Caveman 2 Cosmos (ideas/discussions thread)

[Arakhor]

I tend to agree with Joseph, here.

 

[alberts8]

It's that simple 10 times more techs should be 10 times more turns. If that is too much then there are too manny techs. The prehistoric era alone has more techs as BTS so playing that era should take at least the same number of turns as BTS. The normal gamespeed in C2C is way off it is like playing BTS in under 100 turns i can't see how that should be the normal way to play.

 

[JosEPh_II]

It's that simple 10 times more techs should be 10 times more turns. If that is too much then there are too manny techs. The prehistoric era alone has more techs as BTS so playing that era should take at least the same number of turns as BTS. The normal gamespeed in C2C is way off it is like playing BTS in under 100 turns i can't see how that should be the normal way to play.

Normal in C2C is 1001 turns, 3 times the turns of BtS Blitz. Which is what C2C normal correlates to. But I have to ask have you tried to played a game of C2C on it's Normal (1001 turns)?

My current test game is at 1533AD in the Ren Era on Normal gamespeed and I have completed 370 turns of the 1001. Researching (at 60% slider) Dueling which will take 8 turns at that rate. The pacing is good and I've had plenty of time to use my units. In fact I'm trying hard to keep up so I don't fall behind in getting newer better units as I'm at war with 2 AI.

Save game attached if you care to check it out. Test game does have Crime modmod installed in My_Mods in the Modules file.

But back to your premise, I have to respectfully disagree.

JosEPh

 

[Lottanubs]

Help! Playing with an SVN version and I turned on Automatic Production and now my citizens are whipping themselves to death. I don't want to micromanage every city but I can't have my capital decimating themselves down from 14 pop to 8 pop every time they can.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

It's that simple 10 times more techs should be 10 times more turns.

Why? I don't see the connection between techs and turns. The cost in beakers per tech increases with turns in normal BtS and C2C but they don't increase by the same rate.

The prehistoric era alone has more techs as BTS so playing that era should take at least the same number of turns as BTS. The normal gamespeed in C2C is way off it is like playing BTS in under 100 turns i can't see how that should be the normal way to play.

If you are aiming for this 10 times the turns for 10 times the techs as a goal on normal I am almost all for it.

However it should be more on an era basis. If the Ancient era has x techs and takes y turns in BtS and a techs in b turns in C2C, then b=ya/x.

The Prehistoric Transhuman and Galactic era number of turns should be based on the number of turn progression between the eras in BtS. IIRC that means that the Prehistoric should take less turns than the Ancient.

The number of turns by tech is based on the beaker cost of the tech and the expected research rate of the nation which is based on traits, number of cities, buildings and specialists.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I gotta say... the number of turns is a little irrelevant. I mean, it CAN mean the end of the game on some settings. But if you're getting your average civilization generally getting through the eras at about the point that historically it would've taken place and a reasonable future curve to meet this progression then you'll have the # of turns accurate.

I tend to lean towards Alberts2 and DH on this matter. Let's not get overwhelmed by the amount of turns... it's fun to play a long and epic game as long as it can stay epic the whole way... that's the real challenge.

EDIT: Let me just add that I feel that the game is progressing through the eras about as accurate to history as possible from Prehistoric to Ancient at least. I'm forseeing a good solid case to say the same for moving into the Classical Era coming up here in testing. So I feel, at the moment, like we've done this quite right so far.

 

[MacCoise]

Well, I, for one, am enjoying a brilliant game half way through Ancient era and everything working perfectly- great fun.

Eternity Speed, Huge map. Great work.

Reached a point at the beginning at Ancient where my economy dived but a couple of cities on Wealth and I got through it. 8 cities now and leading in my continent by 5 points only.

Wiped out (more or less)- one civ easily enough with mammoths. Their defence was disappointing but hey mammoths !

