Community Call to Power Project

[nathanglevy]

Hi guys! It's great to see things coming along nicely!

@Chrome: While playing, I noticed that I can't trade resources (thus getting a better monopoly), is this intentional? Nothing showed up for me, not even the normal strategic.

 

[FiresForever]

@horem: if you can find the mod and post a link it could be useful

@chrome: it all sounds good

@Doc and Daniel: thanks again for volunteering for the resource placement, I suggest that one takes one of the following splits while and the other takes the other:

1) americas, africa
2) the rest, europe, asia etc

You will be needing firetuner so download the civilisation 5 SDK from steam:

1. to get the SDK from steam select library tab, where it says "all games" click to open a pull down menu select "tools", download the civ 5 sdk from list.

2. To enable firetuner: find the config.ini file at
<My Documents>\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\config.ini

open config.ini file in notepad and change "EnableTuner = 0" with "EnableTuner = 1" press save and close

3. start the civ 5 sdk and choose firetuner, then load civ 5 and put it into windowed mode load any game and in firetuner in the "lua console" tab you should see a load of text being written.

I will be sending you both a pm with everything soon

 

[chrome-rome]

Hi guys! It's great to see things coming along nicely!

@Chrome: While playing, I noticed that I can't trade resources (thus getting a better monopoly), is this intentional? Nothing showed up for me, not even the normal strategic.

It's intentional in the sense that I wanted to reserve the Strategic Resources for those that are actually strategic (horse, iron, etc). This movement came with the unwanted side effect of blocking trade. I'm probably going to cave in and put it the way it was, but it would be nice for a field for trade-able resources without making them luxury or strategic.

 

[danielshannon]

I'll do Europe, Asia, Australia, etc. I have an excellent world history atlas with details about Eurasia's resources from the Roman empire times to the era right before ww2.
Edit: I won't be able to start on this till tomorrow or Friday, however.

also here is a map of global titanium deposits

Spoiler :

and of bauxite/aluminum output as of today
bear in mind that the area just south of Little Rock, Arkansas produced the vast majority of America's bauxite during ww2, so it should be represented

Spoiler :

and this map can help with uranium placement

Spoiler :

 

[DocBuchanan]

Should be able to find the placement information I need on the interweb. Do you want me to tweak resource placement in favor of fairness or do you want this as realistic as possible? Your call boss types.

In addition, chrome, please shed a little light on this tech breakthrough idea. Sorta my cup of tea.

Just to throw a zero in the code... Had you thought about changing the tech tree so that each ERA had a tree instead of each field of study? So, button1 opened an ancient era tree that spanned all five of your fields, button2 opened up a classical era tech tree, etc. I'm in the process of putting together my own design and this was the way I decided to go. Of course, I want a really really long game.

 

[FiresForever]

@doc: i am thinking to begin with realistic placements, with a few fairness tweaks for example there should be some horses placed in America. That way placements can be tweaked based on feedback from games played.

 

[chrome-rome]

Should be able to find the placement information I need on the interweb. Do you want me to tweak resource placement in favor of fairness or do you want this as realistic as possible? Your call boss types.

In addition, chrome, please shed a little light on this tech breakthrough idea. Sorta my cup of tea.

Just to throw a zero in the code... Had you thought about changing the tech tree so that each ERA had a tree instead of each field of study? So, button1 opened an ancient era tree that spanned all five of your fields, button2 opened up a classical era tech tree, etc. I'm in the process of putting together my own design and this was the way I decided to go. Of course, I want a really really long game.

Actually, it would be better to direct this question to Fires (if you don't mind ). He's the mastermind behind it, and therefore has the best answers. For that second bit though, the tech tree will now be structured by breakthrough. Once you get achieve one, it will open up techs in one or more of the four different tech categories (growth, military, econ, society).

BTW, it seems like you have some experience with coding. Would you be interested in joining "The Team?"
/shameless promoting

*EDIT*
Patch notes for the upcomming patch have been posted on 2k forums. It doesn't look like there will be any complications. I hope they will add more to it though, as it's looking a little small.

