Crazy Spatz's Alpha Centauri Mod

[Spatzimaus]

Okay, if no one else is going to say anything, I'll mention something I got working for the next version: Lua combat hacks! I figured out the syntax of the RunCombatSim logic, which allows me to do things at the start of each fight.

Specifically, three changes were made so far.

1> When a Ranger enters combat, there is a 10% chance that the opposing unit will take 5 damage, before anything else happens. (Against a Titan, this can make a BIG difference between winning and losing.) I don't know whether this affects whether a unit is counted as "wounded" during the actual combat, but I'm guessing it would. (If the unit was already wounded and the 5 damage would kill it, however, it doesn't seem like it prevents the combat from happening, so the Ranger will still take return damage.)
Note that this'll trigger if the Ranger gets bombarded at range, too, even if the attacker normally can't be hurt in a ranged attack.

2> When a Troll enters combat, there is a 10% chance that it'll immediately heal 5 damage, before anything else happens. It'll still fully heal at the end of the turn, but this makes it much harder to wear its health down through light bombardment on the opponent's turn (-1, -1, -1, whoops it's back up to full again!). And it's even better, if the healed unit wouldn't count as "wounded". It can trigger on ranged attacks too, but that's kinda the point in this case.

(I was tempted to make both of the above be 100% chance of +/-1, but that's too abuseable if it DOES trigger the "wounded" logic. A Ranger could take the appropriate promotion and mop up.)

and the big one:
3> Psi units now work a bit more like they did in SMAC, but in a way that I feel is a bit more balanced. The way it works is this:
If neither unit is Psi, or BOTH are Psi, or a city is involved in any way, there's no change, and the unit fights at its normal strength.
If only one of the two is Psi, the Psi unit's base strength will move up or down up to 25% based on the opponent's base (pre-promotions) strength. So if a Mindworm is strength 45, then it can go up to 56.25 when fighting anything big, or down to 33.75 when fighting something weaker. If you're fighting something between those values, like a Mechanized Infantry (42), then it'll just go equal to the opposing unit. (Again, before promotions are considered.)
For units that have ranged attacks, it'll use whichever strength is higher (which'd be the ranged one most of the time). Unfortunately, the event doesn't register whether the attack itself was ranged or not, so you can get some strange results. For instance, a Bolo (150 strength, 75 ranged) bombards a Nessus Worm from long range, and the Nessus' 130 would move up to 150 despite only being hit by a 75 attack. (Naval units are also lopsided in this direction.) Conversely, if a Combat Mech (100 strength, 120 ranged) gets attacked by a Nessus, the Nessus would only go down to 120 despite being up against the 100 strength. (Artillery units are like this as well.)
In both cases, these make Psi units stronger than normal when attacking artillery units (like the Plasma Artillery, which is 40/60) or defending against naval units.

The reason I did it this way, instead of just copying SMAC's logic, is that I wanted a reason to build the tougher Psi units like the Nessus Worm. Since its base strength is 130, it can only go down so far (down to 97.5, or up to 162.5); a Nessus Worm will always be much harder to kill than the other Psi units. Conversely, a Mind Worm isn't going to even scratch the paint on a Titan unit, since it'll only move up to 56.25 at best.
And remember that Psi units earn XP twice as fast as normal, although they don't spawn Great Generals to compensate. So Psi units will probably have more of those +25% promotions stacked on top of their base strength. (In SMAC, the attacker always had a 10% advantage in Psi combat, but I wanted it to be a bit different.) However, also remember that Psi units get a -25% penalty if they're NOT adjacent to a friendly unit, but this is handled with the promotions, after this strength adjustment.

----------
So there you have it, three changes to combat. I'm hoping this makes Psi units more interesting, and more worthwhile to build in general. Basically, the units at the top of the tree (Psi units, Golem, Ranger, Troll) are less straightforward than the tanks on the bottom of the tree, but I'm trying to make them still be worth building. And that's where feedback comes in; I need to know whether these actually work, and whether the units these units are now too strong, or are still too weak. (Also: Psi and Titan units start with +10 XP, and Rangers and Trolls start with +30 XP. This counteracts that these units can't be upgraded from things you used in earlier eras.)

The biggest problem with these changes is that the AI is utterly incapable of considering the effects. So the AI'll decide whether or not to attack on the basis of what the strengths were before these kicked in. And it won't show up in the combat odds beforehand, although with enough work I could probably tweak the UI to do so. But since the AI seems to have no qualms about attacking into bad odds, I don't see how this'd change its behavior.

