C2C Observations

[Bobisback]

First off thanks for all the hard work everyone has put into this mod! It is alot of fun.

I wanted to point out a couple of things that make this mod less enjoyable and see if anyone has any suggestions on how to mitigate the effects or maybe a way to work around them. The following observations are based off of my experience with v36 of the mod. I have only played one game so far and I have not finished this game yet. The following settings are on the current game.

Immortal Difficulty (Started at Monarch with Flex Difficulty)
C2C Perfect Mongoose v310
Huge map
Prehistoric Start
Marathon Game Speed
Turn 900 or so, Mid to Late Middle Ages.

Animals
Animals are great.... for the ancient/prehistoric age. In the beginning I loved the game of hunting for food, wonder, culture, production, and science. it turned the normally very boring beginning of Civ4 into something more. I think this should not change for the start of the game.

However, it is now 900 turns into my game. About mid Medieval Era, and there is an over abundance of Animals at this point. My first question is do the animals go away at a certain point? Below are some issues I am having with them. Any suggestions as to how you guys deal with this stuff would be great.
1. I Waste a ton of time during turns having to decide what to do with the subdued Animals in late game. I usually get about 10 a turn right now. This is from them attacking me. I am not actively attacking any Animals. Is there any way to automate the tales and subdued Animals?
2. I cannot tell any ships/units to go anywhere. I used to be able to tell units to sail across the world. Now they get one turn and ask for orders again. This is probably the most frustrating thing. Any ideas how this can be solved?
3. Related to the above. I tell a strength 15 ship to go 3 squares to the right and it re-paths around the world. Turns out there was a .3 strength tuna next to it blocking the path. So it had to go around, really? hahaha.
4. With so many Animals could this be slowing the mid to late game down? I mean the sea literally has millions of them haha. Not to mention the pathing issues the ai might have with them.

Like I said I would rather not turn them off as I like the start with them. It adds alot of flavor. However, towards the mid to late game they become very tedious and annoying. If there is no solution I may be forced to just turn them off. In my current game I have already set the spawn rates of all the Animals to 0 for both sea and land Animals. Is there any way to just mass delete them all?

Gold
Gold in this game seems to be a bit abundant. Gone are the days of old where I had to adjust the tax rate to compensate for lack of gold and/or economic troubles. In fact the entire 900 or so turns I have played I have never once changed it from 0% tax rate. (Aka it has mostly been on 100% science, untell I got espionage then I had a 90/10 split.) I do not consider myself a very good civ player but I have managed to not only keep tax rate at 0% but still make a sizable income. Since my second city it has gone from 200 a turn up to 4k a turn now. I have half a million sitting in the bank atm hahahaha. Not sure what I will ever do with all that gold. I never have to rush buy anything as all of my cities are built up to build everything in one turn. (Just realized you can rush buy wonders, just found a use for it. But even a 3000 shield wonder only costs 28k?? Drop in the bucket) And compared to what I am making upgrading is nothing as well. So not really sure why there is so much gold in this game. Any ideas from others?

Couple more things, this kinda makes building choices easier as I could care less if it costs gold. i have so much of it. So I basically just build everything. Second this really makes trade missions somewhat useless. I just did one all the way across the map and it netted me 400 gold... hahaha

As a little experiment I put my game on auto play for 100 turns. When I came back my civ had 1m in the bank and was making 17k a turn And that was only late middle ages. I cannot imagine what Industrial/modern era will be.... is this common in c2c to have so much gold? I only have 18 cities haha. Now I realize that in the beginning of the games you will build up some gold mainly because lack of uses for it but this seems a bit excessive.

Buildings
So there are alot of buildings, and even though I do not like so many buildings I am not going to focus this discussion on that. What I would like to focus on is how do we manage so many buildings when the buildings keep changing constantly. How can I control what my cities build and don't build in a streamlined fashion. The city screen is just flat painful with so many buildings. Now I know we have the save the queue thing butt this only helps so much. Anyone thought about building a queue manager mod? I was thinking about making one but I have never done much civ4 modding. Though I do program for a living so if someone points me in the right direction I may make that happen. What are some other strategies that people employ to help with this major task?