 

[FiresForever]

I think you might end up with a similar confusing scenario to the current system in this mod by using era pages, especially if tech prereqs span different eras. Also if the trees will be going from top to bottom instead of left to right this will result in either a total pipe (the lines connecting techs) rework or removing them. Either way i think the planning of tech progression is the key to simplifying a multi page system, hence why we are working on the new breakthrough system

gonna go look at the patch notes

 

[rulner]

@Chrome\Exec Team, sorry if this is a little late on sending you info on my experiences but I’ve been away on my hols . Some of these comments may be obsolete after your recent post on increase era turns.
Game type: Continents, Huge, Standard speed, Prince
My thoughts are all based on the feel rather than exploring the mechanics of the game so I’m not sure how useful this is to you but hopefully it may consolidate what others have said.
Classical – breakthrough turns 16-35
Medieval - breakthrough turns 67 – 97
Renaissance - breakthrough turns 161-204
Industrial – 218 - …
(I haven’t gone any further as yet, not had a lot of time and I'm a slow player )

Overall feel:

Spoiler :

I have never really had to worry about food. Whether I farm land or not, cities always seem to grow (at least in the early games up until Modern) and CtP has lost the challenge that sometimes occur if you don’t keep ahead on farming.
I never felt I was going to have a negative financial turnover, though those who play longer games seem to imply that the maintenance does become an issue later. In vanilla, I have often gone into negative turnover right at the beginning <50 turns and the hunt for Goodie hut s with close to 100 Gold became a need . There was always a constant battle with money and researching economic technologies had more importance. (this may be just the way I play). Anyway so I’ve experimented with not paying attention to money at all and not building any markets etc and yes I did find myself in all kinds of financial trouble lol. I think there are powerful buildings which easily resolve financial issues but there may be a slight balance alteration required where buildings are not so powerful but maintenance can be reduced slightly (especially building maintenance). It may avoid the yo-yo effect. It’s more of a feeling than actually looking deeper into it.
With City States, the issue of food above makes the Maritime one obsolete. I never bother with them other than for strategic purposes.
Overall buildings are too expensive to build (and buy) in contrast to the speed on the game. Yes your main few cities may be able to keep up with building versus research speed (just) but those not blessed with as much production will quickly fall behind and can only produce say 1 building for every 2 researches and those newly built ones around turn 100 onwards will never keep up unless you plough money into them to speed up production.
I have the same issues as others here regarding upgrades to units being way too expensive.
I feel happiness is spot on in the early eras up to Modern. I like the challenge in the early game, makes you think.

Comments on other posts from last week:

Spoiler :

- Love the ideas on War Weariness and the Research BT sounds great (can’t wait). I know you wanted us to hold fire on ideas regarding BT but I thought of another one to through into the mix . The first player to achieve the first breakthrough is the only one who can build the unique unit\building until the first one is built. Once it appears in the ‘field’, then it unblocks it for all other players who have also acquired the breakthrough. This should be limited up until the discovery of the next tech along that tree path as to avoid any player holding back building the unique unit\building. This will give a benefit to the first person to make the breakthrough but I also love the idea of imposing a penalty on the first player to get the breakthrough but rather than a wholesale approach on penalising the player, make it more specific. In other words, penalty should be applied to science only. Let’s not cripple a player’s economy and growth just because of the BT.

- I think the idea of increasing City Size radius will be interesting once we get to underwater cities\floating cities\cloud cities…

Bugs:

Spoiler :

- I still haven’t found any stone, am I supposed to see stone resources around? I think I saw a thread somewhere saying it still wasn’t available but not sure.

-I’ve notice a small bug but I think it’s probably in Vanilla where if a civ you have a research agreement with a civ who gets conquered, it tells you that ‘your research agreement has been cancelled because you are at war’ (and I wasn’t at war with anyone).

-I am able to fish with a fishing boat where there are no fish. (I noticed this in earlier versions too and think its cool but I wanted to check if this was intentional?

Suggestions:

Spoiler :

- Make Scouts more useful in later games. Make them upgradable to a Recon unit, able to move across borders (like spies). Can only kill civilians, Generals, other Recon Units, able to use enemy roads etc.

