Caveman 2 Cosmos

[perilousride]

Well a few versions ago there were much stricter restrictions on how many cities you could found. Thus solved many of he problem you have. Since it was impossible to found more than 3 cites with Chiefdom, 6 with Despotism, 12 with Monarchy and 20 with Republic. Beyond that you had unlimited cities.

Many people thought it was too artificial but I think it really gave the AI a chance to complete since there was so much open land for them to spread too. Now we have a less restrictive system where it gives you if you go over the limit and the limits are WAY too easy.

Exactly. I agree with everything you say. The open land is a huge problem in the games I have played. It's like Stalin can build 4 cities all around Hitler, closing him in, and effectively ending the game for him. The funny thing is, if I can intervene and destroy those cities, just to keep Stalin from getting too powerful, not only do I have huge negative modifiers with Stalin (you declared war on us... you raised one of our cities), then Hitler will be like, "you declared war on our friend!". That's hilarious, but now diplomacy suffers from it as well. I usually like to try and keep friendly with civs until I have no choice.

 

[draz]

Many people thought it was too artificial but I think it really gave the AI a chance to complete since there was so much open land for them to spread too. Now we have a less restrictive system where it gives you if you go over the limit and the limits are WAY too easy.

Yeah the is really no concern at all - would it be possible to have increased maintenance penalties if you go over the limit? If you're overextending past your civ's capabilities, you need to pay the price.

 

[Koshling]

If a consensus can be arrived at (don't hold your breath) changing it to maintenance is easy enough.

We could also reinstate the option for hard city limits I guess, but I'm loath to have to support more options in that area

 

[strategyonly]

If a consensus can be arrived at (don't hold your breath) changing it to maintenance is easy enough.

We could also reinstate the option for hard city limits I guess, but I'm loath to have to support more options in that area

I agree, lets consolidate, somehow?

 

[DRJ]

If a consensus can be arrived at (don't hold your breath) changing it to maintenance is easy enough.

Consensus, yay

We could also reinstate the option for hard city limits I guess, but I'm loath to have to support more options in that area

Excuse me for checking in on that... would you mind making a "revolution light" game option, preventing/disableing cities to flip while revolutions but to spawn 1,5 more rebel troops outside of the city instead? would temporarily take care of the "lose GGs in city when it flips by revolution" - bug...

Spoiler :

(which is very hard to recreate as after a load a flipping often doesnt happen anymore. One time moving all troops out of the city also helped to stop the flipping process, although the chances to flip were significantly higher after the general and the troops were out of town... Perhaps the original popuplation felt not as opressed with them gone for a turn?)

 

[ls612]

I think that people are missing the point to a certain extent. The main problem here is not that people are expanding too fast. It is that there are too many positive feedback mechanisms for civs that are at a disadvantage to be able to come back against the powerful civs in a game. REV is not a good solution because it was designed for vanilla BtS and no one here knows how to mess with it.

Now, I honestly don't know what the best method for handling this is. But limiting expansion more in the early game is not addressing the problem, just pushing it back a bit. AIAndy a while ago made a thread discussing this issue, perhaps we should bump that and continue that discussion.

 

[TheDisco]

I think that people are missing the point to a certain extent. The main problem here is not that people are expanding too fast. It is that there are too many positive feedback mechanisms for civs that are at a disadvantage to be able to come back against the powerful civs in a game. REV is not a good solution because it was designed for vanilla BtS and no one here knows how to mess with it.

Now, I honestly don't know what the best method for handling this is. But limiting expansion more in the early game is not addressing the problem, just pushing it back a bit. AIAndy a while ago made a thread discussing this issue, perhaps we should bump that and continue that discussion.

That's too bad REV would be the perfect solution I think. The way I imagine the restriction on expansion would work is that long long ago the other cities would skew independent way more frequently due to the isolation of distance in particular, but other factors as well that are already considered by REV.

If there was a way to simply crank up the revolution chances based on these already existing REV factors such as distance wouldn't that be a decent first attempt? You could then scale down those factors as the eras moved forward. For instance as transportation techs and government techs were unlocked it would lower these chances (e.g., amost certain revolution based on even short distances without roads, less chance as road techs researched, etc).

REV should really be a required mod almost, as without the concept of REV it misses a huge part of historical reality. Why no large empires have ever succeeded for long for instance. Even simulating kings of old constantly battling to keep breakaway subjects in line.

 

[DRJ]

I agree to everything you say. The problem is that many people dont like to use the rev game option due to the fact that it is sometimes/often difficult to manage and kinda unpredictable/too unbalanced.

