Caveman 2 Cosmos (ideas/discussions thread)

[DC0]

Are they overpowered compared to Mammoth Riders? That's what they are compared to in terms of massive advantage capability.

I can't tell. I've never built Mammoth Rider. Recently I built Hero units. Since that moment my 6 unit army was disbanded.
Properly promoted, Hero unit will have almost 100% chance to capture. There are my choice, since constant shortage of still forces to harvest captives.
My current objective in game is to build all world wonders. I'm exploring HUGE game possibilities and having fun. I'm almost constantly in awe from this mod. It's amazing what you were able to build.

Speaking of units: in real life there were overpowered "units". At least for some time. So Mammoth Rider is ok. Hero unit is not ok. Stealthy Trained Cat is not ok.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I can't tell. I've never built Mammoth Rider. Recently I built Hero units. Since that moment my 6 unit army was disbanded.
Properly promoted, Hero unit will have almost 100% chance to capture. There are my choice, since constant shortage of still forces to harvest captives.
My current objective in game is to build all world wonders. I'm exploring HUGE game possibilities and having fun. I'm almost constantly in awe from this mod. It's amazing what you were able to build.

Speaking of units: in real life there were overpowered "units". At least for some time. So Mammoth Rider is ok. Hero unit is not ok. Stealthy Trained Cat is not ok.

Any animal with the word Tamed or Subdued in its name were originally designed to flee all combat. Those with Trained are less fearful but should not be the only unit in the combat as if they don't have support they should also flee. Other animals which are trained but don't have these words in their name are just like any other combat unit. At least that was the original intent.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Speaking of units: in real life there were overpowered "units". At least for some time. So Mammoth Rider is ok. Hero unit is not ok. Stealthy Trained Cat is not ok.

The first statement makes sense but does not serve to highlight why these last two categories of units don't apply in the same manner as the first.

 

[Elberet]

First of all, I'd like to say a huge thanks for your work and your mod, you did and continue to do a lot of for players. =)
Second, I have an idea to be realised: sometime ago in CivV (I guess) saw a feature, when civics were changed, the name of countries changed too - empire, kingdom, commonwealth etc. Thought it was interesting thing to have.

Also, a minor bug: "Waterproof concrete" is misplaced. It has right colour but wrong era.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

First of all, I'd like to say a huge thanks for your work and your mod, you did and continue to do a lot of for players. =)
Second, I have an idea to be realised: sometime ago in CivV (I guess) saw a feature, when civics were changed, the name of countries changed too - empire, kingdom, commonwealth etc. Thought it was interesting thing to have.

Also, a minor bug: "Waterproof concrete" is misplaced. It has right colour but wrong era.

We did have the nations changing names with the Civics but it does not work with our Civics. When we tried to remove it and replace it with another version we discovered that the code was mixed in all over the place. Eventually we will get rid of the old hard coded version and put in the new XML based one.

The colour for the tech is based on the Era. Waterproof Concrete is a tech that you can only research if you have built one of a set of buildings. Until you build one of those buildings, to do with volcanoes, you can't research the tech and it will be marked/coloured as not available to be researched.

 

[DC0]

The first statement makes sense but does not serve to highlight why these last two categories of units don't apply in the same manner as the first.

By "in real life" measure. Mammoth is big and scary, etc. Real life prototype - Elephants, which were successfully deployed in many battles.
Trained cat - you can't even train a cat Cat is too smart to be trained.
Hero is a single person, right? Single person can do almost nothing against combat unit consisting of several men.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Cat is too smart to be trained.
Hero is a single person, right? Single person can do almost nothing against combat unit consisting of several men.

I suppose you could always mod them out for yourself. But for me, it works fine coming from an RPG background.

 

[DC0]

I suppose you could always mod them out for yourself. But for me, it works fine coming from an RPG background.

No I won't mod them out. They are best captives harvesters

 

[tmv]

Trained cat - you can't even train a cat Cat is too smart to be trained.

That might be true for small cats, but for big cats there is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_taming - and if you look at the units they are big cats (I suppose small cats wouldn't look that frightening for trained soldiers).

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

That might be true for small cats, but for big cats there is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_taming - and if you look at the units they are big cats (I suppose small cats wouldn't look that frightening for trained soldiers).

