[Beyond the Sword] History In The Making

[Ekmek]

Grave, cool stuff. Have you thought about making oil wells generate oil? maybe make them add +1 gold to desert or jungle but give the chance of finding oil (and make oil unavailable at start)? if the AI can handle it it would add some sport to thegame trying to find oil.

Another possibility is that maybe a town has a chance of discovering a musical. That way those resources can be available to someone that doesn't get broadway.

 

[Grave]

@Grave:- A few observations......

Firstly for some strange reason when I try and take Screenshots running HiTM, I just get a black picture, so strange whatever, but I can't provide any to illustrate my points.

All I do for screenshots is ALT+PRINT SCREEN then paste the image into Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop. I never tried taking screenshots in game... never knew it was possible?

1) Stonehenge. I feel the free specialist to be just too strong so early on. If you manage to combine Henge with the Sphinx, thats a free scientist in every city from ridiculously early on, which lasts all the way through to Astronomy. Combine that with a beeline to code of laws, and then whacking out the Senate and going Uni Suffer, is 2 free scientists (or whatever) per city. You've probably already won if you manage this....

Last game (huge/emp/agg ais/rand pers/ me random civ/leader)...I got Germany and The Austrian Painter ....I manage to conquer the Greeks and The Nat Ams, plus achieving the above wonders by 500BC. I then filled the continent with eventually 32 cities, and found 3 religions. Ok so then I much later explore the world, and adopt merc, which leads me to point 2...

Ok, I can look into adjusting Stonehenge. Maybe just remove the free specialist?


Also... Austrian Painter?

2) Mercantilism...you have it set at 3 per specialist...well on a huge map with astronomy and open borders with 9 of the surviving 13 nations, I discover Free Market, and change to it from running Merc

And my income (at 70% science, 30% gold) goes from +252 p/t, to -125 p/t.

This is where I took a load of screenshots to illustrate but as said earlier the didn't come out...so 2 examples were Athens, and The Nat Am ex capital (whatever its called)....Both were super food rich, and were running 8 specialists each (2 free, one from Uni Suff, and the other from The St Of Lib, built in 1350AD)....now thats 24 each. Free Market could never ever make up for that...even tiny cities were pulling in 6 per turn,(from specialists) which they could never hope to emulate from trade routes.

So in short, even though this was a slightly extreme example, even if I had open borders with every nation on earth, and Custon Houses and the like, Free Market could never match Merc. Plus Merc gets 2 per mine and plantation.

So a suggestion to Merc would be maybe 2 per specialist and 1 per mine and plantation, otherwise, the whole world just stays in Merc all game...

Definately sounds like Mercantalism needs tweaked. I'll see what I can do with that.

Grave, cool stuff. Have you thought about making oil wells generate oil? maybe make them add +1 gold to desert or jungle but give the chance of finding oil (and make oil unavailable at start)? if the AI can handle it it would add some sport to thegame trying to find oil.

Another possibility is that maybe a town has a chance of discovering a musical. That way those resources can be available to someone that doesn't get broadway.

Say... that's a pretty NEAT idea!

I never thought about that before. Hmmmmm.....

 

[bcr1776]

Also... Austrian Painter? Reference to Adolph's supposed vocation. Popularized by w.s.Churchill

 

[DrewBledsoe]

All I do for screenshots is ALT+PRINT SCREEN then paste the image into Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop. I never tried taking screenshots in game... never knew it was possible?

Normally you can just press the "prnt scr" button, and the screenshots are saved by the game ...default is my docs/my games/beyond the sword/screenshots............for some reason they have been coming out black for HiTM recently, may be a conflict in my own settings

Ok, I can look into adjusting Stonehenge. Maybe just remove the free specialist?

I'd say that was a good idea. The extra culture, early priest pts,and free monument of vanilla CivIv is good enough imo

Also... Austrian Painter?

Adolf Hitler. He trained as a portrait and landscape painter, but was refused entrance to the Vienna Art Academy, thus (in some opinions) fuelling a lifelong hatred of the city..


Definately sounds like Mercantalism needs tweaked. I'll see what I can do with that.

