Crazy Spatz's Alpha Centauri Mod

[Spatzimaus]

however nothing too significant to report other than in my last game none of the adjacent AIs ever attacked me.

Interesting. How big was your military, relative to theirs? And how crowded was the map? It'd be good to know whether your strategies led to this outcome, or whether it's just a randomly possible result.

The other thing was that there was a serious lack of strategic resources: there were no naturally occuring sources of Uranium, oil, Aluminum, Neutronium, Dilithium, or Omnicytes within my empire, so I could only build a few units based on the resources which became available when I built certain buildings.

NO Dilithium, Aluminum, or Uranium? At all? Without Dilithium you can't build a Fusion Lab, which is the only way to get the Aluminum or Uranium, although you could wait until you get Quantum Labs in the early Nanotech era and use its Dilithium to make the Fusion Lab I suppose. Or did you just buy some from other players or from a city-state? I've actually done that; I bought some Dilithium, built a slew of Fusion Labs, and then when it lapsed I was down to -5 of the stuff but the labs still worked.

It's really sounding like the game needs a basic override to force a few more deposits of the various strategics. The funny thing is that it has a special override already in place for the critical early resources (Iron, Horses, and Oil) to ensure that there's always some near each player's starting location, although its definition of "near" is a bit questionable. It sounds like this needs to be expanded, or at least there should be an option to force a more even resource distribution.
I guess the developers felt no need to do the same for the Coal, Uranium or Aluminum, since the game's usually nearly over by the time you get to those. Which, of course, is why I built this whole mod in the first place, so I shouldn't be surprised.

Dilithium is a different issue. Obviously, the problem is that it's a water-based resource, which can be problematic on a lot of map types and is inherently random in general. I liked the idea of an important production-boosting resource in the water, and I'd hate to dilute that by putting it on land. (I already cheated on this and have land-based Dilithium being a possible outcome of the Deep Mining operation.)

I could just force an additional amount of Dilithium to appear on the map, only in Lake tiles, to complement the current coastal distribution (which I'd reduce to compensate). Actually, I think I'll try that as a first pass. I'm just worried about two things:
1> The AI would be horrible at placing cities on lakes, because right now, there's no benefit to doing so. Lakes, as good as they are, yield less than an improved tile. So if his cities are 1 tile off the lake shore then there'd be no way to reach the deposit to improve it.
2> Can you even build a Work Boat on a lake-adjacent city? Since no resources exist in lakes normally, I'm wondering if this'd even be possible. And if you COULD make Work Boats buildable on lakes, the AI would build more than it needs and be stuck maintaining them.
Now, I'd already thought of a way around this: the Former. It, like several of my other units, is supposed to be capable of moving over both water and land, which'd allow it to improve these tiles. Two problems: it's a T22 unit (endgame), and that movement ability doesn't work yet. So the other solution would be to add a new type of Work Boat at a lower tech, one that builds without sacrificing like a normal Worker. If you add something like a "Kelp Farm" (+1 food, only buildable on coasts or lakes) then this makes a lot more sense.

 

[Darsnan]

Interesting. How big was your military, relative to theirs? And how crowded was the map? It'd be good to know whether your strategies led to this outcome, or whether it's just a randomly possible result.

I’ll see about posting a game-save when I get home.

you could wait until you get Quantum Labs in the early Nanotech era and use its Dilithium to make the Fusion Lab I suppose.

That’s what I did.

Or did you just buy some from other players or from a city-state?

I’ve never bought/ traded any resources with the AIs or C-S to date.

Dilithium is a different issue. Obviously, the problem is that it's a water-based resource, which can be problematic on a lot of map types and is inherently random in general. I liked the idea of an important production-boosting resource in the water, and I'd hate to dilute that by putting it on land. (I already cheated on this and have land-based Dilithium being a possible outcome of the Deep Mining operation.)

I also like the idea of a water-only based resource like Dilithium, if only to give a human player another reason to build a navy.

2> Can you even build a Work Boat on a lake-adjacent city?

I’ll pull up the game-save and see if I can do this with my city on a lake.

D

 

[code9]

I just wanted to say that this mod really looks fun to me and I appreciate it a lot! I'll let you know how it plays out. Thanks!

 

[Spatzimaus]

I’ll see about posting a game-save when I get home.

No rush, I'm off on a business trip until the weekend. No game access, and limited board access.

That’s what I did.

Yeah, it's things like this that have made me consider removing the Dilithium requirement from the Fusion Labs; it just seems like it becomes too potentially crippling if you don't have the right mix of resources (and it sounds like you got the absolute worst possible draw).

I’ve never bought/ traded any resources with the AIs or C-S to date.

Getting a city-state up to Ally level is worthwhile in its own right for the food/culture/unit bonuses and the luxuries; the strategic resources are usually just an added plus. But I've taken good advantage of that before, especially on Dilithium (since city-states are, where possible, placed along coastlines).

I also like the idea of a water-only based resource like Dilithium, if only to give a human player another reason to build a navy.

In my last game, I ran into this when the AI slipped a couple destroyers past my navy and managed to pillage a bunch of resources, including two 5-point Dilithium deposits I'd really needed for all my fusion labs and units. Going negative on a strategic doesn't seem to hurt the buildings that use it, but it does give a large penalty to the units; having all my Gravtanks and Titan units suddenly get weaker was not pleasant.
You'd see this with Oil somewhat in the earlier game, but the fact that 2/3rds of the Oil is land-based made this less effective.

Now, this comment about navies brings up something I'd thought of. Notice how bombers have the Naval Penalty promotion (-50% vs Naval units), and yet still do a lot of damage to ships? It's because the naval vessels have disturbingly low Combat ratings; without it, the air units would annihilate navies. (This is why land-based artillery is so insanely strong against ships.)
Well, I put the Naval Penalty promotion on the Needlejets, so that they'll have the same problems killing Stealth Ships and Leviathans. But I don't think I put that limitation on the orbital bombardment units; the Ion Cannon has a very low attack rating, so it wouldn't be much of a threat, but the Death Ray should rip through ships VERY quickly. Granted, I'm not too worried about massive paradigm changes at T22, since the game will nearly be over by that point, but it's made me think that I should up the Combat ratings of the more advanced naval vessels (Destroyer on up) in general, to make them more resistant to these sorts of things.

------------
And on an almost completely unrelated note, I've been trying to figure something out. I've been thinking about overhauling the Command Nexus and Citizens' Defense Force, two National Wonders that give custom promotions to all of your units.

