Chronicles of Mankind

[<Nexus>]

(sigh) i want raze cities sometimes, now i will be must using it with worldbuilder
anyway, thx.

(double sigh) Me too.
Unfortunately that's the most I can do. Sorry.
We will have to wait patiently

 

[alstone]

agreed , some cities NEED to be razed for a few reasons, not just to weaking a civ but the ai often puts cities in stupid spots ( most often over resources other times one squire to help ships get around the world ) but mostly to be realistic,
even rome got burnt down to the ground, but like in the game back when you could raze a city someone came back and started a new city. sometimes under a different name, interesting fact my home tome had a different name 100 years ago, not to mention ghost towns are a real thing

also with the city limit being so low and being forced to wait tell federation to really go to war and with the city limit being forced to be a federation civ unable to raze cities hurts even more,, i mean really
Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan would not be able to do what they did if they had to follow these rules

and i dont play on the biggest maps but have to stop wars because my main cities are starving to death because im taking over the known world which is not even a third of the continent im on

 

[cyberlegale]

Hello, my question may seem silly, but...
Can anybody share a link to an installation guide for Chronicles of Mankind.
I need precise instruction)

 

[<Nexus>]

Hello, my question may seem silly, but...
Can anybody share a link to an installation guide for Chronicles of Mankind.
I need precise instruction)

1. Download Archive and Patch from HERE
2. Go to your Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Mods folder
3. Extract the archive first, than the patch and say 'Yes' to overwrite.
4. And... Run the game

 

[<Nexus>]

agreed , some cities NEED to be razed for a few reasons, not just to weaking a civ but the ai often puts cities in stupid spots ( most often over resources other times one squire to help ships get around the world ) but mostly to be realistic,
even rome got burnt down to the ground, but like in the game back when you could raze a city someone came back and started a new city. sometimes under a different name, interesting fact my home tome had a different name 100 years ago, not to mention ghost towns are a real thing

also with the city limit being so low and being forced to wait tell federation to really go to war and with the city limit being forced to be a federation civ unable to raze cities hurts even more,, i mean really
Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan would not be able to do what they did if they had to follow these rules

and i dont play on the biggest maps but have to stop wars because my main cities are starving to death because im taking over the known world which is not even a third of the continent im on

I totally agree.
I don't know why it got broken but it is a known issue and will be fixed.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Yea, it's a tough one. On one hand it is a gamebreaking bug that definitively needs to be prioritized and it clearly has not been for months now. On the other the people working on it are doing so on their own time and for free. And we have to respect that fact.
I mean, we can't well demand they go and do overtime over the holidays. Hell my boss can't demand that from me and he is paying me money.


This being said, alstone does bring up another good point. The penalties for having too many cities are a very good idea overall. They definitively add to the feel of the game in a very positive way. But during wartime they just become ruinous to the point where wining the war is actually worse than loosing it. Especially given just how much more population and building loss cities in this mod tend to suffer after conquest than in regular CIV which means you not only get penalties but penalties for cities that become useless upon conquest.

Ideally I'd say that something needs to be done about those losses. Like make cities get far less ruined when captured.

And also I would say that if possible the penalties for too many cities should not count conquered cities until the war is over. Only when peace is declared and the cities are officially divided up should they apply.

 

[PKSRoman]

And also I would say that if possible the penalties for too many cities should not count conquered cities until the war is over. Only when peace is declared and the cities are officially divided up should they apply.

no, its stupid
have 9 cities, declare war, conquer 12 more, have 21 total and be TOP1, never make peace, get profits from additional cities

 

[PPQ_Purple]

no, its stupid
have 9 cities, declare war, conquer 12 more, have 21 total and be TOP1, never make peace, get profits from additional cities

I understand your opinion but I feel that it is somewhat invalid for the simple reason that what you described is an exploit. And I firmly hold that the game should be balanced around people playing it as intended and NOT around those who abuse game mechanics and use exploits. Do that and you might as well start balancing thing around people who open the worldbuilder to add them self free stuff.

And the current situation where you can't conquer any cities at all because it wrecks your economy is clearly broken. If wining a war causes you more harm than the enemy that is clearly NOT a good thing. And neither is the current state where conquering a city basically renders it into a newly settled useless settlement.

Not that I would be opposed to some balancing measure to stop snowballing and turning enemy cities against them too rapidly. But that's a different thing and a bridge that we can cross when we get to it.