Also... Austrian Painter? Reference to Adolph's supposed vocation. Popularized by w.s.Churchill

Yep..........

 

[ebo]

To Grave:-

I did a few tests with cottages and WB:- All other civics apart from Slavery work as you intended (with Emanc they grow twice as quickly).

Normally (with marathon speed), a cottage to a hamlet is 30 turns. With Slavery, I can see you intended this to be 50% slower hence 45 turns. From Civ4CivicInfos.xml:-

What if you set the default time for cottage growth to 45, then put a 50% Bonus on all the other civics, including the starting one that would put them back at 30 turns, then put 300% bonus on Emanc.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

What if you set the default time for cottage growth to 45, then put a 50% Bonus on all the other civics, including the starting one that would put them back at 30 turns, then put 300% bonus on Emanc.

I suppose he could but its a bit messy.....

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To Grave (again)

The extra commerce from trade routes for financial doesn't seem to be working as intended:-

Spoiler :

<TraitInfo>
<Type>TRAIT_FINANCIAL</Type>
<Description>TXT_KEY_TRAIT_FINANCIAL</Description>
<ShortDescription>TXT_KEY_TRAIT_FINANCIAL_SHORT</ShortDescription>
<iHealth>0</iHealth>
<iHappiness>0</iHappiness>
<iMaxAnarchy>-1</iMaxAnarchy>
<iUpkeepModifier>0</iUpkeepModifier>
<iLevelExperienceModifier>0</iLevelExperienceModifier>
<iGreatPeopleRateModifier>0</iGreatPeopleRateModifier>
<iGreatGeneralRateModifier>0</iGreatGeneralRateModifier>
<iDomesticGreatGeneralRateModifier>0</iDomesticGreatGeneralRateModifier>
<iMaxGlobalBuildingProductionModifier>0</iMaxGlobalBuildingProductionModifier>
<iMaxTeamBuildingProductionModifier>0</iMaxTeamBuildingProductionModifier>
<iMaxPlayerBuildingProductionModifier>0</iMaxPlayerBuildingProductionModifier>
<ExtraYieldThresholds/>
<TradeYieldModifiers>
<iYield>0</iYield>
<iYield>0</iYield>
<iYield>2</iYield>
</TradeYieldModifiers>
<CommerceChanges/>
<CommerceModifiers/>
<FreePromotions/>
<FreePromotionUnitCombats/>
</TraitInfo>

Is iYield the right variable? (again just guessing as I don't really know how the prog works)...

 

[DrewBledsoe]

Me Again

Is "Ranged Attack" with Cats working as intended? They do absolutely lethal damage with no risk involved at all:-

6 cats vs ok only 2 fully healthy archers (the other one must have gone a wandering):-

Spoiler :

Group and Press "Ranged Attack" button

Spoiler :

And After Both Archers on 0.8:str:... I could probably take them with warriors. I just destroyed Nat Ams (again! too close to me at start), in this manner, without losing a single troop....

Spoiler :

 

[Agent327]

Ok, I tried re-downloading the entire mod and this time the game crashed when I tried using the 1000 AD map. (You might want to actually name it 1000ADmap instead of having 2 indictically named maps.) I'll try again later...

 

[toft]

In my opinion forts and hereditary rule is a weird mix and overpowered... the AI is spamming forts on all tiles and it feels unrealistic.

 

[Grave]

Also... Austrian Painter? Reference to Adolph's supposed vocation. Popularized by w.s.Churchill

Yeah, I realized it was Hitler after I logged off the forums. At first I was thinking he somehow got a free unique German Great Artist, so I was like

But then it hit me...

What if you set the default time for cottage growth to 45, then put a 50% Bonus on all the other civics, including the starting one that would put them back at 30 turns, then put 300% bonus on Emanc.

Like Drew said... that would be a messy work around.

I'll just have to find an alternative negative trait for Slavery this weekend.

