[Beyond the Sword] History In The Making

[Arian]

Did you know that the Unit Statistics Component of the mod doesn't work properly. Don't know whether Grave did this on purpose

 

[Rusty Edge]

Did you know that the Unit Statistics Component of the mod doesn't work properly. Don't know whether Grave did this on purpose

I didn't know until you mentioned it. Thanks for pointing it out, and keep your observations coming.

Grave from post #460

"The unit statistics works just fine. I don't really care enough about the Player statistics or whatever to try fixing it right now.

The unit stats works... that's all I really wanted anyway. "

 

[Arian]

Thanks for the info. I managed to get more from Unit Statistics but it's still not 100% functional:

Spoiler :

 

[Healz]

Sounds cool, so eventually Grave you will work to get this unitstatistics mod fully fuctional?

 

[Rusty Edge]

I really appreciate it too and I hope that Grave somehow makes an appearance, even if only for handing over his SDK. Perhaps other modders know where he can be reached alternatively?

Now onto suggestions then :

• 1)Shorter revolutions between civic changes in the later half of the game
• 2)Prevent airships from upgrading to fighters, it's really a different league
• 3)Tweak Wonders like Pisa to do more than only add culture/turn or else remove them (by the time you can build them you have ample ways to boast culture)
• 4)Supreme Court gives free Courthouses in all your cities i.e.. Nice, but by that time I already have Courthouses everywhere. Supreme Courthouse should be made available earlier or yield a different bonus
• 5)Are promotions for spies possible?
• 6)Security Centers/Intelligence Agency: they are too similar in my perception. The possibility to create Special Forces should be dealt with differently then

I'll continu thinking about suggestions, only problem is that I can't play HiTM .

1) I think the drawback is that it would nerf the advantage of the spiritual trait and certain wonders.

2)Airships are for bombing and recon, so I take your point about them not upgrading to fighters. When fighters arrive they would be obsolete as ground attackers, would need to be escorted, maintained in the hanger, or upgraded.... or maybe just scrapped. Sounds sort of realistic to me now that I think about it.

3) Could be. I'll pay more attention next game.

4) I'll pay more attention to the tech tree, I agree it could be a little earlier.

5) Don't know. It comes with commando, so it has an innate promotion, and could probably use other movement and recon promotions .It's an invisible unit that can't attack others, so it would need to be awarded exp points based on successful missions rather than combat. It doesn't get them from a barracks , but I suppose if the rest were possible
then it would get them from spy buildings.. Maybe somebody has already moded this.

Or were you thinking more along the lines of ...promotions that help evade capture & success% ?

6)Make one building that serves both security purposes and possibly adds spy experience?

6a) Grave said something about Special Forces at one point, that he made a mistake. I'll have to research that and see if he corrected it or not, and if not, what his intensions were.

Keep thinking everybody.

 

[Arian]

5) Don't know. It comes with commando, so it has an innate promotion, and could probably use other movement and recon promotions .It's an invisible unit that can't attack others, so it would need to be awarded exp points based on successful missions rather than combat. It doesn't get them from a barracks , but I suppose if the rest were possible
then it would get them from spy buildings.. Maybe somebody has already moded this.
Or were you thinking more along the lines of ...promotions that help evade capture & success% ?

There's a modcomp called 'SuperSpies' which allows you to promote spies.
Major drawback here is that it needs SDK-changes and therefore can not (yet) merged with HitM.

 

[Hyronymus]

I know that in a few scenarios there are Wonders that produce units at a fixed interval. Is this possible for National Wonders too? If we introduce a new National Wonder called National Security Agency you could make that produce Special Forces at a fixed interval. This keeps Special Forces truly special and forces you to (ab)use Marines. It also obosletes Security Centers and Intelligence Agencies which is fine by me. To still add more resistance to espionage the National Security Agency could boast every city's resistance to espionage. Possibly, you could modify that in multiple ways:

Player constructs National Securit Agency (National Wonder)

• The NSA give +10% resistence to espionage per city (base)
• Barracks now give +5% resistence to espionage
• Courthouses now give +5% resistence to espionage

Also contained in my brain are these question:

• how many people use a Great Spy to construct Scotland Yard?
• how many people use a Great Spy to spy on enemies?
• how many people consider a Great Spy a valuable unit?