Thoughts? Anyone? Bueller? (40 people have downloaded the last version, SOMEONE must have an opinion.)

 

[Verticalo]

The mod looks great and I wonder if there is a link where I can download "Crazy Spatz" and "Spatz's Alpha Centauri" capable to the patch 1.0.1.167.

 

[Spatzimaus]

You mean the last one from before this last patch? (That'd be v.0.16.) There's nowhere online to grab it, since I remove the old versions from this thread whenever I post new ones. I keep zip files of the old versions on my home machine, for debugging purposes, so they still exist. And I could probably post them here, although I wouldn't leave them uploaded for long since the content mod sucks up a good fraction of my upload capacity. I'll check when I get home tonight to make sure they're in a usable form.

But given Steam's auto-updating, there's really not much point in going back to old versions. My new version IS technically compatible with the .167 patch, in that it won't crash (I think), although it might screw up Trading Posts a bit, and you wouldn't have Aqueducts, which I guess would screw up the Sewer System and Recycling Center. Probably not worth trying to mix the two, but you never know.

So I guess the question is, why are you still using .167? Especially since most of the changes made from 167 to 217 were balance changes that were remarkably similar to ones I made in my mods (which is why I removed so many of my previous changes in v.0.17). While I hate the amount of work needed to make mods compatible with large patches, I do think this patch was a significant improvement to the game, although I suppose I'm biased as, again, the changes were very similar to my own idea of how to balance the game.
(Okay, you'll play things other than my mod, and so might prefer the old balance when playing other people's mods. I get that. But I still see the patch as a major improvement in general.)

The bigger problem with keeping old versions floating around is that the mod simply improves as time goes on. Besides just general balance improvements, I fix bugs in the following versions instead of having some sort of "hotfix". So in the case of v.0.16, there were a couple actual bugs whose fixes went into v.0.17 (easy to spot if you read my patch notes); anyone playing with the older version would have to fix those themselves.

 

[Darsnan]

Thoughts? Anyone? Bueller?

I'll be DL'ing and playing Friday night. Per my previous post I plan on playing Pangea/ Prince for this playtest. Let me know if this works for you, or if there is something else you'd like me to concentrate on.

40 people have downloaded the last version

D

 

[Verticalo]

I'm using the old one because there are some mods that i really like and they don't work with the new patch.

I would appreciate if you upload v.0.16 or just send me the files. I will do my best to avoid the bugs.

 

[Spatzimaus]

I'll be DL'ing and playing Friday night.

Welcome back. I'll try to have a new version posted tomorrow (Thursday), although it'll be a bit lighter than many previous versions; the balance on v.0.17 has turned out to be quite a bit better than I was expecting, and I still haven't implemented the fix for the negative happiness issues I was having. (That'll wait for at least the next version.)

Per my previous post I plan on playing Pangea/ Prince for this playtest.

That works just fine. I've been doing quite a few Pangaea games myself, mainly to see if the ocean placement of Dilithium is a real problem on maps without a lot of coastline. So far, it hasn't seemed too bad in practice, especially now that I've forced Dilithium to be adjacent to shore; it's really no worse than the desert/ocean/tundra nature of Oil in my experience.
The drawbacks I've found on Pangaea involves the increased contact between civs; there's no Astronomy gap keeping half the civs away from the other half. This leads to:
1> Luxury sharing. Since many luxuries are "regional", it's common that on Continents-style maps that civs won't have access to nearly as much diversity of luxuries until Astronomy. That means lower Happiness all around, which means more emphasis on happiness buildings.
2> Research Agreements. One group of six has 15 combinations of two civs, two groups of three has 6 combinations until the two groups contact each other. So it becomes far more common to see two AI civs entering into research agreements on a Pangaea map (or on a very large map with 10+ civs).
As both of these are things I've tried to adjust in my mod, it means that the balance of that map type can be a bit different. (But still useful to test.)

I've played around with quite a few of the map types, but the only one I haven't actually tried to balance yet is Terra. The race for the New World shouldn't be affected by the addition of later resources, but in my past experience the civ that managed the best late colonization phase ended up with a large advantage, which doesn't really mesh well with the way I like to balance things.

I'm using the old one because there are some mods that i really like and they don't work with the new patch.

Fair enough. It's unfortunate that so many mods are incompatible across versions like this, and you might hit a point in the near future where you need to just update them yourself if the person who originally made them has stopped maintaining them.

