Caveman 2 Cosmos (ideas/discussions thread)

[LumenAngel]

I'm not suggesting all nations need to be the same size. I'm saying even the way the core game was developed has the flaw that once a nation gains momentum over the others it's much harder for any other civs to compete. In fact, yes, the problem is more prevalent in the core game than it is here because some things have been done about it here.

Disagree, it's even worst here.
Because of religions, because of civics, because of many bonus in %....
Increase cost for number of city and BIG increase for city on others continent is needed.
Add some "Racial tension Crime" (Req a native culture and another non-native culture) to increase problem with too much conquest. I you have all culture, you will have far more problem with these tuny building !
Maybe some crime can allow a "Big crime building" in capital. Eg. with 5 Crime (Murder), a free "Assassin guild" in your vapitale, with lot of malus for you!
Increase the effect of pollution. The most advanced players are (except in future era) the one with most pollution.

 

[JosEPh_II]

@LumenAngel,

Pollution property is not finished impo. It's something this fall/winter I'd like to go thru and "tweak". A future project if DH doesn't do it 1st. But as much as he has on his plate, it will probably be my project.

JosEPh

 

[Thunderbrd]

Disagree, it's even worst here.
Because of religions, because of civics, because of many bonus in %....
Increase cost for number of city and BIG increase for city on others continent is needed.
Add some "Racial tension Crime" (Req a native culture and another non-native culture) to increase problem with too much conquest. I you have all culture, you will have far more problem with these tuny building !
Maybe some crime can allow a "Big crime building" in capital. Eg. with 5 Crime (Murder), a free "Assassin guild" in your vapitale, with lot of malus for you!
Increase the effect of pollution. The most advanced players are (except in future era) the one with most pollution.

You make some good points as to why it would be worse despite some of the things we've done to curtail the issue. Your solutions are interesting but debatable as to the impact. I THINK (not sure yet) that pollution may already be too severe. It does impact the most advanced players but it doesn't do so on the basis of whether those players are ahead or behind and iirc can impact other players almost as severely that didn't personally earn it. Crime is something that if kept under control can always be maintained. Racial tensions could be good but complex to implement.

However, the first suggestions about upkeep may be very good ones.

I'm finding it's mid-late Classical that you can easily get ahead on gold stress factors. Not sure if this has anything to do with the max number of cities that continue to add num city upkeep but it certainly has a lot to do with the power of courthouses and some of the trading buildings being perhaps excessively potent. So far, it's not civics so much as I'd suspected it would be.

I still feel that adding a research drag factor for increasing nation size would be a first answer that would be quite effective at giving smaller nations a chance.

 

[JosEPh_II]

I still feel that adding a research drag factor for increasing nation size would be a first answer that would be quite effective at giving smaller nations a chance.

Tech Diffusion is supposed to play that role now. And sometimes I personally think it does it too well.

@LumenAngel,
Do you use Tech Diffusion Option?

JosEPh

 

[Sparth]

TB, its possible to add something similar to Property system: Stability? This should work similar to Flamability - when its too high Stability Event should apear in the city.

Maybe this Stability formula will work:
Local Stability * Number of culutures present in the city * Number of the cities in Empire * Distance from Capital * Number of Religions present in the city +/- buildings.

Stability should be increased by buildings and units present in the city. Also pseudo National Wonders (similar to Ordinances) build by Great Peoples can help.

 

[Taxman66]

If you go too far down this path it will be impossible to get a domination victory.

 

[arihant]

Tech Diffusion is supposed to play that role now. And sometimes I personally think it does it too well.

We know what are you trying to say, but tech diffusion is not enough. AI must learn that bigger empire is always better, or easier solution, we can weaken bigger empires by: more tech points to research, more maintance per city, more unhappines.....

 

[Sparth]

If you go too far down this path it will be impossible to get a domination victory.

As everything in game - this should be balanced.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

We already have a local stability concept in the game. It is in the Revolutions mod which is optional.

 

[JosEPh_II]

We know what are you trying to say, but tech diffusion is not enough. AI must learn that bigger empire is always better, or easier solution, we can weaken bigger empires by: more tech points to research, more maintance per city, more unhappines.....

Not sure I follow you unless you meant " AI must learn that bigger empire is "not" always better,...". Did you forget the "not"?

