Beta 13

[Tigranes]

What can you do with espionage? It is only an alternative to gold/science, you can steal techs and perhaps influence a civic change. Poisoning the water supply or destroying production should not something that the Pope should engage in.

If we tie the attitude of the Pope to the Civ's Faith points more than anything else (i.e. gifting techs or gold to Pope) we can get very realistic situation when Pope refuses to trade with you, and without Archbishop you will feel like excommunicated -- no need to script anything extra. The demands of the Pope about how much Faith Points is ok should grow over the time -- one needs to shows some spiritual growth (Papaul State Civ AI currently feels very powerless and gets Pleased with you even for you agreeing to open borders). Blessing of the Church was essential especially at the beginning with all the big projects -- even Catholic Universities could not be built without consent and involvement of the Bishop, but that could be too much to handle for today's layman player .

Trading for the resource should be annoying burden. It represents that Catholic Church was expensive and that Rome played an important role for Catholic Civs.

Usually AI Spies just do some useless bad things to you when AI is annoyed with you, when AI is friendly you see less of that nonsense. If AI Pope is annoyed with you he will send his invisible legates to your place (we need to think about how they would periodically reach UK though). Things would go wrong in your realm if the Faith points of the leader would not grow. And don't blame Pope, please ! Pope does not destroy your production -- his legate incites your people in sermons. Your own people start destroying things , they get angry and stuff like that. As for the sickness from the wells -- this was interpreted as a punishment from Heavens

The Collegiate Church of St Peter, Westminster commonly known as Westminster Abbey, was chosen to be a A Royal Peculiar -- a place of worship that falls directly under the jurisdiction of the British monarch, rather than under a bishop. You can chose any other Wonder to free one Catholic civ from the iron hugs of the Pope prior the Reformation -- time after time different Kings even before the Reformation were able to assume considerable degree of independence from the Rome, like Philipp Fair of France.

 

[3Miro]

Three small things as the Byzantines:

- Barbarians now consist of double stacks of lancers, right in the beginning, spawning near your cities. Kinda hard!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sassanid_Empire

It was hard for the ancient Byzantines too

- Should hippodromes give +1 happy for every 5% culture?

It is more powerful than a Theater, but it is a UB anyway. 5% is just saying +2 happy for 10% culture, since you cannot go in steps of other than 10%.

- No mercenaries available the first hundred years

For the first 130 years, it is you, the Pope that does virtually nothing and the French that are too far away to talk to them. Other than fighting Barbs and dealing with a Plague, there is little else you can do. Also, there is virtually no competition on who would get the Mercs.

Mercs come into play when more players appear. We may add some more early mercs, but the lack of mercs is probably not bad.

 

[3Miro]

Nice to see the changelist. Don't understand the divided Europe concept and its effect on AI yet, but I believe you Also hope the merc system will be better - previously I rarely used mercs; but when I needed them, usually no merc was available. Hope it was changed now.

Europe is divided into sub-continents, much like a regular map would be divided into continents. It used to be that the Ottoman AI would be looking for a good target and picking Edinburgh and then doing nothing because it is too far away. Now everybody knows to look at their own region first.

One annoying bug remained though: the flashing amber (at least with intel 945 chipset graphics and regardless of frozen animations). Reported it looong time ago.

I don't know if we have a fix for that one.

Also, remember reading some thread about the autosave - wasn't it supposed to be removed from the autoplay (even back in normal rfc)? It is really not necessary. Don't know if it would speed up autoplay, but supposedly could.

I tried to cut the number of autosaves, but it didn't affect the autorun speed. The game sometimes crashes and it is useful to have an autosave. This is still Beta after all.

Also, in the mod Reference directory, the png files are still outdated, were so even in beta12 and probably before that.

Once we get into the next stage, I will redo the entire reference folder.

 

[3Miro]

Guided crusades sounds like a great mechanic!

Considering the Dawn of Man texts: I made suggestions for Ottomans, Muscovites and Austrians that weren't incorporated, but not rejected, perhaps they were missed? I see that you've added another one for Ottomans, but Muscovites and Austria still have the default text. My suggestions were:

Austria:
"It is the year 1282. The Holy Roman Empire have had enough of the excesses of the Hohenstaufen. Called Stupor Mundi -astonishment of the world - Fredrick II has made the people long for stability and moderation. Your Habsburg dynasty will provide that. Navigate carefully through the intricate diplomacy of central Europe, and your dynasty will still stand proudly many hundreds of years from now!"