 

[JosEPh_II]

I gotta say... the number of turns is a little irrelevant. I mean, it CAN mean the end of the game on some settings. But if you're getting your average civilization generally getting through the eras at about the point that historically it would've taken place and a reasonable future curve to meet this progression then you'll have the # of turns accurate.

I tend to lean towards Alberts2 and DH on this matter. Let's not get overwhelmed by the amount of turns... it's fun to play a long and epic game as long as it can stay epic the whole way... that's the real challenge.

EDIT: Let me just add that I feel that the game is progressing through the eras about as accurate to history as possible from Prehistoric to Ancient at least. I'm forseeing a good solid case to say the same for moving into the Classical Era coming up here in testing. So I feel, at the moment, like we've done this quite right so far.

What??? How can you agree with both alberts2 and DH when they have opposing views. DH is similar to mine, just worded differently and direct to alberts2.

Number of turns irrelevant? I don't think so.

Let's not get overwhelmed by the amount of turns... it's fun to play a long and epic game as long as it can stay epic the whole way... that's the real challenge.

And there is not one shred of evidence that an Eternity game can do this for 14K turns, absolutely None.

It can be for maybe 6000/7000 turns. Talin's game is our only recorded evidence of a game making it to ~ that amount of turns and I would dare say it's at a stage were the challenge is not in the gameplay but just how long the game itself can be played. He could've won his game a 1000 turns earlier but chose to be a peacemaker just to see how long and how far he can make it in that game.

And don't get me wrong that is a Valid choice. But the mod by the design of the modding team and it's players trend towards a war monger game (because of the focus placed on AI aggressiveness in making war) vs a builder or space race game.

I will stand by my post that 14k turns is not a valid number for any method of play for C2C. Thereby making Eternity gamespeed irrelevant when jusr re-naming Eon (with it's current settings)to Eternity and removing All of Eternity's former settings. And I seriously doubt that a 9000+ turn game will ever materialize even with this change.

JosEPh

 

[Arakhor]

I have to agree with Joseph that I don't think that there's any real difference between the two timescales (other than a bit of propaganda).

 

[Toffer90]

Number of turns irrelevant? I don't think so. And there is not one shred of evidence that an Eternity game can do this for 14K turns, absolutely None.

I personally enjoy the game the most when there is about 15-50 turns per tech and I hate games where there are 2-3 techs per turn as in the fastest setting. Others may have other preferences and the mod should cater to the most normal preferences.

By normal I mean that if someone would prefer a 100 000 turn game with an average of 133 turns per tech they should make a modmod because very few would like this setup.

PS - For me the fastest speed is only there for debugging (test-game) purposes.

Edit: I'm not saying 14000 turns for the longest game speed is the way to go though; in my civic modmod I adjusted it to 10000 turns for an easy to scale range of gamespeed options.

 

[JosEPh_II]

<snip>

PS - For me the fastest speed is only there for debugging (test-game) purposes.

Edit: I'm not saying 14000 turns for the longest game speed is the way to go though; in my civic modmod I adjusted it to 10000 turns for an easy to scale range of gamespeed options.

This! ^^^

I'm not asking or arguing that ppl should only play the fastest speeds (heaven forbid! I support choice, Reasonable Choice that is.), but as what Toffer has done for his modmod is what needs to be done for C2C Main.

Edit: Even on Normal you don't get 2-3 Techs per turn unless you are way way behind the tech leaders. 700 tech vs 1000 turns and No Guarantee that you will Ever research Every tech in the game. (Capitals for emphasis because it's True!)

JosEPh

 

[Yudishtira]

Getting to the end of the turns is just so irrelevant. Who has got to the end of the turns on any gamespeed?

Some people - perhaps most - never get to the Industrial era, and very few get to Modern. Some people don't want to.

Evidently some people want to play the first era or two really really slowly. It doesn't matter to them that they will never get to industrial, because they don't want to.

So let them!

