Caveman 2 Cosmos (ideas/discussions thread)

Making tech costs multiplicative would affect interaction between map size modifier with other than 100 value and handicap value, if its other than 100.
Going from additive to multiplicative would increase tech costs if Handicap >Noble and Size >Standard or Handicap <Noble and Size <Standard.

In case of Handicap >Noble and Size <Standard or Handicap <Noble and Size >Standard techs would get cheaper after transition.
If two modifiers don't stray far from 100 then you get similiar costs in additive and multiplicative methods.

Side note about normalizing Noble production modifier to 100 (was meant for after V38 release):
In short I changed Global Modifier to 0.675 (0.9*0.75, 0.75 being Noble handicap/100).
In XML files I divided all these values by 100 for easier calculations.
Global production modifier would have to be changed to 67.
Then from Noble being 100 I stepped down by 5% to 85% for settler.
Up from Noble to Immortal I used steps up of 5%.
For Deity I stepped 10% and for Nightmare - stepped by 20%.
Settler - 85, Noble - 100, Immortal - 120, Deity - 130, Nightmare - 150.
Production coasts wouldn't get changed by >6%.
 

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It is true that at the end of the Prehistoric Era the number of the cities won't be too different on a large map and on a small one. But at the later eras it will be very different. If you adjust by the Prehistoric Era the later eras will be off. If you adjust by the later eras the early eras will be off.

The best sollution for the map size problem would be a research modifier by the number of the cities. You could count the cities of all major empires (you shouldn't count the barbarian and neanderthal cities), sum it up and adjust their research rate equally. This way the bigger empires still have research advantage but the research won't accelerate at the later eras on bigger maps.

It's a nice universal sollution, you have to find the working formula once and then you can forget the whole map size problem. At least in theory.
 
It is not new game therefore it is mid game. He would have had time to build more buildings and cities before starting the research of sedentary lifestyle as if compared to a new game started after the tech cost were no longer increased for big map sizes. At sedentary lifestyle no player would have more cities on a giant map than what is normal to have on a duel map so techs should cost close to the same in this era for all map sizes.
I don't think I jumped the gun, but I might have to add back some map size modifier later, like a 5% step per map size. I want to let it play out for a week or two before re-adding any research modifier for map size.
Nomadic Lifestyle Is the start of a game, column x1. Having brain farts are we? And even if he Was at Sedentary lifestyle, even that is not "mid game".

All moot now anyway as you've already done it.
I'm for having some small curve but I'd be against having some sizes be adjusted and others not be. A smooth constant transitioning value across every step is important to maintain imo. The point of the research modifier on map size is because the map can only allow so many cities - usually this is somewhat compensated by the amount of players as well so a very soft and gradual adjustment based on map size does seem a little rational.
Why are you lecturing me? Tell this to Toffer. His decision, not mine.

@Toffer90,

So now if I have No Storms checked in BUG I will have Storms in my game?
What about Hide Unconstructable Buildings or Hide Untrainable Units?
Terrain Damage now On by default?

Will you explain please?
 
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Nomadic Lifestyle Is the start of a game, column x1. Having brain farts are we? And even if he Was at Sedentary lifestyle, even that is not "mid game".
Spoiler Irrelevant, I had a brain-fart, this was not a mid game thing. :

What I meant was that a game started before such a balance tweak would feel off to the player right away. That is what I meant by changing assets mid game. I meant "mid Game" as in "after game is started".
Feedback on a balance tweak of this kind, based on what is seen the first couple of turns after loading a game that was started before the balance tweak, is almost worthless. The longer that save has been played after the balance tweak the more stabilized values in the game will be, and the veracity of any feedback on balance from it increases too. A new game started after the balance tweak will provide 100% valuable feedback on balance issues from the get go.
Shoobs feedback was, how I see it, a comment that he felt tech cost was too low on snail gamespeed regardless of map sizes.

