C2C: Promotions

[Thunderbrd]

I still maintain that adding anti-Disease promotions now would be a bit unbalancing given that there are fewer disease sources than crime sources and that Healers already on their own reduce the disease in a city.

I counter with the point that this may simply mean it becomes necessary to crank up the disease source factor but we won't really know by how much until we have the promos that feel as if they are already currently missing from the game. Better to resolve the sense that it's been an oversight now and discover from this fact what needs to be done to bring us back to balance then it is to lock us down from further development so that we can keep whatever balance we currently have.

@Joe: I'm not sure how this becomes so problematic for some. I give maybe 10% of my thought in the game towards keeping these things in line and find it rather easily done. And if you start to slip a bit it doesn't mean you're a bad player, it means you had other priorities at the time you started slipping and simply have to remember to get those things back under control. Only takes a little attention now and then rather than full blown round by round monitoring unless you simply can't stand allowing a penalty where one was avoidable anywhere. But being overly attentive in that way could also mean your taking a penalty by not taking advantage of other bonuses you could've been reaching out to achieve while you were struggling with your crime/disease factors. (just a less 'felt' penalty, but possibly a worse one nevertheless)

Is it supposed to make managing the nation and its cities a bit more challenging? Yeah... of course it is! Opposition is what the human mind thrives on! We do get irate when the opposition goes beyond our ability to ever manage it but surely crime and disease factors aren't THAT far out of managability for you yet is it? I don't know... maybe later game it gets worse... I'm only seeing things up to Ancient in recent playtesting.

 

[strategyonly]

I have to ask, is it the design of the mod to keep every city under the thumb and constant attention to Crime and Disease?

When will there ever be a time that you can get some stability in either case?

It's becoming tiresome.

JosEPh

I have been thinking about this (alittle) and if you look back at History, you WILL see (almost) exactly what C2C has for crime and disease(s), ie:

Smallpox was one of the earliest diseases that spread in an epidemic as early as 10,000 BCE.
(Smallpox devastated the native population of Australia, killing around 50% of Indigenous Australians in the early years of British colonisation. It also killed many New Zealand Māori. As late as 1848–49, as many as 40,000 out of 150,000 Hawaiians are estimated to have died of measles, whooping cough and influenza. Introduced diseases, notably smallpox, nearly wiped out the native population of Easter Island. In 1875, measles killed over 40,000 Fijians, approximately one-third of the population. The disease devastated the Andamanese population. Ainu population decreased drastically in the 19th century, due in large part to infectious diseases brought by Japanese settlers pouring into Hokkaido.)

Bubonic plague first appeared in Europe in the middle 1300s and is considered one of the deadliest pandemics ever. The first wave of the Black Death is thought to have killed up to 100 million people.

Typhus is spread through lice on humans. The first epidemic of the disease occurred in the 15th century during a siege in modern day Spain. It also has been known to spread quickly in prison populations and other groups of people in squalid conditions packed tightly together. The disease is estimated to have taken 3 million lives during World War I in Russia alone.

The first influenza epidemic that spread worldwide was recorded in the early 1700s, but the most well-known pandemic of it was during and following World War I. This Spanish Flu spread rapidly around the world, partly because of soldiers carrying it with them as they returned home from the war. Scientists believe a full third of the world's population was infected between 1918 and 1920. It was nearly as cataclysmic as the Black Death, wiping out up to 100 million people, far more than were killed in battle in the war. New strains of flu appear nearly every year. In 2009, swine flu or H1N1, was declared a pandemic after its appearance first in Mexico and then throughout the world.

Plague of Athens, 430 BC (wiped out a quarter of the population over four years.)
Antonine Plague, 165–180 (wiped out up to five million)
Plague of Justinian, from 541 to 750 (wiped out 10,000 a day at its height, and perhaps 40% of the city's inhabitants)
Third Pandemic, started in China in the middle of the 19th century, spreading plague to all inhabited continents and killing 10 million people in India alone.

This is only SOME of the diseases out there??

Thing is, people FORGET about these

 

[JosEPh_II]

Incomplete testing before new releases or even new additions during a version cycle is a problem. A very big problem that continues to be done. This mod is too big and complex to just keep adding stuff in with out serious testing time.