To Grave (again)

The extra commerce from trade routes for financial doesn't seem to be working as intended:-

Spoiler :

<TraitInfo>
<Type>TRAIT_FINANCIAL</Type>
<Description>TXT_KEY_TRAIT_FINANCIAL</Description>
<ShortDescription>TXT_KEY_TRAIT_FINANCIAL_SHORT</ShortDescription>
<iHealth>0</iHealth>
<iHappiness>0</iHappiness>
<iMaxAnarchy>-1</iMaxAnarchy>
<iUpkeepModifier>0</iUpkeepModifier>
<iLevelExperienceModifier>0</iLevelExperienceModifier>
<iGreatPeopleRateModifier>0</iGreatPeopleRateModifier>
<iGreatGeneralRateModifier>0</iGreatGeneralRateModifier>
<iDomesticGreatGeneralRateModifier>0</iDomesticGreatGeneralRateModifier>
<iMaxGlobalBuildingProductionModifier>0</iMaxGlobalBuildingProductionModifier>
<iMaxTeamBuildingProductionModifier>0</iMaxTeamBuildingProductionModifier>
<iMaxPlayerBuildingProductionModifier>0</iMaxPlayerBuildingProductionModifier>
<ExtraYieldThresholds/>
<TradeYieldModifiers>
<iYield>0</iYield>
<iYield>0</iYield>
<iYield>2</iYield>
</TradeYieldModifiers>
<CommerceChanges/>
<CommerceModifiers/>
<FreePromotions/>
<FreePromotionUnitCombats/>
</TraitInfo>

Is iYield the right variable? (again just guessing as I don't really know how the prog works)...

I'll check the Schema... maybe I botched that, too.

Is "Ranged Attack" with Cats working as intended? They do absolutely lethal damage with no risk involved at all:-

There is a new version of Dale's Ranged Bombardment out. I'll check it out this weekend and see how it is.

I may have tuned the all the siege units a little too strong. I started with Mobile Artillery, and used the same forumula the rest of the way down.

Ok, I tried re-downloading the entire mod and this time the game crashed when I tried using the 1000 AD map. (You might want to actually name it 1000ADmap instead of having 2 indictically named maps.) I'll try again later...

They're not. My map is named GraveEarth.

BeginGame
	Era=ERA_ANCIENT
	Speed=GAMESPEED_MARATHON
	Calendar=CALENDAR_DEFAULT
	Option=GAMEOPTION_FLIPPING_AFTER_CONQUEST
	Option=GAMEOPTION_NEW_RANDOM_SEED
	Victory=VICTORY_TIME
	Victory=VICTORY_CONQUEST
	Victory=VICTORY_DOMINATION
	Victory=VICTORY_CULTURAL
	Victory=VICTORY_SPACE_RACE
	Victory=VICTORY_DIPLOMATIC
	Victory=VICTORY_RELIGIOUS
	GameTurn=0
	MaxTurns=1500
	MaxCityElimination=0
	NumAdvancedStartPoints=2160
	TargetScore=0
	StartYear=-4000
	Description=This is the Earth1000AD map that came with vanilla BtS
	ModPath=MODS\HISTORY IN THE MAKING
EndGame

All you need to do is double-click on the scenario file itself. By doing so the game will automaticlly fire up HiTM and you start playing.

Seriously, I don't know why people are having such problems with loading a simple scenario. It's the exact same map I used for prior versions of HiTM, and nobody had problems then. And I have absolutely no problems loading it at all.

In my opinion forts and hereditary rule is a weird mix and overpowered... the AI is spamming forts on all tiles and it feels unrealistic.

Ok, I'll look into that, too.



Sounds like I got my work cut out for me this weekend!


Thanks for all the valuable feedback, fellas! I'll put it to good use this weekend!

 

[toft]

All you need to do is double-click on the scenario file itself. By doing so the game will automaticlly fire up HiTM and you start playing.

Seriously, I don't know why people are having such problems with loading a simple scenario. It's the exact same map I used for prior versions of HiTM, and nobody had problems then. And I have absolutely no problems loading it at all.

A little hint to ya'll... you can play any map you would like. Just open it in a texteditor (wordpad) and add teams and players up until number 23 (just making them available, not necessary to actually play with 23 oppenents / Remember to backup )

This way it should load up fine, but only with the vanilla resources... open it in worldbuilder to place those.