Maybe the buildings in the city screen could be filtered based on what they produce? Is this even possible? it would be further used if it filtered based on cost second. Aka The things that are cheap that give production are first followed by the more expensive production buildings. It would be useful to me since I build building based on what hte cities needs. Aka crime reduction, food, production, gold, etc.

Those are the 3 major things that I believe are causing the most headache is this excellent mod. Please do not take this comments the wrong way, but I hope we can come to some resolution on this subjects as they are quite frustrating when trying to complete a 1000 hour game

Thanks for reading,
Bob

 

[strategyonly]

Are u playing on v36, or v36 SVN?

 

[Harrier]

Buildings
Anyone thought about building a queue manager mod?

There is one already. Access it at the top left of the screen. I do not use it, but I think there is a bug option you have to check first. Click on the green insect face (top left) - to enter bug.

Maybe the buildings in the city screen could be filtered based on what they produce?

Already exists in the city screen. They are those small icons just above the build options.

As for animals, there has been a major change since Ver. 36. So we need to know if you are playing the SVN version or not.

 

[Bobisback]

Oct 23 2015 ModDB V36. Did not know about the SVN until I started the game. Otherwise I would have checked that out instead.

btw when do you guys plan to do another release?

 

[Bobisback]

There is one already. Access it at the top left of the screen. I do not use it, but I think there is a bug option you have to check first. Click on the green insect face (top left) - to enter bug.

I looked for a bug option for a mod manager. I also googled it. The only thing i found was this thread that mentions the thought of building one here. I have seen some other threads here and there about build queues as well. Some were very helpful. In fact just spotted a new one will check it out shortly. I will take a look again for an option like this. Maybe it is in the SVN version? Any other clues as to what it is called or what tab it is under?

Already exists in the city screen. They are those small icons just above the build options.

I looked at those small icons some time ago they only filter based on type of unit and from what I saw they have nothing to do with buildings?

I am looking at it now here are the options:
Show only land units
Show only water units
Show only air units
Show only worker units
Show only civilian units
Show only siege units
Show only mounted units
Show only hero units
Show only military units
Show only missionary units

Please let me know if I am missing something.

As for animals, there has been a major change since Ver. 36. So we need to know if you are playing the SVN version or not.

Oh boy, what change did you guys make ?

Thanks for the reply.
Bob

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Oct 23 2015 ModDB V36. Did not know about the SVN until I started the game. Otherwise I would have checked that out instead.

btw when do you guys plan to do another release?

Normally we would say "move to the SVN" now as it is save game compatible but just this once we are breaking this and getting rid of a number of things that have been kept only to keep the save game compatibility.

We are in the middle of a huge set of changes at the moment. I would not expect a release soon.

I agree with some of your points about animals and some things have changed on the SVN. Subdued animals are used for more things than just the myths which makes it difficult to automate them.

As to gold this seems to be a personal game play style thing. I find gold difficult to accumulate before the late Middle Ages and that is on Noble difficulty.

 

[Bobisback]

Normally we would say "move to the SVN" now as it is save game compatible but just this once we are breaking this and getting rid of a number of things that have been kept only to keep the save game compatibility.

We are in the middle of a huge set of changes at the moment. I would not expect a release soon.

Ya I saw that the save games break otherwise I would have updated already.

As to gold this seems to be a personal game play style thing. I find gold difficult to accumulate before the late Middle Ages and that is on Noble difficulty.

Ya I may have gotten a ridiculously lucky start. But the thing that scares me the most about it is a wonder of the world richest civ showed up some time ago and I was 5th on the list Granted I only had 250k in the bank but still hahaha. I am literally rush buying every wonder that I can since I posted this and I still have 460k in the bank haha.

 

[strategyonly]

Ya I may have gotten a ridiculously lucky start. But the thing that scares me the most about it is a wonder of the world richest civ showed up some time ago and I was 5th on the list Granted I only had 250k in the bank but still hahaha. I am literally rush buying every wonder that I can since I posted this and I still have 460k in the bank haha.