Right now, they're very simple: CDF is +25% to Combat within your own borders (used to be +33%), while CN is +20% to Combat outside of your borders. These just worry me for two reasons:
1> The combat bonus is just really large. CDF's not so abuseable, but getting the Command Nexus makes your army MUCH stronger on the attack. All units getting +20% at the same time, in all terrains? That's like giving each two free promotions.
2> They're just BORING. One numerical bonus to combat strength?
So I was thinking of lowering the bonuses and giving something else.
CDF, for instance, might become +15% and +1 heal rate within friendly territory (i.e., giving the old city healing rate to units outside of cities, which is less than the NEW city healing rate that's boosted by defensive structures).
For the Command Nexus, I was thinking +10% and +1 range. That range boost means artillery and naval units can now usually hit 4 hexes away; aircraft would also get a slight boost, but nothing worth planning for. (I also thought of adding +1 visibility to go with the +1 range, but only if I increase the Hunter Seeker penalty to visibility to -2.)
But I'm worried that +1 range might just be too good, especially since it'd stack with the normal +range promotion that artillery units can take at higher levels. It's not so much that the range would now be huge, because that nicely counteracts the increased mobility of units, but that there's no way that I can tell to boost the CITY ranges. If you've got artillery units hitting at a range of 5 while the cities have a range of 2, it's a problem. (Maybe I should put -range on the Hunter-Seeker, but I don't know what that'd do when applied to melee units. Would they have range -1 and be unable to attack? Guess I should try that.)
So, any thoughts?

 

[Darsnan]

Can you even build a Work Boat on a lake-adjacent city?

Your right - you can't build a workboat in a city on a lake! Argh! However you can build ships.

Getting a city-state up to Ally level is worthwhile in its own right for the food/culture/unit bonuses and the luxuries; the strategic resources are usually just an added plus.

I found out the hard way last night that another good reason to cultivate good relations is to ensure they aren't turned against you: two AIs declared war on me on the same turn, and their C-S allies joined the fray as well. Not a pretty sight for me! But a very good reason to start really considering getting those C-S to be on friendly terms with you!

D

 

[Spatzimaus]

I found out the hard way last night that another good reason to cultivate good relations is to ensure they aren't turned against you

Yes, definitely make sure that city-states near your empire (i.e., each one on the same continent) is an ally.

The thing is, city-states aren't cost-efficient for any one thing. If adding +150 relations costs 1000 gold, and relations drop by 1 per turn (less if you have a certain policy, more if your enemies have a different one), then you're looking at a cost of 6.67gpt to add +5 happiness, so if all you're using them for is to grab a luxury, you'd be better off building a Theater or Stadium instead and paying the upkeep on those. (Even at my higher costs for these.)
Likewise, the Maritimes now just don't provide much food. It helps, sure, but it's not worth that 6.67gpt cost. Culture city-states are a bit better for this (+10 or +12 culture?), except that this culture isn't multiplied by the Broadcast Tower, Hologram Theater, or certain policies, so it's not quite comparable to the culture from your own buildings. And the gifted units wouldn't be so bad if they started with any XP, but they don't.

But if you can use the culture/food/units AND the city-state has a luxury you don't AND it's close enough to your empire to cause problems in case of war, then it's a good investment. I've also added a few things that tweak this balance, like the Empath Guild; if your effective decay rate is 0.5 less at Ally, then it drastically reduces how long it takes before you have to pay 1000 again, which makes C-S's start to be cost-efficient even compared to buildings.

The problem I've found is that buying a CS is just TOO good. Once you get into the later game and are earning +200 or +300gpt during a Golden Age, there's little reason not to buy up every city-state as an ally; besides what you gain, it ensures that the AIs don't get the extra luxuries and such for themselves. And once you do that, a diplomatic win becomes trivial; Ally city-states ALWAYS vote for you, and all you need is a 2/3rds majority. Since city-states outnumber empires 2:1, well, that's all you need, even if you haven't destroyed any empires.

I've been trying to fix this. I'd like to mod in the following:
1> City-state relation decay rate depends on distance from your capital. So while making the nearby states is easy, the distant ones would be untenable.
2> City-states don't like sharing. You can only have one Maritime, one Militaristic, and one Cultural state as an Ally.
2a> Even if it's not so absolute, I can tie the decay rate to the number of that type. So if you have three Maritime allies, all of your Maritimes decrease at an increased rate (say, -0.5 per extra ally). This'd encourage you not to try allying with every Maritime at once. (The AI wouldn't be able to handle this, but then again, they tend to follow a trend like this naturally.)
3> Just because you're an Ally doesn't mean they'll vote for you. The odds of them voting for you are random, depending on your current Influence level.
4> The base city-state decay rate increases automatically with era. So in the Ancient Era it might only be -0.5 per turn, but maybe it goes up by -0.25 each era. So in the Industrial it's decaying at -1.5, in the Digital it's -2.0, and in the Transcend era it's -2.75. This basically parallels the increased difficulty in raising Influence.

Of those, I think I can code in #1, #2a, and #4 with the current stubs, although the UI wouldn't reflect this correctly and the AI wouldn't handle it well. (Also, the Greeks wouldn't get their bonus on it, although I might be able to handle that manually.) #2 might be possible in Lua, but #3 almost definitely requires the DLL, which is too bad, because I think it's the most necessary.
And if I do #4, I'd want to tweak things like the UN and Empath Guild to give more influence bonuses to compensate.

Any thoughts on which I should do?

 

[Darsnan]

Please note that all of my answers are hypothetical think-throughs on my part.

I'd like to mod in the following:
1> City-state relation decay rate depends on distance from your capital. So while making the nearby states is easy, the distant ones would be untenable.

I think its better the way it is in that you have to "pay more attention to your own backyard" so to speak, as you don't want a distant (or near) AI allying and potentially turning that C-S against you. Real-world examples of this could be Cuba in the '60s, El Salvador and Afghanistan in the '80s: the supporting antagonistic states (in order Russia, Russia, and the US) were distant, yet were very influential in these conflicts. Also from a gaming perspective I think the AIs are better equipped to take advantage of the existing set-up as there are more of them than you the human: the thought process here is that as your fortunes ebb and flow, so too do the various AIs. However statistically speaking there is a better chance that an AI who is ascendent can step in and win over the C-S you are losing influence over: with the current set-up this is then more likely to successfully happen than if the AIs influence abilities decay at an increased rate because of their distance.

2> City-states don't like sharing. You can only have one Maritime, one Militaristic, and one Cultural state as an Ally.

Question: do you think the next patch is going to nerf C-S benefits even moreso? If so, then I don't think this idea would be necessary. Also, what happens towards the end-game when there are only a few C-S which survive? If its a case of "C-S going to the highest bidder", then I think it more likely a human player would be better positioned to get and hold the C-S as allies.