I actually quit playing C2C last month for almost the whole month. It was, for me, getting to the point where once you get out of the Ancient Era and deep into the Classical that the tedium over the property systems (Crime, Disease, Pollution, Gold Maint Costs, etc) was getting to the point that during a play session, after 5-10 turns of play, I was looking for something else to do. These so called challenges had become distractions and detractors from the flow of the game. This in turn was and still does greatly take away from the Fun of playing.

JosEPh

 

[Thunderbrd]

So your point, SO, in a nutshell, is that if Disease is NOT a hugely powerful factor in the game... if it does NOT commonly wipe out population and make trouble, then it is NOT doing its job correctly right? Trying to keep players happy with the mod is all that seems to stand between us and achieving that I think...

 

[ls612]

Incomplete testing before new releases or even new additions during a version cycle is a problem. A very big problem that continues to be done. This mod is too big and complex to just keep adding stuff in with out serious testing time.

I actually quit playing C2C last month for almost the whole month. It was, for me, getting to the point where once you get out of the Ancient Era and deep into the Classical that the tedium over the property systems (Crime, Disease, Pollution, Gold Maint Costs, etc) was getting to the point that during a play session, after 5-10 turns of play, I was looking for something else to do. These so called challenges had become distractions and detractors from the flow of the game. This in turn was and still does greatly take away from the Fun of playing.

JosEPh

You make a good point about adding stuff. The balance in C2C can be easily pushed one way or another by seemingly small changes, which often leads to overcorrections in an attempt to compensate.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

By the way, my prefered strategy for dealing with Crime is to make all of my inner cities (non-border) have a garrison of 4 archer-type units (or gun units in the Renaissance) and 3 police-type units. Combined with the right civics you should be able to get Policing I on each of them, leading to -10 to -20 Crime per unit depending on what era you are in, so -30 to -60 total. That I've found is enough for all but the larger cities, in which I build buildings (Seal Maker is a really good one, as it gives gold and reduces crime).

Interesting, if I have more than 5-7 units in my non-border cities, I give up on the game as it is no longer fun. One archer, 1-2 guards, one healer and a spy an two defense fighters is the maximum I can stand, so when I start needing park rangers and the like I loose interest.

So your point, SO, in a nutshell, is that if Disease is NOT a hugely powerful factor in the game... if it does NOT commonly wipe out population and make trouble, then it is NOT doing its job correctly right? Trying to keep players happy with the mod is all that seems to stand between us and achieving that I think...

In one mod I played Smallpox did nearly wipe out your whole population in every city, when you first came into contact with it. It was a shock to see all your size 20 cities becoming size 4! But it turned out that it was not a game breaker and in fact added to the fun of the mod. You started playing so that you would get Smallpox as early in the game as possible as a city going from 4 to 2 population is not such a shock. Secondary outbreaks of smallpox had a muck lesser affect, about what we currently have in the event, since the population were descended from those who survived the original outbreak and had some immunity.

Edit on worker promotions as I mentioned in the bugs my workers are getting desert promotions even though there is no desert within cooee of my nation.

 

[Hydromancerx]

I have been thinking about this (alittle) and if you look back at History, you WILL see (almost) exactly what C2C has for crime and disease(s), ie:

This is only SOME of the diseases out there??

Thing is, people FORGET about these

This is why I have been holding back on the big diseases because DH and TB seem to have some great ideas on how to simulate such diseases but just have not gotten around to implementing them yet.

In one mod I played Smallpox did nearly wipe out your whole population in every city, when you first came into contact with it. It was a shock to see all your size 20 cities becoming size 4! But it turned out that it was not a game breaker and in fact added to the fun of the mod. You started playing so that you would get Smallpox as early in the game as possible as a city going from 4 to 2 population is not such a shock. Secondary outbreaks of smallpox had a muck lesser affect, about what we currently have in the event, since the population were descended from those who survived the original outbreak and had some immunity.

This is the kind of stuff I would like to see in C2C. Especially with cities gaining resistances and developing vaccines and stuff. There is just a whole other realm we could be adding that would dwarf things like crime and pollution. Especially if used in warfare.

 

[strategyonly]

This is why I have been holding back on the big diseases because DH and TB seem to have some great ideas on how to simulate such diseases but just have not gotten around to implementing them yet.