- Increase number of units stationary in City. City +10 Unit +1 (eg up to City size 9 = 1 unit, City size from 10 to 19 = 2 units etc)

I got to say though the balance is getting better and better with every new release. I hope the above didn't come across as a criticism, because this mod is just awesome and is just getting better and better. Big thanks to you and the rest of the Exec. Team

 

[Bladesss]

I am not sure the vision you have of a new tech tree. When Decimatus was making the existing tech tree, he encountered a limit of only having 9 allowed rows of tech vertically on the tech tree.

As more tools become available another thing Decimatus wanted to do was to add a 2nd map that could be
a) underwater, to allow underwater exploration and cities
b) an orbital map that would allow obital stations and maybe cities
c) a solar system map to also allow more exploration.

 

[rulner]

Are you sure it was 9 because we already have 10 rows in the Eco tech tree.

I wonder how powerful your PC would have to be, to be able to deal with map layers

 

[chrome-rome]

Response to rulner:

Spoiler :

@Chrome\Exec Team, sorry if this is a little late on sending you info on my experiences but I&#8217;ve been away on my hols . Some of these comments may be obsolete after your recent post on increase era turns.
Game type: Continents, Huge, Standard speed, Prince
My thoughts are all based on the feel rather than exploring the mechanics of the game so I&#8217;m not sure how useful this is to you but hopefully it may consolidate what others have said.
Classical &#8211; breakthrough turns 16-35
Medieval - breakthrough turns 67 &#8211; 97
Renaissance - breakthrough turns 161-204
Industrial &#8211; 218 - &#8230;
(I haven&#8217;t gone any further as yet, not had a lot of time and I'm a slow player )

Any and all feedback is welcome.

Overall feel:
I have never really had to worry about food. Whether I farm land or not, cities always seem to grow (at least in the early games up until Modern) and CtP has lost the challenge that sometimes occur if you don&#8217;t keep ahead on farming.
I never felt I was going to have a negative financial turnover, though those who play longer games seem to imply that the maintenance does become an issue later. In vanilla, I have often gone into negative turnover right at the beginning <50 turns and the hunt for Goodie hut s with close to 100 Gold became a need . There was always a constant battle with money and researching economic technologies had more importance. (this may be just the way I play). Anyway so I&#8217;ve experimented with not paying attention to money at all and not building any markets etc and yes I did find myself in all kinds of financial trouble lol. I think there are powerful buildings which easily resolve financial issues but there may be a slight balance alteration required where buildings are not so powerful but maintenance can be reduced slightly (especially building maintenance). It may avoid the yo-yo effect. It&#8217;s more of a feeling than actually looking deeper into it.

With the food, the main limiting factor I am going for is happiness. In all of my games with both this mod and D's, I have never had a city get to the point where it was starving. It's almost impossible, because each citizen only consumes 5 food, while every terrain and building gives much more than that. My check on growth has always been happiness. Now that I am increasing the population of cities, food (by itself) will become even more of a non-issue. However, I think that the benefits of the higher population outweigh any problems that may be encountered.

On the money, I actually play without building a single trading post, often favoring the extra production or food more. That being said, I usually hover right above the negative gold values for the entire game. When I get to Renaissance, I too feel a little yo-yo with my financials; I can go from really negative to really positive in a matter of turns. The problem with changing the values here though is that I want each financial building to give bigger and bigger bonuses as compared to their less advanced counterparts. Buildings like the bank and stock exchange need to be that high in order to make them seem worthwhile when compared with a market/town hall. Adjusting that can mean an entire economic overhaul. Granted, we will probably do that anyway for the breakthrough techs so it's nothing too terrible.

With City States, the issue of food above makes the Maritime one obsolete. I never bother with them other than for strategic purposes.

My take on CS is that they are nice if you have them, but they aren't necessary by any means. If you fill out the Pacifism tree, they will become significantly more cost effective to maintain, but otherwise they are a little like eye-candy. I know that this is a pretty shallow game concept here, but tbh we weren't given anything in vanilla to make this better. I'm going to but City-State Diplomacy Mod integration on my to do list (assuming permission is granted), so maybe that will add depth. Right now, the only thing I can tell you is that if you get maritime CSs, you will grow faster than if you don't have any.