2a> Even if it's not so absolute, I can tie the decay rate to the number of that type. So if you have three Maritime allies, all of your Maritimes decrease at an increased rate (say, -0.5 per extra ally). This'd encourage you not to try allying with every Maritime at once. (The AI wouldn't be able to handle this, but then again, they tend to follow a trend like this naturally.)

I like this idea as it makes it more difficult for a human to maintain control over all the C-S, which is of course to the AIs advantage.

3> Just because you're an Ally doesn't mean they'll vote for you. The odds of them voting for you are random, depending on your current Influence level.

I do like this idea as well! Almost gives that sense of diplomatic "horse-trading" that was revealed recently via Wikileeks - you gotta really finnesse some of these C-S leaders, and even then they prove finecky!

4> The base city-state decay rate increases automatically with era. So in the Ancient Era it might only be -0.5 per turn, but maybe it goes up by -0.25 each era. So in the Industrial it's decaying at -1.5, in the Digital it's -2.0, and in the Transcend era it's -2.75. This basically parallels the increased difficulty in raising Influence.

Question: would this lead to more AI wars on C-S because their alliances/ friendships have expired quicker? Here again the natural ebb and flows of the AIs fortunes would mean they aren't always able to pony up the necessary funds to keep the C-S on good terms, leading to C-S no longer being allied/ friends, which would probably lead to more C-S being conquered because they weren't allied/ friends with nearby AIs.

Anyways, my $0.02 on the subject.

D

 

[Spatzimaus]

Real-world examples of this could be Cuba in the '60s, El Salvador and Afghanistan in the '80s: the supporting antagonistic states (in order Russia, Russia, and the US) were distant, yet were very influential in these conflicts.

But that only reinforces what I was saying. It's FAR easier to convince a minor power that shares a border with you to be your ally, but allying with a minor power halfway around the world takes far more work. So the USSR had no problems "allying" with the eastern European minor powers, because they had so much in common, culturally, and because the threat of force for not cooperating was so close by, while convincing Cuba to do what they want took far more. So making distant city-states decay faster (meaning they need more money to keep up) seems to reflect reality.

The problem with the current system is that if I want to invade a new continent, my first priority should be to ally with the city-states on THAT continent, to draw off some of the enemy's forces. And that's just not realistic; your "natural" allies are the ones near you. It should be much easier for a city-state to stay friendly with its neighbors than with someone halfway around the world. (Not that there aren't plenty of real-world examples of this, of course.)

However statistically speaking there is a better chance that an AI who is ascendent can step in and win over the C-S you are losing influence over: with the current set-up this is then more likely to successfully happen than if the AIs influence abilities decay at an increased rate because of their distance.

Except the AIs just don't do this. They rarely spend any effort allying with city-states, and they most often just ally with whichever city-state is closest to their capital. I've NEVER seen an AI try allying with city-states on the opposite side of the world, at least not until they'd already locked up all the local ones. The only leader I've ever seen prioritize city-state alliances was Napoleon.

Question: do you think the next patch is going to nerf C-S benefits even moreso?

No. There might be tweaking to it, of course, but I think the primary complaint was always about Maritimes and their effect on ICS. With their food output decreased and other methods of stopping ICS, there's no longer an abuseable strategy centering around city-states. So I don't see them getting massively nerfed any more.

If so, then I don't think this idea would be necessary. Also, what happens towards the end-game when there are only a few C-S which survive?

In my experience, C-S's RARELY die. The ones that do are usually the cases we've just talked about, where you ally with a Cuba-style state on the border of an enemy. So I don't think that this'd be a problem, and causing those sorts of alliances to go away faster would definitely help this. I HAVE had one case where a single civ (England) decided to invade a few city-states, but they were my first target for conquest and so I liberated the C-S's.

I plan on making it a bit tougher to invade a city-state in the future. Not by boosting the city-states themselves, but indirectly. Remember how I added "Secondhand" versions of the various future units, resourceless versions that were a bit weaker? Well, I was realizing that I should start that earlier. There should be Secondhand versions of the Tank, Fighter, Radar Artillery, and so on. Right now, in the Industrial/Nuclear eras, you'll be using tanks and bombers against a city-state that only has infantry. Hardly an even fight.

Question: would this lead to more AI wars on C-S because their alliances/ friendships have expired quicker?

As far as I can tell, being an ally doesn't stop an empire from attacking a city-state if it decides to conquer.
I just don't see many unprovoked wars on C-S's. Nearly every time I've seen one invaded has been after the C-S declared war on the empire as the result of an empire-on-empire war.

 

[Darsnan]

the USSR had no problems "allying" with the eastern European minor powers, because they had so much in common, culturally, and because the threat of force for not cooperating was so close by,

I think it was the latter in that the Soviet army was bent on vengence against those who had marched with the Germans to the gates of Moscow and Stalingrad. That and a well trained NKVD who had plenty of practice "installing" new leaders into the eastern states who were friendly with the USSR (read: anyone who was not a communist or communist sympathizer simply disappeared - Soviet controlled Poland in 1940 and again in 1944 would be good examples here).

Regardless, I think you have a system in mind for the C-S. Why don't you implement everything you can code now, lets play around with it and see how the changes mesh/ respond to the system as it stands, and discuss after a few games? That's probably the best way - do some empirical testing, discuss results, and decide if this is the best (or better) route for C-S. Sound good?


D

 

[DustedRug]

This mod is massively cool. I really like the mix of the sid meier's ideas with original content. Keep it up.

 

[Darsnan]

Playtesting hasn't produced a whole lot of observations the last few days. I have still been starting out on King, in Industrial, playing Lakes maps, going for Louvre and using that to slingshot Cristo Ridentor: always get CR to date.

On to this evening's playtesting:

1. When I produced a Laser Infantry in a city with an arty, the arty symbol disapeared and it seemed like it was gone. I didn't get the automatic "you need to move the Laser Infantry" message like I usually get with units produced in cities which already contain a garrisoned unit.

2. The Colony Pod does not colonize for me. I tried reloadint the game, tried building in a different city, tried dropping the unit (that works), however I never get the option to colonize.

3. I do believe the PDL is overpowered. A human is going to recognize its significance (i.e. you can instantly catch up in tech with this Wonder) and develop methods to exploit it, whereas an AI cannot.

4. Concerning your comment previously regarding my never going to war with adjacent AIs: I am exploring this avenue again this evening. Didn't work, however I think it is tied to the weighting of my military. The avenue I am exploring is slowly but continuously building up my military. Worked quite well into the Digital age as none of the adjacent AIs attacked me. The Romans finally did declare war on me, but its a minor dribbling of units towards me rather than a carpet of doom. Will try this approach of slowly but continuously building up my military again in the future and see if it works again.