It's simply false that there are balance issues etc due to "kowtowing" to Eternity players. I wholeheartedly agree that Eternity players should be aware that it is not the modders' responsibility to fix the consequences of their choice of gamespeed (and they are).

 

[alberts8]

Edit: Even on Normal you don't get 2-3 Techs per turn unless you are way way behind the tech leaders. 700 tech vs 1000 turns and No Guarantee that you will Ever research Every tech in the game. (Capitals for emphasis because it's True!)

JosEPh

You start to see one problem but from another direction as i did.

Those gamespeeds where balanced years ago but alot happened since then. Lots of techs where added and each of them unlooks lots of new stuff. But without adjusting the gamespeeds it became a huge mess. You simply run out of turns.

This could be fixed by more turns or getting techs faster. For me more turns make more sense try playing BTS or K-Mod and compare that with the Normal gamespeed in C2C.

 

[JosEPh_II]

@alberts2,
I just updated my test game to the latest SVN, was using the version before you made the "date" changes. My game was at 1533AD but after doing a Re-Calc it reverted back to 1075AD. Researching Metallurgy at 1100AD in the Ren era.

JosEPh

 

[Thunderbrd]

What??? How can you agree with both alberts2 and DH when they have opposing views. DH is similar to mine, just worded differently and direct to alberts2.

He seemed to be in agreement for the most part:

If you are aiming for this 10 times the turns for 10 times the techs as a goal on normal I am almost all for it.

Number of turns irrelevant? I don't think so.

Meh... I could care less how many turns the game is 'supposed' to take. It really boils down to how long it takes to get to the end of the tech tree. Since we haven't really seen a game DO that yet we really have no basis to know how many turns the game SHOULD be set to. I suspect that the extended length of the turns are primarily given in the later eras of the game and may be entirely incorrect there as after modern, the gamespeed chart should expand out the amount of time between techs to get us further into the future faster. It was this way after I had personally done the gamespeeds... why it was later changed I don't know. I also hardly care. Again, what seems to make sense to me is that the amount of turns needs to be roughly equivalent to the average time it takes to reach the end of the tech tree. As we further balance and develop the later eras and further stabilize the mod in these eras, we'll eventually start to see what the turn count should be. At the moment its all guess work. A time victory has always seemed to be a fairly lame victory setting imo, not just in this mod but for CivIV in all variations. That it is used in Mastery is a bit of a pet peeve of mine regarding the mastery setting.

The other factor in gamespeeds is that it fairly well matches the tech progression historically. That's always going to be a major pain to keep balanced as development is constantly throwing off all best efforts to do so. So after I put in many hours trying to get it 'right' I decided I no longer cared until the mod was much more in the state we envision it to be in when we call it fairly close to 'done'. But I welcome anyone to make any adjustments they wish to this if they want to... I just warn that it could drive you nutters in the process.

An adjustment like you did and then recalc and so on CAN help to show if changes are an improvement or not BUT must be done with nothing else changing in the mod while the game has been played up to the point the date change test is measured. (AND the start date can't change or that will REALLY throw off the value of the assessment.)

You start to see one problem but from another direction as i did.

What's the problem you're pointing at here? The overall size of the amount of techs in the mod? Or something else?

And there is not one shred of evidence that an Eternity game can do this for 14K turns, absolutely None.

Maybe that has less to do with the number of turns on any setting but the instability and imbalances in the game after a particular era. This will take time and diligence to correct and can't be addressed by stressing over the expected turn count for a time based victory.

It also has to do with the underlying problem of the runaway effect. At least I can safely say now that in the games I'm seeing, the AI players are now just as capable of getting a runaway effect for themselves as the player is. Which may be to say that defense isn't very good. There's still many AI issues to address that will help with this.

Another factor that could help would be to implement a tech cost modifier based on the number of cities so that larger nations are naturally slowed by expanding tech costs. Someone brought this up a while back and I still think it would be brilliant.