For instance, take Tech Diffusion. It's an excellent mod, and something I use in nearly every game I play, but the "official" version predates the December megapatch, which broke it entirely. So I've got my own version of it, very similar to the original, which I update whenever a patch screws it up. You might just want to look into doing the same for the mods you really care about.

 

[LetMyPeopleGo]

Hello to you all,

For all of you looking for version 0.16, I still have it, so if there is still an interest for it, I'll upload it to some file hosting site, just let me know.

Hi Spatzimaus, I'm still playing version 0.16 but soon enough I'll update to 0.17, I have one question regarding balancing in general and particular too.

Many modders have balancing mods to compensate for stuff the AI is not handling well, If for some reason all players were to be humans, everyone knows the rules, so there would be no need for balancing, am I right? no one is going to balance Chess or Poker because some players suck playing it.

Some modders do the balancing to fine tune the game stile to their mod, for example, Transcendence Victory calls for as many players as possible present towards the game end, otherwise, if only me and two very weak players remains to the end, the Transcendence Victory will come very easy.

I've asked you before I think, is your balancing mod made to make it difficult to achieve Domination victory in mid or mid late game so the content mod witch is the main reason I play your mode will be more meaningful? so why don't you merge your mods?

Your balancing mod makes the game very rewarding for players enjoying very difficult Domination victory because any achievement over the AI is hard to get.

Well, just some unorganized thought, I'll be happy if you find some time to comment on the balancing issue as I represented it.

Many thanks.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Side note: uploading files still doesn't work on this board. Until it does, I'll be holding off on releasing v.0.18. (And I'll repost v.0.16 at the same time, for pre-patch folks.)

I've asked you before I think, is your balancing mod made to make it difficult to achieve Domination victory in mid or mid late game so the content mod witch is the main reason I play your mode will be more meaningful? so why don't you merge your mods?

That's a big part of the reason, but it's not so absolute. The Balance mod has three real purposes:
1> Make it harder to utterly dominate the AI in general; harder to get a large tech advantage, harder to completely wipe out a civilization in a single war, and so on. The "home field advantage" promotion, diplomacy changes, city defense boosts, flavor changes to infrastructure, etc. do this. It's also why I highly recommend using a Tech Diffusion mod, although I won't integrate that into the mod myself because some people just don't want it.
2> Make the game's progression flow more smoothly. The growth changes, the tech-based improvement yield increases, the change to food storage buildings, and the decrease in effectiveness of research buildings all fall into this category. In the vanilla game there are too many key points where you suddenly get far stronger (which favors a player who can plan for those); I wanted a more gradual pace. This is also why most single-effect buildings now boost multiple things, like how the Temple was changed from +3 culture to +1 happiness and +1 culture; you can now get a little Happiness without going down the Colosseum path, as well as a little Culture without going down the Opera House path.
3> Kill ICS as a viable strategy. The happiness and trade route changes go here. The specialist slot stuff also did this, but that's in the patch now.

#1 was intended primarily to make the Content mod more meaningful, as you described; not much point in having three future eras if the game's over by the time you get there. And the later two help with that quite a bit as well. So in that sense, I could have just put this all into a single mod, and that would have definitely made things easier for me.

But I think that each of these is also a worthwhile goal in its own right, for people who have no interest in futuristic content. So I figured that by keeping them separate, it'd be possible to use the Balance mod without the Content mod if you wanted to. I've played quite a few Ancient-start games where the game DOES end before reaching the future eras, meaning I was only seeing the Balance mod's changes, and I think it still made the game substantially better. I could see playing without the Content mod at all and trying to win with a spaceship.

My other thought was that certain other balance mods (like Thalassicus' set) are very popular; people who use those mods on a regular basis aren't going to want to give them up, and they accomplish most of the same goals as my own Balance mod. While I haven't actually tested that combination lately, my intent is that you could pair my Content mod with HIS balance mods if you really wanted, and still have a playable game. So the Content mod, while adding many new mechanisms, is almost purely limited to the future eras, allowing you to pair it with balance mods other than my own.

As of this morning, 57 people have downloaded the latest version of my Content mod but only 42 the corresponding Balance mod. So maybe the missing 15 are doing this, or maybe they don't want the Balance changes at all and are pairing it with the vanilla. Or maybe they're not even playing the mod, and are just looking through its files to steal ideas. Or maybe they just didn't read the warning signs too closely. Who knows.