5. My allies the Indians were collapsing under the weight of a Japanese and Persian attack: I moved my reserve units up to my common border with the Indians and Persians, and the Persian's attacking forces fleed! :/


6. When I invaded the Japanese I puppeted the nearest city I conquered. When I chopped a nearby forest the minerals went to this puppeted city. Should the minerals have gone to my nearest city instead?

7 . Am having a very spirited game this evening: the Ottomans and Romans are pressing me on two opposite fronts. However because of previous games played (read: experience) I am holding my own and am planning to go over to the offensive on whichever axis presents the best opportunity! :b:

D

 

[Spatzimaus]

Back from my trip, so hopefully I'll have a new version within the next day or two. I've got a bunch of ideas about things I want to try.

1. When I produced a Laser Infantry in a city with an arty, the arty symbol disapeared and it seemed like it was gone. I didn't get the automatic "you need to move the Laser Infantry" message like I usually get with units produced in cities which already contain a garrisoned unit.

I've seen this occasionally, but this might be related to a graphical bug I've seen, where the artillery isn't actually there in the first place. (Sort of like the old Carrier bug; the artillery WAS in the city, then you moved it, but the icon stayed, so you think there's a stacking issue when there really isn't.) If it's actually losing a real unit somehow, then that's a huge problem.

2. The Colony Pod does not colonize for me. I tried reloadint the game, tried building in a different city, tried dropping the unit (that works), however I never get the option to colonize.

I'll try playing around with that myself. It might be bugged; there are a lot of little stubs to be copied when duplicating a worker or settler unit, and I might have missed that one little not-so-important one.

3. I do believe the PDL is overpowered. A human is going to recognize its significance (i.e. you can instantly catch up in tech with this Wonder) and develop methods to exploit it, whereas an AI cannot.

I'm tempted to just jack up its Flavor to 100. The problem here, in general, is that it depends heavily on map size and difficulty. If you're playing on a 6-civ map, then there's a good chance two of the civs will be dead by the time you reach that era, and it'd do nothing. Conversely, if you're playing on a 10+ civ map, it's practically guaranteed there'll be enough civs around to trigger the effect. If you're playing on a higher difficulty then you'll nearly always be behind the AIs in techs and so would gain a ton from this, while on a lower difficulty you're likely to be the tech leader and gain almost nothing.

6. When I invaded the Japanese I puppeted the nearest city I conquered. When I chopped a nearby forest the minerals went to this puppeted city. Should the minerals have gone to my nearest city instead?

No. Puppeted cities just don't allow you to control them manually and have less of a happiness penalty; in every other way, they're like a normal city. So chops go to them if they're closest. This is one reason why I almost never bother with puppets. That, and the ability to rush buildings or units; especially in the later eras, where a smart player wants his first buildings to be the +production ones (Factory, Genejack, etc.), while the AI is wasting time on Monuments and such.

7 . Am having a very spirited game this evening: the Ottomans and Romans are pressing me on two opposite fronts. However because of previous games played (read: experience) I am holding my own and am planning to go over to the offensive on whichever axis presents the best opportunity!

Sounds fun. So the question here is, does this sort of two-front war become easier with the future units (more mobile and so more able to cover both fronts), or harder (enemies are just too fast to allow for reinforcements, meaning you need to engage with what you have on hand)?

My biggest worry has been that it's just too easy to go on the attack. In my experience, with longer ranges, faster movements, more units that can withdraw, etc., it's too easy to crush an enemy city in one turn from your side of the border and easily capture with a Skimmer or Vertol. I've tried ramping up the city strengths more quickly, and I added quite a few defensive buildings, but I'm not sure it's been enough.

One possible solution I thought of: take all the non-orbital Air units, cut their ranged combat strength in half, but then start them with the Logistics promotion (can attack twice). This solves two problems at once:
1> This one promotion had been the must-have before; every air unit I made would beeline for it. By giving it by default, that doesn't happen any more.
2> While the total damage of the two attacks would be the same, the aircraft would take twice as much damage in the process. (Possibly more, I'm not sure what the equation is for their damage.) This is especially important against naval units.
Right now, there's rarely any threat to the aircraft survival; they attack a couple times, then rest up safely behind the front lines. As an added bonus, this'd let you use aircraft to pick off almost-dead units without feeling like it's a waste of your time.
This'd make conventional artillery (and naval units) more important by comparison, which is fair since it's far riskier to move those units into position.

 

[Spatzimaus]

There'll be a new version later tonight, unless I find some other major bug in it. Not a lot of huge changes, but I did find something pretty important.

The Public School, in the original game, was +50% research (like the University and Observatory). Since you'd build it after the University (and possibly the Observatory), that +50% was actually more like +33% or +25% in practice, since all percentages are additive in Civ5. The Library, with its "+1 per 2 pop" was the only one that was truly multiplicative, since it was the only building to adjust that base rate that everything else multiplied off of. (That is, building a Library ALWAYS increased your research output by 50%... unless you had anything else that added a flat +research, like the Trading Posts after that one policy.)

Now, I'd thought the research pace was too fast, so I reduced the bonuses of all of these buildings. The Public School only dropped to 40%, but the University and Observatory dropped further (but added Culture to compensate). So far so good, right? Well, in the megapatch, they changed the Public School pretty substantially. I'd noticed that they'd added +1 culture to it, but I'd missed the other part: instead of +50%, it now gives "+1 per pop", basically double of the Library. This is pretty much always +40% to effective research rate (going from a base of 1.5 per to 2.5 per), which is much more (like double) than what it gave before, and FAR more than it gave after I'd nerfed it previously.

Seriously, it's like the devs don't even WANT balance. Was there anyone claiming that the research pace was too slow in the mid-to-late game before, to justify making it even stronger? The way they'd done this also prevented my mod from doing anything to the Public School (it was trying to Update an entry that no longer existed). I've now fixed it in the next version, but be aware that in v.0.12 it's very overpowered.