The Ottomans:
"It is the year 1359. Allah has truly shown his favour towards you. Firstly, the Black Death affected the Byzantines in the cities, but largely spared the countryside of the Turks. Secondly, the earthquake in Gallipoli 1354 levelled all the walls. The way to Europe is open, you need only to reach out and grasp it!"

The Muscovites:
"It is the year 1380. The shadow of the Mongol Golden has loomed over the land for more than a hundred years. With the people chafing under their oppression, fear has prevented effective resistance. All has changed now on the fields of Kulikovo, where you led your coalition to victory. The road ahead is long and arduous, but in the end, Mother Russia will prevail!"

I don't know why those weren't added. I have it on my todo list for the next release.

 

[Sian]

with the new Merc system in place, how about a revisit to an idea i aired while it was in the workings?, basicly reworking Norse

Bezerker is changed to a cheap Merc recruitable in Scandinavia

Norse UU is reworked into the Longboat replacing Galley, able to sail the oceans and to carry a extra unit (so it carries 3 units instead of two)

Norse UP could then be reworked into a 'pillage gives x5 times money' promoting Pillaging wars for them (which is quite historical)

 

[3Miro]

with the new Merc system in place, how about a revisit to an idea i aired while it was in the workings?, basicly reworking Norse

Bezerker is changed to a cheap Merc recruitable in Scandinavia

Norse UU is reworked into the Longboat replacing Galley, able to sail the oceans and to carry a extra unit (so it carries 3 units instead of two)

Norse UP could then be reworked into a 'pillage gives x5 times money' promoting Pillaging wars for them (which is quite historical)

That is interesting. I wonder what other people think about it.

Berserkers can be units available only in the Scandinavian provinces, thus the Norse would need to expand throughout Scandinavia to get more Berserkers. The ship wit extra cargo works fine too. The Pillage UP would tie with the Viking points.

 

[Daffy]

One quick question:

Isn't Buda a bit too close to Vienna?
I know in reality it is, but in the game could be cumbersome (to don't mention that Buda loses the protection from the river).

I haven't tried out beta 13 yet, and won't really have the time in the near future, but..

Moving the Hungarian Capitol sounds like a great idea to me, especially the renaming and moving it to the other river side.
And I assume that things will get better for Vienna since the AI really liked to build Steinamanger which even though it flipped to Austria was always a very annoying city for me.(Vienna, Steinamanger, Budapest all in a space about 5-6 tiles wide)

 

[3Miro]

I haven't tried out beta 13 yet, and won't really have the time in the near future, but..

Moving the Hungarian Capitol sounds like a great idea to me, especially the renaming and moving it to the other river side.
And I assume that things will get better for Vienna since the AI really liked to build Steinamanger which even though it flipped to Austria was always a very annoying city for me.(Vienna, Steinamanger, Budapest all in a space about 5-6 tiles wide)

The current situation actually looks better as you get only Buda and Vienna on those few tiles (i.e. one city less).

 

[civ_king]

Steinamanger is really brutal on Vienna

 

[Sian]

That is interesting. I wonder what other people think about it.

Berserkers can be units available only in the Scandinavian provinces, thus the Norse would need to expand throughout Scandinavia to get more Berserkers. The ship wit extra cargo works fine too. The Pillage UP would tie with the Viking points.

only problem i can see in this is that they might not have time to both expand into Scandinaivan provinces and do everyting else ...but then again ... that could be changed with tweaking their cost making units and buildings cheaper for them to build

 

[3Miro]

only problem i can see in this is that they might not have time to both expand into Scandinaivan provinces and do everyting else ...but then again ... that could be changed with tweaking their cost making units and buildings cheaper for them to build

Right now the Norse have to build Units, Wonders/Colonies and Settlers. Under the new scheme, they will build Wonders/Colonies. Conquest is more fun than settle, and instead of Units, they will hire Mercs. Mercs will be payed for with Pillage money. The conquest/pillage becomes its own separate thing, letting the player concentrate on Wonders/Colonies/Settlers.

 

[rrosen]

That is interesting. I wonder what other people think about it.

Berserkers can be units available only in the Scandinavian provinces, thus the Norse would need to expand throughout Scandinavia to get more Berserkers. The ship wit extra cargo works fine too. The Pillage UP would tie with the Viking points.

I think it sounds like a fun mechanism.

 

[Tigranes]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sassanid_Empire

It was hard for the ancient Byzantines too

For the first 130 years, it is you, the Pope that does virtually nothing and the French that are too far away to talk to them. Other than fighting Barbs and dealing with a Plague, there is little else you can do. Also, there is virtually no competition on who would get the Mercs.