 

[dinobot386]

Hey, I love this mod. But I was wondering if you had any plans to create models for your new units. I understand that you probably have more important things to alter in this mod than cosmetic feature, but the placeholder do often kill the emersion sometimes. Id help but i unfortunatly have neither the skills or equipment to mod anything but maps and stats.

Now, I have no idea how the programming works, but if you have to rip unit models from other files, this games future era units have very nice artwork, espcially the bioengineered units http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA-2t8vW80Y

I was also wondering why the tech tree isn't veiwable

Anyway, this is looking to be one of the best mods for civ 5 yet, almost an expansion pack itself, actually

 

[Spatzimaus]

Hey, I love this mod. But I was wondering if you had any plans to create models for your new units.

Plans? Yes. Ability? Not so much.

I've got the Planetfall mod from Civ4, and a variety of other Civ4 models that would work well for most of my units. In several cases, you can tell from the Civilopedia text which unit was intended to be the final graphic. (Like how the Vertol's entry calls it the "Hammerhead" class, because I was going to use the graphic of the fighter from Space: Above and Beyond, which was in the Planetfall pack.)
As I've said before, this was actually a Civ4 mod originally that I never published (since by the time I got it working, there were better science fiction modpacks out there), and many of my design decisions were the results of the availability of certain unit graphics. For instance, the whole Skimmer-vs-Gravtank split, while justifiable technologically, was really caused by the fact that I had downloaded two good hovertank unit models and didn't want to drop either, so I used the smaller, "cruder" one for the Skimmer.

But converting a model from Civ4 to Civ5 is not trivial, requires some editing tools that I just don't have currently, and a lot of work that I don't know how to do yet. It's on my list of things to learn how to do, but it's a relatively low priority behind getting the game mechanisms I want in place.
I just got the last unit abilities I'd wanted finished, as I mentioned a few posts up, and that'll be in the next version. Right now, my top priorities involve Happiness, either the negative values from certain buildings, or the positive boost from an Empath. But after that, there's not much left; a couple things I want to do to the Transcendence victory, maybe the Kelp Farm discussed earlier, and then at that point I'll basically be done with the engine side of things for a while. Since I'm doing all of this myself, I'm not going to try splitting my attention between two entirely separate parts of the game if I can avoid it. So I'm not going to switch over to unit graphics until I can devote more time to it. (And I DO work for a living. I'm actually posting on my lunch break right now.)

There's a reason that the Unit Graphics subforum has so little in it right now, beyond a few recolorings of existing models. While I'd think that new tank-type units would be simple to transfer because of the lack of animations, some of the units are a bit more involved than that. And I still have to go back and make sure I actually have good Civ4 graphics for some of these; it's been a while since I checked.

I was also wondering why the tech tree isn't veiwable

What do you mean? It works fine for me, which is why I have screenshots of it in the second or third post in this thread, and I keep those posts updated after each new version. Those are taken directly from in-game play, so if you're not seeing a tech tree when you play, there's a real problem. (Possibly on my end, possibly on yours.)

Is anyone else having problems viewing the tech tree when they play?

And dinobot, are you running any other mods? Any kind of conflict would result in a blank tech tree; it's VERY sensitive. Some UI mods would break this, for instance. For that matter, you'd probably get this sort of bug if you tried playing my newest version with a pre-patch engine, or vice versa.
To test it, try playing a game with only my two mods enabled, nothing else, just to see if the tech tree shows up. For reference, I only play with my two mods, plus maybe the Tech Diffusion (which has no UI effects). No InfoAddict or DiploCorner-type mods, so if one of those is causing a conflict, I wouldn't know.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Okay, next feedback question. Since I can't upload a new version at present, I'm just going to continue with the modding, so here goes.

The Planetary Datalinks.

I don't like it. Specifically, the part that gives you a tech if 4 other civs have it, which is designed to help a civ that's fallen behind, technologically, keep up. (A lot of my mod changes are like that; the Psi units, for instance, were designed to be the sort of "normalizer" units that a weaker civ could use to fight a stronger one.) It's not that it's a BAD effect, but it's too... bimodal. In games with a small number of civs it never triggers. In games with a large number of civs it triggers all the time. And more annoyingly, it triggers on the exact turn someone else researches the tech, so you're sitting there waiting for a fourth civ to finish its research so that you can get your bonus.

