CCM - An introduction to a great mod

[vmxa]

I am not so sure that increases in unit support cost are the way to go as towns are hard to come by for a long time. I would rather see maint for structures as we can just them not build many of them and get by fine.

I played a ton of games with massive maps and thousands of units and they are not a problem for even my prior two PC's. Yes some IBT or town foundings/razings can take a bit, not an issue.

In fact I was looking forward to playing on my new rig to see, if the large L2 cache made any impact. Let the whimps play std maps, if they need instant responses. One thing that would ruin the game is to be only able to build structures and not have large battles.

 

[BuckyRea]

A lot of units can't cross mountains
(from Post 25 "First War")

That's an odd choice. Why'd you do that, trying to help the AIs build bottleneck/kill zones? I know they suck at that usually.


Second question: Do monks give 200 points of culture for all govs, or just for theology? Either way, that seems like an awfully high number for just one monk to generate. Is the idea here to use the monks to fight a city conversion war along your frontiers? Because historically theocracies are really bad at converting neighbors--cultures that go theo in real life tend to be a lot like feudal states: they're the losers in history, or at least the second rate powers (Tibet, Iran, and Alabama spring to mind).

It really seems like you're making theocracy too powerful a gov. With their monk-tech bonus, you might want to cap their sliders at 60% and maybe make them lose all their libraries when they revolt.

 

[Civinator]

That's an odd choice. Why'd you do that, trying to help the AIs build bottleneck/kill zones? I know they suck at that usually.

It adds a lot of strategic depth in gameplay -for the AI and the human player. None of the CCM Prebetatesters would miss this setting any longer, so it is responsible for some instability issues of CCM caused by pathfinding errors of units with the "wheeled "-flag.

Second question: Do monks give 200 points of culture for all govs, or just for theology? Either way, that seems like an awfully high number for just one monk to generate. Is the idea here to use the monks to fight a city conversion war along your frontiers?

Monks give 100 points of culture for all governments. Theocracy has a building (the monastery) that doubles this culture to 200 points. The intention is a quicker enlargement of cityborders and an additional punishment for governments that are xenophobic and can´t receive that bonus.

In later eras you will see in this story lawyers who give some contracts to talented units of other civs to recruit some great artists. They have a much higher cultural value than the monks you can see here. These great cultural persons (GCPs) in my eyes are something new for C3C. The GCP values are in relation to the next growth-level of cityborders. In C3C they could be up to 4000 culture points for a single GCP, but I dimmed them down to the values they have now.

In CCM there is no cultural victory.

Because historically theocracies are really bad at converting neighbors--cultures that go theo in real life tend to be a lot like feudal states: they're the losers in history, or at least the second rate powers (Tibet, Iran, and Alabama spring to mind). It really seems like you're making theocracy too powerful a gov. With their monk-tech bonus, you might want to cap their sliders at 60% and maybe make them lose all their libraries when they revolt.

As you can see above, these monks are nothing special for the government Theocracy. The advantage of that government is, that here the cultural value of the GCPs can be doubled in the early phases of the game. When compared to history in my eyes this setting is not so wrong.

Theology in CCM at present is nothing other than an improved version of Despotism. There is the same tile penalty as in Despotism and no commercial bonus as it exists for Republic and Democracy. It´s a form of government for early warmongers.

At present all forms of governments in CCM have too much money. The reason is, that shortly before the starting of the public betatest of CCM I threw spymissions out of the game to achieve a better performance of this mod with big maps in the later phases of the game. Before that, spymissions were available from start in CCM and took away a lot of the money that is now available to the civs. Now I have to find another setting that draws away money from the civs without doing a new calculation. To give CCM a better performance with big random maps, some other calculations (p.e. building maintainence costs) were cut out, too.

The final settings for governments in CCM must be found in the public betatest of this mod. All civers are invited to post their suggestions, thoughts and ideas in the CCM public betatest thread that can be found here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=352057

 

[vmxa]

I do not recall any issues with time in AoI 3.0 and it had the AI stealing plans and sabotage frequently. I had many turns where I would get several spies mission run against me. Same for some of the other scenarios that are using very similar things in their mod as AoI.

 

[vmxa]

BTW don't forget that AoI and its derivitives have a gold bug that has Persia come up with 6 figures pretty early. I have run into that and in one mod two nations had the gold bug.

These were 2 town nations that jump up with 200,00. This is at a point, when all the nations together did not have a fraction of that. This may be due to the prior placement of towns and units, I do not know.

