[BtS] "Extra"

[DAKH]

I love your mod, but I have a small balance issue with Barter Economy. As it works now it adds a flat 15% increase to all income in all cities, and it easily rivals Free Market. I tested the mod on an archipelago map, playing as Ragnar (Agg, Fin), and I had to build several Customs House before I could switch to Free Market without loosing income. Now I might be wrong, and there certainly are other factors I have overlooked, but it needs a bit toning down. So I increased the upkeep cost to "high", going to test it later.

In addition, Independent Farmers are a bit underpowered in my humble opinion. +1 food to farms and -33% unit production with medium upkeep is a bit harsh for such a small benefit. But I must admit, it helped a few cities in the arctic region of the map flourish a bit, but the upkeep and unit production penalties really hit the rest of my empire, as they had already reached their health/happy limit. So in short, it needs a small buff, either the upkeep could be lowered, or another stat increase. As it stands now it could help smaller nations pick up their production and population, but the negative unit production stat hampers them even more than what a few extra pop points make up for it.


One more thing, but it isn't your doing: I had got an infinite loop error one turn (mid-renaissance), and couldn't get the game to progress after that point even how many saves back I tried. Solver posted a small .dll fix to address this issue, I would love it if you could include that on your next update. (http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=168750)

 

[bmarnz]

Good job. I think Shamanism is overpowered. It makes a Cultural Victory much easier. I would suggest either lowering the culture boost or have it give monuments a small culture boost.

 

[DAKH]

Good job. I think Shamanism is overpowered. It makes a Cultural Victory much easier. I would suggest either lowering the culture boost or have it give monuments a small culture boost.

I agree, or, another suggestion if I may: Have it give a flat +2 culture to every city. Obviously the civic is meant for early border expansions.

 

[frob2900]

Great modpack

Are you thinking of including any of the medieval units from the Charlemagne mod? (in addition to the inquisitor you mentioned)

There are e.g. some very nice light cavalry / heavy swordsman which might add some diversity to the medieval age. (e.g. Heavy Swordsman has Strength 8, but +10% City Attack, so it could be an option instead of building macemen etc...)

 

[FK2006]

hello for the arcology buildings you have to use a modified next era python stuff

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

Great modpack

Are you thinking of including any of the medieval units from the Charlemagne mod? (in addition to the inquisitor you mentioned)

There are e.g. some very nice light cavalry / heavy swordsman which might add some diversity to the medieval age. (e.g. Heavy Swordsman has Strength 8, but +10% City Attack, so it could be an option instead of building macemen etc...)

Hes including the EDCs mod which comes with the EDUs mod, which as the Chalemagne units with it...in an upcoming release.

At least last time I heard.

 

[Chiyu]

@Sword of Geddon:
The ethnic artstyles and units have been added, because if I understood properly, most of these unit graphics were already stored on the disc but never got implemented? That means it fits the theme of the mod.

@James009:
I've seen Solver's extra events mod comp, and I like the idea very much, but I'm not sure if I should add any new events as long as they're not official firaxis material. On the other hand, if Solver was a beta tester for Civ4, he is in someway affiliated with Firaxis and he probably knows how to balance things. I'll think about it.

@Aeven:
Which files would I need to add to get the inquisitor working, other than a few .xml edits? Any python maybe?

@arstal:
I'm sorry, but - although your ideas are nice - you're missing the point of this mod.. It's to combine existing features from other Warlords/BtS mods and try to make it as balanced as possible, not to make new content. Dennis Moore's post sums it up nicely.

@rukawascsu:
I have no idea, considering I never had any bug like this myself...

@DAKH:
I really appreciate your feedback on the civics! Please let me know what happens when you test Barter Economy with High upkeep cost (in comparison to Free Market).
And okay, I will make Independent Farmers better. I'll probably remove the civic upkeep or something.
And sure, I'll include that update, fixing bugs is always welcome. No problem.

