(CONFIRMED) Marathon/Espionage Bug

[Roland Johansen]

Not sure about the poison water mission, maybe something like that but not quite exactly, can't really put my finger on it at the moment.

The second I like, and would also refine it, so that its flat 3 pop WON'T work whatever. Even if there are 40 troops in the city under Hered Rule. (part of the reason the original 24 although wrong, isn't quite as nasty as the poisoning,,if you have 16 troops, and say therefore a hapiness cap of around 30 for a pop 12 city, then the unhappiness isn't so nasty as the unhealthiness)

About the ferment unhappiness: yes that was what I wanted, I just didn't describe it well. It should be a kind of unhappiness that cannot be removed until the 10 turns have passed.

Maybe you can do a better suggestion for the poison water supply mission then. In a reasonably fast growing city with granary, you could get 2 population points in 10 turns (on normal speed), so I wouldn't call that one overpowered. But if you have a better suggestion, then I want to hear it.

By the way, you could make the missions more interesting by having some buildings influence them. For instance: A jail reduces the ferment unhappiness mission time by 30% (so 7 turns instead of 10). But that isn't needed. It could all get too complicated for starting players.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

About the ferment unhappiness: yes that was what I wanted, I just didn't describe it well. It should be a kind of unhappiness that cannot be removed until the 10 turns have passed.

Maybe you can do a better suggestion for the poison water supply mission then. In a reasonably fast growing city with granary, you could get 2 population points in 10 turns (on normal speed), so I wouldn't call that one overpowered. But if you have a better suggestion, then I want to hear it.

By the way, you could make the missions more interesting by having some buildings influence them. For instance: A jail reduces the ferment unhappiness mission time by 30% (so 7 turns instead of 10). But that isn't needed. It could all get too complicated for starting players.

The thing with the flat 2 pop loss for poison water, is that its naturally more punishing to a CE cottaged city than an SE city, relying on farms, which strikes me as maybe a little unfair. How it stands now already is more punishing to a cottaged city, as to use the whip analogy, a SE generally uses it more than a CE. If you are only growing at +2 food per turn, then its a much longer time to grow back, than if you have +5 or more food to spare, and of course, the cottages don't grow when they are unworked.

But no, I haven't a better idea yet unfortunately....

 

[Todd Hawks]

@Todd Hawks:

What was the name of the XML file you modified to remove the missions? Also, if a save is passed to another player (say in a Succession Game), do they need to have removed the missions from the XML file, or is that a change that remains within the save?

It's CIV4EspionageMissionInfo.xml in the Beyond the Sword/assets/xml/gameinfo/ folder. Just look at it, it's easy to see what you need to delete (or modify, depending on what you want to do).

Since changing the xml takes effect even when loading a game, I guess the change does not stay with the save and everyone needs to have the same file to get the same effect.

 

[Uncle_Joe]

So has this been acknowledged as a 'bug' as in not working as designed or is it just a poorly implemented/balanced game mechanic. If its the former, I have more hope that it will be quickly rectified.

I know its been 'confirmed', but does that mean 'confirmed as bug'?

 

[Todd Hawks]

Strictly speaking, it's not a bug since it's working exactly as it should (i.e. there is no rule stating otherwise and there is no hint that the files aren't what they should be). It's just an extremely poorly implemented feature. So poorly that I can't imagine that they don't fix it with the next patch, no need to worry about that.

 

[ChrTh]

It's CIV4EspionageMissionInfo.xml in the Beyond the Sword/assets/xml/gameinfo/ folder. Just look at it, it's easy to see what you need to delete (or modify, depending on what you want to do).

Since changing the xml takes effect even when loading a game, I guess the change does not stay with the save and everyone needs to have the same file to get the same effect.

Thanks for the info.

 

[Roland Johansen]

The thing with the flat 2 pop loss for poison water, is that its naturally more punishing to a CE cottaged city than an SE city, relying on farms, which strikes me as maybe a little unfair. How it stands now already is more punishing to a cottaged city, as to use the whip analogy, a SE generally uses it more than a CE. If you are only growing at +2 food per turn, then its a much longer time to grow back, than if you have +5 or more food to spare, and of course, the cottages don't grow when they are unworked.

But no, I haven't a better idea yet unfortunately....