Otherwise I have to disagree. The Options I personally use for C2C my AI opponents are not weak. I'm an avowed eXpansionist player and I generally have 3 -4 of the 8-9 AI I start a game with always bigger and smarter than my empire until well into Med and Ren Eras. Current test game is in Ren Era and I'm in 4th place out of 9 "players" on Emperor, Large PM map.

I don't use some of the quote "popular or suggested" game set up Options. And as such my AI opponents are almost always good adversaries/rivals.

But then again can we ever Please the Deity players? I think not. If we make C2C so Deity players can have a good go of it every game, we will run off every new and average player that tries to play C2C.

@Taxman,
I can see your point.

And on the subject of Victory Conditions it is my contention that Mastery befuddles the AI. And by limiting the # of Victory Conditions at game set up you Help the AI be more focused. Mastery is good for player vs player games, but imho is Not good for normal single player games.

There are many such "recommendations" for how to play C2C that over the years I've come to disagree with.

JosEPh

 

[arihant]

Not sure I follow you unless you meant " AI must learn that bigger empire is "not" always better,...". Did you forget the "not"?

JosEPh

I didnt forget "not", bigger empires are better. More people mean more sience, more sience mean faster advance in technology tree and we know what technolgy advance mean in time of war

Only disadvantage i see in bigger empire is unhappines from overexpansion. This is only disadvantage and we should change it.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Tech Diffusion is supposed to play that role now. And sometimes I personally think it does it too well.

@LumenAngel,
Do you use Tech Diffusion Option?

JosEPh

Tech Diffusion helps a civ that's behind in tech catch up. It doesn't help to hold back civs that are getting too large and running away . It CAN help with the steamroll effect but the difference is that it can only ever help a nation to keep up somewhat, not potentially get ahead of the lead civ in tech because the lead civ is ahead in territory size. If we implemented more of that effect you'd see smaller civs suddenly become very dangerous to larger civs and could actually give a civ a reason NOT to bite off more than it can chew in terms of territory expansion. I think this would help a lot against the steamroll effect.

But I would also want to see it be optional, just like tech diffusion, because not all players would want to ensure the steamroll effect is combated so strongly, nor would those who do always like this method of doing so. I tend to not play with tech diffusion on, not because I don't want the AI to keep up but because if I'm behind, I don't want the bonus!

TB, its possible to add something similar to Property system: Stability? This should work similar to Flamability - when its too high Stability Event should apear in the city.

Maybe this Stability formula will work:
Local Stability * Number of culutures present in the city * Number of the cities in Empire * Distance from Capital * Number of Religions present in the city +/- buildings.

Stability should be increased by buildings and units present in the city. Also pseudo National Wonders (similar to Ordinances) build by Great Peoples can help.

Something of an alternative approach to rev could be done. I have extensive considerations for how and why to create revolutions through a second mechanism as it is and this sort of thinking may well be a way to assist with that design.

But it's a very very very complicated concept that I won't be working on for a while.

Not sure I follow you unless you meant " AI must learn that bigger empire is "not" always better,...". Did you forget the "not"?

Otherwise I have to disagree. The Options I personally use for C2C my AI opponents are not weak. I'm an avowed eXpansionist player and I generally have 3 -4 of the 8-9 AI I start a game with always bigger and smarter than my empire until well into Med and Ren Eras. Current test game is in Ren Era and I'm in 4th place out of 9 "players" on Emperor, Large PM map.

I don't use some of the quote "popular or suggested" game set up Options. And as such my AI opponents are almost always good adversaries/rivals.

But then again can we ever Please the Deity players? I think not. If we make C2C so Deity players can have a good go of it every game, we will run off every new and average player that tries to play C2C.

@Taxman,
I can see your point.

And on the subject of Victory Conditions it is my contention that Mastery befuddles the AI. And by limiting the # of Victory Conditions at game set up you Help the AI be more focused. Mastery is good for player vs player games, but imho is Not good for normal single player games.

There are many such "recommendations" for how to play C2C that over the years I've come to disagree with.