So here's what I was thinking of changing it to. Once you have the PD, on each turn, check to see if there are any techs you lack that other civs know. Count up the number of civs that know the tech. (This is the same as what it does now.)

Start at 10. This number is still up for debate, but it's going to be a constant once implemented.
Divide by the ResearchPercent setting of your current game speed and/or map size, each divided by 100. ResearchPercent is 100 for Standard speed and Small size, with bigger numbers for slower speeds or bigger maps. So for those settings we're still at 10. For a Marathon game it'd be 3.333. Marathon on a Huge map, more like 2.55.
Multiply by the fraction of remaining other civs (not counting yourself, city-states, dead civs, or barbarians) that know the tech. So if there are 6 players counting yourself, on a Small map with Standard speed, and three others know the tech, you'd have 10 * 3/5 = 6. If everyone else knows the tech but you, this'd be 10.
If you're currently researching the tech in question (from the previous turn, since this is a start-of-turn event), double this value. Now you've got a value that ranges up to 20, but only for one tech at a time, the rest would still peak at 10.
The result is the percent chance that you'll be spontaneously given the tech at the start of a turn.

Basically, it's a lot like the Tech Diffusion logic, but a bit more... absolute. Not speeding up the pace, but awarding techs outright at random intervals. (And it'll tell you so, with a popup that says you've just stolen a tech.) I wanted something that would adjust itself naturally to the number of other players left in the game, so that you wouldn't get that small map/large map discrepancy.

So, does this sound better than the current version, or do people feel it's just overly complex and mostly unnecessary? And would your answer depend on whether you're the civ in the lead, for which it's almost worthless, or the one in the back that's gaining the most?

--------
Unrelated note: you know how there's now a Policy in the early game that lets you select a Great Person of your choice? As it turns out, you can pick a Great Empath with that policy, and I can't see a way to stop it. So I'm going back to tweak the balance on the Monolith, since it was originally designed around the assumption that it'd start off as strong as one of the 2-upgrade GP buildings. (The only alternative would be to add a tech prereq to the Monolith itself, which'd mean someone who picked that early Great Empath would only be able to use it for a Golden Age. But maybe that's not the worst idea, if I boost the Great Empath's GA length like I was thinking of.)

 

[Darsnan]

The Planetary Datalinks.

I don't like it. Specifically, the part that gives you a tech if 4 other civs have it, which is designed to help a civ that's fallen behind, technologically, keep up.

I'd previously provided some feedback on the PDL. Do my previous comments still apply or have you changed things enough where I should re-assess what I'd said earlier? If so I'll try and focus on this aspect of the game.

D

 

[Spatzimaus]

Do my previous comments still apply or have you changed things enough where I should re-assess what I'd said earlier?

No, nothing's changed on that one in quite a while. It's still the same "gain any tech that 4 others know, and gain a luxury resource that gives +3 Happiness" that it's been for a long time. I'm just trying to get more opinions on the Wonder in general, and on this specific suggestion for change in particular. Basically, I want a National Wonder that helps civs that lag a few techs behind to catch up, but within that framework there's a lot of room to work with.

 

[markusbeutel]

No, nothing's changed on that one in quite a while. It's still the same "gain any tech that 4 others know, and gain a luxury resource that gives +3 Happiness" that it's been for a long time. I'm just trying to get more opinions on the Wonder in general, and on this specific suggestion for change in particular. Basically, I want a National Wonder that helps civs that lag a few techs behind to catch up, but within that framework there's a lot of room to work with.

I like this idea - it's very unique. Is there any way for the free tech to trigger only from AI you have a declaration of friendship with?

 

[Spatzimaus]

I like this idea - it's very unique.

I wouldn't call it "unique", given that the primary effect is a near-copy of the Planetary Datalinks from SMAC, and the Internet from Civ 3/4, each of which gave you a tech the moment a certain number of other civs had it (3 civs, in the case of the Internet).
Note that the Telepathic Matrix wonder in this mod uses the same logic, except there it's reduced to N=1; if ANY other civ has it, you get it. Obviously, it's an endgame Wonder, in the Nanotech Era. But this means that if I do make this change, I won't remove the old logic entirely.

The fact that it's a National Wonder is new, but that's actually because this mod was originally designed for Civ4 (pre-BTS), where the Internet wonder already existed. It was meant, then, as a consolation prize; you lost the race to the Internet, but hey, you can still build the slightly inferior (and slightly later) Datalinks! The fact that Civ5 doesn't HAVE the Internet Wonder any more made it a bit more important, but I still liked the idea of leaving it a National Wonder to help level the playing field a bit in the future eras.