I played through a game on King, with an Industrial start. Standard map size (8 civs), Small Continents map. The highlights:
> I started on my own little continent, Russia started on their own, and in between us was a single long continent containing the other six. I had plenty of coal and two oil deposits, but no Aluminum. The only available Aluminum was in one city-state, Geneva. Plenty of dilithium, too.
> Those six were in a near-constant state of war. Russia and I almost never got involved; despite my weak army, none of the AIs declared on me, because they were too busy fighting each other.
> Catherine beat me to the spaceship by four turns. Only two other civs had the Apollo Program at that point, and only one had completed any parts, although a couple other civs were tied with Russia for the tech lead. (I'd returned the spaceship flavors to their original values, so the AIs really wanted to build them.)
> That six-way infighting caused the death of one civ (China), reduced the Ottomans to their capital, and England to its capital plus one ice city. Some of England's cities changed hands multiple times between Arabia and Germany. As a result, two civs (Arabia and Siam) had pretty huge empires with massive tech and production, but had expended most of their military units on each other.
> I got a foothold on the main continent by making a colony in a desert area that no one had wanted (even though Cerro Potosi was there), and then started attacking, but without Aluminum my units were a bit primitive and I had quite a few losses while I conquered Germany. The AI is MUCH better about using Air units now. Germany had an 8-unit Aluminum, so once I had that my problems were over.

At that point I now had a significant tech advantage and it was mainly just mopping up the rest. The strange part, really, was in culture; even before I started my conquests I was the Policy leader, and it made a HUGE difference. So I have to wonder what the AI's doing wrong. I think it's one of the following:
1> Starting in a later era unlocks most of the policy trees, but the Flavor ratings on every policy add to 20. So the AI values the weak ones in the Tradition and Liberty tree as much as the more powerful later ones; Communism (+5 production per city) should be far more desirable to the AI than the one that only adds +1 per city, but the AI doesn't realize this. I think, then, that the AI wasted some of its picks on those earlier trees, while a player on those late-era starts will only buy the good stuff.
2> I took the Piety tree instead of Rationalism, which greatly boosted my Culture output. Maybe that's why Catherine beat me to the spaceship.
3> I got Cristo Redentor and the Sistine Chapel first, mainly because I think I was the first civ to get Coal hooked up for Factories. I shouldn't have been able to get any early Wonders on King, but that production boost made all the difference.
(If I'd started in the Ancient Era, #1 and #3 wouldn't have applied, and things might have been very different.)

 

[Spatzimaus]

While I normally have an unofficial rule against triple-posting, it's been 4 days since anyone else posted, so here goes.

I'm planning on releasing a new version tonight.
> Among other things, the five Secondhand (city-state exclusive) units weren't coded correctly, so the game wasn't using them. This meant that in the future eras, nearly the only unit they'd build would be the Mobile SAM. I've also added an additional six units to this list: Tank, Modern Armor, Fighter, Jet Fighter, Gunship, Rocket Artillery; city-states now get resourceless-but-weaker versions of each. (Rule of thumb: 15% weaker.)
> Colony Pods still don't work. It's looking more and more like "Settler" is hard-coded into the engine as the only unit to get that action, but I'm still looking to see if I missed something somewhere. If I can't get these working then I'll disable the unit for now, because obviously there's no point without it.
> I'm not sure whether it's the Happiness tooltip that's broken or the game itself, but the negative happiness on the Genejack Factory, Children's Creche, Nanofactory, and Gravity Shield don't seem to be applying. I'm still testing this one.
> On a related note, I ran into a really strange bug in my last game, also related to Happiness.
I built 12 cities of my own. At 4 unhappiness per, I'd get -48. (Forbidden Palace knocked this to -36, Planned Society to -24.)
Then I started conquering cities. The first thing I'd build in each was a Courthouse. Before the courthouse completed I'd see -8 per conquered city as well, but when the CH completed it all went away. It didn't knock it down from -8 to -4, it went from -8 to 0.
If this was intentional, then this is a HUGE reason to avoid the raze-and-resettle strategy. But it also meant that conquered cities were massive Happiness gains, since they'd have the whole Colosseum/Theater/etc. setup.
So by the Nanotech era, I had something like +250 Happiness. Since I was in a perma-Golden Age I can't tell whether this was a display bug or something in the engine itself, but I'll try to test it tonight.

-------------------------

But before I release the next version, I have a couple balance questions to ask.
1> City growth. My version uses a much higher exponent than the base game, because the megapatch changed the equation.
OLD: 15 + 6x + x^1.8
NEW: 15 + 8x + x^1.5
ME: 20 + 8x + x^2.2
On an Industrial start, my cities were getting to size 18-19 by the Nanotech Era, despite having massive food storage from all my buildings. So the question is, is this too low? What sort of size should cities level off at?
One thing to keep in mind: population means gold and research. As it was I was getting new techs every 2-3 turns by the end; more population just means getting new techs faster. Likewise, in my Golden Age I was gaining ~500gpt. (Okay, the research thing was partially because of the Public School issue I mentioned above. It was still fast.)

2> I'm still not happy with some of the balance issues. Gold and research, especially, just seem too easy to get. One culprit might be of my own design, the research bonus to farms at Centauri Ecology, and then the research bonus to mines at Graviton Theory. +1 research per farm or mine tile adds up awfully fast, after all. I can't add Culture through that table, I don't want to add more food to the farm, adding food to a mine makes no sense, there's already too much gold in the game, mines already get two production boosts, and I don't really want to go back to having the farms be +production (the original version). Any ideas?

One thing I thought was to change both to +gold and just drastically increase the building maintenance costs for the advanced buildings. But that makes the Trading Post (+2 gold, +1 production) too similar to the Mine (+2 production, +1 gold).

 

[Spatzimaus]

Okay, it's that time again. New version!

There are quite a few things in this version that could use some feedback. For instance, the Command Nexus adds +1 to range for artillery and naval units. This is VERY powerful. The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm now gives -1 range, but that won't kick in until the unit has been in the enemy territory for a turn, so a smart player could do hit-and-run attacks if he was smart. (Also, if you've got a big tech advantage, your opponents might not have that for a while.) They're both National Wonders, so at least there's not an issue with getting locked out of one or the other.

v.0.13 (January 19th):
BALANCE:
> I’d previously changed the trade route equation from (1.0+1.25*pop) to Thalassicus’ (-1.3+1.5*pop+0.05*capital). I’ve now changed it to (-1.0+1.33*pop+0.07*capital). This breaks even at population ~13 compared to the vanilla game, and doesn’t explode quite as badly at high populations, but should significantly discourage ICS.