Imagine you heavily invested in a war against a larger neighbour, managed to get hold of a city of theirs and put in a pretty sufficient, strongly trained garrison, as well as your highly promoted general. But then you realize that - regardless of what you do, (constructing happiness~, anti-crime~ and culture buildings) as revolutions dont stop and finally the city flips back to the enemy without your troops fighting (suddenly being 1 tile next to the city which just got a new garrison) and your general is gone forever - this is the kind of frustration that, if we can get rid of, will make more people try to actually use the revolution game option again. Its not the problem to lose a city but its the feeling how it happens or how it can be prevented in a more fun way.

My last post in "caveman2cosmos ideas and suggestions" sticky thread also described some suggestions for further revolution gameplay enhancements.

By the way having too many cities really is a luxury problem, for those playing c2c on higher diffcultiy levels the maintenance usually prevents having many (small/new) cities (until the late classical when many economic buildings start to kick in), because a high science rate is needed to keep all happy and getting to crucial techs like writing asap - sometimes having created too many cities you essentially often have to use lesser wealth/lesser research to get there in time).
But I think closely tieing revolution rate on number of cities is a good idea, of course!

 

[ls612]

I agree to everything you say. The problem is that many people dont like to use the rev game option due to the fact that it is sometimes/often difficult to manage and kinda unpredictable/too unbalanced.

<snip>

They would be right though to a certain extent. Many parts of REV are either too powerful or non-existent in C2C balance, and no one on this team has any idea how the internals of it really work (and none of us want to learn).

 

[AIAndy]

Imagine you heavily invested in a war against a larger neighbour, managed to get hold of a city of theirs and put in a pretty sufficient, strongly trained garrison, as well as your highly promoted general. But then you realize that - regardless of what you do, (constructing happiness~, anti-crime~ and culture buildings) as revolutions dont stop and finally the city flips back to the enemy without your troops fighting (suddenly being 1 tile next to the city which just got a new garrison) and your general is gone forever - this is the kind of frustration that, if we can get rid of, will make more people try to actually use the revolution game option again. Its not the problem to lose a city but its the feeling how it happens or how it can be prevented in a more fun way.

I think there is a number or strength check to see if the rebels are able to push you out of the city and I guess it is no wonder that they assassinated the general at the start of their rebellion.

 

[Koshling]

I think there is a number or strength check to see if the rebels are able to push you out of the city and I guess it is no wonder that they assassinated the general at the start of their rebellion.

Maybe, but it's just too annoying from gameplay perspective because generals are such high investment items. IMO generals should be pushed out along with military units, or at worst have only a (smallish) chance to be killed.

 

[DRJ]

I think there is a number or strength check to see if the rebels are able to push you out of the city and I guess it is no wonder that they assassinated the general at the start of their rebellion.

Oh, I didnt know how that worked. But say does the strength check also include the bonus/malus of the particular situation? For example: after the initial revolution the best Garrison I had was a 2,8/4 Atl-Atl BUT with city defender 3 promotion (75% city defense + 10% vs melee), 25% fortified defense bonus and 20% general strength as well. The other 4 Atl Atls and a log ram as well as a clubman and a healer were also well fortified. I think the indirect bonusses made the garrison pretty sufficient against the attacking Atl Atls if they fought. Yeah I'd lost 1 or 2 defenders from time to time but I also sent reinforcements... Maybe I should just leave the general on a tile next to the city and have a smaller group defend him but then again he gives +4 happiness for "we have a celebrity in our midst" and without the +4 happiness quelling the resitance over time is even harder. As I said, balancing the revolution mod could be difficult but I think its worth the task as it would really make the game better. At the moment using revolutions is like realizing your hot date has got a pretty frigid mind.

 

[strategyonly]

At the moment using revolutions is like realizing your hot date has got a pretty frigid mind.

What an analogy

 

[AIAndy]

Oh, I didnt know how that worked. But say does the strength check also include the bonus/malus of the particular situation? For example: after the initial revolution the best Garrison I had was a 2,8/4 Atl-Atl BUT with city defender 3 promotion (75% city defense + 10% vs melee), 25% fortified defense bonus and 20% general strength as well. The other 4 Atl Atls and a log ram as well as a clubman and a healer were also well fortified. I think the indirect bonusses made the garrison pretty sufficient against the attacking Atl Atls if they fought. Yeah I'd lost 1 or 2 defenders from time to time but I also sent reinforcements... Maybe I should just leave the general on a tile next to the city and have a smaller group defend him but then again he gives +4 happiness for "we have a celebrity in our midst" and without the +4 happiness quelling the resitance over time is even harder. As I said, balancing the revolution mod could be difficult but I think its worth the task as it would really make the game better. At the moment using revolutions is like realizing your hot date has got a pretty frigid mind.

