Community Patch for BNW

Generally speaking, it would help the current poor balance between Great People; specifically, how much weaker Merchants are than Engineers and Scientists. While Merchants will still be weaker with separate counters, adjusting the spawning system to make Merchants not be an active detriment due to the opportunity cost from increasing the time to your next Scientist or Engineer would go a long way towards helping balance them.


More personally speaking, I plan to use this patch as the base for a large mod I am about to start working on, which converts all expended Great People to combat units which have different abilities based off of which type of Great Person created the unit. Having separate GP counters will allow me to balance this much better.

 

Thing is, I don't really want CSD. I'm want a "Civ 5 +" sort of patch. One that retains what Civ5 has (as in doesn't fundamentally change anything that would make it "custom") but increases and balances it. To me, new resolutions would be fit in this, and it would help making WC less frustating/boring.

As I said, patches add new content too.

 

The general rule of the dll system here is to make balance or interesting changes from CSD or CEP or other modifications easier to do and to run.

If we're going to spend time deciding what kinds of WC or UN resolutions might be of interest that we currently can't do, that's one thing. But completing them into an active mod will take a lot of effort arguing over the balance of change X versus change Y, effort that would probably be better spent in CEP or CSD modifications rather than here. That's a distraction from the work necessary to change some code to make the game/AI run smoothly as a baseline as well as enabling the options for modding these kinds of changes in.

@vice, there are other ways to address the merchant-scientist-engineer balance question, namely by improving the yield of GM missions or that of merchant specialists, or reducing those of the engineer/scientist instant yields somewhat (they're fun, so we'd rather not nerf them too much). I'd like to see a way to separate the spec counters as well, but I'd put it as a fairly low priority so long as the balance can be addressed elsewhere.

 

This statement seems to contradict your lack of interest in CSD. CSD's changes are largely 'new content' (all of it is technically new content- the only major change to core rules is that you can't give CSs gold gifts). I've made so many edits to the dll via CSD that it would be very time-consuming to separate the new features from the pure changes.' Also, I'm not sure you read this:

Exactly. We're making some important improvements to the AI and to the modular elements of the game, but actual changes will be relegated to existing or new mods. In short, if you want new resolutions, etc., those changes will come outside of the Community Patch.

This would be useful, though, as you said, it'll need to be addressed in a mod (unless there's a function that we can add that would facilitate the 'strength' of the GM).

G

 

I'm sure CEP already bumps up the yield of trade missions and reduces the bulb/rush value (or changes it at least). And modifying the yield of the specialists I think is trivial, if annoying for the culture yield. That part is already an option. I'd have to check if this is something that was a simple data edit or required a lua modification.

We'd probably want something similar for musician/writer effects to be easily modded if that isn't already the case. I don't think that has been addressed as a question for balance within CEP (for the treatise or the concert tour). Again, this would be something we should check if it is done easily in a data edit before demanding it here.

If a modder is looking at adding new values to the specialists, such as a created unit with combat abilities, that's a different story that maybe could be helped out here. Or could be pretty simple to do. I don't know. My own modding ability is mostly limited to debugging and/or liberally modifying things other people have already decided to do. But it's something.

 

Don't Bath, Well and Wind Plant fit into that category then? It's basically new content.

 

I like that these are available, or the artwork is available, but I don't see a need for any of them to be included by default. I would advise against adding any of those other than as conceptual additions if they add some new functionality for modding (but not turned on by default).

I don't even think they are needed balance wise. The garden could just remove the freshwater tag rather than add a new building to do the same thing (CEP did this), and the river/lake bias more broadly I think of as fine for realism/gameplay purposes rather than a problem in need of a solution with non-freshwater buildings. The AI settler bias against rivers/freshwater/coast is a bigger problem than the buildings balance and the buildings balance can be addressed with other compatible mods very easily, including mods adding that content if desired by those who want it. This is not a strong argument for demanding new content in this project in otherwords because the content requested is a) easy to do already and b) not that great of an idea other than conceptually (the wind plant is an interesting concept for late game, probably better than the recycling center as a late-game building, but I don't see that it would need to be non-freshwater limited for example).

 

They won't be enabled in the final version of the patch. They're proofs-of-concept, used for testing functionality.

Indeed, though I do think that it makes sense to have two different buildings, and to make the freshwater-enabled version more powerful or cost-effective to give incentive for river settling. The option will be available.
G

 

I could certainly see a basis for a "no-river" building as a concept for modders to make use of, as not everyone sees changes the way I do. Not sure it's a default addition needed in the game itself was the point. Additional content is a very, very wide arena, and this will only make it wider. That needs to remain the focus or it can get bogged down in adding features and feature creep away the good stuff in favor of adding new stuff. Because there's an endless amount of stuff people may want to see available.