CONTENT:
> The Colony Pod now actually settles new cities. Its cost will now also work correctly; currently it’s set to cost 250 hammers more than a Settler, although this will be reduced depend on the era’s multipliers. I'd like there to be something else to make this better, like the Colony Pod getting that ring of free Improvements we talked about before, but I haven't figured out how to code that yet.
> The buildings that had negative Happiness weren’t actually subtracting. (Apparently the developers don’t understand what “integer” means.) I’ve built in a primitive kludge that will subtract the correct amount of happiness at the start of each turn, but anything that causes the game to recalculate Happiness (like settling a new city) will undo it for that turn. Also, it’ll subtract the amount from the Difficulty Level happiness in the UI, not the Buildings amount, but at least the total will be correct.
> The Spaceship component flavor ratings were raised back up to their original values. I’d lowered them back when building the spaceship did little, but now that the full effects are in place it’s important for the AI to build them as quickly as possible.
> In a recent patch, many promotions gained the “LostWithUpgrade” flag. Some of these were ones I’d previously given that attribute to, so there’s no need to alter them. Many (sight penalty, naval penalty, weak ranged) still needed the flag, though.
> The Citizen Defense Force’s promotion was previously “+25% in friendly territory”. It’s now +15% in friendly territory, +1 healing in friendly territory, and +10% city defense for garrison units.
> The Command Nexus’ promotion was previously “+20% in enemy territory”. It’s now +10%, plus 1 Range. The range is the important part, really. I REALLY wish I could increase the attack range of cities with a wonder, policy, or something.
> The Neural Amplifier’s promotion, in addition to its previous benefit (+25% vs Psi, +1 visibility to all units) now also adds +10% when adjacent to a friendly unit. The Psi bonus was just too rarely applied. Remember that this is a National Wonder now.
> The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm’s negative promotion now also subtracts 1 from the range of all ranged units.
> The Nanohospital’s food storage was lowered from 10% to 5%, meaning the maximum storage is now 95% instead of 100%, and its science output was also cut in half, from +1 per 2 citizens to +1 per 4.
> In the megapatch, they changed the Public School from +50% science to the far more powerful “+1 science per population” plus 1 culture, which not only made it much stronger but broke my previous change to the building (since I was using an Update on an entry that no longer exists). I’ve undone the patch’s change; the Public School now gives +40% research and +2 culture.
> In a previous version I disabled the change to GOLD_GIFT_FRIENDSHIP_EXPONENT (which changes how quickly the cost of bribing a city-state goes up). The default value was 1.01, but I changed this to 1.02. I removed this because I couldn’t find the original value and thought it might have been removed/hard-coded in the megapatch, but I found it again (in AI/GlobalAIDefines.xml) so I re-enabled this. This means that the costs of bribing should now go up more quickly again.
> I’d made a mistake in the Civilizations.xml, and so the city-states weren’t using the Secondhand versions of the five units I’d previously given them (stealth ship, gravtank, etc.)
> Added six more Secondhand units: Tank, Modern Armor, Fighter, Jet Fighter, Gunship, Rocket Artillery. (No Bombers, Battleships, or Carriers. At least for now.) This should make city-states militarily viable in the Industrial/Nuclear eras, when the player usually goes on a big combined-arms military rampage. As with the previous Secondhand units, they’re slightly weaker than the norm to make up for the lack of resources:
- Tank: 44 strength instead of 50, costs 400 instead of 450
- Modern Armor: 60 strength instead of 70 (base game is 80), costs 600 instead of 700.
- Fighter: 42 strength instead of 50, costs 350 instead of 420
- Jet Fighter: 60 strength instead of 70, costs 520 instead of 600
- Gunship: 45 combat and 5 move instead of 50/6, costs 375 instead of 450
- Rocket Artillery: 40/15 instead of 46/18 strength, costs 500 instead of 600
> The Pholus Mutagen required a local copy of a food resource, but it wasn’t counting Omnicytes on that list (even though it was giving the appropriate bonuses to those tiles). That’s been changed.
> The Living Refinery’s food bonus for a local Omnicytes has been changed from +5 to +10; it was just too weak relative to the production/gold boosts.
> Tweaked the costs of several Wonders that had been moved to new techs in the previous update. While it's not a straight dependence on tier, in general the cost go up fairly smoothly as you go up the tree.
> The Maritime Control Center can only be built in coastal cities (just like the lighthouse, harbor, etc.)
> Increased the build cost of the Opera House and Museum by about 20%, they were just too cheap before.
> The Opera House was supposed to be 4 culture for 4 gold, but I’d accidentally left it at +5 culture. In the course of fixing this, I realized that the culture output of the Museum (+5) was still a little too big, so I lowered it to +4. So it's identical to the Opera House in effect, and slightly more expensive. Oh well. I'm tempted to add +1 research or something.
> Decreased the Happiness for the Theater and Stadium from +4 and +5 to +3 and +4, respectively, but to make up for this (and to make them better than the Colosseum), they add +2 and +1 culture, respectively. (In the late game, you require more and more culture to get anything done, but +1 happiness is still +1.)
> Hologram Theater was decreased from +3 happiness to +2, to make up for its much greater culture benefits now. (It was changed from a flat +5 to a +25% in the last version.) Its flavor values were also tweaked to focus more on culture and less on happiness.
> City Ruins add +1 research at Archaeology. It’s still not quite as good as having a real improvement on the tile, but it’s a pretty good start. (I’m still evaluating whether to boost the tiles further, to make them worth keeping indefinitely.)

 

[Darsnan]

Note that the following is based on a sample size of one using the new patch and newst versions of your mod.

Here are the following results from this evening's playtesting:

1. Again I had no oil, no aluminum, and no uranium anywhere near my borders. I do cherry-pick my starts by always going with rivers (i.e. I just restart the game if I'm not near a river). Does this have a bearing on these critical resources being available nearby?

2. When my early exploring units encountered several of the LM's (Landmarks), why they had already been incorporated into C-S borders! Good!

3. In my Wonder city, why twice I started building National Wonders where the turn count to completion was double digits (i.e. in the low teens). Previously this had always been around 5-7 turns. However they always did seem to be completed in the 5-7 turn range!

4. The quickfix didn't seem to fix the issue with AI's asking you to go to war with them, but then immediately turning around and denouncing you for war-mongering.

5. Concerning the Two Things pic below: first, the C-S are building second-hand fighters (these are very easily dispatched by my regular units, btw), second, I couldn't believe Montezuma (MZ) conquered the nearby territory so quickly! It was like two turns from the time I got the notice! Thats different! Are the AIs now more aggressive with this hotfix?

6. Question concerning flavor ratings: how far out do the AIs assess flavor settings for spevific items? Is it only after the appropriate tech is discovered, or before the tech is discovered?

7. Something happened to my Workers this evening: I sent them into the vicinity of Berlin after it had been nuked to clean up the mess. After a few turns both my Workers disappeared for no reason!?! I have no explaination as to why this happened.

8. Well the AIs finally decide to nuke a different city than my capitol. This is good, and based on this game I am seriously considering dropping down another skill level. Will probably play a couple more games at King, but if the results are anything like I encountered this evening (i.e. no critical resources and getting nuked), then I will probably drop back another skill level.