JosEPh

I don't think it's for Deity level players that we must be concerned about the steamroll effect. If anything, implementing solutions to that would only make things easier on Deity because it's YOU that the AI is steamrolling over in a Deity level game. I actually think anti-steamroll measures apply more to make less difficult games more enjoyable. I can't tell you how many times I get a savegame and it's Industrial or earlier and the human player's pt score is about 10 times the next highest player of some 20 other players. I feel like we let that player down by making it so easy to dominate the board, even on a less difficult setting. Once you have that kind of lead, the game is no fun at all. Even on easier settings it should be more difficult to obtain such dominance.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I did play a Civ like game, "back in the day" so probably around Civ II, where you needed to spread your tech knowledge/discoveries around your nation. If you didn't then you ended up with a lot of duplication in effort and so slower tech rate. It was based on how fast the communication was between cities. Initially this was a wise person on foot but eventually there was the Internet. Therefore I would suggest a loss of similar to the maintenance upkeep due to distance from capital(s) but based on travel distance from your science centres.

 

[Thunderbrd]

If it adjusted and got easier with improved techs/buildings development etc... then it would only serve to enhance the steamroll effect further for the tech leader. Which in turn would be counterable with tech diffusion I suppose... Interesting.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

However it only affects big empires, for what ever is big at that tech level.

 

[Thunderbrd]

True... may work.

 

[LumenAngel]

I THINK (not sure yet) that pollution may already be too severe. It does impact the most advanced players but it doesn't do so on the basis of whether those players are ahead or behind and iirc can impact other players almost as severely that didn't personally earn it.

In an ideal civ game, Pollution can kill animal/plants ressource. Maybe it's because too many building give Health bonus, but having an unhelathy city is rare, even with lot of pollution an disease.

Crime is something that if kept under control can always be maintained.

Agree, only because of the "too much gold" thing. Maintain crime in a big city is really expensive, but maybe not enough.

Racial tensions could be good but complex to implement.

With some simple thing, it can be
"Racial tension with Oceanian" Req Any native culture except Ocenian, Oceanian culture. +X crime, +1 Unhappy, increase rev
And so on.

I'm finding it's mid-late Classical that you can easily get ahead on gold stress factors. Not sure if this has anything to do with the max number of cities that continue to add num city upkeep but it certainly has a lot to do with the power of courthouses and some of the trading buildings being perhaps excessively potent. So far, it's not civics so much as I'd suspected it would be.

Not the courthouse for me. More civics. They suddenly reduce your ukpeep a lot and supress some big gold malus...


|quote=JosEPh _II]@LumenAngel,
Do you use Tech Diffusion Option?
[/quote]
Yes...

 

[Arakhor]

We do not need yet more properties, as already with every city built, the turn times increase. I'm still in favour of having only a single pollution property, rather than two.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

The problem with the suggestions for cultural and religion tensions is that they don't match the real world experience. They don't now either of course and need some work.

One of the things history teaches us is that there are ways of overcoming those tensions if you put the effort into it. Two instances that come to mind are the Roman conquest of Britain (basically what we would call England and Wales) and Emperor Athalstan's conquest of what we would call Great Britain 500 years later. (He is forgotten by the English but was celebrated as the new Charlamage in his time on the continent.)

In both cases they conquered an area of land with many cultures and they did not suppress those cultures but integrated them. In the Roman case they forced a base set of "customs and laws" on the people but also respected their differences when they did not conflict with those base laws. In the case of Athalstan, he built libraries to collect and save elements of the individual cultures and spread them through out the land as well as reconciling the laws of each area into the laws of the Empire. Athalstan let the kings and princes live and retain their kingdom but in fealty to him.

In both cases revolutionary tension was high in the beginning but reduced over time with effort. In Athalstan's case the various regions kept revolting. Six times the Danelaw revolted, twice they elected Erik Bloodaxe as their leader. Eventually Athalstan grew tired of the and killed the whole royal family, including any relatives of the revolting kingdom. That was Cornwall. After that the rest decided that peace was the better option.

What I am saying is that a simple formula for the clash of cultures and religions is not enough for C2C. Let us give the judges, diplomats, Great Statesmen, Great Prophets and maybe missionaries more things to do.

edit

We do not need yet more properties, as already with every city built, the turn times increase. I'm still in favour of having only a single pollution property, rather than two.

Properties like flamibility use about as much processing as a building does. We will be having many more of these.

I agree we don't need more properties like crime and pollution as these are very processing costly.

 

[Arakhor]

Æthelstan, grandson of Alfred the Great and first King of England? He was hardly an emperor.