The cottage economy is a more fragile economy, that is true. It is more vulnerable to pillaging and bombing. It is more vulnerable to sabotaging tile improvements as a town takes far longer to return than a farm. And it is also more vulnerable to the poison water supply mission. I think that is just a characteristic of that type of economy. It is also true that a well developed cottage economy is more powerful than a specialist economy (as long as it is left alone and given the time to develop). I've always considered the vulnerability one of the balancing elements between the two types of economies.

Normal speed example:

City size 10 with granary is losing two population points. The specialist economy loses two specialists, going from +0 food per turn to +4 food per turn. The cottage economy loses a plains hill and a cottage, going from +0 food per turn to +2 food per turn. At size 9 the cottage city uses another grassland cottage and the specialist city uses another specialist both having a surplus of 2 food.

City size 10 with 19 food becomes a size 8 city with 19 food. The city needs 17 food to grow to size 9 and then it has 18 food (granary). Then it needs 20 food to grow to size 10 where is will have 19 food.

This takes 14 turns for the specialist city and 19 turns for the cottage city. (after 5 resp 9 turns the cities would have been size 9).

Just an example of course.

 

[Zoolooman]

While we're talking about espionage missions, can someone figure the costs versus damage for blasting production, blasting a building, stealing a technology, or blasting an improvement?

I'm particularly interested in the default cost on Normal, Epic, and Marathon. If the cost doesn't scale properly, these missions become increasingly powerful on the slower speeds.

Tomorrow, when BTS hits Steam (and I'll have the game here on my home machine), I'll do some testing and calculations as well.

Edit: Also, Roland, I think you're on to something with 2 pop points versus 1. But we've got to be careful, as this will hit large cities harder than small cities (ironically), and we want the mission to be overall effective (multiple missions will shrink a city) without being much more effective than pillaging, sabotaging improvements, or successive nukes.

Edit2: My last edit was wrong. I thought about it, and a large city losing 2 pop points loses a small percentage of its workforce, while a small city losing 2 pop points loses a large percentage. However, since the small city can grow new pop points much faster than a large city, it all balances out.

For this reason, I think the baselines for a new poison mission and a new unhappiness mission should be what you said:

Poison Water Supply: Kills 2 population. Cannot be used again in that city for 15 (10? 20?) turns.

Foment Unhappiness: Makes 3 population points angry citizens for 10 turns. Cannot be used again in that city for 15 (10? 20?) turns.

 

[Pep]

Besides the -24 health/happiness issue, I think espionage mission costs should be increased 3x times in Marathon.
My point: in a normal speed game, leaving the espionage slider at 0%, you can conduct very few espionage missions until renaissance or so, when you have earned enough espionage points through time (and new buildings). But in Marathon game, you remain 3x time in the same age accumulating points. So you can conduct powerful spionage missions even on classical/bronze age!

It's very annoying to suffer enemy espionage missions each turn after a certain period of time (when ALL civs have earned an insane number of spionage points). You can do the same thing, of course, but the game should be renamed to espionagization or so!

I think Marathon spionage should scale to permit you only a similar number of 'spionage missions' as in normal speed. Otherwise, it is unbalanced IMHO.

 

[whb]

It actually makes more sense for Poison Water Supply to have 24 for 8 turns!

The reason is that in Marathon, the grain stores are three times the size -- so there is effectively three times as much food to remove before the city should starve. The starvation then still happens at 1/turn for a max pop loss of 8 if the grain store was empty at the start.

It's much harder to counter -- 24 is quite something to replace, but most larger cities will have granaries so they won't actually face starvation until a few of the 8 turns have passed anyway.

(Alternatively, keep it at 8 for 8 turns, and reduce the price -- to less than a third because your opponent has warning enough to counter you and prevent you poisoning him three times in succession)

 

[DrewBledsoe]

The cottage economy is a more fragile economy, that is true. It is more vulnerable to pillaging and bombing. It is more vulnerable to sabotaging tile improvements as a town takes far longer to return than a farm. And it is also more vulnerable to the poison water supply mission. I think that is just a characteristic of that type of economy. It is also true that a well developed cottage economy is more powerful than a specialist economy (as long as it is left alone and given the time to develop). I've always considered the vulnerability one of the balancing elements between the two types of economies.