Note that I will be OOT for the remainder of this weekend, and next weekend I am dropping back onto a SMACX project for a little bit, so feedback will be slow from my end.

D

 

[Spatzimaus]

1. Again I had no oil, no aluminum, and no uranium anywhere near my borders. I do cherry-pick my starts by always going with rivers (i.e. I just restart the game if I'm not near a river). Does this have a bearing on these critical resources being available nearby?

Yes, somewhat. Aluminum and Uranium are mainly found on hill tiles, and Oil is basically deserts, snow, tundra, and marshes. Rivers tend to be placed in the middle of grassland or plain areas, far from all of the above. So you just won't have many of the right kinds of terrains near your starting point.
Other than that, it's purely random; the chance of one hill tile having aluminum is the same as any other hill tile. So if you DO have hills near your river you should still be okay.

For instance, take Aluminum, using the numbers from my mod. The large deposits (the 8-unit ones) go like this:
1 in 12 tundra tiles will have a strategic resource, and 15% of the time, that'll be aluminum. 1 in 14 snow tiles will have a strategic resource, and 15% of the time, that'll be aluminum. 1 in 16 hill tiles has a resource, and 30% of the time, that'll be aluminum. So you'll have about 1 large aluminum deposit per 80 tundra, 1 per 100 snow, and 1 per 50 hills. Given that most maps don't have a huge number of tundra or snow hexes, most aluminum ends up being found on hills.
Small deposits work differently; the game places a limited number (35), picks random hexes, and then does a percentage draw. By sheer odds, it's usually going to pick grass/plains/desert tiles, so the chances of seeing even one small aluminum deposit are pretty slim.
Oil tends to be a bit better odds, especially because of the deserts (1/10, 45%), although oil isn't found on hills. Oil also gets some extra deposits placed at sea, although you can't use those until Refrigeration.

Anyway, bottom line: I can tweak the numbers to make some of these resources a bit more common, and I'll do that for aluminum in my next version, but yes, part of it is your insistence on a nice river start. Most of the important strategic resources get placed on the lousy terrain types; only horses and a small number of omnicytes get placed on plains or grassland, and while coal and uranium can be placed on jungle or forest tiles, the odds aren't good (only 1 in 25 jungle or forest tiles gets a resource).

3. In my Wonder city, why twice I started building National Wonders where the turn count to completion was double digits (i.e. in the low teens). Previously this had always been around 5-7 turns. However they always did seem to be completed in the 5-7 turn range!

I've seen this happen a few times. I don't know why this is happening, and it COULD be related to the production headstart boost I added, but I haven't played any vanilla games to see.

5. Concerning the Two Things pic below: first, the C-S are building second-hand fighters (these are very easily dispatched by my regular units, btw), second, I couldn't believe Montezuma (MZ) conquered the nearby territory so quickly! It was like two turns from the time I got the notice! Thats different! Are the AIs now more aggressive with this hotfix?

Secondhand Fighters have 42 strength instead of 50, and a lower cost, but in every other way are identical to Fighters. One big difference is that city-state units have few chances to build up experience, so they'll rarely have any promotions. But bottom line, they're not that much easier to kill than a normal fighter.

As to the AI, not that I've seen, but Monty has always been high on the aggression scale, and there's always a bit of randomness on motivations. So you might have just had a game where he maxxed out the aggression scale and happened to have a military advantage at the right times.

6. Question concerning flavor ratings: how far out do the AIs assess flavor settings for spevific items? Is it only after the appropriate tech is discovered, or before the tech is discovered?

Techs have their own flavor ratings. The AI has no idea what benefits a tech ACTUALLY gives beforehand; it just picks a tech based on the tech's flavors, and then once the tech is researched, the things it unlocks are added to the appropriate lists and can be picked by cities as normal. So if an AI thinks it needs more growth then it might prefer a tech that has the Growth flavor, but it'll have no idea exactly WHY the tech has that flavor, what exactly it unlocks.

I had to keep a close eye on this when I was shuffling stuff around, because it was very easy to reach a point where the flavors assigned to a tech didn't match the things it unlocked any more. So I went back and double-checked all of the flavors in v12; they should be correct right now, but not completely. (For instance, Globalization now has the Colony Pod unit, but its flavors don't reflect that yet. In fact, I didn't change the flavors of ANY of the Industrial/Modern techs I modified.)

This is unfortunately pretty arbitrary. For instance, let's say a tech unlocks a research wonder and an offensive unit. So I give it a FLAVOR_SCIENCE of 5 and FLAVOR_OFFENSE of 5. The AI reaches that point in the game and thinks it needs more science, so it might pick this tech. But what happens if someone else already has completed the Wonder? The AI still sees this tech as favoring a "science" flavor, even though it now does nothing for that.
And the numbers are purely arbitrary, too. Instead of 5 and 5, maybe it should be 4 and 6. So I had to eyeball these things; I think I got pretty close to workable numbers, but there's no way to know for sure. In general I tried to split it evenly across the buildings and units each tech unlocks, but again, there's a question of weighting.

7. Something happened to my Workers this evening: I sent them into the vicinity of Berlin after it had been nuked to clean up the mess. After a few turns both my Workers disappeared for no reason!?! I have no explaination as to why this happened.

My first thought is that Fallout damages units passing through it, and they died. (Noncombat units like workers don't show health bars as easily.) There's a "TurnDamage" variable in the Features table. But, strangely, it's not being used for Fallout. The only unusual variable for fallout is a Disappearance Probability, but that's supposed to be the chance the feature disappears on its own without being cleaned up.
Beyond that, no real idea; maybe you got nuked again in the same area? Did any other units die, or the city lose any more population?

Will probably play a couple more games at King, but if the results are anything like I encountered this evening (i.e. no critical resources and getting nuked), then I will probably drop back another skill level.

Well, I usually play on Prince to test or on King for fun. The only real "cheat" I do is that in an Industrial/Nuclear start I'll only play if there's a large (7-unit) Coal deposit within easy reach, and for most games, there is. In my last Industrial start (on King), I was beaten to the spaceship by a few turns, but ended up winning handily in the Fusion era. So that river start bias might be hurting you a bit more than you're expecting. (Which is bad news for people who like playing as America, I suppose.)

 

[DocVertigo]

Sorry if I'm bringing up an issue already addressed, I've searched the front page.

I've been having a major problem playing through the Content mod on Marathon speed. When I get to the Nuclear era, the game will sometimes crash after pressing "end turn". When I reload my last saved game, the crash event will usually not recur at exactly the same point, but it will happen again (always immediately after pressing "end turn") after I've been playing for a little while. The frequency between crashes tends to increase, to the point that by the Digital era the game has become unplayable. Sometimes it even happens at the start of the Nuclear era. Usually there's a crisis point at which the crash event will happen at exactly the same point even after reloading.