 

[Civinator]

I do not recall any issues with time in AoI 3.0 and it had the AI stealing plans and sabotage frequently.

AoI has a fixed map and therefore can gain a lot of gamespeed by cutting down the tradenet. This is not possible for games with random maps as it is CCM. Additionally the big maps in CCM are much bigger than the maps in AoI 3 and 4 and therefore use more calculation power.

 

[vmxa]

Compute power I have and the 512MB L2 should help and a large L3. Anyway it was not a big problem with my 4 year old PC playing normally on 250x250 31 nations AWE/DG. Yes we ran into some wait times and it was a bit of a pain, but like I said that comes with those games.

Most of the delays were from calculation of route as a town was created or destroyed. If a harbor was added or lost or an airport. Cutting roads would also trigger the routines, so we learned to not cut that many roads.

Sticking it in very late in the game should not be the end of the world. Not having any espionage at all, could be though. See my lost settler comment.

In any event is not my call, just my perspective.

 

[ThERat]

By the way, am still playing, but due to this long holiday weekend (Chinese New Year), my time playing is a little short. Expect an update tomorrow.

 

[ThERat]

The Korean war went very smooth, the only issue that is holding back a faster progress is the lack of roads at times. The last Korean city was quite far off the other cities and Japan somehow didn't manage to take that out.

Well, in 1702AD, I manage to raze the last city. There are now a few major AI's left on the continent: Japan, Mongolia, Maya, Korea and Persia.

As I want to fight Mongolia next anyway, I sucessfully steal their map in the second attempt.

The world as I know it looks like this:

My continent is actually rather small and filled with cities all over. I might be able to raze a few major cities for some slaves. There is another major continent but quite far off ours. I guess conquering it from the east might be easier. But in order to do that, I have to eleiminate all the others on my continent first.

I finally enter a new era. I am now doing 4 turns research and have traded little in the end. Trading stops after the first tier of techs in the 3rd era anyway.

As for the techs, I decide to get to railroad first before getting steel. Steel will enable workers to be built. but will obsolete quite a few wonders and buildings including the nice monasteries. I decide to head for communism first before steel.

 

[ThERat]

The next target will be the Mongols. However, the land looks terribly underdeveloped. It seems the AI is lacking workers (hint: maybe the worker output has to be increased a little to help the AI). There is a Japanese city blocking my progress, thus I decide to get an agreement to use their land to travel.

I get another handbuilt small wonder, but with the cash I am making, this is of little significance.

 

[vmxa]

I found plenty of issues with workers for me and the AI. I was woefully short, but elected to not make a lot more to stay close to the intent.

The AI waste workers on the garrison and late in the game the few it had were in towns that I captured. Have you razed any town of size? I think I did one small size 1 or 2, so I do not know, if you get workers/slaves from that.

I just do not know, if more workers would help them or just cause more garrisons. I stayed in Theo the whole game, so I suffered the food hit. This slows down making settlers workers as well.

It reduces pop sizes and hence extra specialist, but Idid not really need them for research or gold anyway. The other thing is troops do not capture workers, they kill them. Enslavers are not able to work after a time, due to their low attack values and no ability to ping units with cannons.

I should have razed a large city to see, if that gave slaves. It is just that replacing the town is not so convient.

 

[ThERat]

After a really long time to bring my first lawyer to the front and finding the right victim I get this:

Ok, so what will this unit do? These type of units (artists, monks etc) are best used in a war to quickly expand borders for faster movement and better protection of the newly acquired land.

Here is how it works:
Use the GA to add 1000 culture points into a city.

Then marvel at the new expanded borders right inside core enemy territory.

Meanwhile I finish a great wonder. Note that the 'pays all maintenance for buildings' doesn't make any difference as you do not pay for maintenance of buildings in CCM anyway. The real benefit lies in the added commerce per tile.

I continue to hit the Mongols and take a city with a wonder, that counts for Budhhists, not much worth for me at the moment.

As I just got the ability to construct railroads, the bummer effect of not being able to build workers really hits home.
It takes 8 turns or 8 workers to finish the railing for one tile For slaves it takes 24 turns

This means , we simply need plenty of more workers or slaves. Time to try raze a few cities. I start with the Mongol capital. Nine workers isn't too bad. I guess I need to head for steel right after getting communism. First I will need to get to communism though...

 

[vmxa]

I was surprised that razing was allowed to yield slaves. Maybe that cannot be controlled in the editor. I did not do any, so I was not sure. I figured I was better off not having to come up with settlers and get them to the location.

