Caveman 2 Cosmos

[Thunderbrd]

I just made an adjustment that could help with the siege issue. However, I must admit it's probably going to take a lot of very deep AI work to really solve it. Such an effort nears the project table. For now, I hope this tweak helps.

 

[Daedwartin]

I agree here, and they leave it/them out in the open ALL BY THEMSELVES also. In the Medieval Era i have picked up maybe 40 siege weapons just by capturing them, because of what i just wrote .

It's quite simple: They thought they were playing Age of Empires II and were now in the Post-Imperial stage and were building mass Siege.

Sadly, they were not playing Age of Empires II, but in fact were playing the Caveman to Cosmos mod for Civ 4.

 

[Thunderbrd]

For those playing with the SVN, some feedback on the adjustment would be good when you can. Of course games in progress will likely take a while to show the difference.

 

[Buildkirbyus]

Pardon me but-
What's SVN?

 

[strategyonly]

Pardon me but-
What's SVN?

Take a look at this: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=429816

 

[Soulmate]

For those playing with the SVN, some feedback on the adjustment would be good when you can. Of course games in progress will likely take a while to show the difference.

I would like to give a feedback but need some time to see the change. Well even if Dutch build at least 5 Spartan warriors and Praetorians each instead of rams, that would be quiet and improvement

 

[ThrainII]

I have a question regarding the revolutions element in C2C. Its my first game including this feature and while it seems rather easy to maintain people satisfied on local level, I see that nationwide satisfaction is bad and indicated as a threat. How does this work together? Can I get troubles although all individual cities are fine?

In the previous version of C2C, air pollution was a big issue. Now it seems that water pollution has somehow become a more severe problem. It seems to be related to population growth and I found no effective way to counter that. When dealing with air polution, I could limit the amount of buildings with +air pollution per city. Mentioning that, I don't understand why you have removed the free Great Doctors linked the health techs.

And yes, I do agree that units are too cheap compared to buildings. The AI builds insane amounts of units.

 

[JosEPh_II]

I have a question regarding the revolutions element in C2C. Its my first game including this feature and while it seems rather easy to maintain people satisfied on local level, I see that nationwide satisfaction is bad and indicated as a threat. How does this work together? Can I get troubles although all individual cities are fine?

In the previous version of C2C, air pollution was a big issue. Now it seems that water pollution has somehow become a more severe problem. It seems to be related to population growth and I found no effective way to counter that. When dealing with air polution, I could limit the amount of buildings with +air pollution per city. Mentioning that, I don't understand why you have removed the free Great Doctors linked the health techs.

And yes, I do agree that units are too cheap compared to buildings. The AI builds insane amounts of units.

Are you using the Game set up Option Aggressive AI or Aggressive Barbs? If so then the AI is set to be inclined to war and as such will build many more units than a "normal" AI setting.

JosEPh

 

[ThrainII]

Are you using the Game set up Option Aggressive AI or Aggressive Barbs?

No, both settings are off.

Water pollution

I am wondering how water pollution works. While air pollution can be easily controlled by selecting which buildings to build and which not, water pollution seems to be harder to manage. I actually didn't find a lot of sources for water pollution in my current game, so I can only conclude that population is the main factor here. Limitation of growth is difficult, as cities grow ever on with that big surplus in food.

Some minor issues:

- Barbarossa comes too late, he should be available sooner.
- Why can you trade cultures? Doesn't make sense, does it?
- Great Persons issue need to be addressed. Some techs are not really worth to be discovered without free GP for the first player to unlock the tech. And Great Doctors are hard to get at all.
- In Revolutions, it seems hard to absorb a conquered city to your realm. I immediately get troubles with that city, so burning it down seems to be the better option?!
- I get graphical errors with some of the Longbow units.

Anyway, keep up the good work!

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

- Why can you trade cultures? Doesn't make sense, does it?

It is because the wonder only gives the one. It was designed that way. Personally I think the current Culture is a good start but it is time we reviewed it.

- Great Persons issue need to be addressed. Some techs are not really worth to be discovered without free GP for the first player to unlock the tech. And Great Doctors are hard to get at all.