I personally think the Great Spy is a Great Waste of possible Great Persons and that Scotland Yard is hardly worth the effort.

More about Great People: what struck me while playing HiTM is that you get a bar in the top half of your screen that announces a Great <type of Great Person> will be born in <City name> in <#> turns. Quite neat but in the later game you often ended up with a totally different Great Person than announced by the "GP announcement bar" (silly name for it). Does it need a fix?
Later in a game you end up with Great Prophets a lot who are virtually useless by that time.

Something I always liked from the old versions of Civ was that you could actually send a trireme across the ocean. You always had a chance it would sink though. Is it possible to reconfigure early ships to venture out on the Seven Seas of Rhye, with unknown result?

The Apostolic Palace would be even nicer if it produced Inquisitors at a fixed interval. That way you can remove unwanted religions, as a form of Crusade.

Any chance of adding the Unit Allegiance Mod, with it not working in the Modern Age?

Last thing before I retire to bed: The Internet (World Wonder). I hate it, it makes me nervous to think how easily my enemies can come back in the race. It's too expensive IMHO. If it stays in, I suggest that whoever creates it suffers a -10% resistance to espionage.

 

[Arian]

More about Great People: what struck me while playing HiTM is that you get a bar in the top half of your screen that announces a Great <type of Great Person> will be born in <City name> in <#> turns. Quite neat but in the later game you often ended up with a totally different Great Person than announced by the "GP announcement bar" (silly name for it). Does it need a fix?

The odds are displayed here. Even if you have a chance of 99% getting a great merchant and a 1% chance of getting a great spy then consider it bad/good luck if you get the great spy.

Later in a game you end up with Great Prophets a lot who are virtually useless by that time.

Use them for Golden Ages

Something I always liked from the old versions of Civ was that you could actually send a trireme across the ocean. You always had a chance it would sink though. Is it possible to reconfigure early ships to venture out on the Seven Seas of Rhye, with unknown result?

This probably requires changing Python/SDK-code if you ask me.

The Apostolic Palace would be even nicer if it produced Inquisitors at a fixed interval. That way you can remove unwanted religions, as a form of Crusade.

Would't it be overpowered??

Any chance of adding the Unit Allegiance Mod, with it not working in the Modern Age?

I added this one along with StackAid. It's working in all Ages. AFAIK you can not set the ages, only the type of units which can change their allegiance.
Another nice ModComp to add would the Volcano. It's brand new.

Last thing before I retire to bed: The Internet (World Wonder). I hate it, it makes me nervous to think how easily my enemies can come back in the race. It's too expensive IMHO. If it stays in, I suggest that whoever creates it suffers a -10% resistance to espionage.

See my comments in the quote
Goodnight

 

[Rusty Edge]

I missed the send your fleet to sea and see who falls off the edge of the earth and who wins the race to another continent... but I can see that it's a numbers game for the human player and an exploit of sorts. I've come to accept and appreciate gameplay with BTS and the seafaring civs as it now stands.

But somehow that doesn't fully represent human history- Leif Erickson, Columbus, and on to the astro and cosmonauts...

I don't know how difficult or gamebreaking it would be to mod but...
This game could use a few Great Explorers. Perhaps a point each for a harbor and a stable, maybe another from an observatory. 1)You could attach him to a unit and gain a visibillity promo and access to unpassable areas, such ice and ocean (if a ship) or ice and mountains (if a land unit) and perhaps "in air refueling" for an air unit, so that it could fly it's range for multiple turns before re-basing. 2) light bulbing for traits that advance exploration- paper astronomy and flight, for examples. 3) Golden Age.

The Vikings and Polynesians crossed oceans with single-sail craft. There ought to be an outside chance of this happening in the game. There would still be a risk of barbarian encounter off of the coast of some island ,even if you did attach to a galley... so I think a balance could be achieved.