Yeah, Gold standard has been reduced dramatically by TB and now is (i believe) on an algorithm.

The animals have their OWN civ related now (passive' \ 'aggressive, etc), u can check them out someplace in the C2C threads, i believe its listed someplace in this one? http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=559751

 

[Harrier]

When in the city screen - to the right of the unit build options (after the scroll bar) there are three buttons. The first is for units (already displaying), the second for buildings and third for wonders. Click on the second button and the filter options change.

As for the build queue manager - it is a hammer icon at the top left of the map screen. Never used it so can not say how it works.

 

[Bobisback]

When in the city screen - to the right of the unit build options (after the scroll bar) there are three buttons. The first is for units (already displaying), the second for buildings and third for wonders. Click on the second button and the filter options change.

As for the build queue manager - it is a hammer icon at the top left of the map screen. Never used it so can not say how it works.

Hell ya!!

That is just what I was looking for. You are a gentlemen and a scholar. Thanks.

The animals have their OWN civ related now (passive' \ 'aggressive, etc), u can check them out someplace in the C2C threads, i believe its listed someplace in this one? http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=559751

Oh ya I remember reading that when scanning the v36 changes for the svn. Thanks for the link.

 

[Bobisback]

Well just lost this game to a crash on turn 952. So I will be starting a new one game. I guess I will grab the latest SVN for my new one haha.

 

[ijffdrie]

There's always autosaves in case of a crash.



The queue manager is kinda awful though. It rebuilds the icon list every time you add anything to your list, meaning it takes ages to get anything done. And then, if you select the list you made in the city, it will only build the first thing on the list it doesn't have. And you can't queue queues, so you can't make a queue list of queue lists.

 

[Bobisback]

There's always autosaves in case of a crash.

Ya it happens 100% of the time on the same save. I was told to update as there is no point in trying to fix it. Since the new version breaks saves pretty much sums this game up to a loss.

Edit: Updating to rev 9098 Seemed to fix it. Yay

The queue manager is kinda awful though. It rebuilds the icon list every time you add anything to your list, meaning it takes ages to get anything done. And then, if you select the list you made in the city, it will only build the first thing on the list it doesn't have. And you can't queue queues, so you can't make a queue list of queue lists.

Ya then this does not do what I thought. I thought it would tie directly in with the saved queues you already have.

 

[strijder20]

Hi there,

I've played some turns with your mod (up to late ancient), and this is what I experienced:

I swapped between Emperor and Deity using the Bug difficulty swapper.
I was playing a Huge Terra map, prehistoric start, Marathon
I also played the GEM 5 civs on Marathon, prehistoric as Egypt
V36 ModDB

Animals really need automation​

As OP already stated, it gets really tiresome by late-game (and by this I mean late-prehistoric ). I had five hunters with woody 3 and hunter 3 running around, and some turns I got up to 30 subdued animals in my cities. While you can just mass-select and butcher them with two clicks, it becomes tiresome to do even that if it repeats every turn.

I see the SVN version is toned down, but even then automation would be handy.

Just make animals auto-butcher themselves, if possible - players usually know by which point the small risk of losing out of a myth is worth taking if it increases playability.

Holy city guacamole​

I'm rather surprised that with Divine Prophets on, I can just found all religions in the same city and rack in insane prophets. Yes, it's just an option, but a seemingly popular one, and you'd expect there would be a major revolution problem if you did so.

AI unit build priorities​

The AI having the same power ratio as you suddenly means a lot less when you see they have a stack of 100 City Watchmen (the 5 str. policing unit) running around, which is going to do squat in terms of offenses.

Turn Denmark into Afghanistan in a few turns' time​

Building a 20-stack of Bandit Riders (which can be easily upgraded into flanking 3 to make them n(e)igh-immortal too) and riding them into a city spawns the 'Sectarian Violence' crime after reaching 650 crime level, which gives inane maluses and instability bonus. Poof, the city goes into revolt for the next fifty- or so turns. While this was just hilarious to pull off, it seems a little bit too overpowered since 4000 marathon hammers isn't that much in this mod. The AI also seems not to attack my riders once in the city.