I don't know why we don't get free Great Doctors any more. I have almost gotten the fix for the specialists working so that you can assign doctors. Then we need to set up the buildings that allow you to have them.

- In Revolutions, it seems hard to absorb a conquered city to your realm. I immediately get troubles with that city, so burning it down seems to be the better option?!

Sounds like you are not taking some Story Teller line units with you to the newly conquered city to "persuade" them of the benefits of being in your nation. Their mission reduces the number of turns of conquest anarchy and spreads/increases your nationality percent in the city. Get the nationality over 50% and remove most of the revolutionary sentiment from this source.

 

[Noriad2]

- In Revolutions, it seems hard to absorb a conquered city to your realm. I immediately get troubles with that city, so burning it down seems to be the better option?!

Most REV troubles comes from crime, and to some extend from unhappiness/unhealth.
So when you conquer a new city, remove all the crime-increasing buildings with CTRL-A. Also remove some +unhappiness or +unhealth or +disease buildings if necessary.

Build more anticrime and +stability buildings in your new city. Also there are some buildings that cause +stability in all cities, so build a few of those in your other cities.
Let the city population drop by taking city population away from the food tiles so the population starves. Lower population has a beneficial effect on your crime. Also crime fighting units may help.
Education effect on crime has been nerved a bit, but additional +education buildings (and perhaps stationed storytellers) are still useful.

 

[Sparth]

- I get graphical errors with some of the Longbow units.

Can you tell me which ones? From which civilization?

 

[Soulmate]

Regarding the feedback about rams :
I spent around 100+turns so far nad while noticing some more troops variety, 90% of attacking forces are still purely rams. More so, AI completly ignore defense in favor of rams(attcking force ?).
Then I saw this

Spoiler :

AI started to build swordsmans in 2 of his cities

And felt like there's still hope, but then he casualy continued with ram building again.

Here's how his attack force looks (50 unitss each stack), including 37 rams in the city.

Spoiler :

Imo before making any major changes further it would be realy cool to solve that unreasonable AI behavior which poisons the experience and diversity of the mod.

Also I have observed some revolutions problem which hinders AI further:

- first problem comes from raam spam, and as a result insufficient defnse forces to protect cities from revolutions/or invades.
- second huge problem is that AI somehow manages to drop his city population realy fast(maybe there's some game feature I'm unaware of ?) for example Hitties had magnificent city with 23 pop during ancient era, and they never had any revolutions. however during the war with another great empire they droped the population of capital to 1. That kind of behavior frustrates me since they can't grow again during war bcause of produiction with food. I suspect that the problem is sacrificing it's own population for produciton, which(ironicaly) COUTNERPRODUCTIVE for ai since he can build military units in 1 turn anyway. I would be totaly fine with removing the sacrificing as mechanics from AI, or in general(it's unproductive anyway...since the populatuon is harder to gain than production)
- another huge AI handicap is that somehow revolutions work in a mysterious way. In 90% of cases the revolution starts from the capital(the most importan city for AI) . For example I had a huge capital city without crime or disease and at 0 rev rate. When I switched to another civilization AI managed to get revolution in MY captial in 5-8 turns, effectivly losing it to arab rebels. That made my hair stand straight. How ?
- another thing that doesn't sit right is that when AI get;s revolutions it spanws NEW CIV every time(unless it's occupied territories)shouldn't rebels just be one faction ? For example HRE and hitties bothe spanwed 4different rebels on their territories, and thosse rebels get revolution again spawning new civs each. This leads us to next issue
- I have some minor complain about revolutions that does not affect AI much, but is irritating nevertheless. Whenever there's rebeling nation apeears it's guaranteeed that they themself will get revolution again , effectivly doubling the number of contestants. This combined with my previous point makes the map a huge mess of unimportant few-turns living nations which are no threat to anyone exept the scoreboard space. It would be realy cool to adjust the revolutions in a way that prevent this revolution plague .

 

[JosEPh_II]

Continue to use Eternity gamespeed and you will continue to get such anomalies that you keep cryin' about.