I know the feeling here, i have been waiting for stuff now for a month and a 1/2, and still waiting for stuff (hint hint) BUT again they are more busy doing more important stuff, then trying to appease me.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Really? I seem to recall I'm still trying to get those tags you wanted programmed in! lol

Thank you all for your patience. The disease mechanism is extremely important... trust that. One thing it will hinge on too is the subcombat classes being well developed out so that's a very important step at this time and hopefully we can make that happen in this cycle!

 

[ls612]

This is why I have been holding back on the big diseases because DH and TB seem to have some great ideas on how to simulate such diseases but just have not gotten around to implementing them yet.



This is the kind of stuff I would like to see in C2C. Especially with cities gaining resistances and developing vaccines and stuff. There is just a whole other realm we could be adding that would dwarf things like crime and pollution. Especially if used in warfare.

I agree with Joe when he says that Disease and Crime function too opaquely. It is often hard to figure out exactly what the next thing you do for or against any of them will mean for your city. So adding more importance to them should be a secondary priority IMO.

 

[Thunderbrd]

The one thing I find I agree with on that sentiment ls612, is the trade diffusion. It seems there should be some way to include that in the display, perhaps on the trade routes? (Though that's a pretty full panel that's overloaded already...) I dunno... just would be nice to be able to see somewhere what change that will bring during the round change.

 

[ls612]

The one thing I find I agree with on that sentiment ls612, is the trade diffusion. It seems there should be some way to include that in the display, perhaps on the trade routes? (Though that's a pretty full panel that's overloaded already...) I dunno... just would be nice to be able to see somewhere what change that will bring during the round change.

I asked AIAndy in another thread if the underlying property modifiers could be easily displayed in the hover text for cities, that would be quite useful.

 

[Hydromancerx]

@Thunderbrd

Here is an icon/button for an Alien Combat Class. Please add a new Alien Combat Class using this icon/button.

Thank!

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I thought there were not going to be aliens in the mod.

 

[Hydromancerx]

I thought there were not going to be aliens in the mod.

They are for your Tripods in the War of the Worlds event and possibly a late game event.

 

[ls612]

I thought there were not going to be aliens in the mod.

I thought so too. I'd be highly against having Aliens in C2C, humans can do enough damage to themselves without having green men helping out.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Like my proposed implementation of Smallpox the "War of the Worlds" event is intended to look like a game breaker - "it's the end of the world as we know it" but is actually good in the long run because of the "as we know it". In the case of the Tripods while the event is disastrous it is just a special tech diffusion method allowing those nations who are far behind to catch up a bit.

Neither of these are anywhere near ready for discussion yet and they probably belong in the "Bad_Stuff_Happens" mod anyway.

Btw anyone know if a barbarian unit has hidden nationality can it ignore the Great Wall? If it does then we can put back in a whole lot of stuff that we had to take out because the Great Wall meant that player was immune to them. Slave and Serf revolts and the like.

 

[Hydromancerx]

I thought we were going to have 3 different alien events.

1. War of the World By H. G. Wells - Tripods and Red Weed take over the planet for a few turns and then die off. The survivors are rewarded.

2. Andromeda Strain By Michael Crichton - An alien microbe infects the population.

3. The Qu By Nemo Ramjet - Galactic nomads which are powerful god-like race encountered at the edge of the Galaxy. They would be spawned on the Galactic map near the end of the tech tree. Defeating them before they defeat you (or you build a multiverse ship to escape them). This is an end game challenge to keep things interesting.

Note that all of these are non-playable and 1 and 3 would be barbarian units. 2 is more like an exotic disease.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I forgot that I had stuff for the Andromeda Strain. That is not your usual alien as it could just be a super virus.

 

[Thunderbrd]

@Thunderbrd

Here is an icon/button for an Alien Combat Class. Please add a new Alien Combat Class using this icon/button.

Thank!

Got it. Will add it whether it sees use or not. But I can't do anything overnight right now as this project I'm locked into is like peeling into an onion one layer at a time and I can't say how long it will take me to make sure all is good. I may be discovering pre-existing bugs along with debugging my own stuff here too. Anyhow... rather extensive stuff I'm stuck in.