 

[Uncle Anton]

@ Grave re; Ranged Artillery

Don't tone down the ranged attack too much otherwise there's no point using it at all... personally I think an ancient invasion force which brings a regiment or two of warriors and 6 regiments of siege weaponry WOULD decimate two defending archer units... and HOW.

Giving Siege units that kind of ability is the whole point of Dale's mod. If someone can argue the point that bombardment weapons HAVEN'T dominated warfare from the time they were invented, I'll be very impressed. From Medieval warfare where 90% of the time siege tactics were NECESSARY, to the Great War when artillery accounted for 2/3 of all casualties on the Western Front, you can't tell me that Artillery of some sort isn't THE deciding factor.

Yes, in terms of gameplay, I'm aware that this makes things a bit of a pain in the backside. My answer to Drew would be "Build more artillery than the other bloke" - Same answer as it's been in real life.

If you are gonna tweak. Make it a small tweak, or remove that modcomp altogether, because there's no point having siege weapons represented in Civ in "realistic terms" unless they're represented in "realistic terms". What's the point of packing an arty unit in a stack and ranged bombarding if that arty unit will do .1 damage to ONE unit in the defensive stack you're attacking per turn?

Being an old buckethead ("One-One, Fetch IRONSIDE over...") I never thought I'd say this, but given artillery's domination of the battlefield throughout history, nerfing a ranged bombardment modcomp sounds akin to giving teets to a bull to quote the old saying. Someone tell me I'm wrong. I double dare ya.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

@ Grave re; Ranged Artillery

Don't tone down the ranged attack too much otherwise there's no point using it at all... personally I think an ancient invasion force which brings a regiment or two of warriors and 6 regiments of siege weaponry WOULD decimate two defending archer units... and HOW.

Giving Siege units that kind of ability is the whole point of Dale's mod. If someone can argue the point that bombardment weapons HAVEN'T dominated warfare from the time they were invented, I'll be very impressed. From Medieval warfare where 90% of the time siege tactics were NECESSARY, to the Great War when artillery accounted for 2/3 of all casualties on the Western Front, you can't tell me that Artillery of some sort isn't THE deciding factor.

Yes, in terms of gameplay, I'm aware that this makes things a bit of a pain in the backside. My answer to Drew would be "Build more artillery than the other bloke" - Same answer as it's been in real life.

If you are gonna tweak. Make it a small tweak, or remove that modcomp altogether, because there's no point having siege weapons represented in Civ in "realistic terms" unless they're represented in "realistic terms". What's the point of packing an arty unit in a stack and ranged bombarding if that arty unit will do .1 damage to ONE unit in the defensive stack you're attacking per turn?

Being an old buckethead ("One-One, Fetch IRONSIDE over...") I never thought I'd say this, but given artillery's domination of the battlefield throughout history, nerfing a ranged bombardment modcomp sounds akin to giving teets to a bull to quote the old saying. Someone tell me I'm wrong. I double dare ya.

I agree completely with you on the concept, with a couple of provisos. Firstly, its been me the player, who is just literally walking through whole fledgling civs. All you need for cats is writing/masonry/maths....this can be achieved extremely early.Then just take 6 cats, archers (to fight and then fortify, and a few axes or chariots). Once a city is bombarded down to 0%, then just "range attack" with the cats.

Against the Nat Ams, the combined bombardment (plus collateral) reduced the defenders to just clean up. In his cap, Bull had 3 archers, and 3 dog soldiers. After "no risk-ranged attack form the 6 cats", even the dog soldiers had less than a 5% chance vs my axes. Its just too easy.

And my main point, is that the ai DOESN'T seem to understand this. Its early stacks are mainly (sensibly) mixed troops (axes, spears, chariots), with maybe 2 cats. If I again "range attack" with say 4 cats, it will turn his stack into fodder for my troops to clean-up.

I agree with your original points, except there is no point in ever having a cat actually "normally attack" anything, a stack does far more damage from the "range attack", with no risk whatever. A normal attack from a siege weapon, when successful, takes a defender down to a certain lv, but "ranged attack"exceeds this default minimum level.

So I think this needs toning down. On a last point, I always get 2 buttons for siege weapons when in the field and 3 buttons when at a city with defence. I suspect this may not be working as intended.....