If you want to turn off Big Cats you can. They are modular. Turns out you can't turn them off at the present time due to a conflict with Pepper's work. I will have a look soon (I only got 3hrs sleep last night and I am old!) to see if that can be rectified.

Normally you would edit Assets/Modules/Alt_Timelines/Megafauna/MLF_CIV4ModularLoadingControls.XML and change

                <Module>
                    <Directory>Big_Cats</Directory>
                    <bLoad>1</bLoad>
                </Module>

to

                <Module>
                    <Directory>Big_Cats</Directory>
                    <bLoad>0</bLoad>
               </Module>

 

[Thunderbrd]

I realize this is more about them being 'OP' but I found them useless any weaker and have not been finding them impossible to beat now (though they are only balanced if they cannot merge.)

 

[tmv]

though they are only balanced if they cannot merge

Which isn't that unrealistic. Big Cats other than lions should be solo only, and lions should usually be parties or squads. Any larger group (in either case) would be beyond anything that has been seen in nature, I think. Companies of Big Cats might be possible in Narnia, but certainly not here.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Which isn't that unrealistic. Big Cats other than lions should be solo only, and lions should usually be parties or squads. Any larger group (in either case) would be beyond anything that has been seen in nature, I think. Companies of Big Cats might be possible in Narnia, but certainly not here.

Stealth units should never be able to merge because as a larger group each individual adds greatly to the chance of being detected. As a party or less, stealth units can be super lethal with hit and run tactics that can wear down even the largest army.

We are supposing here that one civilization somewhere could have, early on, developed a keen bond to these giant cats that make them the alpha leaders that can give instructions. And yes, big cats can and have been trained. We are supposing that this civilization continues to maintain this bond to varying degrees of effectiveness throughout the ages. This sounds unrealistic because it is also unrealistic that nations that began from the beginning of human civilization would still be pretty much surviving today. Without that factor, and considering how many things have been lost due to to raids and conquest and civil collapse of nations along the way in the real world to get to today, we no longer see that kind of bond among any modern nation with great cats. But one that maintains its heritage back to that Prehistoric era could have.

Lions aren't the only ones to hunt as a group. Panthers can as well and it's horrifying when they do. Trained to work as hit and run strike forces for a military, they could've been pretty impressive. Even then, they don't continue to maintain validity far into the modern world in our mod.

Yes, they come back as the genetically augmented human intelligence granted cats of the future but that's well... scifi that may someday happen.

Truth is, in the modern world, a great cat in battle, such as Shiva on the Walking Dead, would be little more than a great bullet magnet until it rapidly dies.

 

[tmv]

Panthers can as well and it's horrifying when they do.

I didn't know that.

Truth is, in the modern world, a great cat in battle, such as Shiva on the Walking Dead, would be little more than a great bullet magnet until it rapidly dies.

Certainly true in open terrain, but e.g. jungle warfare would be a bit different. In the middle, we have terrain like (regular) forest or mountains where Big Cats at least wouldn't be completely helpless. Up to World War 1 I would have included deserts as well, but World War 2 certainly proved that humans have "mastered" desert warfare.

There is a scene in "Apocalypse Now" where a US soldier is a bit - surprised - by the sudden attack of a tiger. That guy might have disagreed with your statement.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Well, in the modern world you can still use the great cat units you have but they haven't been able to get a significant upgrade for that era so it still fits.

 

[tramwajg]

I was thinking about realistic of war cats today, very nice explanation I wouldnt think any nations was using it in real world. Also I learned a lot of history on this mod, also something about geography, animals or flowers English improved too, for example i was laughing when saw "murex" on map with shell graphics, then it turned out that something like this exists its much better than normal unmoded civ. My question: is it possible to somehow rebuild ship tree? now I see strange cases, for example battle cruiser has 7 movement and same strength as dreadnought which has 5 movement and is more expensive, tech requisities seems to be exactly same. Then it would mean there is no point building dreadnought as slower and more expensive unit with same strength. But maybe there are some differences and I am wrong?