I'm of course not fully aware of later policing options, but against AI which ain't technologically superior this was awfully effective as a peace-time war operation.

Super-slave cities​

Once you get a 'no-'-modifier, which can be obtained relatively early by using either the Divine Cult-civic or the Ark of the Covenant, there is no real downset to mass-settling Military Captives into your city (choosing either production or commerce). Sure, you'll rack up crime, unhealthiness and disease, but the first can be bought off with large stacks of policing units and the other two can be safely ignored for a long time.

Slave captives produce +4 or 4 per slave if you use the specialised slaves; this can easily lead to a runaway effect as more hammers means you can build more units to go slave-hunting with.

All in all, very enjoyable if slightly cluttered mod.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Animals really need automation​

As OP already stated, it gets really tiresome by late-game (and by this I mean late-prehistoric ). I had five hunters with woody 3 and hunter 3 running around, and some turns I got up to 30 subdued animals in my cities. While you can just mass-select and butcher them with two clicks, it becomes tiresome to do even that if it repeats every turn.

I see the SVN version is toned down, but even then automation would be handy.

Just make animals auto-butcher themselves, if possible - players usually know by which point the small risk of losing out of a myth is worth taking if it increases playability.

Since on the SVN version you can no longer butcher animals I would suggest a new status promotion for the hunters "hunt to subdue" or "hunt to kill" which can be turned on or off by the player as they need. If we assume "hunt to subdue" is the normal state then I could add a status promotion of "hunt to kill" which has no effect on the chance to kill but only the chance to subdue. Status promotions are actions the player can choose, usually it takes a turn to have an effect.

Of course, with the SVN version, doing this would mean loosing the chance of settling the herd animals as resources on a selected plot inside your nation. The chance of success and where you can place them increases with tech. It is experimental at the moment and may prove to be too OP to stay in.

 

[Bobisback]

Since on the SVN version you can no longer butcher animals I would suggest a new status promotion for the hunters "hunt to subdue" or "hunt to kill" which can be turned on or off by the player as they need. If we assume "hunt to subdue" is the normal state then I could add a status promotion of "hunt to kill" which has no effect on the chance to kill but only the chance to subdue. Status promotions are actions the player can choose, usually it takes a turn to have an effect.

This would be very useful. You may not get the best outcome for the situation, but a least it does not require alot of micromanagement. I vote for this

 

[Thunderbrd]

Since on the SVN version you can no longer butcher animals I would suggest a new status promotion for the hunters "hunt to subdue" or "hunt to kill" which can be turned on or off by the player as they need. If we assume "hunt to subdue" is the normal state then I could add a status promotion of "hunt to kill" which has no effect on the chance to kill but only the chance to subdue. Status promotions are actions the player can choose, usually it takes a turn to have an effect.

Of course, with the SVN version, doing this would mean loosing the chance of settling the herd animals as resources on a selected plot inside your nation. The chance of success and where you can place them increases with tech. It is experimental at the moment and may prove to be too OP to stay in.

If you can pull this off I've always thought it would be cool to be able to set hunters to subdue or kill. I'm not sure what our limitations would be with the missions and promotion interactions.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I can only turn of the subdue part of the current system. Basically the status promotion would give a -200% chance to subdue.

The way the current system works is that combat happens and if you kill the unit then and only then is a test done to see if you subdue it.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Makes sense. So are you saying you'd either be looking to subdue OR get food out of the kill? What would be the point of not wanting to subdue if you get the same amount of food either way?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Makes sense. So are you saying you'd either be looking to subdue OR get food out of the kill? What would be the point of not wanting to subdue if you get the same amount of food either way?

Already the kill gives the food no matter if you subdue or not. Subdue is extra as is the other possibility of placing the resource on the plot.

Remember in is not the animal you fought with that you are subduing but some of the young that were with that animal.

edit The only thing stopping me is a button.