 

[McMowgli]

I play a game and when I have played for awhile, it jumps out in Windows with an error in the BTS exe file, this happend also when I tries too load a game, but only when I played for a while. I will try too upload the savegame from the first turn and the savegame in bc1430 that doesn't work!!!

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/120669/Tommy_Hagen_BC-3685.CivBeyondSwordSave
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/120669/Tommy_Hagen_BC-1430.rar

 

[toft]

Im getting CTD when clicking "quit to main menu", and in late games I cant reload the games Ive tried 4 autosaves and they all CTD... v0.6 seemed more stable

 

[Grave]

@ Grave re; Ranged Artillery

Don't tone down the ranged attack too much otherwise there's no point using it at all... personally I think an ancient invasion force which brings a regiment or two of warriors and 6 regiments of siege weaponry WOULD decimate two defending archer units... and HOW.

Giving Siege units that kind of ability is the whole point of Dale's mod.

Actually, the Ranged Bombardment you speak of isn't Dale's. It's probably the stock system of AirCombat and AirRange for siege units. It it's current form in my mod Dale's Ranged Bombardment hardly does any damage... like maybe 0.04 points of damage! I had to port his v3.03 version over to v3.13 in order to get it into the mod.

But now that Dale released a newer v3.13 version (with some changes) I'm going to check it out this weekend.

Hopefully, that will alievate me having to use AirCombat and AirRange values for siege units in order to do any worthwhile damage.

I play a game and when I have played for awhile, it jumps out in Windows with an error in the BTS exe file, this happend also when I tries too load a game, but only when I played for a while. I will try too upload the savegame from the first turn and the savegame in bc1430 that doesn't work!!!

Thanks... I'll look at the 1430BC game and see what's up.

Im getting CTD when clicking "quit to main menu", and in late games I cant reload the games Ive tried 4 autosaves and they all CTD... v0.6 seemed more stable

It's pretty much the exact same SDK, except I added Bhruic's unofficial patch and Dale's RtW Bombing missions.

The rest of the changes I made were Python and XML... python won't give you a CTD. XML might under certain circumstances... which is why it's important to play test.

 

[Grave]

I suppose he could but its a bit messy.....

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To Grave (again)

The extra commerce from trade routes for financial doesn't seem to be working as intended:-

Is iYield the right variable? (again just guessing as I don't really know how the prog works)...

Unfortunately, "iYield" is the correct tag... so it must be the SDK that doesn't like Extra yields from trade.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

Unfortunately, "iYield" is the correct tag... so it must be the SDK that doesn't like Extra yields from trade.

Ah well.......

I changed my game to 1 extra on plots that already produce 3 or more, thus taking financial coast and lakes out of the picture.

The "ranged attack" button just isn't working as intended. I walked up to Bibracte, a holy city on a hill with walls (60% culture). I didn't even bother bombarding, just grouped 6 cats and hit "ranged attack", which completely ignored the walls and culture, and reduced the 4 archers all below 1 :str:, and then mopped up with axes.

So yep, you definitely need to look into this

 

[Grave]

Ah well.......

I changed my game to 1 extra on plots that already produce 3 or more, thus taking financial coast and lakes out of the picture.

The "ranged attack" button just isn't working as intended. I walked up to Bibracte, a holy city on a hill with walls (60% culture). I didn't even bother bombarding, just grouped 6 cats and hit "ranged attack", which completely ignored the walls and culture, and reduced the 4 archers all below 1 :str:, and then mopped up with axes.

So yep, you definitely need to look into this

Yeah, that was something I added in once I realized DCM wasn't doing enough damage.

Essencially, what the siege units are doing are Air attacks, similiar to air units. I actually got this idea from playing around in the Final Frontier scenario, since the Star Bases do the exact same thing.

Hopefully the v3.13 version of DCM takes care of all this, so I can remove my hack way of doing it.

 

[Dale]

The 3.13 version of Ranged Bombard does twice the amount of damage 3.03 did.

The above reasons are why I hate the FF method of simulating an air attack for ranged. Also, in my mod because cats are available so early, they don't have RB ability. It comes in later.