Caveman 2 Cosmos (ideas/discussions thread)

[Somebody613]

Yes. Yes. Probably.
Do you mean to say that it should still work?

I'm not on the modder team, lol.
But it's not entirely "wrong" that an economic deal perseveres even after one of the sides is unable to fulfil the obligation it signed upon (for the duration of the predefined deal period).
This SHOULD lead to penalties, obviously, which I dunno whether the game is capable of doing (or it's still simply a bug game-wise).
I'm just saying that the happenstance itself COULD be viewed as not-exactly-a-bug, since such stuff can happen in real life as well.
Now, game-wise - I have no clue, lol.

 

[strategyonly]

dont know if any of these would help C2C or not . .


improvements and buildings ..
​

 

[Thunderbrd]

@team from my playtest notes:
One thing I noticed that perhaps we should seek to tweak - There are still a lot of buildings there in early to mid prehistoric to drag us out of the default unhealth that we used to start with in the prehistoric, but they are useless to build in most cases now because we no longer HAVE default unhealth in the prehistoric so much. On one hand, I feel it's a little inaccurate NOT to have such a starting health deficit, since natural living is free and great but horrifically dangerous on so many levels (and remember unhealth MEANS mortality rate now that disease means sickness and pollution means environmental poisoning).

That said, I also agree with Joseph that it seems kinda rough to start with so much unhealth that for a long time additional food collection investments are useless - that I'm seeing he's right is sorta bad design as well.

But what can we do to get these 'health' providing buildings back to being valuable then? Should we turn the amount of food to grow up and swap out some of these 'health' bonuses from buildings like wet nurses over to reductions in how much food is required to grow instead? I think a little more unhealth to overcome is helpful but maybe it should be sourced as a side effect of something else somehow... any proposals there?

Anyhow, something for us to consider as we move forward I think.

 

[Maltazard]

Something I've been thinking about a lot about buildings balancing... is there a spreadsheet with all buildings and their respective properties, those being health, happiness, and C2C properties, where you can figure out what's the net balance for each one at the end of every era?
I realize this sounds like a titanic endeavour to put together by hand, but I imagine there must be a way to automate this to some extent, or at least to extract the information from the XML files in an already presentable fashion.
I think it would be a great tool to tune and balance buildings across eras and avoid huge surpluses/maluses of properties at particular points in the game.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Something I've been thinking about a lot about buildings balancing... is there a spreadsheet with all buildings and their respective properties, those being health, happiness, and C2C properties, where you can figure out what's the net balance for each one at the end of every era?
I realize this sounds like a titanic endeavour to put together by hand, but I imagine there must be a way to automate this to some extent, or at least to extract the information from the XML files in an already presentable fashion.
I think it would be a great tool to tune and balance buildings across eras and avoid huge surpluses/maluses of properties at particular points in the game.

This hasn't been updated in a long time but it was how we started with recosting and it was intended to eventually get us to what you're talking about. When I was putting this together my thinking was to look at the upgrade chains and do a lot of what raxo has done this round so kudos to him there and maybe we can automate the generation of a similar sheet - flabbert on the discord server is pretty good at that stuff. There are some building scaling economic tags I want to create still that I think would help a lot for the game as a whole and we've had discussions about resource generation->consumption systems that we can use for a system of partially volumetric resources. All that would play nicely into equipment of course.

 

[MattCA]

There are some building scaling economic tags I want to create still that I think would help a lot for the game as a whole

What tags you want?

When I was putting this together my thinking was to look at the upgrade chains and do a lot of what raxo has done this round so kudos to him there and maybe we can automate the generation of a similar sheet - flabbert on the discord server is pretty good at that stuff.

I think you're talking about when raxo wrote some python code to determine/find all the appropriate xml changes that needed to be made.
He could do something similar to filter buildings by era and add up certain tag values.

 

[Thunderbrd]

What tags you want?

I want tags that allow us to say +/- OR +%/-%, yield or commerce amount in decimal terms (thus 1 in the XML = .01), PER population in the city, for EACH of the following bonuses you have access to.

I also want tags that say, if you have access to this bonus, you are USING up an amount per population of that bonus in equally decimalized terms and it should tally on the national level so if I say 'Consumes 2 Wheat', What I'm saying in game terms is, Consumes .02 of a Wheat resource per population in this city, added to all the other partial consumption amounts in every other city and if it's over an actual full integer amount, your nation actually has 1 less to trade and for other purposes like corporations.

I think you're talking about when raxo wrote some python code to determine/find all the appropriate xml changes that needed to be made.
He could do something similar to filter buildings by era and add up certain tag values.

Yeah, in part. Also referring to some scripting flabbert did to help me with resource access points. But yes, raxo did a great job with getting the building chains to start linking in a much more organized fashion.

 

[raxo2222]

@Toffer90 should barbarians be able to build workboats?

 

[Thunderbrd]

Something I've been thinking about a lot about buildings balancing... is there a spreadsheet with all buildings and their respective properties, those being health, happiness, and C2C properties, where you can figure out what's the net balance for each one at the end of every era?
I realize this sounds like a titanic endeavour to put together by hand, but I imagine there must be a way to automate this to some extent, or at least to extract the information from the XML files in an already presentable fashion.
I think it would be a great tool to tune and balance buildings across eras and avoid huge surpluses/maluses of properties at particular points in the game.

Hey sorry I forgot to share the link to the document I was referring to in my last reply comment on this: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1blJHi8tOxd51JomARwPWBo3PyfOEOyeI0xDjvv-J75c/edit#gid=0

 

[Toffer90]

@Toffer90 should barbarians be able to build workboats?

Maybe not, or if so then they should have a simplified code for when a city can order their construction.
I might look into it at some point.