 

[Inthegrave]

Yea, it's a tough one. On one hand it is a gamebreaking bug that definitively needs to be prioritized and it clearly has not been for months now.

At the very least Zeta has just released a patch file you can use that makes city razing not happen under any circumstances, and if you wanted to raze you can just use the world builder for now.

Only other thing I will say is that there is reasons why it hasn't been prioritized for months which I won't go into here. But the issue will eventually be addressed.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

At the very least Zeta has just released a patch file you can use that makes city razing not happen under any circumstances, and if you wanted to raze you can just use the world builder for now.

Only other thing I will say is that there is reasons why it hasn't been prioritized for months which I won't go into here. But the issue will eventually be addressed.

That's not a solution worth considering as using the worldbuilder reveals the whole map and thus spoils the game.

 

[Inthegrave]

That's not a solution worth considering as using the worldbuilder reveals the whole map and thus spoils the game.

Sure I understand that. You'll just have to wait in the meantime.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Sure I understand that. You'll just have to wait in the meantime.

Yes, obviously. Again, don't take my complaining as a lack of understanding or appreciation for your work. We are all, you and we simply stuck until things fall into place.


This said, as an annoying end user bugging the developer to fix bugs with apparently zero regard to the actual complexity of the problem beyond what I can see I have to say that it's kind of fun to be on this side of the equation for a change.

 

[Inthegrave]

Yes, obviously. Again, don't take my complaining as a lack of understanding or appreciation for your work. We are all, you and we simply stuck until things fall into place.

Nah don't worry you didn't do anything wrong.

 

[<Nexus>]

This being said, alstone does bring up another good point. The penalties for having too many cities are a very good idea overall. They definitively add to the feel of the game in a very positive way. But during wartime they just become ruinous to the point where wining the war is actually worse than loosing it. Especially given just how much more population and building loss cities in this mod tend to suffer after conquest than in regular CIV which means you not only get penalties but penalties for cities that become useless upon conquest.

The original idea was that the bigger your empire is, the harder it is to maintain. And I still hold to this. I always wanted the game to be an "Empire Simulator" where the challenge comes not only from conquering your rivals but also from maintaining your own empire. Of course these two aspects need to be balanced with each other.
And from a historic point of view: There were quite some "balloon empires" that grew from small to to huge and than quickly collapsed. So if your empire is collapsing under its own weight, than its not necessarily the mom's fault...
At least it shouldn't be but I don't say that the most is already that balanced
But that's the goal

Ideally I'd say that something needs to be done about those losses. Like make cities get far less ruined when captured.

Now this is something with real meaning. I always felt that cities are losing to many buildings after conquering but never really cared or had the capacity to do something about it.
But I can increase the conquest probability of buildings, so captured cities won't be so empty.
Interestingly religious buildings (temples, monasteries and cathedrals) have 0 chance of capturing. It was this way in AND2 and probably in BtS too.

So what should be a standard % of keeping buildings after conquering a city? Should religious buildings have the same chance? What kind of buildings need special rules? (World Wonders are always captured)

I think we should start along these lines.

 

[cyberlegale]

1. Download Archive and Patch from HERE
2. Go to your Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Mods folder
3. Extract the archive first, than the patch and say 'Yes' to overwrite.
4. And... Run the game

Thanks a lot!
I think also, that it would be reasonable to create a direct link on this thread's first page with this instruction. For example "Installation guide". It is to avoid asking this repeatable questions from newfags as sort as me)))

 

[PPQ_Purple]

The original idea was that the bigger your empire is, the harder it is to maintain. And I still hold to this. I always wanted the game to be an "Empire Simulator" where the challenge comes not only from conquering your rivals but also from maintaining your own empire. Of course these two aspects need to be balanced with each other.
And from a historic point of view: There were quite some "balloon empires" that grew from small to to huge and than quickly collapsed. So if your empire is collapsing under its own weight, than its not necessarily the mom's fault...
At least it shouldn't be but I don't say that the most is already that balanced
But that's the goal

As said, I agree with the general idea behind it. And for times of peace it works just fine. But as it stands it really discourages war.

I mean, look at the cost-benefit analysis. What are the potential benefits of wining a war:

1. Knock out / down a rival.
2. Get more cities and territory.

In your mod, #2 isn't really an option due to city number limits. And that's not a problem. Indeed, it makes for an interesting game because it encourages critical thought. How many cities do you keep? Which do you gift to your allies? Do you maybe want to turn the enemy into a vassal and gift him all his cities back? Your mod is really the first and only time ever in my years of playing CIV where I've had to ask my self these questions. And that was fun.