 

[Thunderbrd]

I was thinking about realistic of war cats today, very nice explanation I wouldnt think any nations was using it in real world. Also I learned a lot of history on this mod, also something about geography, animals or flowers English improved too, for example i was laughing when saw "murex" on map with shell graphics, then it turned out that something like this exists its much better than normal unmoded civ. My question: is it possible to somehow rebuild ship tree? now I see strange cases, for example battle cruiser has 7 movement and same strength as dreadnought which has 5 movement and is more expensive, tech requisities seems to be exactly same. Then it would mean there is no point building dreadnought as slower and more expensive unit with same strength. But maybe there are some differences and I am wrong?

A major naval review has been done but has not yet been put to XML - and there's also a few more bits of programming needed to finalize the vision. Furthermore, there's not yet all the unit graphics we'll need. Hopefully we'll get to finishing that at some point.

 

[dummy1929]

38.5 reactions:

Great as ever, I really enjoy playing this!

Some things I noticed:
(playing on giant map, snail, emperor)

- All governments before Democracy now give the same number of cities that can be build without happiness penalty. That gives much less of an incentive for changing to more advanced forms of government.
- Almost all later civics now cost more in maintenance, but offer few other improvements or benefits.
- E.g. there now is little reason to switch from Meritocracy to Bureaucracy, or from Patriarchy to Legislature.
- Playing with Revolutions on, it never seems to be a problem for the player, but AI empires all break up slowly but surely. This makes the AI so much weaker to play against.
- Republic seems still overpowered (this is an old issue). I think there should be a serious stability penalty for expansion under Republic (think Roman Civil War), making Monarchy a much better choice.
- Although the longer game with a larger map gives more time to play, in my game at least practically no wars happen - there is too much unsettled land, units are too expensive and slow.
- I wonder if there could be an option to make units cheaper relative to buildings?
- The variety of animals seems to have gone down a lot. The most common animals I see are red foxes, lizards, and owls.
- There are few barbarians, despite the "Raging barbarians" option selected, and no massed invasions. These were so much fun in the past, please make them happen again!

 

[Thunderbrd]

You make some good observations on civics but it's not my department.

Less wars do mean a longer game with competitive AIs. Units are already cheaper relative to buildings but there's a global in the globaldefines.xml that can modify training or construction costs directly (modifier meaning a % modifier) and they are used to tune things up. Your preferences can be adjusted there. The variety of animals being diminished I think has a lot to do with the system being very difficult to get predictable results out of when making adjustments. I haven't been able to figure out why this happens exactly. There's also a global that can adjust the amount of barb spawns.

 

[Galadrion]

- E.g. there now is little reason to switch from Meritocracy to Bureaucracy, or from Patriarchy to Legislature.

The differences between Meritocracy and Bureaucracy are subtle, but they are fairly profound. When you can't see any particular benefit to a given civic, a good place to start looking is the buildings that civic enables, and what that building will allow you to do. (Free example from my own history: years back, I had a strong prejudice against using the Banditry civic... until I tried it one time, built the Bandit Hideout, and then began using the units that building allowed. Rogues and the follow-on units in that line are deceptively powerful.) In the case of Bureaucracy, in itself, it isn't that much different from Meritocracy, but the Civil Servant's School is a fairly powerful building. It makes a huge difference.

- Playing with Revolutions on, it never seems to be a problem for the player, but AI empires all break up slowly but surely. This makes the AI so much weaker to play against.

Revolutions has been a problem for some time now, and hasn't been a recommended option since about v35 or so. If the team can ever get the AI to understand and utilize it properly, it will probably be extremely dangerous, but for now... just, no.

- Republic seems still overpowered (this is an old issue). I think there should be a serious stability penalty for expansion under Republic (think Roman Civil War), making Monarchy a much better choice.

Again, look to the adjutant aspects of the civics. The Monarchy-enabled building make it a reasonable competitor for Republic... at first. Later on, Republic becomes a bit better - it's not as strong in the early part of their overlapping timeframes, but it handles the problems of a larger, more developed empire a bit better. Part of what I like about this mod is that the civics have been rebalanced against each other to emphasize the way circumstances and priorities shift over time. A strategy which works now won't necessarily work as well later, and figuring out when to make the change becomes an interesting choice.