Play Marathon or Snail and you won't have this exaggerated problem. But persist in playing Eternity and you reap what you sow.

On Eternity you are on your own for getting help. Just sayin'.

JosEPh

 

[Thunderbrd]

Regarding the feedback about rams :
I spent around 100+turns so far nad while noticing some more troops variety, 90% of attacking forces are still purely rams. More so, AI completly ignore defense in favor of rams(attcking force ?).

Going to take a huge amount of work to insert some further defense AI. At the moment they are indeed programmed to provide themselves with a minimum of city defense and a little bit of territory guarding and that's it.

The rams are purely a city attack stack coming together.

Then I saw this

Spoiler :

AI started to build swordsmans in 2 of his cities

And felt like there's still hope, but then he casualy continued with ram building again.

Looks like a little bit more adjusting and it'll be about right. Maybe another 5 or 10 %.

Here's how his attack force looks (50 unitss each stack), including 37 rams in the city.

The one in the city is probably another attack stack forming. Looks like they have some restraint issues on how many attack stacks to build and I've known that for a while. v37 cycle will address this.

Imo before making any major changes further it would be realy cool to solve that unreasonable AI behavior which poisons the experience and diversity of the mod.

All in due time. A lot of new AI work is already planned and it would help to hold off a little to make sure that other considerations for a reconstructed defense and attack AI structure aren't left out of the mix. Unfortunately, it's best to make the AI the last thing to address in major projects.

- second huge problem is that AI somehow manages to drop his city population realy fast(maybe there's some game feature I'm unaware of ?) for example Hitties had magnificent city with 23 pop during ancient era, and they never had any revolutions. however during the war with another great empire they droped the population of capital to 1. That kind of behavior frustrates me since they can't grow again during war bcause of produiction with food. I suspect that the problem is sacrificing it's own population for produciton, which(ironicaly) COUTNERPRODUCTIVE for ai since he can build military units in 1 turn anyway. I would be totaly fine with removing the sacrificing as mechanics from AI, or in general(it's unproductive anyway...since the populatuon is harder to gain than production)

They are far too quick to slave off population, yes. They should only do so when immediately threatened by an overwhelming force imo. Not sure where they make this counterproductive determination but I've noticed it before.

I don't work with Revolutions so can't comment on the rest.

 

[Soulmate]

Continue to use Eternity gamespeed and you will continue to get such anomalies that you keep cryin' about.

Play Marathon or Snail and you won't have this exaggerated problem. But persist in playing Eternity and you reap what you sow.

On Eternity you are on your own for getting help. Just sayin'.

JosEPh

I am not sure why you thought so but my gamespeed is Snail.
And how is this problem exaggarated ? Seems pretty potent to me.

As always, thanks for you fast and insightfull answer TB . I will wait for the next version then , I would realy like to finish this game though, I guess I'll have to manualy make their armies via WB

Oh, aslo about this "Revolutions in capital" issue :
At the time of late Classical there are only 4 Capitals that were not affected/destroyed by rebellions. 2 of which are under 10 pop because of the population sacrifices and production with food. I would realy like to understand how that whole revolution thing works, because I feel like capital should beee the safest city for AI ,unless he suffers major losses at war.

Also, here's some huge rant with a little of information about the revoultions:

Spoiler :

Siamese empire was on the isle with 6 cities and never actualy overxpanded neither they waged any land war, also their capital was one of the most populated and had toughest defenses.They have built the largest amount of wonders (including huge factors like Great library). But somehow they managed to get revolution in capital aswell(note that the crime level was low) and somehow it ended up in destroying the whole 26 pop city by barbarian rebells. This is so much of a nonsense that it made me cringe. I even wanted to load autosave after few turns however found out that after SVN the autosaves somehow were disabled.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