The luxury resource was just added as a way to make this a useful thing to build even if you were the tech leader. You get 3 units of a luxury resource, Information, that gives +3 happiness. So if you're the first to build it then you get a tradeable semi-luxury that you can trade to two or three other civs for things of value or friendship, while the later civs to reach it will just get a simple +3 happy since no one will want their extra resource units, but will get far more out of the tech stealing part.

Is there any way for the free tech to trigger only from AI you have a declaration of friendship with?

Is there a way? Yes. But I don't want to do that; it'd make the algorithm far too complicated on one hand, and penalizes the human player disproportionately on the other. It wasn't just intended to be for the weaker AI players, despite what I said before; I wanted it to help a human player as well. Or more specifically, I want it to help the "pariah" state that no one will deal with, which directly opposes your suggestion.
Even if all the AIs hated you and were swapping Research Agreements behind your back (far more of a problem in the past), you wouldn't fall far behind as long as you had this. Obviously, the recent fix to denunciations helps tremendously here, as have my price increases to Research Agreements, but there's still a natural diplomatic bias against whichever civ just conquered its neighbor, and you can quickly hit a point where no one will give you any kind of trade deal or Friendship agreement.

But it'd be easy enough to cannibalize the logic I used for your own purposes, if you wanted to construct a pseudo-espionage/diplomacy tech trading system. It's not very complex under the hood, at least until you get into the Barbarian and City-State implications. (Those two don't gain techs in the normal way.) What you might want to look at, instead, is the Tech Diffusion mod. (The posted version is nonfunctional since December, but it's easy enough to fix; I've got my own, working version with slightly different values.) In that mod, you get extra beakers once you start to fall a few techs behind. The exact number of beakers you "steal" from each civ, though, depends on several factors: whether you have contact with the other civ, whether you're at peace, exactly how many techs back you are, and so on. So it'd be easy enough to add a check for a Friendship declaration into something like that.

 

[dinobot386]

Hey, I got the tech tree working, turned out it was some other mods I left on.

Anyway, something caught my attention while testing it.
The Centari Ecology tech is triggered by completing the spaceship, how does that work out with the AI? Since it is meant to trigger a science victory, how does the AI know to persue this if that victory is turned off? Or if the spaceship was completed by another civ?

 

[Spatzimaus]

The Centari Ecology tech is triggered by completing the spaceship, how does that work out with the AI?

Remarkably well, actually. I've been beaten to the spaceship twice by AI players. (Both times on King difficulty and Industrial starts, which is skewed to ensure the AI has a big tech advantage and will often get there first.)

Since it is meant to trigger a science victory, how does the AI know to pursue this if that victory is turned off?

It doesn't actually think in those terms; the AI never actually knew that completing these was something that would end the game. It does, however, know that the SS Cockpit, SS Engine, SS Stasis Chamber, and SS Booster are four units that it really wants to build (high Flavor values), which hasn't changed. And once it's built the units, it knows that it wants to use them to complete the four Projects each is used for (again, high Flavor values) by sacrificing them in the capital. Disabling the spaceship victory in the normal game would remove those four units from the list, because if they hadn't, then the AI would build them anyway. Basically, the AI follows a specific behavior because of Flavor values, but it doesn't actually KNOW that doing so in a vanilla game will lead to victory.

The only difference is that in this mod, completing those four projects doesn't trigger a victory condition. Instead, I trap the completion of the four sub-projects in a Lua script and use that to award the Centauri Ecology tech. But from the AI's point of view, building a spaceship is just as desirable as it was before.

Or if the spaceship was completed by another civ?

Again, the AI has no idea of this. He just really wants to build the appropriate units and complete those projects, because their Flavor values are set pretty high. Remember, launching a spaceship first in this mod doesn't prevent the other civs from building their own spaceships; the first to launch just gets better rewards. So the AI should value building the ship regardless of who else has completed one.

Also, the way I coded the Breakout logic helps with this. If long enough has passed since the first spaceship launched, then everyone else is just given the Centauri Ecology tech for free and no further ships can launch. So most spaceship races end up being a 2 or 3-nation race, with the rest of the civs too far behind to even start, but this doesn't cripple them too badly.

