Cordoba should be definitely strengthened.
Adding extra units for them in specific dates, to represent Almohads and Almoravids is not a bad idea.

 

[Tigranes]

Towns represent the single biggest investment in any improvement in the game. They require a lot of strategic planning on the side of the player and pay off good but very late, compared to the other investments. Towns are created via 4 stage process, each of them is pretty long. The game requires constant dedication on the side of the player -- you need to keep your eye on them making sure the city works cottages instead of automatically redirecting the work to the better tile (before cottage becomes a town that is). We have 3-4 civics referencing towns and even a very cool Wonder giving a free specialist for every town in the fat cross.

But .. what town? How many towns you grow and use for a long time in your average game? With 3-4 plagues, reducing them to cottages in just 4 turns, it does not worth to develop them at all (unless you have a village pre-placed on the map). So smart human players stick to watermills and farms. But AI does not know about the Black Death and invests a lot in cottages. And thus the entire Plague-Town mechanics hurts not so smart AI, and gives yet another advantages to not so disadvantaged human player.

I know that this whole mechanics came from Rhye hatsoff himself -- but, will all due respect, how realistic is that? The size of the city represents the total population in the fat cross of the city. Now, with Plague that population reduces 1 point every turn. You have less people to work your farms, mines and ... towns! Some towns become ghost towns as you redirect your remaining population to work farms and economic activity of your town temporarily stops. But Plague does not destroy buildings as enemy who burns and loots the town. It certainly does not destroy cottages even after 5 turns. Therefore it's more realistic to assume that even after the plague the potential of the town is still there -- you simply have no one to work it!

So I suggest to moderate the impact of the Plague on Towns and help AI (who already does not know what to do to escape collapsing, how to tune civics, etc.). Possibilities are many: (a) Plague doe not affect Towns as it does not affect Cottages, Mines and Farms (see above). (b) Plague affects only one random "cottage" improvement for a given turn -- so if cottage gets randomly selected instead of village -- nothing happens that turn. (c) Plague kills 2 population points every turn but leaves towns alone.

 

[Wessel V1]

I agree that towns are too vulnerable right now. On the other hand, what's the use of towns in general? Sure, they generate lots of commerce, but how to invest it? Tech costs are more or less tied to the timeline so you can never get a huge advantage, no matter how many towns you have. Currently there is no way to test it (I can't turn the plague off), but I doubt that a cottage economy is better than a farm-based economy. Specialists and a couple of modified outputs (civics) make farms strong enough to compete.

 

[amrod]

What about making towns that create some hammer and some gold? That might be more historically accurate (or maybe combined with the -food of workshops). (Well there was some tech or civic that did that in civ4...) But I'm not sure if it'd be useful, just a thought.

Another note. I found it a bit curious that Education lets you build Inns. (Reminds me of the posters from the 30s that warn about choosing the way of education over the way of alcoholism).

And another one: Is the province of Picardy necessary? It is very small and has only a few tiles available (when the other cities are built, like Paris) and it needs a city there for the English UHV (cf Aquitania which is pretty large). Though it's true that even a coastal city can be good, just it'll take long time to build anything.

Btw in my English game, Byzantine, Bulgaria and Hungary didn't collapse even in 1450s and Byz and Hun was actually leading and Austria vassalized. (As a side note, IRL Hungary didn't collapse even when most of the country was under Turkish occupation, and only a crescent shape part remained. In RFCE such a country would have large chance of collapsing.)

 

[Sian]

in my games recently Bulgaria looks like they could use a retuned ... they're to weak early on, hardly able to take more than a single city from Byzans ... but on the other hand they almost never collapse due to being to strong when they're up and running (with the narrow path to Kievan steppes Mongols aren't a problem, and after their initial bout they're to friendly with Byzans to war in that direction, and from what i see Hungary doesn't have any interest in fighting them

 

[Just6040]

For the towns, I suggest letting them grow from villages to towns faster, and give villages and towns a hammer bonus.

Cottage - +1 commerce
Hamlet - 10 turns - +2 commerce
Village - 20 turns - +3 commerce, +1 production
Town - 30 turns - +4 commerce, +2 prodcution

With the right civics towns would be more useful than watermills due to a production bonus.

Edit: +1 production for towns is enough, and the shorter growth times compensate for plague.

 

[ezzlar]

Limited monarchy gives another hammer for town, total 4 commerce and 3 production?

 

[merijn_v1]

For the towns, I suggest letting them grow from villages to towns faster, and give villages and towns a hammer bonus.

Cottage - +1 commerce
Hamlet - 10 turns - +2 commerce
Village - 20 turns - +3 commerce, +1 production
Town - 30 turns - +4 commerce, +2 prodcution

With the right civics towns would be more useful than watermills due to a production bonus.

+2 for towns is overpowered. (And it will make some other improvements useless, like mines and workshops) But the may indeed get an production bonus. I think it should get the bonus for the improvement itself, but with a civic.

 

[civ_king]

+2 for towns is overpowered. (And it will make some other improvements useless, like mines and workshops) But the may indeed get an production bonus. I think it should get the bonus for the improvement itself, but with a civic.

It takes 60 turns for it to get there and then several times a game the plague comes along and reduces it to a cottage

 

[KievanRus]

5. I was hoping that AI Cordoba will be stronger if I select Emperor level, but it was the opposite. Emperor means stronger Barbarians -- so every time Cordoba was collapsed by barbs by the time of my spawn. What those barbs represent in a first place, why we need them and why don't we nerf them even if we cannot part with them?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe they represent the Goths present in Iberia prior to the Muslim conquest

 

[Tigranes]

BogorodiceDevo soundtrack is stunning. I never heard this version... Who found it, from where and who is singing? The lyrics are in Old Russian or Bulgarian, but the accent does not sound Russian at all. I just stopped what I was doing and played that soundtrack again and again. We need to come up with more original soundtracks like that!

 

[steerpike_swe]

I agree that towns are too vulnerable right now. On the other hand, what's the use of towns in general? Sure, they generate lots of commerce, but how to invest it? Tech costs are more or less tied to the timeline so you can never get a huge advantage, no matter how many towns you have. Currently there is no way to test it (I can't turn the plague off), but I doubt that a cottage economy is better than a farm-based economy. Specialists and a couple of modified outputs (civics) make farms strong enough to compete.

Towns are the best way to protect your roads from pillage...

 

[steerpike_swe]

Regarding those huge stacks that both the player and the AI likes to have...

Keeping large stacks of units in peace-time and inside your own territory should be much more expensive and cause unhappiness. At least this would be more historical.

On the other hand this idea goes against the current game mechanisms and I am not sure if it is worth the trouble.

 

[ezzlar]

Armies are far too cheap in the civ series. The only realistic part was in Civ 1 where they ate a production shield each.

So, much higher cost for armies!

 

[steerpike_swe]

And higher maintenance could force more pillaging of enemy lands - which would be good.

And more pillaging could even result in more field battles being fought.

 

[Sian]

well ... at least for peacetime armies i see it as the ability to drum up a certain ammount of soldiers within a year's time ... but yeah ... giving units a 2xMaintainence cost from what it is now, could be an idea