@Thunderbrd: Regarding balance and the handicap research/building/training modifiers, I really hope you would consider changing those into iAI type tags so that whoever is modding tech/building/unit cost balance is not influenced by what handicap setting they prefer to play. It may make whoever is modding that, to mod it so that deity games would have reasonable costs on all gamespeeds while "Noble" games may tech/build/train way too fast on all gamespeeds.
I really don't think it's wise to make the handicap setting into a pseudo gamespeed setting as you recently made a move towards. It is better to speed up the AI's tech/build/train time on higher difficulties than to slow down the human player tech/build/train time on higher difficulties. That way the Human player won't feel that difficulty setting affect gamespeed making deity games long and boring and settler games fast and hectic

@Toffer90,

So now if I have No Storms checked in BUG I will have Storms in my game?
What about Hide Unconstructable Buildings or Hide Untrainable Units?
Terrain Damage now On by default?

Will you explain please?
If you have "No Storms" checked you will not have any storms. I didn't change how the option works in any way.

I only changed what the setting is set to by default if you delete your user setting folder.
If you delete your user settings folder and start a new game the "No Storms" BUG option will be checked by default. Same story with "Hide Unconstructable Buildings" and "Hide Untrainable Units".
Perhaps "Terrain Damage" should be off by default, I don't know, perhaps most players play without terrain damage?
 
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It is not new game therefore it is mid game. He would have had time to build more buildings and cities before starting the research of sedentary lifestyle as if compared to a new game started after the tech cost were no longer increased for big map sizes. At sedentary lifestyle no player would have more cities on a giant map than what is normal to have on a duel map so techs should cost close to the same in this era for all map sizes.
I don't think I jumped the gun, but I might have to add back some map size modifier later, like a 5% step per map size. I want to let it play out for a week or two before re-adding any research modifier for map size.
This was the very first tech I was researching in this game.

What I meant was that a game started before such a balance tweak would feel off to the player right away. That is what I meant by changing assets mid game. I meant "mid Game" as in "after game is started".
Feedback on a balance tweak of this kind, based on what is seen the first couple of turns after loading a game that was started before the balance tweak, is almost worthless. The longer that save has been played after the balance tweak the more stabilized values in the game will be, and the veracity of any feedback on balance from it increases too. A new game started after the balance tweak will provide 100% valuable feedback on balance issues from the get go.
Shoobs feedback was, how I see it, a comment that he felt tech cost was too low on snail gamespeed regardless of map sizes as he would probably have had the same amount of "beakers per turn" at that point in the game if his game had been any other map size.

@Thunderbrd: Regarding balance and the handicap research/building/training modifiers, I really hope you would consider changing those into iAI type tags so that whoever is modding tech/building/unit cost balance is not influenced by what handicap setting they prefer to play. It may make whoever is modding that, to mod it so that deity games would have reasonable costs on all gamespeeds while "Noble" games may tech/build/train way too fast on all gamespeeds.
I really don't think it's wise to make the handicap setting into a pseudo gamespeed setting as you prefer it to be. It is better to speed up the AI's tech/build/train time on higher difficulties than to slow down the human player tech/build/train time on higher difficulties. That way the Human player won't feel that difficulty setting affect gamespeed making deity games long and boring and settler games fast and hectic

If you have "No Storms" checked you will not have any storms. I didn't change how the option works in any way.

I only changed what the setting is set to by default if you delete your user setting folder.
If you delete your user settings folder and start a new game the "No Storms" BUG option will be checked by default. Same story with "Hide Unconstructable Buildings" and "Hide Untrainable Units".
Perhaps "Terrain Damage" should be off by default, I don't know, perhaps most players play without terrain damage?

Again
Utterly new start to a game. FIRST TECH. No saves used.

And my feedback is technology is going TOO fast for me to keep up with production of buildings.
 
This was the very first tech I was researching in this game.



Again
Utterly new start to a game. FIRST TECH. No saves used.