But all this is thrown away if the war drags on and the cities you have a plan for become useless dead weight grinding you down.

In my last game I had a plan for a war that involved crossing a small patch of sea to beat up a neighbor on the other side, take his cities and release them as a colony. I had the superior army, and economy going in. My opponent was near the bottom of the score board. Really, everything was 100% on my side.

But by the end of it even though none of the fighting was even on the same continent as my cities the penalty had wrecked them to the point of me falling down several spots in the score board. And when I finally won and released the colony I wanted it ended up being a horrible dead weight full of radius 1 cities with like 1-2 pop each that newer did recover until the end of the game.

I would have been better off just razing those cities entirely. And I would definitively been better off not starting the war at all. And I doubt that is the effect you were going for.

Now this is something with real meaning. I always felt that cities are losing to many buildings after conquering but never really cared or had the capacity to do something about it.
But I can increase the conquest probability of buildings, so captured cities won't be so empty.
Interestingly religious buildings (temples, monasteries and cathedrals) have 0 chance of capturing. It was this way in AND2 and probably in BtS too.

So what should be a standard % of keeping buildings after conquering a city? Should religious buildings have the same chance? What kind of buildings need special rules? (World Wonders are always captured)

I think we should start along these lines.

It's not just buildings. Indeed, the buildings are not the problem but just a symptom of the problem. The problem is with how your game handles culture and population growth.

Basically the way this mod handles culture and stuff means that when it is conquered a city is going to lose everything beyond the 1st circle. And that is inevitably going to send it into a cycle of starvation that it can't recover from. At least that's my experience.

And what this means is that, buildings or no buildings the city is pretty much reset to its founding. It's going to take it tens if not hundreds of turns to recover and become worth anything. The building loss is just the final nail in the coffin that ensures it won't ever recover as opposed to it just being so long you might as well raze it and found a new one.


And honestly I am not sure what you can do about all this.

Fundamentally you want to definitively keep the city limit because it makes peaceful gameplay very fun and offers up interesting choices during war time. But at the same time you need to somehow make it ignore temporary conquests during war to ensure war remains fun. You also have to make sure that cities aren't wrecked upon conquest. But at the same time you have to make it so that this can't be abused by forewerwar or more prosaically by using conquered cities to churn out armies to keep the war effort going.

And I am not sure how you can accomplish this.

 

[<Nexus>]

It's not just buildings. Indeed, the buildings are not the problem but just a symptom of the problem. The problem is with how your game handles culture and population growth.

Basically the way this mod handles culture and stuff means that when it is conquered a city is going to lose everything beyond the 1st circle. And that is inevitably going to send it into a cycle of starvation that it can't recover from. At least that's my experience.

And what this means is that, buildings or no buildings the city is pretty much reset to its founding. It's going to take it tens if not hundreds of turns to recover and become worth anything. The building loss is just the final nail in the coffin that ensures it won't ever recover as opposed to it just being so long you might as well raze it and found a new one.

Well, those are not the same thing:
1) Capturing buildings is defined in CIV4BuildingInfos.xml individually for every building. I can change that.
2) Culture after capture is defined in the dll. I cannot change that.
If cities would keep more of their buildings (I especially think of Cathedrals) I think they would recover faster.
3) Population: Well... It seems realistic that a captured city suffers and is experiencing starvation until it recovers. Of course, it should be able to recover.

It's still theoretic but I believe that fixing point 1 will fix point 2, that will fix point 3.

Of course even with this, conquered cities will likely to see some starvation before recovering.

But I believe that players have some tools to handle the situation:
1) Before war send spies to spread your culture, so when you capture the city you already have its surroundings (I admit that it takes a lot of preparation)
2) Culture Bomb with a Great Artist and/or Treasure to expand city borders (but of course you may not have such a unit for that purpose)
3) Send Traders/Caravan/Freight/Truck to Hurry Food mission (I know it is tedious but humanitarian efforts always are)
4) Use civics wisely: e.g. Autocracy has +1/military units stationed.
5) Bring workers and build Forts to grab more land around captured cities.

I'm not saying that nothing is wrong but I think it can be solved.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Well, those are not the same thing:
1) Capturing buildings is defined in CIV4BuildingInfos.xml individually for every building. I can change that.
2) Culture after capture is defined in the dll. I cannot change that.
If cities would keep more of their buildings (I especially think of Cathedrals) I think they would recover faster.
3) Population: Well... It seems realistic that a captured city suffers and is experiencing starvation until it recovers. Of course, it should be able to recover.