I only started playing the Content mod a few weeks ago, and it's been the same for both versions I've played. I can play through the Long Mod and standard game just fine (I'd actually been using the Long Mod for a month or two), but the Content mod crashes whether I have the Long Mod enabled or not. I don't use any other mods.
I've tried lowering graphics detail levels and resolution, I've tried disabling autosaving, I've tried multiple difficulty levels, I've tried never reloading from within the game, I've tried using both randomly generated maps and my own scenarios, and I know it's not caused by the Plant Forest/Jungle command because I tried not planting any, and the game was crashing before anyone else had gotten that far.

The only thing I haven't tried is, er, not playing it on Marathon. But I'd rather play Civ at detail levels that most closely resemble a wide bucket of sick than play Epic or quicker....
:edit: Also haven't tried starting from any era beyond the default Ancient.

I'd just like to say though, I think the changes implemented in this mod are absolutely wonderful. At this point I don't consider Civ 5 worth playing without it. I felt that way about the Long Mod before the last patch added a bunch of new stuff, but the standard game still ends too quickly and too basically for my liking. All the alterations in the Content mod that I've been able to sample have been absolutely spot on, I'd love to be able to play through the Alpha Centauri-esque part.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Sorry if I'm bringing up an issue already addressed, I've searched the front page.

Don't feel bad about that, I don't expect people to wade through the massive walls of text too often. I get a little, well, verbose when I get started, so I understand it's not worth reading through everything.

I've been having a major problem playing through the Content mod on Marathon speed. When I get to the Nuclear era, the game will sometimes crash after pressing "end turn".

I haven't ever played on Marathon. Actually, I think I've only played once on Epic, too, pretty much my entire game experience is on Standard. But the only thing related to game speed that I haven't finished tweaking yet is the whole number-of-years-per-turn setup; it's fine-tuned on Standard, but for the other speeds I just scaled it up pretty linearly for now. I'll get to that eventually.

If the game is crashing on End Turn, then it's likely that it's hitting a problem during one of the AI turns. That's reinforced by your reload experiences; if you reload then the AI won't do the same things again, but give them long enough and they will do whatever it is that's causing the problem.

Now, exactly WHAT they're doing, I'm not sure. The strange part is that you say it's happening when you enter the Nuclear Era. The only things I added at all before the last tier of the Nuclear Era are a few tech improvement yield increases (which don't crash anything), and the Plant Forest/Jungle command at Fertilizer.

So a few questions:
1> Are you using ANY other mods at all, besides my two? (Unless they contain a file named Terraform.lua or add improvements named IMPROVEMENT_PLANT_FOREST, I don't see how they could conflict, but you never know.) I know you said you didn't use other mods, but not even a UI tweak? Or a custom map script?
1a> Is there a specific map type you're using most of the time?
2> While you say you're not planting forests or jungle, does it work if you do? Does it actually plant the forest?
3> Do you get crash bugs when playing anyone else's mods?
3a> Do you play anyone else's mods? (Not at the same time, I mean do you play a game with my mods, and then play a game with someone else's, or with the vanilla game?) If so, it could be a cache issue.
4> Are you playing in fullscreen or windowed mode? For debugging reasons I now almost always play windowed.

Also, note that while you may not be planting trees, and the other AI civs aren't that far, the city-states MIGHT be; they don't research in the normal way, and instead get techs granted to them based on what the major civs have. So it's possible that the city-states DO have Fertilizer and are trying to plant a forest.

Now, it might also help if you checked FireTuner when it crashed, to see what it says, but it probably won't say anything. The strange thing is, I get maybe one crash per game, and I often play all the way to transcendence. So the only ways I could see a problem would be if something got corrupted along the way, or if something was missing from your mod package. The package I zipped up in the first post is the exact directory I play from, so there shouldn't be anything missing.

It's also possible that on Marathon, if you're using a large enough map or something, it might be running out of memory. How good is your CPU, and how good is the video card?
(Not sure why that'd be causing problems with this mod and not with the core game, but you never know.)

All the alterations in the Content mod that I've been able to sample have been absolutely spot on, I'd love to be able to play through the Alpha Centauri-esque part.

In my experience, if you want to see the new content, it's best to start in the Industrial Era. My own current game (King difficulty, Large map of Small Continents) started in the Ancient, and even though I'm just entering the Renaissance, I've got the game pretty well under control now. (Even with 10 civs I've got 2/3rds of the world's Wonders.)

Starting in later eras has pluses and minuses. For instance, a Renaissance start is HARD for two reasons: one, you don't know where the Coal is going to pop up and you don't have time to let your empire expand normally to ensure there'll be some in your borders. Two, your cities start with a few extra population (meaning more unhappiness) but you don't get the free Colosseums to deal with that unless you start Industrial or later.
The reverse is true of the Nuclear starts. You see the Coal and Oil, so you'd absolutely HAVE to settle next to them if you want them. But then your chances of getting Aluminum and Uranium are slim, of course. And if you start in the Fusion Era, not only do you miss out on the spaceship, but now you're unlikely to have the future resources near your starting cities.

 

[DocVertigo]

Nope, no other mods at all. I usually use my own maps, but like I said it happens on standard randomly-generated ones too.
The only randomly-generated type I've tried so far has been Continents, but I've tried a couple of sizes.

I haven't actually planted any Forests yet, but I did plant plenty of Jungles. The planted Jungles were producing +1 food before the latest version, but that's about the only unusual behaviour it caused.

The only other mods I have (though I don't use them anymore) are quite small - +1 prod for mines, extra cash from Gold/Silver, no cap on xp from fighting Barbarians, that kind of thing. None of them crash on a regular basis (Civ 5 itself is still an unstable platform for me and does crash by itself on rare occasions).

I haven't played using someone else's mod, disabled it then played using yours in the same session if that's how the cache works (at least, I don't think I have - it would have been quite a while ago..). However, I did delete previous versions of your mod without disabling in the game first (although not while the game was running), I don't know if that's a potential problem causer.

I play in Fullscreen mode, but I think I did try Windowed mode at some point early on.

That's a good point about the city-states. I'll try playing a game without them (or kill them early if that's not possible) and see how it goes.
I've never tried Firetuner, so I'll give that a go next time I play.

I have a decent system - Q9300, 4gb DDR2 (nerfed by Vista 32bit down to 3gb) with an AMD 5770. I can run Civ 5 pretty well at maximum detail, but I've been running at low-to-medium detail since the crashes started. If memory's the issue, there must be some kind of gargantuan pile-up happening at the problem end-turns.

Thanks for the help!