And my feedback is technology is going TOO fast for me to keep up with production of buildings.
That is a feedback i agree with, i love the faster pace of building buildings, but i would slow down research with about 20ish percent, since increased building speed is an indirect buff of economy.
 
This was the very first tech I was researching in this game.
Lol, I somehow read "sedentary lifestyle" instead of "nomadic lifestyle". Sorry about that., much of what I've said is then completely irrelevant to what was said by others then.

I made ^those latest posts right before I went to bed yesterday and right after I woke up again, in the haze I kept reading "sedentary lifestyle", I've now had my coffe and woken properly and understand what transpired here. ^^
And my feedback is technology is going TOO fast for me to keep up with production of buildings.
I understood that, from the get go, even though I thought you said sedentary lifestyle instead of nomadic lifestyle.
Shoobs feedback was, how I see it, a comment that he felt tech cost was too low on snail gamespeed regardless of map sizes.
5 turns for first tech is imo close to how epic or marathon gamespeed should be.
 
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Why are you lecturing me? Tell this to Toffer. His decision, not mine.
I don't mean for you to feel as if I'm speaking only to you when I quote you. I was taking your comment as a talking point. Most of what I was saying was more aimed at Toffer than you. Just sharing a perspective.

@Thunderbrd: Regarding balance and the handicap research/building/training modifiers, I really hope you would consider changing those into iAI type tags so that whoever is modding tech/building/unit cost balance is not influenced by what handicap setting they prefer to play. It may make whoever is modding that, to mod it so that deity games would have reasonable costs on all gamespeeds while "Noble" games may tech/build/train way too fast on all gamespeeds.
I really don't think it's wise to make the handicap setting into a pseudo gamespeed setting as you recently made a move towards. It is better to speed up the AI's tech/build/train time on higher difficulties than to slow down the human player tech/build/train time on higher difficulties. That way the Human player won't feel that difficulty setting affect gamespeed making deity games long and boring and settler games fast and hectic
I don't play on the highest levels but I can say that it feels a lot better to feel the impact of the difficulty rather than silently having the AI going crazy fast in comparison only. It lets you feel the difficulty you're playing rather than attempting to conceal it. Plus, if I play a Noble level game, I get to see exactly what the AI is experiencing regardless of the player level. That's enormously useful for AI design considerations. Otherwise you're never seeing it if the AI is getting bound up in various possible problems resulting from the varying cost formulas.

If you have "No Storms" checked you will not have any storms. I didn't change how the option works in any way.
When you have no storms checked you still get lots of storms at game initialization and then you simply don't get more and those fade away after a while.

Making tech costs multiplicative would affect interaction between map size modifier with other than 100 value and handicap value, if its other than 100.
Yes, we do need to throw things into this chaos to eventually come back out at the other side with a new and improved balance. I've been waiting until I finish a v38 game first.
 
I don't play on the highest levels but I can say that it feels a lot better to feel the impact of the difficulty rather than silently having the AI going crazy fast in comparison only. It lets you feel the difficulty you're playing rather than attempting to conceal it. Plus, if I play a Noble level game, I get to see exactly what the AI is experiencing regardless of the player level. That's enormously useful for AI design considerations. Otherwise you're never seeing it if the AI is getting bound up in various possible problems resulting from the varying cost formulas.
I feel you are exaggerating the difficulty of understanding the impact of the cost reduction AI's would have on higher difficulties the way I want it. The formula, when tech cost formula is made to work the same way as building and unit cost formula, will be straight forward with no number magic between different xml values set.

We would only need one handicap tag for this: <iAICostPercent> that is used for building, unit, projects, and tech cost modification for the AI depending on which difficulty the human player is on.
These tags could then be removed:
iTrainPercent
iConstructPercent
iResearchPercent
iAITrainPercent
iAIWorldTrainPercent
iAIConstructPercent
iAIWorldConstructPercent
iAICreatePercent
iAIWorldCreatePercent​

An example of values used for this one tag that replace nine tags:
if Noble is set to 100% tech/unit/building cost for the AI (Human player difficulty decides which values are used)
Prince - 95%
Monarch - 90%
Emperor - 85%
Immortal - 80%
Deity - 75%
Nightmare - 65%​

Then you know that the AI build/train/tech close to twice as fast as yourself when you play on nightmare difficulty. Twice as fast would be at 50%.