@bmarnz:
Okay, I'll go with DAKH's suggestion. I already felt that Shamanism was a little overpowered. The balance of the civics from the Chinese Unification mod could be better .

@frob2900:
I really like the units from Charlemagne's mod as well, but I don't want to focus too much on one era. Still, an unit or two wouldn't harm, as long as they are original enough and don't make the Maceman, Pikeman and Knight obsolete.

 

[Aeven]

It would make sense that there a Python units needed for it. It adds a function which goes against standard game mechanics.

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

Hey Chiyu are you still eventually going to include the cities of Geomodder's mod?

 

[Chiyu]

Already did .
But I want to add a few more things before releasing 2.2, you see..

 

[Solver]

@James009:
I've seen Solver's extra events mod comp, and I like the idea very much, but I'm not sure if I should add any new events as long as they're not official firaxis material. On the other hand, if Solver was a beta tester for Civ4, he is in someway affiliated with Firaxis and he probably knows how to balance things. I'll think about it.

It's your call, but my goal is to have balanced events in my mod. I actually want them to have more balance than the original BtS ones, I find the balance in those to be poor sometimes. Well, there are only a few events that are unbalanced in and out of themselves, but there's generally poor balance between the different choices among the stock BtS events.

I'd rather recommend you stay away from including my mod for about a week or so, though, it's only a handful of events right now. I want to add a bunch more, and hope to be able to do over the next week.

 

[DAKH]

@DAKH:
I really appreciate your feedback on the civics! Please let me know what happens when you test Barter Economy with High upkeep cost (in comparison to Free Market).
And okay, I will make Independent Farmers better. I'll probably remove the civic upkeep or something.
And sure, I'll include that update, fixing bugs is always welcome. No problem.

Thanks. I love the civics system, and I often mod them myself to fit to my liking. For example, it's a personal quirk of mine to improve Emancipation, because I hate having to switch to a virtually useless civic, but that's a story for another time.

I haven't had time to do extensive testing of Barter vs. Free Market, as in my game I've just discovered Free Market and will make the transition once I destroy a few more Native American cities.

But some theorycrafting: The inherent "flaw" of Barter Economy is it's scaling. It scales too well, so with a flat 15% increase to all income, the higher your Economy tab is, the more it outperforms the other economic systems. I currently play another Financial civ (the Dutch), so the problem is only intensified with the Financial Trait (I love that trait too much, hehe). Now, in the game I'm currently playing (huge map 180x128, 17 civs, marathon) I have a fairly sizeable empire, I'm on an island with 20+ cities, and Isabella as my vassal in the middle of it. Suffice to say, with 60% of my gold going towards pure income, I'm making a nice 1000+ gold each turn. Anyway, it should be nerfed some way, perhaps to 10%? Of course, that would only delay the problems (scalability), because with a sufficiently large empire it would massively outperform the other economical civics. Of course, this is all theory, when I get to the point that I have built Customs House in all my coastal cities (around 70% of them is coastal) I can probably make the transition nice and easy. Still, for a large, mostly land-locked empire (think Pangaea) Barter Economy might be the preferable choice from 2875 BC to 2050 AD. The Civic Upkeep isn't enough alone I think to warrant it's existence in it's current form (unless there's a higher value than High ), but as said, actual testing needs to be done. Well, I have made quite a wall of text now, so I'll just stop now.

Anyway, I am certain that it needs a change from it's current form. Perhaps something along the lines of
+15% Economy
3 biggest cities
High Upkeep

OR

Make Barter Economy obsolete with Free Market (if possible), and leave it in it's current form.

OR

+15% Economy
+100% Inflation
High Upkeep

My last suggestion would probably work out best, if it's possible to give Civics an Inflation modifier. The plus to Inflation will need to be looked at more closely, but it's scalability won't be so insane, especially with a large empire.


Well there you have it, a few lines on Barter Economy.