 

[Darsnan]

Ran a game using Germans/Prince/Pangea/ Industrial start. Here are the following observations (note: I forgot my camera interface cord at work, so I can't post the pics I took!):

1. Had 3 CTD's during this game - none repeatable. The game also locked up at the end when it went to the "You Lose" screen.

2. Noticed that the Barbarians seemed to be fielding more inferior/ outdated units (archers, Brutes, etc. instead of Riflemen and Arty) than in previous games. As the Germans this has an effect as typically I'll send out a few units exploring with the goal of "harvesting" some riflemen/ arty Barb units from conqured camps. Definately will have to take this into account in the future if the norm now is to have the Barbs fielding more inferior/ outdated units.

3. Was still able to build the Louvre and use that to slingshot Cristo Redentor. Not sure if this is really a good benchmark/ litmus test of the game anymore as I am typically able to build these NP.

4. Noticed that embarked Barbs were just sitting off the coast of a C-S. After a while of watching them (20 turns) I brought up some arty and sank them.

5. Finally got to see an AI get nuked! The Romans did this to the Japanese as part of their offensive against the Japanese. Nice to see AI's nuking each other instead of me!

6. Air war against an AI was very good this evening: the AI employed Stealth Bombers very well to attack my forward cities. The C-S second-hand fighters didn't stand a chance though against my aircraft/ AA units. Not sure if you should make these a little more efficient or what, but right now they seem easy prey to the defenses of regular civs.

7. Lost the game to the Siamese who were way ahead tech-wise and had pocketed the UN, then got ALL the C-S to vote for them, which gave the Siamese 13 votes, enough for the victory.

8. The Siamese dribbled units at me on our common front. I had previously pocketed a C-S at an isthmus, so I was able to easily defend this front and plink off the advancing Siamese units, however I couldn't muster enough of a military to go over to the offensive because of the Roman threat to my north and east.

9. On a sample size of one game I'd say game pace was better (very little just hitting end turn). Happiness and gold were continual issues in that I had to prioritize builds/ research projects/ research agreements/ warmongering/ etc. , so I'd say this is a good thing (a la I continually had an interesting set of choices to make at the strategic level).

D

 

[Spatzimaus]

The game also locked up at the end when it went to the "You Lose" screen.

Hmm. I basically never lose, so I guess I didn't test that one out very well. (It sounds like your game was a lot more war-heavy than most, though.)

2. Noticed that the Barbarians seemed to be fielding more inferior/ outdated units (archers, Brutes, etc. instead of Riflemen and Arty) than in previous games.

The only thing explicitly Barbarian-related that I did was turn on barbarian camps in later eras and add the Wild psi units. I don't see how that'd make them produce weaker units, but basically I don't know the logic Barbarians use to spawn new units anyway. If their spawns are based on any kind of economy, then it's possible that they'd been spawning too many units and effectively ran out of money for "upgrades". I've noticed that this happens in late-era starts; on a Transcendence start, once you get past the initial spawns you'll see half of the Barbarian units being things like Nessus Worms, and the other half will be Archers. I'm thinking it's related to the AdvancedStartCost of these units, but I don't want to go back and change every unit, so I'll see if tweaking the values in the Eras file helps.

The C-S second-hand fighters didn't stand a chance though against my aircraft/ AA units. Not sure if you should make these a little more efficient or what, but right now they seem easy prey to the defenses of regular civs.

Secondhand Fighters have a ranged combat rating of 42, instead of the 50 of the normal Fighter unit. The only other change I made is that both the Weak Ranged promotion, which both the regular and secondhand versions have, is now -50% instead of -75% (so that Fighters can actually be useful in ground attack). So they shouldn't be much weaker than the normal counterparts. To some extent, it sounds more like a consequence of fighters sucking in general.

There's also another factor: no XP. The city-states won't have things like the Military Academy, Barracks/Armory/etc., and won't have used them in wars to build up XP the other way, so they'll be significantly weaker in the later game. It'd be so much easier if there was some building unique to city-states that I could give these sorts of bonuses to; I'm tempted to add one myself and give it through Lua.

Regardless, those fighters aren't really intended to be that robust. I HAVE seen a city-state with three of them sink a passing destroyer, and combined with a guided missile or two can do a lot worse. But they're not really supposed to stand up to good AA/SAM fire. What they do, though, is make it impossible to just ignore a nearby city-state you're at war with.
(Now, the Secondhand Jet Fighters should be able to do better.)