Normal speed example:

City size 10 with granary is losing two population points. The specialist economy loses two specialists, going from +0 food per turn to +4 food per turn. The cottage economy loses a plains hill and a cottage, going from +0 food per turn to +2 food per turn. At size 9 the cottage city uses another grassland cottage and the specialist city uses another specialist both having a surplus of 2 food.

City size 10 with 19 food becomes a size 8 city with 19 food. The city needs 17 food to grow to size 9 and then it has 18 food (granary). Then it needs 20 food to grow to size 10 where is will have 19 food.

This takes 14 turns for the specialist city and 19 turns for the cottage city. (after 5 resp 9 turns the cities would have been size 9).

Just an example of course.

Agreed as normal If they just change the poison effect to 8 for 24 turns, decreasing by 1 food every 3rd turn (which is my first assumption), then thats a total of 108 lost. If a city is size 12 to start with, on marathon it needs 132 to grow to the next size. Therefore, if it has 109 food in its granary and is at neutral heath when poisoned, it won't starve at all. (I think this math is correct, very tired today)

Losing a flat 2 pop regardless of city size, is therefore extremely punishing, and would in some cases be much more an extreme effect than the current system (when adjusted), especially for the very large cities. A size 23 city, would lose in a nearly full granary case, around 400. The cost of the mission though, is I think scaled to the size of the city (well it should be if it isn't), plus distance from your capital etc. so this isn't so much a problem. However, if a large city is already starving,has lots of unhealthiness and lets say no granary (assume sabotage) and 1 food in its box, then the current system is devastating.

So your idea may be a lot fairer on more refection. However (again), in reality, you couldn't possibly know how many people would die from this poisoning of water, so how about a random factor thrown in, sometimes (the lesser side) only losing a few food from the granary, sometimes causing an epidemic and losing 3 or 4 pop (the severe side). Most of the time, somewhere in the middle. Just that I love how the random events bring colour and character to the civ world, making it come to life as such. Being able to cause a precise amount of people to die in a city from a hostile act seems a little out of character, however its viewed.

 

[a_civilian]

Perhaps the problem isn't so much these missions in particular (other than the broken speed scaling) as with starvation in general. Consider some other temporary event that reduces food production, such as a blockade/pillage of food tiles. This, too, will kill off population more quickly (relative to the growth rate) on marathon than on normal; it, too, will cause more damage to a city that has just grown than to a city that was about to grow.

Perhaps starvation itself should be changed. The most obvious fix would be to put some food into the granary after the loss of a population point, but I haven't put a great deal of thought into this.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

I went ahead and removed those two missions (simply delete the entries in the xml) and I like it.

It's CIV4EspionageMissionInfo.xml in the Beyond the Sword/assets/xml/gameinfo/ folder. Just look at it, it's easy to see what you need to delete (or modify, depending on what you want to do).

Thanks for the info.

Ditto.

So has this been acknowledged as a 'bug' as in not working as designed or is it just a poorly implemented/balanced game mechanic. If its the former, I have more hope that it will be quickly rectified.

I know its been 'confirmed', but does that mean 'confirmed as bug'?

Whatever the case, I feel like the whole espionage system is borke.

By the time I'm through, it's very likely I will have removed ALL of the active missions, because they feel like terrorism to me ... and unless you think corporations are terrorist organizations, I didn't buy BtS to be a damn terrorist.


Why Firaxis supports terrorism but not accurate WWII history is beyond me.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Okay, Zoolooman and DrewBledsoe. It seems that we largely agree on how these missions should be changed. I wouldn't object to some randomness in the effect as Drewbledsoe suggests, although too much randomness can also be irritating. It is of course more realistic that such a mission wouldn't have a precise effect. (I'm the kind of player who likes to plan everything into detail.)

In my first game of BTS, the second tile improvement of my civilization, build around 3200BC or something like that was destroyed by a random event. Normally, a random event that destroys a tile improvement isn't that bad, however when it happens that early in the game, then it does hurt a bit. I can live with a bit of randomness, but it shouldn't be too influential. So I can live with a bit of randomness in the poison water supply mission, but it shouldn't be too much.

 

[jowr]

These bugs are hilariously overpowered when playing one city challenge, as well.

It SUCKS to lose half your population....

 

[DrewBledsoe]

These bugs are hilariously overpowered when playing one city challenge, as well.

It SUCKS to lose half your population....