And the unit and building cost restructuring needs to take place throughout the mod to enforce some balance factors that will allow us to then rebalance accessible modifiers in production and construction and training speeds so that there is a better measured rate of progress. The tech cost rebalancing has been VERY nice imho. It has gone to show how applying the building and unit costs rebalances can help just as effectively.


But all this is moot if I can't solve this infernal incorrect reference bug I brought up earlier that's causing a host of crashes I've been finding in both single and multiplayer games here.

 

[JosEPh_II]

@T-brd,

I think we are playing "semantics" here, don't you?

Maybe that has less to do with the number of turns on any setting but the instability and imbalances in the game after a particular era. This will take time and diligence to correct and can't be addressed by stressing over the expected turn count for a time based victory.

No one is "stressing" just emphatic in debating and discussing.

My main point is that we could eliminate one gamespeed. 1 less balancing act to contend with. And it's simple and clean to do.

And to whomever posted that C2C's Normal should be for testing only, I don't agree fully. Normal is a viable Gamespeed for play as well as for testing and needs no further turn changes. Now if you want to change it's name to C2C Blitz, that I have No Problem with. Epic could be renamed C2C Normal, Marathon to Epic, and so on down the line, but just eliminate the last one, 6 gamespeed settings whittled down to 5.

@T-brd,

It also has to do with the underlying problem of the runaway effect. At least I can safely say now that in the games I'm seeing, the AI players are now just as capable of getting a runaway effect for themselves as the player is. Which may be to say that defense isn't very good. There's still many AI issues to address that will help with this.

If the AI can achieve what the player can then there is no deficiency. And the extrapolation that "defense isn't very good" is not founded either. Defenses may be too strong still. (Especially when you can have a city in the Med Era with 400+% defense bonus. No, defenses are still too strong when a str 5 composite bowman group can defend a city from Str 13 Sword and Axe, str 9 Crossbow, Lithobolos, onagers, and seige towers.)

JosEPh

 

[Toffer90]

And to whomever posted that C2C's Normal should be for testing only, I don't agree fully. Normal is a viable Gamespeed for play as well as for testing and needs no further turn changes.

I did emphasize that it was a subjective opinion. ;p

Now if you want to change it's name to C2C Blitz, that I have No Problem with. Epic could be renamed C2C Normal, Marathon to Epic, and so on down the line, but just eliminate the last one, 6 gamespeed settings whittled down to 5.

Yeah, there is nothing normal about that "Normal" gamespeed; but I don't see the problem in having 6 gamespeed options.

 

[Thunderbrd]

If the AI can achieve what the player can then there is no deficiency. And the extrapolation that "defense isn't very good" is not founded either. Defenses may be too strong still. (Especially when you can have a city in the Med Era with 400+% defense bonus. No, defenses are still too strong when a str 5 composite bowman group can defend a city from Str 13 Sword and Axe, str 9 Crossbow, Lithobolos, onagers, and seige towers.)

There's a few factors here.

1) When the AI can achieve it and, as the player can, achieve it too quickly, then it is just as imbalanced. Our game is down to one other major contender in the whole globe and it's still the ancient era. When we come to blows with that contender and one of us gets the upper hand over the other, the game's pretty much already over. They've stomped their entire continent already and are double our point score.

2) This game is taking place on Size Matters where many strength limitations, particularly in offensive efforts, for the standard game can very easily be overcome. To balance this out, the AI needs a stronger defensive AI (not stats so much but response planning). I also believe that ongoing training xp is going to be necessary to really balance it out as well.

3) So in the main game I don't think that defenses are TOO strong because if done right defenses needs to be capable of trumping even great offensive campaigns so that the runaway is much more difficult to achieve. However, I don't think it necessarily needs to be made any stronger... I think the balance is there. Though I do think the defenders still need some better response AI strategies overall.