 

[Kalimakhus]

Hi Chiyu

I am thrilled to know that you added Ethnic City Styles to 2.2 (This would mean also ethnic units I guess as Geomodder has them in his mod).

While adding things to you coming release would you consider the PLE. A BTS version is available on its thread made by turlute. It won't conflict with anything you have and it only adds few files and overwrites nothing.

Adding Charlemagne units is quite and excellent idea. You may also look into The Road To War mod. The way units depend on buildings is very realistic for the Modern Era.

I don't know if you would like to add SDK modifications but also in the RtW bombers missions are excellent and I am for one would like to see them added to the regular game.

All in all, I like your mod a lot it offers a better way to play the regular game with much more fun keep up the good work.

 

[GeoModder]

Geo intends to add Ethnic African units, but the EDG is a merger already of EDU and EDC.

The idea is to add Rabbit's African units once he's finished with it, and work further from there on the other artstyles if there's a need.

As is now in the mod, the 5 artstyles that ship with the game have ethnic units for every unit-class before the musketman.
My biggest gripe todate is there are no ethnic ships yet. I could add some Asian ships already, add C.Rolands' galleas for the Middle Eastern and tinker a bit with the ancient ones so the Vikings have their own "longboat" but feel it might be better to wait for Rabbit's stuff.

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

I hope White Rabbit puts out those African units soon, I'm tired of seeing white guys when playing the Zulu, Mali, or Ethiopians lol.

 

[LordGek]

Hey Chiyu,

While most of these additions sound fun and fairly balanced, can the AI play with all of the new stuff? Like will the AI use the Civics?

 

[Kalimakhus]

Chiyu, Thanks for the new update. Next time please announce updates with a new post, this way people registered to the thread will get mail notification and the thread will get higher order under the forum so people can know something is new there.

I like the pace you work with quite fast but keeping things balanced, good work indeed.

If you need any help with coming addition in case they would require SDK modifications or so let me know, I would be glad to help.

 

[Chiyu]

@Kalimakhus (1):
I would really like to add (some of) the tanks, ships and aircrafts used in The Road to War, but... None of them has it's own button . If someone could give me decent buttons for them, then I would gladly add (some of) them!

@LordGek:
Yes, they do. I've seen them use Absolutism, Shamanism and Barter Economy in my last game for instance.

@Kalimakhus (2):
The reason why I didn't announce it is that immediately after uploading it here, is that I got some good ideas for another update. I plan to upload 2.3 tonight as well. I hoped that people wouldn't notice the update till then, hehe.

 

[Kalimakhus]

I am actually more interested in the Bombardment missions in RtW than the units. It can really make the game very interesting. Not only can you bombard defenses but you can choose to bombard factories or civil buildings. In a long war of attrition one can cripple the enemy by destroying his economy and prevent him from building fighting units.

Dale actually makes the source code available for download within his Add-On pack.

If you like the idea it can be expanded for siege units so they can bombard tile improvements, and enemy units in adjacent tiles. (Of course siege units can't be selective when bombarding cities).

However if you like to keep things simple without getting involved in the DLL it is alright. It is your mod and I already appreciate the work you have done so far. It is already a great MOD.

P.S. I mentioned the Plot List Enhancement modcomp before. This one add much convenience when managing large stacks specially in the heat of a battle. Adding it is quite straight forward and won't affect other MOD elements.

Edit: I just remembered that you use attitude icons so you do modify the main interface screen python file so integrating PLE is not actually straight forward at all. Still I hope you may add it.

 

[LtChambers]

Barter economy should DECREASE tax income. Barter is officially discouraged, if not outright illegal, in centralized civilizations because it is virtually impossible to tax it accurately. However, barter/trade is certainly an improvement over tribalism or whatever the default civic is, so perhaps it should instead provide minor benefits to research, culture, and espionage, while either penalizing tax income or increasing city maintenance (to model the increased number of tax collectors to deal with the logistical problems). It does seem like in the absence of an economic civic around the discovery of Currency, that something is missing.