Overall buildings are too expensive to build (and buy) in contrast to the speed on the game. Yes your main few cities may be able to keep up with building versus research speed (just) but those not blessed with as much production will quickly fall behind and can only produce say 1 building for every 2 researches and those newly built ones around turn 100 onwards will never keep up unless you plough money into them to speed up production.

This is one of the benefits of increasing the population. Your cities will have more "umph" to put into constructing various projects. This, added with the return of the slower tech pace, should balance itself out nicely (the cost of buildings is still based on the slower tech pace). And this is the first I have heard about the purchase price of buildings being too much. I will lower it, but seeing as this is a mechanic that the AI doesn't use, making it cheaper for human players makes the game easier as well.

I have the same issues as others here regarding upgrades to units being way too expensive.

Right now I am playing a game where I cut the cost nearly by 66% (3.5 gold per production -> 1.2 gold per production). I don't know if I will keep it this low, but here is one benchmark that I have noted: warrior to legion= ~850g. If you don't buy any tiles, your money will be somewhere around 2,000-3,000g by the time you reach Iron Working. That's 3-4 legions right there. And again, as the tech pace has been slowed down once more, those legions (or swordsmen) will have plenty of time to "create" new puppets.

I feel happiness is spot on in the early eras up to Modern. I like the challenge in the early game, makes you think.

Glad you like it. I am thinking about changing this concept a bit as well, just for my own organizational needs. Conceptually, I have a hard time accepting the Temple as a better happiness building than any other up until the Opera House. Something about that is wrong. Of course, I can't remove the offending happiness without replacing it with something else. The monopoly buildings help, but I am leaning towards adding some luxury resources back in. These will be strictly luxury, ie no monopoly capabilities. Haven't made a decision either way on this, and it certainly won't be in this upcoming update, but it may very well be in the one following.

Comments on other posts from last week:
- Love the ideas on War Weariness and the Research BT sounds great (can&#8217;t wait). I know you wanted us to hold fire on ideas regarding BT but I thought of another one to through into the mix . The first player to achieve the first breakthrough is the only one who can build the unique unit\building until the first one is built. Once it appears in the &#8216;field&#8217;, then it unblocks it for all other players who have also acquired the breakthrough. This should be limited up until the discovery of the next tech along that tree path as to avoid any player holding back building the unique unit\building. This will give a benefit to the first person to make the breakthrough but I also love the idea of imposing a penalty on the first player to get the breakthrough but rather than a wholesale approach on penalising the player, make it more specific. In other words, penalty should be applied to science only. Let&#8217;s not cripple a player&#8217;s economy and growth just because of the BT.

Not bad, not bad.

- I think the idea of increasing City Size radius will be interesting once we get to underwater cities\floating cities\cloud cities&#8230;

It's not the workable tiles I'm increasing, just the population. This maybe a possibility in the future though...

Bugs:
- I still haven&#8217;t found any stone, am I supposed to see stone resources around? I think I saw a thread somewhere saying it still wasn&#8217;t available but not sure.

Yeah, TanisX posted the solution. I have included it for the update that is to be released, but you can add it yourself by putting this:

OnMapResourceGenerator("RESOURCE_STONE" , { "FEATURE_OASIS" } );

in the AddNewResource.lua file. After adding it, open up Community Call to Power Project (v1).modinfo with your favorite text editor (notepad++ ) and save the file, allowing the changes that were made to take hold.

-I&#8217;ve notice a small bug but I think it&#8217;s probably in Vanilla where if a civ you have a research agreement with a civ who gets conquered, it tells you that &#8216;your research agreement has been cancelled because you are at war&#8217; (and I wasn&#8217;t at war with anyone).

I'm going to chalk it up to vanilla as I have not touched anything dealing with notifications.

-I am able to fish with a fishing boat where there are no fish. (I noticed this in earlier versions too and think its cool but I wanted to check if this was intentional?

Yes it is. It was done as an attempt to make coastal cities more powerful. Unfortunately, this is another thing the AI is clueless about.