What do you think?

 

[DrewBledsoe]

With galleys etc. having the chance to explore oceans (with a chance of sinking a la civ III), I thought of this a long while back, but came upon the following problems which would still exist.

The galley could contain a settler, and could therefore find a new tract of land, and settle there. But this new true colony, would then have to be cut off from its parent civ, and I mean totally cut off. It couldn't trade anything, techs resources or have open borders. If you were going to allow any of the above, it would basically negate the points of later seafaring techs (optics in HITM, Astronomy in vanilla).

And the same point arises (but becomes even more complicated), if you meet one or more ai civs. You just can't allow diplomacy of any kind, for the aforementioned reasons.The "early oceanic scamper" has to be almost regarded as a one off, and trade/exchange of ideas neccesitates a constant flow of ships and contact. It becomes just too complicated for current game mechanics....

 

[Healz]

True point but then you need to decide how you are going to implement early seafaring civilizations, for example do you give them the ability to build triemes earlier than everyone else or something? It is a good point to consider...

 

[Arian]

True point but then you need to decide how you are going to implement early seafaring civilizations, for example do you give them the ability to build triemes earlier than everyone else or something? It is a good point to consider...

You could give early seafaring civilizations a UU (galley or so) that can enter ocean tiles but I think that's unbalanced.

Joao's UU (Carrack) can enter ocean tiles and carry any unit prior to Astronomy when galleons become available for the other civs.

 

[Hyronymus]

You could make triremes not available for Settlers, right?

By the way: are Arian and me the only people with ideas for HiTM?

 

[Arian]

You could make triremes not available for Settlers, right?

You could give a trireme cargospace. It would become a galley .
Doesn't make much sense IMO

Allow it to enter ocean tiles and it would become a caravel
Doesn't make much sense either IMO

 

[Healz]

Any way to hard-code a non-ability to go too far away from the shore? Just a thought for the triemes and early naval vessels...

 

[ruffriders23]

Is there a time frame for a 3.17 version of this or do you guys just talk back and forth?

 

[Arian]

Any way to hard-code a non-ability to go too far away from the shore? Just a thought for the triemes and early naval vessels...

This code tag in Civ4UnitInfos.xml prevents a ship from entering ocean tiles:

<TerrainImpassables>
		<TerrainImpassable>
			<TerrainType>TERRAIN_OCEAN</TerrainType>
			<bTerrainImpassable>1</bTerrainImpassable>
		</TerrainImpassable>
</TerrainImpassables>

 

[Healz]

I think the problem at the moment is that Grave is away. I know that RustyEdge is looking at doing the upgrades. At the moment this talking back and forth is discussing a game-play issue with the mod. Personally I love Wolfshanze Mod and probably end up playing it quite a bit more than this one. At the moment it works with 3.17 if you are looking for a good mod that you can download immediately. I am currently downloading that as I type this. Takes a good three and bit hours for me to download about 300Mb though...

 

[Arian]

Is there a time frame for a 3.17 version of this or do you guys just talk back and forth?

I don't know. It's up to Grave to update his mod.

 

[Rusty Edge]

You could make triremes not available for Settlers, right?

By the way: are Arian and me the only people with ideas for HiTM?

I've got a few ideas, but for now I'll try to respond to some of yours.


* According to the civilopedia, the requirements for The Supreme Court are palace in the city where it's built and 8 courthouses in the empire. Not a tech per se, although you need Code of Laws to build courthouses.

On Huge/ Marathon where I might have dozens of cities that doesn't seem bad to me. In fact any Wonder that automatically gives you a building in a captured city is powerful. But 8 is 8.

Do you think it's a scaling issue?


* Culture producing Wonders such as the Tower of Pisa. On the bright side it's handy to have more culture wonders for a cultural victory race and for trying to flip some of those cities peacefully that somebody backfilled in my continent, or wedged in during a war while before the captured keeper cities popped their borders.


*Unless I'm in the mood for a cold war, Scotland Yard is the only one for which I use the Great Spy other than Golden Age fodder.