So is this to say that Size Matters has been found to have a flaw? To some extent the answer is currently yes because after my recent AI adaptations to size matters, I'm finding that it puts a lot of favor in the hands of the invader since cities are much harder to build as strong a defense as they need to have to handle the strength of oncoming powerful stacks. However, if the AI were taught to have one or more very strong mobile defensive stacks, it could resolve the problem and would make things a bit more like the real world. If an army marched into Las Vegas NV and we had to make a stand with nothing but the local National Guard, we'd be toast pretty quick. But in such a scenario, the US Gov would be routing defenses to the site of the battle so as to make a stand. The AI needs to consider this strategy as well and original CivIV combat arrangements never enforced the need for this much.



As for your suggestion to rework the longest game speed... I think those that favor that game speed would be the ones to defend it or not. I don't personally want the game to take THAT long myself either but some seem to be fans. Those are the ones I'd listen most closely to... IMO gamespeed adjustments should all be in equal ratios to one another for the most part so that a longer gamespeed just means a bit more unit movement can take place but otherwise the game should pretty much pace the same throughout the eras.

 

[Sparth]

Our game is down to one other major contender in the whole globe and it's still the ancient era. When we come to blows with that contender and one of us gets the upper hand over the other, the game's pretty much already over. They've stomped their entire continent already and are double our point score.

Its main problem with all Civilizations games. When player Empire take lead there 0% chances that game will be loose. Fighting for first place its major fun factor in Civ but when you get it - fun its over. I think we should think how to fix it in V37.
In reality empires are never eternal. Roman Empire colapse because has major internal problems, so British Empire, Soviet, Mongol etc. Ofcourse in C2C we can got internal problems for example with Crimes but they are small nuisance. They cannot break apart any empire in our mod. I think player in C2C cannot feel safe and comfortable in any part of the game.

RevMod tried this and was great but if you know how to play with this mod then you dont have any problems with revolutions. We need more sophisticated tool

 

[Noriad2]

Its main problem with all Civilizations games. When player Empire take lead there 0% chances that game will be loose. Fighting for first place its major fun factor in Civ but when you get it - fun its over. I think we should think how to fix it in V37.
In reality empires are never eternal. Roman Empire colapse because has major internal problems, so British Empire, Soviet, Mongol etc. Ofcourse in C2C we can got internal problems for example with Crimes but they are small nuisance. They cannot break apart any empire in our mod. I think player in C2C cannot feel safe and comfortable in any part of the game.

RevMod tried this and was great but if you know how to play with this mod then you dont have any problems with revolutions. We need more sophisticated tool

Revmod is currently lackluster; it is too balanced. Even at deity/nightmare if you build a few stability buildings, and you keep crime down, your empire is rock stable.

There is also the balance issue of players collecting religions and stacking the religious bonus buildings. Having more religions in the game is currently always positive; while this is "politically correct", it is very far from the real world. There are plenty of examples in the world today and in history where religious diversity (either between religions or between schisms) caused bloody civil wars. Or rulers like Tokugawa who actively kept Christianity out of Japan to increase the stability of his country.

How about solving both problems at the same time by making religious diversity in a city cause revolutionary instability. If you have more than one religion in a city (or if that religions isn't state religion) you get a instability malus that increases exponentially with the number of religions (and gets worse with difficulty level). With polytheist religions being a bit more tolerant and monotheist religions being the most intolerant. The severity of religious tension depends of course on civics also.

Then add a religious civil war event to REV mod that causes a number of turns of city anarchy and removes one religion (including buildings) from that city.

It adds another layer of strategy to the game: balancing benefits of religion vs. the risk of religious revolutions. As the AI plays on a low difficulty level, the AI will suffer much less from this than a player at high difficulty level.

And sending missionaries can be as dangerous to the opponent as sending armies "the pen is mightier than the sword". Closing borders and preaching bans (in many islamic countries you get thrown in jail if you try to convert people away from islam) help against foreign missionaries.