(Though as I said, I like the wind plant idea broadly speaking as a late game building and there's 2-3 of the current late-game buildings that are practically worthless that it could replace in a balance mod)

 

Not crazy about the -10 resting point penalty, or the 30 turn minumum war. I almost never have wars last that long, even when I'm eliminating a civilization. A war that long against a single city is just preposterous. Both of these changes are too huge.

 

Ahem...

If not stated otherwise, values mentioned here, until the mod is on the verge of being released, are not final values. Also, all values will be editable and changes can be disabled.

 

So gazebo, before you said you weren't focusing on multiplayer but... shouldn't this be one of the goals of this patch? Multiplayer modding has been an obstacle for a long time, and this patch's goal is to facilitate modding as a whole. Plus there are so many things to fix with multiplayer, the science overflow thing, the trading screen bug, the fact that you can actually vote someone else for world leader (which I think is utter nonsense, especially when someone is "kingmade" out of spite for the iminent winner), etc.

Unless it's simply impossible?

 

I don't know how much we can do with the multiplayer side of Civ. I haven't looked into it much, to be fair, as it is both incredibly difficult to test your fixes, and the risk of creating connectivity issues is worrisome. I don't play multiplayer often, so I'm not up-to-speed on the nature of the problems you describe (except for the last one, which, unfortunately, is just a cheap tactic). Care to elaborate a bit more as to what the problems entail?
G

 

I don't play multiplayer either (yet at least), but I watch people play them.

Science overflow is this.

The trading screen bug is an infamous and completely ridiculous one. It basically entails that if you modify a trade, close the window and open again, you can accept the deal you just modified. So you can set up literally any kind of deal ("give me everything you got for nothing") and hit accept.

The last one is just a game aspect I don't think should even be there. Diplomatic victory is supposed to be a personal achievement, by gaining favor of city states, employing diplomats and getting the right wonders and resolutions in place. It should not be just "ROFL LETS MAKE THE LOWEST SCORE PLAYER WIN HUEHUEHUE".

I'm sure people who play multiplayer more often have other kinds of complaints.

 

OMG!!!
I've just realized I've experienced this, the science overflow, before and thought it was some major stuff up in CEP's lua code. This really should be high on the list of fixes.

A Holy Grail perhaps?

Edit:
I just checked the opening post and it looks like this is listed as only a MP (multi-player?) problem in the BUGS section.


Sent from my GT-I9305T using Tapatalk

 

I'll look at it, but if it is truly a MP issue, I'm not sure there is anything we can do. Whoward would be the one to know.
G

 

No, on the contrary, I don't think it's a MP issue. I have never played MP and I think I've seen it. Also there's a video of it being exploited and it is definitely a SP game.
My comment about the MP aspect was just about the comment in the OP.

Sent from my GT-I9305T using Tapatalk

 

It's definitely not an MP-only bug. The issue as I understand it is the tech discount when other civs have already discovered a tech. See this thread (examples start on page two) or watch the following video for proof.

Link to video.
Yoruus also did others without using Great Scientists and Scholars in Residence.

 

The research overflow bug is a maths calculation error.

When the team is researching a tech that other teams have, each member of the team gets a research modifier that is greater than 1 - this is compounded by the Scholars in Residence bonus. As each player hands over their current turn's research plus their overflow it is multiplied by their research modifier before being added to the team pool of beakers. This is necessary due to the way that research is handled by the team and not by a player. The problem arises when the total turn research + overflow from one player exceeds that needed to complete the tech, in this case the research handed back to the player as overflow is NOT divided by the player's research modifier.

I have 100 beakers, my research modifier is 1.2
I pass 120 (100 * 1.2) beakers to the team pool
The current tech only needs 60 beakers to complete, so the pool gives me 60 back.
THIS IS WRONG, I should only get 50 (60 / 1.2) back

Edit: That's the easy bit done, now to work out how to fix it without breaking anything else!

Edit2: Actually it's not that simple, as on closer inspection it's only the overflow that gets multiplied by the research modifier and not the beakers-per-turn, so the hand-back calculation is a bit more complex.

Edit3: Test game using the exploit


Same test game but with the "research hand-back" fix


The predicted values are
150 + 4836 - 12 = 4974 (actual 4975/+1)
150 + 4975 - 18 = 5107 (actual 5108/+1)
150 + 5108 - 79 = 5179 (actual 5180/+1)
150 + 5180 - 163 = 5167 (actual 5171/+4)
150 + 5171 - 241 = 5080 (actual 5099/+11)
150 + 5099 - 423 = 4826 (actual 4827/+1)
150 + 4827 - 621 = 4356 (actual 4360/+4)
153 + 4360 - 819 = 3694 (actual 3695/+1)
which are not those displayed - but they themselves are inconsistent (I could understand an "out by one" error - as that would be rounding - but a sudden leap to +11 is just weird, especially as it then returns to +1), so I'm wondering if the value displayed in the top panel is actually correct!

 

Fascinating. Could the readout be a lua calculation error at that point, or does the lua just read the calculation in the dll?
G