Suggestions:
- Make Scouts more useful in later games. Make them upgradable to a Recon unit, able to move across borders (like spies). Can only kill civilians, Generals, other Recon Units, able to use enemy roads etc.

I haven't touched any of the unit things yet, but I will keep this in mind for when I do.

- Increase number of units stationary in City. City +10 Unit +1 (eg up to City size 9 = 1 unit, City size from 10 to 19 = 2 units etc)

I'll tell you now that I don't see this happening. I like the 1 unit per hex system as a whole, so this will compromise that. Additionally, the only benefit to having another unit in a city plot is increased defense against attacks (and an extra dead soldier if the city falls).

I got to say though the balance is getting better and better with every new release. I hope the above didn't come across as a criticism, because this mod is just awesome and is just getting better and better. Big thanks to you and the rest of the Exec. Team

Thank you. And like I said at the top, any gameplay information is wanted; if there wasn't any feedback, I would only focus on the issues I care about, which would invariably leave some other concepts underpowered.

@Bladesss: welcome to the forums!! Although I guess you have been around for a while now.
____________________________________________
In other news, does the general masses want to see increased plot purchase cost? I am rather fond of having it at 50g base, but if so, knatte Anka has put together some tweaks that increases that to 500g, along with increases in ruin gold and barb hut gold. If the answer is yes, I will include it in the next update.

 

[nathanglevy]

You know, I had a thought, to make civ-states more interesting... What if we had production/science states? Production states would provide +5(1) production in cities, and more in the capital. Science states would provide maybe a bonus like culture states, only science... (I actually think this is possible to do, though it may be hard). Maybe even replace maritime, since it's not needed currently? OR make the maritime give you a gold bonus per city connected to trade-route.

I just always felt that city states should have more to offer, this would make them cool, though still kinda like eye candy . What do you guys think?

(Side note: I actually believe this is possible via a workaround with policies/resources, a policy that would give this bonus in the background when allied with a city state, or a resource that gives that bonus (again, via this hidden policy)... Just like spatz offered with regards to negative happiness... Though I haven't actually modded, I'm guessing on how the system works. It would be cool to see if this is possible!)

 

[chrome-rome]

You know, I had a thought, to make civ-states more interesting... What if we had production/science states? Production states would provide +5(1) production in cities, and more in the capital. Science states would provide maybe a bonus like culture states, only science... (I actually think this is possible to do, though it may be hard). Maybe even replace maritime, since it's not needed currently? OR make the maritime give you a gold bonus per city connected to trade-route.

I just always felt that city states should have more to offer, this would make them cool, though still kinda like eye candy . What do you guys think?

(Side note: I actually believe this is possible via a workaround with policies/resources, a policy that would give this bonus in the background when allied with a city state, or a resource that gives that bonus (again, via this hidden policy)... Just like spatz offered with regards to negative happiness... Though I haven't actually modded, I'm guessing on how the system works. It would be cool to see if this is possible!)

The only issue I have with that is that these bonuses will heavily favor wide empires. Granted, CtP strongly emphasizes having many cities, but by giving science per city it makes it so that you must have a big empire for that to be beneficial. Maybe just flat science. For the gold per city, I think that directly clashes with the idea of losing money on CS. I mean, if you end up turning a profit, there's no reason not to get them. Speaking of CS, I have changed the amount of unit spam from 16/11 to 24/19 on friends/allies. It is still going to be strong in the really late game, but at least it won't be completely OP.

 

[shoi]

Iceco did something like what you're suggesting. He called it the Not Another City States mod.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=395554

 

[chrome-rome]

Iceco did something like what you're suggesting. He called it the Not Another City States mod.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=395554

Just looked through. Thanks. I like CSDM more, but maybe I could combine the two. Although the lack of proper UI functions is a turn-off.

 

[rulner]

@chrome, Thanks for the feedback . It all makes sense.

Re - Price of buildings, tbh I would never buy a building cause it would wipe me out financially. I rather save the money for that emergency unit that always seems to be in demand lol.