Did you put on the updates? Not sure, if it would matter to a game in progress or not. Mostly pedia fixes, but some upgrades may not allow it.

 

[BuckyRea]

... and it had the AI stealing plans and sabotage frequently. I had many turns where I would get several spies mission run against me.

In your game experience, is that a good thing--making the game more exciting--or just really frustrating to deal with? I'm currently working on a mod and have been thinking about upgrading the spying elements in the game. Does it improve the game or just bother the human?

How quick on the DoW trigger are the AIs when they find you pilfering their techs?

 

[vmxa]

Well stealing plans is normally very expensive. So how wise of an use of gold would it be to steal my plans, when you already know them? It is like paying money to someone to steal my shoes for me?

It is just funny, the plans tell them where my units are, duh. They always know where my units are located. Sabotage is another thing, that could be useful, mainly becasue they have money to spend.

It does not really hurt me, unless it is a wonder and I am in a race for it. Mostly they are sabotaging my current build. In a game where I may have 100 builds, what is the impact to me? Yeah, close to zero.
It is not like it is a loss of all shields in the box. It is a loss of that turns shields. IOW a lost a turn, big deal.

This is why I say to those scenarios that have maps that are filled with towns and units to turn off espionage. It only helps the human as I can spy on the town to see how many units, they already know that stuff.

I am not sure about the tech, My response is that, if they are strong you will get a DOW first time, every time. If you are stronger, you may get a warning.

 

[Civinator]

ThERat, thank you very much for your great story. The civilopedia entry about the East India Company will be fixed concerning the effects (the correct name is still fixed).

To some questions that came up during the story:

Razing cities "by will" can´t be stopped in the editor, so cityrazing is a methode to gain more workers. Even the no-raze patch (that isn´t used with CCM) can only stop autorazing of cities but never the option to raze a city by "command".

Railroads in CCM are rather expensive to build. I don´t want, that some turns after railroads are available, there are only railroad-"spagetthis" on the map. A single railroad over a big map shows better the strategic character of a railroad as railroad graphics in every tile of the map (and as a side-effect it even looks better).

Spying missions: As there is no communication- and map trading in CCM to speed up gameturns for big maps, this can be a proper mean to receive the maps of countries far away. Production sabotage was cut out of the game during the CCM prebetatests, as in CCM there are more civs in the endphase of a game than in normal games and each major building (not only the parts of the space race) was tried to be sabotaged by AI civs several times a turn.

BuckyRea, what you will do with diplo/spying missions in your mod of course belongs to you and the settings in your mod. As CCM has some extreme settings to be able to handle bigger maps, there are some other decisions necessairy to balance this, as it may be in other mods. In CCM espionage missions are cut out, as planting spies uses addtitional calculating power that is better needed for gamespeed. On the other side in CCM a lot of normally spying-missions can be done by diplomats as they are necessairy to compensate other options of the normal C3C game, that were cut out (mostly for reasons to decrease the AI turntimes).

 

[Arexander]

Actually, the No-Raze patch stops all razing, not only auto-raze. IIRC you can't even abandon cities. And you doesn't need a CD to play when using No-Raze patch. But for it to be effective, you need to use the correct patch for Conquests/Complete. If you use Conquests-patch for Complete, it won't work.

 

[ThERat]

I am still fighting the Mongols with ease. They pose no danger and have quite a few nice wonder cities. I manage to take another wonder city with the Holy Printed Book that will give me +1 happiness throughout the empire.

I soften up the next city and the Japanese take it before me. That city has the worldreligion buddhism, a gateway for my second religion. Well, I will come back to that sooner or later anyway

In 1732AD I finish the Mongols, turn my forces around and go after Persia next.

I reach communism and revolt immediately. I am sure that I lose quite some population immedately, but hope that the tile restrictions will fuel my long term growth. I got also irked that rails do not increase shields from 2 to 3 in theocracy. However a first comparison doesn't bode well for communism. We will have to see how to it plays long term. For now, steel will take 6 turns instead of 4 turns with the loss of all the science boosts from monasteries. But that would have hit me anyway with steel.

 

[vmxa]

The number of lost pop may have been enough to make the difference in beakers. I did not switch. IOW a better comparison would be when you have the same number of population. Not going to know as you will have more towns.

 

[ThERat]

got a crash while trying to build the Five Year Plan wonder...guess nobody every tried to build that...the pedia doesn't have that wondersplash