I had a look at the code and it seems to purely count numbers and amplify them by the city defense from buildings but it does not check any promotions or other stuff.
The code does not actually seem to kill generals on purpose so it remains a question why the general gets killed. It should not kill non fighting units at all as long as they are allowed to move to the retreat plot.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I had a look at the code and it seems to purely count numbers and amplify them by the city defense from buildings but it does not check any promotions or other stuff.
The code does not actually seem to kill generals on purpose so it remains a question why the general gets killed. It should not kill non fighting units at all as long as they are allowed to move to the retreat plot.

There is something "special" about the commander and some other units. I am fairly sure StrategyOnly has reported exactly what units are being killed. Or to be more precise as the code loops through the units there are some that are not moved where moved is delete old unit and put new unit on map - so the delete is happening but the new unit is not.

BtW there are plenty of extra GG graphics out there, can't we use one of those sets for the Great Commanders so that they are easier to tell apart?

 

[Koshling]

BtW there are plenty of extra GG graphics out there, can't we use one of those sets for the Great Commanders so that they are easier to tell apart?

A great commander is still UNIT_GENERAL - becoming a commander does not change its unit type, so it cannot change its graphic I don't think (?). Of course we **could** rework things to make GCs a total different unit type if we wanted to I guess.

 

[AIAndy]

There is something "special" about the commander and some other units. I am fairly sure StrategyOnly has reported exactly what units are being killed. Or to be more precise as the code loops through the units there are some that are not moved where moved is delete old unit and put new unit on map - so the delete is happening but the new unit is not.

Moving does not delete a unit and put a new one on the map. It just changes position.
But the revolution code only does that if the unit may enter the retreat plot.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

A great commander is still UNIT_GENERAL - becoming a commander does not change its unit type, so it cannot change its graphic I don't think (?). Of course we **could** rework things to make GCs a total different unit type if we wanted to I guess.

Oh! I thought it became a new unit - so Commander can still settle in a city and so on? I have never played with Great Commanders on as I don't do war enough.

Moving does not delete a unit and put a new one on the map. It just changes position.
But the revolution code only does that if the unit may enter the retreat plot.

I always wondered if that was the case. now I can fix the story teller line so that if the unit is not used up in the mission they return to the capital (for some R&R).

 

[perilousride]

I think that people are missing the point to a certain extent. The main problem here is not that people are expanding too fast. It is that there are too many positive feedback mechanisms for civs that are at a disadvantage to be able to come back against the powerful civs in a game. REV is not a good solution because it was designed for vanilla BtS and no one here knows how to mess with it.

Now, I honestly don't know what the best method for handling this is. But limiting expansion more in the early game is not addressing the problem, just pushing it back a bit. AIAndy a while ago made a thread discussing this issue, perhaps we should bump that and continue that discussion.

I agree. Maybe if you created random events where a civ (only if it is lacking behind) can gain a powerful technology or some other great boost. Kinda like Rome getting Social Contract in classical times... just say someone got an idea. That's not very far from what occured, which lead to their rise. Maybe if the AI loses a city to invasion, again like the Romans, it makes them more organized or disciplined, adding xp for all units... giving them a great general, or whatever. Then, maybe there are bad events for a too successful empire, which they would have to work through for a possible reward if conditions are met (Rome during Augustus had become such a place of self-indulgence and crime that he forced family values and ideals upon them). I am just throwing some things out there.

One idea I really would like to see is that overseas trade is increased by naval strength. This is actually a huge reason for Carthage's and Athen's success. Really, the "we struck the motherload" should be far more powerful. It gave Athen's such power, when they decided to build a fleet of ships from the silver they obtained. Naval strength is always a giant deal, and so maybe a civ is terrible at everything else... has only 1 city... but they have naval superiority giving them stronger overseas trade-route commerce.

 

[SilentConfusion]

I have been having this issue lately and wanted to post about it and see if anyone knows why it would happen. This morning I updated the SVN to 5103. I have a Mod folder in Civ IV Beyond the Sword folder and in it I keep a stable version (v28 until v29 goes out) and another one with the latest SVN called SVNPlayCopy. I deleted all of the content in that folder and pasted all folders and files from the C2C SVN folder except the hidden .svn folder. Then when I launched the mod in game when hovering over the flag I see the following: "Caveman2Cosmos build 5098" Now 5098 is a higher number than it was before I updated, but the fact that it is not the same as the version that the SVN folder says I downloaded makes me feel like somethings might be missing. Not sure where in my process I'm losing a couple of updates.