Values used right now only affect the tech cost for the player that use the difficulty listed below:
Only these tags are currently used iTrainPercent, iConstructPercent, iResearchPercent
Diff. ▬ Constuct/Train ▬ Research
Noble ▬ 75% ▬ 100%
Prince ▬ 80% ▬ 105%
Monarch ▬ 85% ▬ 110%
Emperor ▬ 90% ▬ 115%
Immortal ▬ 95% ▬ 120%
Deity ▬ 100% ▬ 150% (Why is there a six (5%) step up in research cost here?)
Nightmare ▬ 110% ▬ 225% (Why is there a fifteen (5%) step up in research cost here?)​

Why should an eternity Nightmare game be over twice as long (tech cost vise) as a noble eternity game, isn't a noble eternity game long enough without doubling the time it takes to research when increasing difficulty to nightmare.
This means that increasing difficulty would require the player to reduce gamespeed if the player wants to keep a similar gamespeed for two games with different difficulty.
The way you want it is a game-balance nightmare compared to simply making the AI faster on higher difficulties. The player that wants to play a higher difficulty doesn't want the game to move at a slower pace.
 
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If you have "No Storms" checked you will not have any storms. I didn't change how the option works in any way.

I only changed what the setting is set to by default if you delete your user setting folder.
If you delete your user settings folder and start a new game the "No Storms" BUG option will be checked by default. Same story with "Hide Unconstructable Buildings" and "Hide Untrainable Units".
Perhaps "Terrain Damage" should be off by default, I don't know, perhaps most players play without terrain damage?
Thanks that makes sense then.

I play with Terrain Damage Off. So I will have to check it now when I start a new game.

Deity ▬ 100% ▬ 150% (Why is there a six (5%) step up in research cost?)
Because that was the way SO put it Years Ago, his decision.

Nightmare ▬ 110% ▬ 225% (Why is there a fifteen (5%) step up in research cost here?)
And the Same answer for NM Deity.

Why does this bother you?

BtS Deity does not use either itrain or iconstruct, these are C2C only modifiers. It uses Only iUnitcostPercent at 100 and iResearch at 130. Civ IV uses the exact same numbers with the same modifiers as BtS.
 
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I feel you are exaggerating the difficulty of understanding the impact of the cost reduction AI's would have on higher difficulties the way I want it. The formula, when tech cost formula is made to work the same way as building and unit cost formula, will be straight forward with no number magic between different xml values set.

if Noble is set to 100% tech/unit/building cost for the AI (Human player difficulty decides which values are used)
Prince - 95%
Monarch - 90%
Emperor - 85%
Immortal - 80%
Deity - 75%
Nightmare - 65%

Then you know that the AI build/train/tech close to twice as fast as yourself when you play on nightmare difficulty. Twice as fast would be at 50%.

Values used right now only affect the tech cost for the player that use the difficulty listed below:
Diff. ▬ Constuct/Train ▬ Research
Noble ▬ 75% ▬ 100%
Prince ▬ 80% ▬ 105%
Monarch ▬ 85% ▬ 110%
Emperor ▬ 90% ▬ 115%
Immortal ▬ 95% ▬ 120%
Deity ▬ 100% ▬ 150% (Why is there a six (5%) step up in research cost here?)
Nightmare ▬ 110% ▬ 225% (Why is there a fifteen (5%) step up in research cost here?)