Re – City Radius

@ nathanglevy Love your idea of Science CS but I agree with Chrome on the science per city being too strong with large empires. I feel the idea of CSs is more for the early game not the late stages. By the Modern era, there shouldn’t be any point in them.

@ chrome, I’m not sure I like the idea of decreasing the spawn rate as there would be little benefit in the early eras of having a militaristic ally.
In Vanilla CSs were useful at the beginning to increase your culture and military but the expense was too high compared to the length of time you would have them as allies. They were only really useful in early eras (and I guess that’s was true in real life)
Is there any chance that the spawn rate could be decreased by era ?

 

[chrome-rome]

I checked the xml tags but there's nothing there. It could be doable through lua though, if one of our resident programmers want's to try it *looks hopeful *

 

[nathanglevy]

@shoi: Thanks for sharing that mod, that's actually exactly what I was thinking .

@rulner and chrome:
I think that there should be different types of CSs, since there is one of warmongering empires, and one for cultural empires, there should also be one for science, productivity and commercial empires too.

Science CSs:
I agree that science per turn may be too strong, which is why I would prefer a bonus which is similar to the culture bonus... Like +6 in starting eras, maybe going up to 8-10, but staying around that area.

Production CSs:
Production CS would be very nice in the beginning, giving a small but useful boost. Later in the game this could go up a little by era, but not by much! Maybe from 5 in early eras to 7-9 later. I feel that in reality, peace with city states is very important, even today, just look at our world today! . And about them being too important later, well, this bonus would actually be much less significant later on, since you'd already have so much production, even with the era boost.

Commerce CSs
I agree with the part on commerce being an issue, but think of it this way... You are basically investing, say 500, and getting a certain amount back over time. Or, if you were to use the CSDM mod, will stop being such a contradictory thing. For those who don't know, the CSDM mod's idea is (and rightfully so) to stop putting gold gifts at the center of CS diplomacy, because that's just unrealistic! So there are other ways to make peace with them, and then wouldn't seem like such an issue . Or, this gold bonus could be based on how many cities you have connected to your trade network.

Alternative commerce idea:
ALSO, an alternative, make it so that CS's give you a bonus in commerce based on what monopoly buildings you have! Basically, if you're better at trade, you get better bonuses on this. I'm not decided yet whether that should be just commerce CS's or all of them, but I think that this should emphasize the importance of TRADE with CS's... And since the way diplo with CS's works now with gold is a big joke, this monopoly tradeoff would make even more sense with the CSDM mod!

The new bonuses in not just another CS mod:
I also really loved the addition of great-people CS's and diplomacy CS's, though IMO, this shouldn't be a dedicated CS, rather a small bonus that may or may not be added from certain CS's based on their personality, eg. a scientific CS that is also peaceful, and therefor give a diplo bonus . Or a productive CS that is also progressive (gives you more gold-age points).

Importance of CSs:
I understand that some of you feel that CS shouldn't be so important, but I feel that CS have, and always will be, an important part of any empire. They do, after all, take up so much space on the map. And this would add such an interesting part to the game. I also feel this would give people much more respect to the CSs, and not some annoying obstacle that keep spamming units and blocking you . Most importantly, we're looking to make the game more epic. What else would make the game feel more epic than more interactivity with city-states?



OH, and last idea, we could also have a mission of a city state be to be the first to make a breakthrough! Cool, huh? .

What do you guys think of my ideas? I enjoy all your responses, it's nice to share my brainstorms!

 

[chrome-rome]

Small rant follows:

Spoiler :

I'm starting to get really frustrated with the AI/tech layout. I'm at turn 171, middle of Medieval, and the AI still has not researched any of the monopoly techs. The flavors are present (thanks to Horem ), but they still decide to research everything but these techs. It's the same with some of the new social techs; flavors are present, but the AI won't research them. I think there is something in the code that makes the techs unrecognizable to the AI.

The tech layout isn't helping much as every economy tech requires monopoly techs as prereqs. So, the AI effectively bottlenecks itself on all economic progress until mid-Renaissance, when they have no choice but to research the monopoly techs. When we start working on the Breakthrough system, this will get a serious overhaul.
/rant