Mercs come into play when more players appear. We may add some more early mercs, but the lack of mercs is probably not bad.

What you mean there is nothing to do? I always attempt to recreate Justinian conquest -- the fleet is waiting in Constantinople for 4 swordsmen to sail for glorious conquests. I really miss Ravenna, but made it up to Milan with my last veteran swordsman. Luckily , the stability mechanics is broken for Byzantium -- I was running -40 stability without Nika riots, without loosing a city, always collapsing in theory but never in reality. It used to be that my Libyan city would turn independent in the first 15 turns or so -- not anymore.

And Lancers are much easier to deal with Spearman than Horse Archers as it used to be before. Monarch Byzantium is now much easier if you know how to defend: few Axemen against Slavs in Thessaloniki, few spearman against Persians -- I even had time for Illirian conquest (would be nice if all the barbarians come with names, like Avars and Magyars, barbarian leaders with names, like Persian warlord Mihran, could also add more flavor).

But final surprise came with Arabs -- they don't start at war with me.

Abu Bakr organised the army into four corps, each with its own commander and objective.
Amr ibn al-A'as: Objective Palestine. Move on Elat route, then across Valley of Arabah.
Yazid ibn Abu Sufyan: Objective Damascus. Move on Tabuk route.
Shurahbil bin hassana: Objective Jordan. Move on Tabuk route after Yazid.
Abu Ubaidah ibn al-Jarrah: Objective Emesa. Move on Tabuk route after Shurahbil.

So the founding Damascus in game terms represents the conquest of Byzantine Syria in real history. Arabs simply have to start at war like Bulgaria does.

In case you worry that Human player can simply annihilate initial stack of Arabs -- in beta 12 it was resulting in more Arabs coming from Arabian desert even after the message said: Arab civilization is destroyed. Arabs were coming towards me even without the capital. And I still lost Jerusalem and Tyre. I really think Beta 12 handled Arab-Byzantian interaction better -- except for the message.

 

[3Miro]

What you mean there is nothing to do? I always attempt to recreate Justinian conquest -- the fleet is waiting in Constantinople for 4 swordsmen to sail for glorious conquests. I really miss Ravenna, but made it up to Milan with my last veteran swordsman. Luckily , the stability mechanics is broken for Byzantium -- I was running -40 stability without Nika riots, without loosing a city, always collapsing in theory but never in reality. It used to be that my Libyan city would turn independent in the first 15 turns or so -- not anymore.

And Lancers are much easier to deal with Spearman than Horse Archers as it used to be before. Monarch Byzantium is now much easier if you know how to defend: few Axemen against Slavs in Thessaloniki, few spearman against Persians -- I even had time for Illirian conquest (would be nice if all the barbarians come with names, like Avars and Magyars, barbarian leaders with names, like Persian warlord Mihran, could also add more flavor).

Sounds fun. Either way, currently you will not see many mercs early on.

But final surprise came with Arabs -- they don't start at war with me.

So the founding Damascus in game terms represents the conquest of Byzantine Syria in real history. Arabs simply have to start at war like Bulgaria does.

In case you worry that Human player can simply annihilate initial stack of Arabs -- in beta 12 it was resulting in more Arabs coming from Arabian desert even after the message said: Arab civilization is destroyed. Arabs were coming towards me even without the capital. And I still lost Jerusalem and Tyre. I really think Beta 12 handled Arab-Byzantian interaction better -- except for the message.

Both Arabia and Bulgaria have about 90% chance to start at war with the Byz. They will be at war almost always. In your case, you hit the 1/10. Also, killing the initial stack doesn't prevent the flip (Jerusalem and Tyre).

 

[ezzlar]

Kill arab start units. Evac flip cities. Retake the empty flip cities. The reinforcements are destroyed.

 

[Tigranes]

I was always wondering what was influencing modders in their current choice of Independent cities placed on the map from the beginning, especially in the places like Germany. Regensburg was far more important than Augsburg (first capital of East Frankish kingdom). Lubek was so insignificant that you won't find it on any 843 AD maps... Cologne, Metz, Aachen were far more important...

 

[3Miro]

I was always wondering what was influencing modders in their current choice of Independent cities placed on the map from the beginning, especially in the places like Germany. Regensburg was far more important than Augsburg (first capital of East Frankish kingdom). Lubek was so insignificant that you won't find it on any 843 AD maps... Cologne, Metz, Aachen were far more important...

Sometimes we do have people form one part of Europe or another and they push very hard for specific changes. Sometimes this is bad, but more often then not, it is quite good.