I can imagine Even though, and no offence intended, OCC is a bit like playing Chess starting with all the pieces removed except the Queen, King and 3 Pawns, i.e. not really Chess or Civ.

 

[homan1983]

Some people don't seem to realize that its NOT +8 for 8 turns but rather +8 in turn 1, +7 in turn 2 and so on...

As such, in theory the fact that in marathon the stockpiles required to reach next population take more food cancels it out, also starting at 24 for 24 turns means you also end at 1 in the final turn.

However this has some huge flaws:

- Unlike when a city is growing, once the food stockpile is down to zero and a population is lost, the next population point doesn't start with the granary at full food but instead goes on to lose 1 pop EVERY TURN.


One of the design philosophies of Civ 4 was that it made the game much more managable. They removed unnecessary complications and unfun aspects of the game.

As such, it still baffles me as to why they decided to do 8 then 7, then 6, then 5 etc..

Why not simply do 8 for 8 turns.
This is much more simple and people can understand it much more quickly and easily.

Furthermore, extra complication is bad game design (just like programming - im a programmer I should know) and it comes back to bite you in the ass later, as is that case now.

if they had simply done it such that it was a straightforward +8 for 8 turns or +8 for 8 turns, then the scalability would have been SOOOOO simple:

They could have either made the length scale such that it would become +8 for 24 turns, or made the potency scale: +24 for 8 turns.

I personally assumed the length made more sense until someone in this thread posted and I'm coming around to the idea of making the effect more potent in longer speeds rather than simply take longer.

Either way the current implementation is is flawed at its core and simply reeks of low playtest/quality control which wasn't the case for civ4 (it was much more polished)

There is also another huge problem with inflation and corporations but thats another story for another day.

I'm still mightily impressed with the expansion though, don't get me wrong!

 

[Ricci]

If you try to posion a cities water supply on normal speed, It gives 8 for 8 turns. Marathon incorrectly triples both the duration, and the effect, hence:- 24 for 24 turns. This effectively destroys a city in the middle game more completely than if it was nuked. I presume this was overlooked, and it should be 8 for 24 turns. Triple the duration, same strength. The same thing applies to unhappiness.It again produces 24 for 24 turns instead of 8 for 24 turns.

Actually, marathon speed comprises doble the turns than normal, although things cost triple (the only exception being units). So, a proper adjustment to this espionage catastrophy would be same unhealthiness (8) for twice the turns (16). For the sake of comparison a golden age lasts 16 turns and it is just fine. I can expect a natural criticism about food storages being also triple in marathon, but bare in mind it takes indeed triple to get a city to grow while food surplus from worked tiles stands as in any other speed level (although, i insist, you only have twice the turns to store food compared to normal). So, things are not quite as proportional as they might seem. Perhaps i could indulge a lightly severe penalty of unhealthiness (12, 14 .. i don't know) to cope with such a large granary and take some pop points down from a city catch off guard. Still there is the problem of pop being lost in 1 turn (as in any other speed level) but needing much much more comparatively to regain that point.

 

[Todd Hawks]

Actually, marathon speed comprises doble the turns than normal

Uhm. No. Marathon has double the turns of Epic, not Normal. I don't even know how many turns Normal has since I never played it but I assume it has 500 (Epic: 750, Marathon: 1500).

 

[OTAKUjbski]

I made an Excel spreadsheet to automagically calculate the results of the different foment values.

The variables are (the cells in black if you're looking at the document):

• Starting Population. 0-30.
• Starting percentage of Food in store. 0-100%.
• Food available for growth. 0-30. Remains constant throughout the 24-turn test cycle.
• Bonus health. 0-30. Starting health is equal to the starting population plus this bonus.
• Foment values (Marathon, Epic, Normal). -24-0.
• Over X turns. 1-24. Determines over how many turns the foment effect decays.

A few results:

Total caused:

• Normal: 36
• Epic: 78 (2.16 times Normal)
• Marathon: 300 (8.33 times Normal) !!!