 

[Divizor]

Good afternoon. Please tell me how the number of population units in cities in fashion correlates with the actual population?

 

[Thunderbrd]

Good afternoon. Please tell me how the number of population units in cities in fashion correlates with the actual population?

We haven't actually mapped that out to RL equivalent numbers yet and old original attempts to do so are probably inaccurate. What we can say is that the higher the number, the more people each population point means.

 

[strategyonly]

i dont like the astronomical signs the way they r currently set up, 2 many almost the same, lets have someone change them to each its own separate design, as is the signs themselves??

 

[Thunderbrd]

i dont like the astronomical signs the way they r currently set up, 2 many almost the same, lets have someone change them to each its own separate design, as is the signs themselves??

They are not supposed to be replacing the ones you guys did - this is purely a matter of planetary influences. Whisperr set this up - I don't want to crush her spirit on this. It's pretty well based on the planetary influence research - particularly from what was known and believed about the planets in that era.

I've been noticing the original promos don't seem to come up much - has that been disabled somehow?

 

[Thunderbrd]

having a brain fart again>>>> what do i have to have checked for a "nation/city" to start/evolve from scratch even if i am in the ancient/class era etc???

Do you mean Barbarian Civs?

 

[strategyonly]

Whisperr set this up - I don't want to crush her spirit on this. It's pretty well based on the planetary influence research - particularly from what was known and believed about the planets in that era.

I've been noticing the original promos don't seem to come up much - has that been disabled somehow?

Just dont like the Doubleness of them is all, should each one be different?? especially the "gemini one, should be "double ,,


the original promo's havent been here for about 5 years now, ever since u added those new ones along time ago . .

 

[raxo2222]

Just dont like the Doubleness of them is all, should each one be different?? especially the "gemini one, should be "double ,,


the original havent been here for about 5 years now, ever since u added those new ones along time ago . .

Astrological Signs (python one) might require events to be active.

 

[Toffer90]

Astrological Signs (python one) might require events to be active.

It is always active, though starsigns do obsolete at satellites tech, i.e. the python code stops handing them out if you have the tech.

    def onUnitCreated(self, argsList): # Enabled in PythonCallbackDefines.xml (USE_ON_UNIT_CREATED_CALLBACK = True)
        CyUnit, = argsList

        # Star Signs
        if not CyUnit.isHasUnitCombat(self.UNITCOMBAT_CIVILIAN) and not GAME.getSorenRandNum(49, "Seventh son of seventh son"):

            CyTeam = GC.getTeam(CyUnit.getTeam())
            bLand = CyUnit.getDomainType() == self.mapDomain['DOMAIN_LAND']
            if not CyTeam.isHasTech(self.TECH_SATELLITES) and CyTeam.isHasTech(self.TECH_STARGAZING) \
            and (not bLand or not CyTeam.isHasTech(self.TECH_REALISM)) \
            and (CyTeam.isHasTech(self.TECH_ASTROLOGY) or GAME.getSorenRandNum(2, "1/2 probability before Astrology")) \
            and (not CyTeam.isHasTech(self.TECH_ASTRONOMY) or GAME.getSorenRandNum(4, "3/4 probability after Astronomy")):
                import StarSigns
                StarSigns.give(GC, TRNSLTR, GAME, CyUnit, CyUnit.getOwner(), bLand)

 

[Thunderbrd]

Just dont like the Doubleness of them is all, should each one be different?? especially the "gemini one, should be "double ,,

Each sign is not completely overlapped by another, each does its own little thing - but each sign gives to the units of the nation a promotion that comes from that sign's planetary influence, and especially in this earlier era, there are fewer planets to influence than there were signs, so there are those that share which promos are being given out based on this planetary influence.

We did think, not only would that be an interesting way to teach a little astrology - so that it shows this fact of planet influences being shared by some signs, point blank, but if you lose out on one sign that gives a particular planetary influence, being as you can only get one of the 12, you may well still be able to get the same planetary influence you were looking for if its shared with another sign that's still available to take.

Your set was based on a direct astrological influence on a unit, with each sign getting its own promotion. The difference with these coming from the limited era group wonder that creates a trait that gives a free promo - the wonder and ensuing civilization trait you get from it is the sign under which the entire society exists, and the promotions, to differentiate from the ones you and DH (and yeah I helped with the tags) created, are representing the planet influences those signs have rather than the direct influence on the unit from the sign that particular unit was strongly aligned with individually.

It's a difference in intention in the promotion that we were hoping would come across as a compatible way to share that overall cultural and planet influence with the influences on the unit directly if they got their own specific sign based promotion as they may have been given as it stood previously.

Do you get what I'm trying to say here?

 

[Maltazard]

In line with the idea of a comparison tool for buildings, I've come to think such a tool would also be great for civics and overall as a balancing tool that should allow mathematical precision to ensure that decisions matter more. For instance, by assessing the current excess of gold in an ideal situation it would be possible to tone it down more accurately, so as to not have millions of excess gold piling up.

So essentially this would be... A civ 4 simulation tool to import current values, make adjustments in the matrix, and fix the game balance on the fly.

I reckon it can surely be made in some programming language, but is also doable in excel, if one's willing to accept the sterile UI and whatnot. The game is, after all, a bunch of math operations.

So let's say one wanted to make a stub of such a concept - maybe with civics, for fast comparison.

Can I just find an XML file to read from, since the game is so finicky when it comes to running windowed? Should one use Excel or a license free tool like Google sheets or an open source tool like libre office, so that the highest number of people can work on it in case it turns out to be a good tool?

I know this exists btw, but it doesn't list properties and bonuses etc.
Also, there's far less civics than buildings, so it'd be an easier starting point, though I know Joseph's working on civs so maybe he's got something like this already?