Why should an eternity Nightmare game be over twice as long (tech cost vise) as a noble eternity game, isn't a noble eternity game long enough without doubling the time it takes to research when increasing difficulty to nightmare.
This means that increasing difficulty would require the player to reduce gamespeed if the player wants to keep a similar gamespeed for two games with different difficulty.
The way you want it is a game-balance nightmare compared to simply making the AI faster on higher difficulties. The player that wants to play a higher difficulty doesn't want the game to move at a slower pace.

We would only need one tag for the AI: <iAICostPercent> that is used for building, unit, and tech cost modification for the AI depending on which difficulty the human player is on.
Aside from still disagreeing that we should hide the difficulty for the human player in only having it affect the AI players, you're now pointing at another issue entirely, which is - why are the tech % values differing from the construction/unit ones. The reason for this is because we borked the tech calculation at the beginning of the v37 cycle and in trying to fix it so that it is multiplicative rather than additive, everything goes haywire and requires a complete recalibration. I have to correct that before we can look at making sure the ratios are aligning correctly.

Something that came to mind here too... when you removed the tech cost adjustments for map size, how much was removed for the map size of the standard game (which is probably Huge)? If we then readjust the underlying global up that far it could help to recover from those being removed across the board. Make sense?
 
Why does this bother you?
I thought SO only wanted nightmare to be two steps up from deity.
Are you saying SO wanted Deity to be six steps up from Immortal and Nightmare to be fifteen steps up from Deity??

Aside from still disagreeing that we should hide the difficulty for the human player in only having it affect the AI players, you're now pointing at another issue entirely, which is - why are the tech % values differing from the construction/unit ones. The reason for this is because we borked the tech calculation at the beginning of the v37 cycle and in trying to fix it so that it is multiplicative rather than additive, everything goes haywire and requires a complete recalibration. I have to correct that before we can look at making sure the ratios are aligning correctly.
I know very well the logic for having them different at this moment, that was far from the point of my post.
btw I edited that post a lot so I would like you to look at it again.
Something that came to mind here too... when you removed the tech cost adjustments for map size, how much was removed for the map size of the standard game (which is probably Huge)? If we then readjust the underlying global up that far it could help to recover from those being removed across the board. Make sense?
Here's the previously used values that I changed to 100%:
Duel ▬ 50%
Tiny ▬ 70%
Small ▬ 85%
Standard ▬ 100%
Large ▬ 115%
Huge ▬ 130%
Giant ▬ 160% (This was the size Shoobs used)
Gigcantic ▬ 200%​
 
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See my added info above.

SO set regular Deity higher than BtS' Deity. And then when he made NM Deity he doubled off of his New Deity. Reason too many players were saying C2C was too easy.

EDIT: I guess all kinds of assumptions can be made when you have no sense of history for the Mod.
 
Something that came to mind here too... when you removed the tech cost adjustments for map size, how much was removed for the map size of the standard game (which is probably Huge)?
Standard game is Standard map size. We've never taken a poll nor based research off of what map size the players of C2C uses most. That would really tilt the process.

As for the changes just double click the CIV4WorldInfos.xml file in Toffer's commit and see for your self. Nvrmnd

EDIT: To save you some time, iResearch Old to New
Duel 50 ->100
Tiny 70 ->100
Small 85 ->100
Standard no change
Large 115 - 100
Huge 130 -100
Giant 160 - 100
Gigantic 200 -100
 
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The way you want it is a game-balance nightmare compared to simply making the AI faster on higher difficulties. The player that wants to play a higher difficulty doesn't want the game to move at a slower pace.
I understand your point entirely and disagree entirely. I would far prefer to FEEL the drag - that as you take steps up in difficulty you should expect that research and build times should take longer but then, if you've played Noble level, you also have a feel for what your opponents are still experiencing, which was exactly what you were experiencing when playing on Noble level, rather than having to take an estimated guess as to how fast they might be developing. Harder difficulties should feel harder rather than feeling disarmingly like they are just fine meanwhile the AI is actually gaining hidden benefit. I feel that was a sneaky move in the original game design and rude.