It's still theoretic but I believe that fixing point 1 will fix point 2, that will fix point 3.

Of course even with this, conquered cities will likely to see some starvation before recovering.

In vanilla CIV cities don't loose their 2nd layer of BFC when conquered though. Not as far as I remember anyway. And capturing cities certainly isn't this ruinous.

1) Before war send spies to spread your culture, so when you capture the city you already have its surroundings (I admit that it takes a lot of preparation)

Aside from this being a giant investment in hammers on the scale of basically building a second army I doubt that the AI would be able to do it.

2) Culture Bomb with a Great Artist and/or Treasure to expand city borders (but of course you may not have such a unit for that purpose)

If I have great artists to waste on such a project than I probably have invested heavily into culture and not other things like... you know, war.
And even if not, what happens when you want to capture the next city over, and the next one? If you have that many great artists just sitting around you might as well just go for a culture victory at that point.

3) Send Traders/Caravan/Freight/Truck to Hurry Food mission (I know it is tedious but humanitarian efforts always are)

1. Can the AI figure that out?
2. That just makes war even more massively expensive at a time when my empire is imploding because my people hate me for wining the war.

4) Use civics wisely: e.g. Autocracy has +1/military units stationed.

If you can afford to build enough of an army to defeat your opponent AND do that you have probably pulled so far ahead in the game that you are probably a difficulty level or ten too low...

5) Bring workers and build Forts to grab more land around captured cities.

That's the only sort of workable thing you mentioned here. And I say sortof because it takes a lot of micromanagement, I don't think the AI could figure it out and it would be difficult to do if enemy cities are not spaced out.

I'm not saying that nothing is wrong but I think it can be solved.

And I don't really see anything you said as a valid solution. Bottom line is that when I capture a 10-20 population city at the core of an enemy empire and by the time the war is done my cities have lost 10 pop because of it and that city is down to 1 and basically useless forever it makes me think that the AI is right to be pacifist. I mean, in vanilla CIV when I capture a city its basically ready to go and start contributing the moment anarchy happens.

 

[<Nexus>]

In vanilla CIV cities don't loose their 2nd layer of BFC when conquered though. Not as far as I remember anyway. And capturing cities certainly isn't this ruinous.

I haven't played vanilla for 10+ years, so I have totally forgotten how it was

Aside from this being a giant investment in hammers on the scale of basically building a second army I doubt that the AI would be able to do it.

If I have great artists to waste on such a project than I probably have invested heavily into culture and not other things like... you know, war.
And even if not, what happens when you want to capture the next city over, and the next one? If you have that many great artists just sitting around you might as well just go for a culture victory at that point.

1. Can the AI figure that out?
2. That just makes war even more massively expensive at a time when my empire is imploding because my people hate me for wining the war.

If you can afford to build enough of an army to defeat your opponent AND do that you have probably pulled so far ahead in the game that you are probably a difficulty level or ten too low...

That's the only sort of workable thing you mentioned here. And I say sortof because it takes a lot of micromanagement, I don't think the AI could figure it out and it would be difficult to do if enemy cities are not spaced out.

No doubt these all need a lot of extra investment and micromanagement. I'm just saying that there are tools that work in certain scenarios, though not always.
But I agree that the AI won't use them.

And I don't really see anything you said as a valid solution. Bottom line is that when I capture a 10-20 population city at the core of an enemy empire and by the time the war is done my cities have lost 10 pop because of it and that city is down to 1 and basically useless forever it makes me think that the AI is right to be pacifist. I mean, in vanilla CIV when I capture a city its basically ready to go and start contributing the moment anarchy happens.

Once I fix buildings we'll see how valid they are. If it will be still the same than we can keep brainstorming about it.
At least I have a plan and not just "Sorry guys, it's something in the dll I cannot fix "

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Once I fix buildings we'll see how valid they are. If it will be still the same than we can keep brainstorming about it.
At least I have a plan and not just "Sorry guys, it's something in the dll I cannot fix "

True, but at the end of the day it all boils down to the simple conclusion that if you capture a city it needs to be up and running reasonably soon as opposed to basically becoming a fresh settlement. How you achieve that is up to you. I can offer my observations on the subject but ultimately that's it.