7. Lost the game to the Siamese who were way ahead tech-wise and had pocketed the UN, then got ALL the C-S to vote for them, which gave the Siamese 13 votes, enough for the victory.

I had that almost happen to me once; one civ (I think it was France) had bribed about two-thirds of the city-states. It was hard work to steal allegiances away from them before the UN was completed, but there are a few policies that really help for this.

This sort of thing, though, is why I want to improve the Planetary Datalinks and such; the game shouldn't be basically over once you start to fall behind. And there are a few other unimplemented things that would help here; for instance, take the Psi unit change I mentioned earlier. Psi units are designed to be something a weaker civ uses to battle a more advanced opponent, since their strengths scale up with the opponent's and they're designed to NOT fight in large groups. But they're severely under-tested (including by me), so I could use feedback on their utility.

----------

So the big question here is, where was each civ technologically when the game ended? Did they win on the first U.N. vote, meaning you were still in the Nuclear Era, or was this later on? Had anyone built a spaceship, and if so, was it you?

Why was Siam so far ahead? Did they settle more agressively, did they conquer another empire, were they making tons of Research Agreements, or did they just have massive cities from all the city-state relationships combining with their trait?
How were they able to afford so many bribes, given how much I've reduced the effectiveness of bribery? Did they complete tons of quests, were they getting every financial Wonder, and did no one take the Order policy that reduces other civs' city-state relations?

Did you go Rationalism or Piety? One of the changes I made in the next patch is reducing Secularism (Rationalism tree) from +2 research per specialist to +1, because in the late game, a large food surplus and the large number of buildings can lead to a huge number of specialists. So if they had that policy and you didn't, I could see things getting out of hand.

Happiness and gold were continual issues in that I had to prioritize builds/ research projects/ research agreements/ warmongering/ etc.

Good to hear, and it'll be a little more difficult in the next version. I'm close to getting the negative-happiness buildings to actually work (including the Courthouse), and I'm reducing the gold bonus of the Stock Exchange slightly (it's now going to be +25% instead of +33%, but add +1 units of Iron and Horses, sort of like an earlier Energy Bank). In my test games, once you get to Stock Exchanges and Stadia you'll now have large surpluses of gold and happiness, and I wanted to tone that down a bit. Of course, you were doing an Industrial start, which makes things a bit different.

It's not all negative, though. For instance, I just changed the Fundamentalist policy from "+5 culture per wonder" to "+3 culture per wonder and +1 happiness per Broadcast Tower", because I thought the Piety tree was getting a bit too light on Happiness compared to the others. Eventually the Empaths will work correctly, which'll help add a bit more. And if/when I add those five new National Wonders, one of them will add happiness (I'm now leaning towards calling it the Magna Carta; at Navigation, all Citizen specialists get +1 food, and it adds +5 unmoddedhappiness).

 

[Darsnan]

Hmm. I basically never lose, so I guess I didn't test that one out very well. (It sounds like your game was a lot more war-heavy than most, though.)

Can't say that it was the mod's fault. I'll see if the same thing happens in tonight's game (when I lose again ).

The only thing explicitly Barbarian-related that I did was turn on barbarian camps in later eras and add the Wild psi units. I don't see how that'd make them produce weaker units, but basically I don't know the logic Barbarians use to spawn new units anyway.

My observation is based on a sample size of one. I'll see if the same holds true this evening.

So the big question here is, where was each civ technologically when the game ended? Did they win on the first U.N. vote, meaning you were still in the Nuclear Era, or was this later on? Had anyone built a spaceship, and if so, was it you?

I had only begun building my spaceship, and I don't think anyone had built one yet. This was the first election held as well.

Why was Siam so far ahead? Did they settle more agressively, did they conquer another empire, were they making tons of Research Agreements, or did they just have massive cities from all the city-state relationships combining with their trait?
How were they able to afford so many bribes, given how much I've reduced the effectiveness of bribery? Did they complete tons of quests, were they getting every financial Wonder, and did no one take the Order policy that reduces other civs' city-state relations?

Maybe its because I haven't played ciV in about 40 days, and I've regressed?

Did you go Rationalism or Piety?

Rationalism.

Also, before I forget, the blurb for the Hospital appears to be broke in that it doesn't list the building's benefits.

Going to play another game tonight -same settings. I'll throw in Siam as well and see if the same thing happens regarding their getting a big tech lead/ UN votes. Otherwise unless someone else has a similar experience then I'd say that last night's experience was just an anomoly.

D