- another huge AI handicap is that somehow revolutions work in a mysterious way. In 90% of cases the revolution starts from the capital(the most importan city for AI) . For example I had a huge capital city without crime or disease and at 0 rev rate. When I switched to another civilization AI managed to get revolution in MY captial in 5-8 turns, effectivly losing it to arab rebels. That made my hair stand straight. How ?
- another thing that doesn't sit right is that when AI get;s revolutions it spanws NEW CIV every time(unless it's occupied territories)shouldn't rebels just be one faction ? For example HRE and hitties bothe spanwed 4different rebels on their territories, and thosse rebels get revolution again spawning new civs each. This leads us to next issue
- I have some minor complain about revolutions that does not affect AI much, but is irritating nevertheless. Whenever there's rebeling nation apeears it's guaranteeed that they themself will get revolution again , effectivly doubling the number of contestants. This combined with my previous point makes the map a huge mess of unimportant few-turns living nations which are no threat to anyone exept the scoreboard space. It would be realy cool to adjust the revolutions in a way that prevent this revolution plague .

No one on the team is familiar enough with the Revolution code to identify problems with it caused by new content.

The Revolution Mod came ready built with all this other cool stuff (WoC and BUG for starters) and so was included into RoM. RoM did not have a dll programmer at all. We have inherited it from RoM.

Don't use Eternity speed

 

[Noriad2]

Also, here's some huge rant with a little of information about the revoultions:

Spoiler :

Siamese empire was on the isle with 6 cities and never actualy overxpanded neither they waged any land war, also their capital was one of the most populated and had toughest defenses.They have built the largest amount of wonders (including huge factors like Great library). But somehow they managed to get revolution in capital aswell(note that the crime level was low) and somehow it ended up in destroying the whole 26 pop city by barbarian rebells. This is so much of a nonsense that it made me cringe. I even wanted to load autosave after few turns however found out that after SVN the autosaves somehow were disabled.

That's odd. I haven't played much since v36 came out but before that I found that AI empires by that time have lots of excess cash, which can be used to buy off revolutions.

 

[Noriad2]

Oh, aslo about this "Revolutions in capital" issue :
At the time of late Classical there are only 4 Capitals that were not affected/destroyed by rebellions. 2 of which are under 10 pop because of the population sacrifices and production with food. I would realy like to understand how that whole revolution thing works, because I feel like capital should beee the safest city for AI ,unless he suffers major losses at war.

That is not necessarily ahistorical. The Western Roman Empire was destroyed partly because it was weakened by continual civil war. In the 3rd century AD, the Roman empire had fallen into the hands of a series of inept emperors whose obsession with personal gain threatened the public welfare and fostered civil war. during a period of 50 years, nearly all of 2 dozen emperors who ceased power, were brutally slain by rivals, rebels and subjects.

And when the Visigoths under Alaric plundered Rome, the once invincible Western Roman Empire shattered into a thousand pieces, each one held by a military strongman who wanted to collect them all. For the next 7 centuries, Europe descended into a state of war that was so persistent it was only rarely interrupted by peace.

(from this awesome documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Pv6QnZ7xDc )

 

[Soulmate]

No one on the team is familiar enough with the Revolution code to identify problems with it caused by new content.

The Revolution Mod came ready built with all this other cool stuff (WoC and BUG for starters) and so was included into RoM. RoM did not have a dll programmer at all. We have inherited it from RoM.

Don't use Eternity speed

Well, thats too bad I guess we should expect the improved AI garrisons with lower crime rate to take care of that .

Spoiler :

hat's odd. I haven't played much since v36 came out but before that I found that AI empires by that time have lots of excess cash, which can be used to buy off revolutions.

I had 36k at the middle ancient era and I was only at 5th place by wealth according to some renown historican . Plenty of cash for AI to buy out, this is why I'm puzzled so much, when seemingly strong empire just loses it;s capital right out of nowhere(see my rant about Siam)

Spoiler :

That is not necessarily ahistorical

I agree that there are plenty of examples of such decadence, however those are rather exeptions than general rule, I gues we can agree that most rebellions are started in another regions and ony then by cinders of rebellion ignite fire in the capital intself. But this is slippery topic imo, from histrical point of view, but purely from gameplay perspective it's kind of frustrating to watch AI suffer so much.

Oh also,Thunderbrd I would reaaly aprreciate if you would lead me where I can fix the siege weapon(ram issue) myself so I would not have to download SVN version which is taking alot of changes(I'm afraid of the bugs etc.)