We can see this is clearly not balanced before even looking at the calculated test results.​

Spoiler Size 20 City :

20 / 20 for all:

100% food in store:

• +0 food for growth
  Normal: Population 20
  Epic: Population 20
  Marathon: Population 12
  
  
• +5 for growth
  Normal: 21
  Epic: 20
  Marathon: 18

50% food in store

• +0 for growth
  Normal: 18
  Epic: 16
  Marathon: 10
  
  
• +5 for growth
  Normal: 20
  Epic: 20
  Marathon: 13

0% food in store

• +0 for growth
  Normal: 18
  Epic: 16
  Marathon: 10
  
  
• +5 for growth
  Normal: 20
  Epic: 20
  Marathon: 13

Spoiler Size 14 City :

14 / 14 for all:

100% food in store:

• +0 food for growth
  Normal: Population 14
  Epic: Population 12
  Marathon: Population 5
  
  
• +5 for growth
  Normal: 15
  Epic: 14
  Marathon: 9

50% food in store

• +0 for growth
  Normal: 11
  Epic: 9
  Marathon: 3
  
  
• +5 for growth
  Normal: 14
  Epic: 14
  Marathon: 6

0% food in store

• +0 for growth
  Normal: 10
  Epic: 8
  Marathon: 2
  
  
• +5 for growth
  Normal: 12
  Epic: 10
  Marathon: 4

Spoiler Size 7 City :

7 / 7 for all:

100% food in store:

• +0 food for growth
  Normal: Population 6
  Epic: Population 3
  Marathon: Population -3
  
  
• +5 for growth
  Normal: 8
  Epic: 7
  Marathon: 0

50% food in store

• +0 for growth
  Normal: 4
  Epic: 2
  Marathon: -4
  
  
• +5 for growth
  Normal: 7
  Epic: 6
  Marathon: -1

0% food in store

• +0 for growth
  Normal: 3
  Epic: 1
  Marathon: -5
  
  
• +5 for growth
  Normal: 5
  Epic: 3
  Marathon: -2

A couple changes

Leaving the durations the same (8, 12 & 24 turns) but changing all foment values to 8 resulted in total caused:

• Normal: 36
• Epic: 56 (1.55 times Normal)
• Marathon: 108 (3 times Normal)

So far, at least the overall effect looks more proportional.​

Spoiler Size 20 City :

20 / 20 for all:

100% food in store:

• +0 food for growth
  Normal: Population 20
  Epic: Population 20
  Marathon: Population 20
  
  
• +5 for growth
  Normal: 21
  Epic: 21
  Marathon: 21

50% food in store

• +0 for growth
  Normal: 18
  Epic: 18
  Marathon: 17
  
  
• +5 for growth
  Normal: 20
  Epic: 20
  Marathon: 20

0% food in store

• +0 for growth
  Normal: 16
  Epic: 15
  Marathon: 14
  
  
• +5 for growth
  Normal: 18
  Epic: 18
  Marathon: 17

Spoiler Size 14 City :

14 / 14 for all:

100% food in store:

• +0 food for growth
  Normal: Population 14
  Epic: Population 14
  Marathon: Population 14
  
  
• +5 for growth
  Normal: 15
  Epic: 15
  Marathon: 15

50% food in store

• +0 for growth
  Normal: 11
  Epic: 11
  Marathon: 10
  
  
• +5 for growth
  Normal: 14
  Epic: 14
  Marathon: 14

0% food in store

• +0 for growth
  Normal: 10
  Epic: 9
  Marathon: 8
  
  
• +5 for growth
  Normal: 12
  Epic: 12
  Marathon: 11

Spoiler Size 7 City :

7 / 7 for all:

100% food in store:

• +0 food for growth
  Normal: Population 6
  Epic: Population 5
  Marathon: Population 5
  
  
• +5 for growth
  Normal: 8
  Epic: 8
  Marathon: 8

50% food in store

• +0 for growth
  Normal: 4
  Epic: 3
  Marathon: 2
  
  
• +5 for growth
  Normal: 7
  Epic: 7
  Marathon: 7

0% food in store

• +0 for growth
  Normal: 3
  Epic: 2
  Marathon: 1
  
  
• +5 for growth
  Normal: 5
  Epic: 5
  Marathon: 4

Some conclusions:

• Somebody didn't think about this hard enough before committing it to code.
• Cities with low populations are hit especially hard by foment unhealthiness
• Cities with high food stores are hardly effected (in population)
• Only a city with 100% food in store and great food tiles is even close to safe on Marathon.
• Only the foment durations should scale. (Though the scaling appears to still be a fraction off even with this change.)