Given that this is understandably a polarizing issue and I don't think you're wrong that some players would feel more like they'd prefer to just let the AI play a faster paced game and have their pace unadjusted by difficulty (I remember some comments from some of them on that), perhaps the more interesting option is another game option. I might even like to try to compare the two for how gameplay actually does feel between the two at some point.

We would only need one handicap tag for this: <iAICostPercent> that is used for building, unit, projects, and tech cost modification for the AI depending on which difficulty the human player is on.
These tags could then be removed:
iTrainPercent
iConstructPercent
iResearchPercent
iAITrainPercent
iAIWorldTrainPercent
iAIConstructPercent
iAIWorldConstructPercent
iAICreatePercent
iAIWorldCreatePercent
IMO, better to have one handicap tag <iScalingPercent> and then you could remove all of the above as well. However, we could also have <iAICostPercent> and have it work off one or the other depending on game option. I'm warming to that idea more and more as I think about it.

SO set regular Deity higher than BtS' Deity. And then when he made NM Deity he doubled off of his New Deity. Reason too many players were saying C2C was too easy.
Interesting. Good to know. Now that the AI is starting to improve, however, perhaps we shouldn't need such a strong sudden upcurve at Deity to begin with? What do you think?

EDIT: To save you some time, iResearch Old to New
Duel 50 ->100
Tiny 70 ->100
Small 85 ->100
Standard no change
Large 115 - 100
Huge 130 -100
Giant 160 - 100
Gigantic 200 -100
Thank you! That helps a lot when I'm at work and can't research the fileset.

So looking at this, I can see why those on larger maps would feel like there's a sudden huge drop in research rates. I get your point about not assuming to use Huge as a basis. I'm finding that even before this shift, the tech might be a little fast anyhow and I'm playing on Huge. So I propose adding 50% to the underlying global to offset this loss or 30% on Huge being as I'd like to see techs take about 20% longer anyhow (and based on the dates I'm hitting that might be about right.)

This is a proposal. Let's hear counterproposals. I don't think just removing these and not adjusting the underlying pace of research would be right though.
 
buildings I haven't completed by tribalism ( skipping some techs ).

Exile Practices, Fire pit, wet nurse, Creation Myth, Smokehouse, Harems, Music Hut, Percussion Instrumetns, Pit Traps, Poison Crafters, Trails, Woodwind INstruments, Bandit's Hideout, Bathing Ritual, Public Stone, Sand Pit ( beach )/(Desert), Walkabout, Juggler's Booth, playing Fields, Excrement Holes, Healer's Hut, Sentry Post, Abatis, Bonemarrower, Piercing Hut, Crafts Hut, Spear Fisherman's Hut, Spiked Pit Traps, Woodcarver's Hut, Frontier Outpost, outhouse, Palisade, Stick Combat, Microlith Workshop

And I have had some good production tiles to work with.

Edit:
I always wondered why Immortal was 10-16 turns for techs and Deity was 20-25-28 for the starting techs.
 
In my game on the Vertical Solar Map Techs go by way too fast after the recent changes, it was OK before! I play Snail and Monarch and have 15 well established cities at the end of the Ancient Era. There is space for much more than 100 cities on the Earth part of the map. Researching a tech takes only 1-2 turns, e.g. building a monastery alone takes about 3 turns, a hero takes 5 turns in my most productive city. If you reduce the tech times you should also reduce the time for constructing buildings and units. Or, as I already have asked for a long time ago, please give us an option to increase research times by a factor of 2 and keep everything else the same.
 
So I propose adding 50% to the underlying global to offset this loss or 30% on Huge being as I'd like to see techs take about 20% longer anyhow (and based on the dates I'm hitting that might be about right.)
Please be specific about this "underlying global". Where and what?
 
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I´d say that it is now roughly the same than a year ago (comparing my current map to the smaller one I used then), maybe it was slightly better then.

Edit: Joseph has changed his last post, I was asked to compare the described effects to what it was about one year ago.
 
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