Germany is particularly hard region as it wasn't centralized and the number of cities that have played very significant role in some period or another will be greater than the number of available tiles. (Italy is much the same way) Another factor is that pre-building a large number of cities often times limits the player in what they can do and the games get too much on rails. If we are to have a good playable game, we will have to sacrifice some historicity.

Augsburg was added as one of the oldest cities in the Germany. Regensburg is far to the west and too close to Salzburg. If we have to decide, it is not Augsburg or Regensburg, but rather Regensburg or Salzburg. The current position of Augsburg also plays very well with the French UHV.

Cologne, Metz and Aachen are on the border between France and Germany. It is much better in terms of gameplay to have those cities be founded by the two players (and Burgundy) and then the three can fight over the region with culture and swords.

Luebek on the other hand fills a region that would otherwise be a void. Luebek gives the Vikings something to pillage and gives Germany and Poland an opportunity to expand into the region by force. The two don't get there until mid-game, and in mid-game, it is much better to conquer a semi-developed Indy city with infrastructure, population and buildings, rather than settle into an empty region.

I hope this answers your question. If you have concerns with exact spawn dates and such, please let us know.

 

[amrod]

Now everybody knows to look at their own region first.

From the user's point of view I didn't even know that the AI is so bad
Good fix!

I don't know if we have a fix for that one.

Has anyone else reported this? maybe only the weak integrated graphics card.
Will have to try on other laptops..

I tried to cut the number of autosaves, but it didn't affect the autorun speed. The game sometimes crashes and it is useful to have an autosave. This is still Beta after all.

All right. So if it should crash, I can just load the autosave and the autoplay will continue?

Once we get into the next stage, I will redo the entire reference folder.

Is it possible for outsider layman like me to help ? (I'm afraid that would need you (the devs) giving me so much info that it's as much as you yourself doing it - but tell me anyway if I can help). or maybe I should go over the pedia (if I can force myself out of lazyness) and the xml files, last time noticed a few strange things (like General name missing etc).

Ah yes, btw : I was trying the upgrade all units of same type feature (standard civ4). Click on crossbowmen, alt-click on upgrade all. I still have a few thousand gold left; but, strangely enough, a few crossbowmen didn't get upgraded (I had no mercs). Anyone seen this before?

 

[amrod]

That is interesting. I wonder what other people think about it.

Berserkers can be units available only in the Scandinavian provinces, thus the Norse would need to expand throughout Scandinavia to get more Berserkers. The ship wit extra cargo works fine too. The Pillage UP would tie with the Viking points.

I like the idea, though it will need much beta testing on its own, but I'd vote for it. Don't forget to add some initial money or mercs.

And what's this about expansion for more mercs? Does the number (and not only type) of available mercs depend on how many provinces I have? (Don't remember reading about this...)

 

[3Miro]

From the user's point of view I didn't even know that the AI is so bad
Good fix!

For quite some time (3 years) I myself didn't know the AI was that bad. When I was trying to figure out the problem with the large stacks that didn't move, I had to go over the "thinking" of a stack of Ottoman units near Jerusalem and they were always trying to attack Edinburgh. Only once they saw that they cannot get to England, did they look at other cities (like a nearby French crusader city).

Has anyone else reported this? maybe only the weak integrated graphics card.
Will have to try on other laptops..

I will look at the amber, but with lots of custom graphics, we may be unable to fix the issue.

All right. So if it should crash, I can just load the autosave and the autoplay will continue?

You will not get the green progress bar, but the autoplay will continue as normal, your units will spawn and you can play.

Is it possible for outsider layman like me to help ? (I'm afraid that would need you (the devs) giving me so much info that it's as much as you yourself doing it - but tell me anyway if I can help). or maybe I should go over the pedia (if I can force myself out of lazyness) and the xml files, last time noticed a few strange things (like General name missing etc).

You can wait for AbsintheRed and merijn_v1 to come back to see if they need any help with XML texts.

If you can make images, you can look at consts.py files and ProvinceManager.py to see the lists of provinces so you can make proper documentation of those. I can tell you how to read those files.

Ah yes, btw : I was trying the upgrade all units of same type feature (standard civ4). Click on crossbowmen, alt-click on upgrade all. I still have a few thousand gold left; but, strangely enough, a few crossbowmen didn't get upgraded (I had no mercs). Anyone seen this before?

I changed some of the upgrade mechanics for Merc purposes and it is possible that I broke something else. Do you have a savegame from were you couldn't upgrade the units?