Crazy Spatz's Alpha Centauri Mod

[Spatzimaus]

But my statement about the worker changing the March to a Grassland (from the game mechanic point of view) Isnt that changing the tile from 1 type to another?

No, because Marsh isn't a Terrain type. It's a Feature that stacks on TOP of a terrain. So you don't see "Marsh" tiles, you see a Grassland tile (+2 food) that then adds a Marsh feature (-1 food). It's really no different than a Forest or Jungle, mechanically; the only difference is that the game says "Marsh" instead of "Grassland, Marsh" when you mouse over the hex.
Likewise, a Flood Plains is actually a feature that's placed on top of a Desert terrain type, although there the player can't remove the feature. And an Oasis is also a desert tile with a feature. (Atoll is Ocean+Feature, and so on.)

Likewise, "Hill" and "Mountain" aren't actually terrain types. They're Plot types. So you have Grassland+Hill, or Plains+Hill, or Tundra+Hill; the game displays a hill, but internally it's still keeping track of the underlying terrain, mostly for graphical reasons.

There are five elements a tile has:
Terrain (Coast, Desert, Grassland, Plains, Ocean, Snow, Tundra)
Plot (Land, Ocean, Hills, Mountain)
Feature (NONE, Forest, Jungle, Fallout, Flood Plains, Ice, Oasis, Atoll, Marsh, and all of the natural Wonders)
Resource (NONE, Iron, Cows, Gold, etc.)
Improvement (NONE, Farm, Mine, etc.)
So each hex has exactly one element from each of the above five lists. (Note that the last three all have NONE as an option.) No combinations are technically exclusive, although there are a few caveats (like how Mountain overrides EVERYTHING else). Note that in the Plot list, "Land" really means "NONE", as in "not a hill, mountain, or water". So my Raise/Lower Hills action simply switches a tile's Plot type back and forth between Land and Hills, which is why I didn't need two separate actions.
The core game has certain combinations happen automatically; Flood Plains always go on Desert, Ice always goes on Ocean, and so on. But if you wanted to, you could make ice on deserts, or fallout covering the oceans, or atolls on top of hills.

And what I was saying was, there's no point in me doing anything Marsh-related in the terraforming code, because workers gain the ability to clear marshes way back at Masonry, and they're a purely negative feature (except that the 3MP cost to move through hurts invaders a bit), so you'll have little reason to keep them around long enough to unlock terraforming.

 

[Chaotic Law]

Wow, again very impressive. You know your stuff. I remember playing Civ4, the 1st thing I would do is go in to the map maker and remove all the mountains form the map, then I would play it. Cant do that in Civ5 at least not that I know of. So really looking forward to some good ol terraforming. Oh, will the formers/engineers be able to turn a mountain into a hill? I tried messing with this way back when Civ5 1st came out, but I talked to somebody who said that mountains are hard coded into the game so there was no way to change that. I am hoping he was wrong. Again love the amount of info you have on all this. Best of luck in getting all this to work. Thanks for the fast responses.

Chaotic Law

 

[Spatzimaus]

Oh, will the formers/engineers be able to turn a mountain into a hill?

Not likely. The biggest problem with doing anything to a Mountain is that you can't put an Improvement on it, and as I noted above, the terraforming logic works by putting an improvement on a tile and then having the game check for that improvement's presence. Also, getting the workers/engineers onto the mountain would require giving them a promotion (Hovering Unit) that I'd rather not give them. (Note that Formers and Labor Mechs DO have that promotion, though. Since they're the only ones that can raise or lower hills anyway, this was deliberate in case I DO ever decide to let the user remove mountains.)

I could get around this by removing the <NoImprovement> flag from the Mountain's Feature entry, but I'd have to be careful to see if that screwed anything else up.

Besides, one fundamental problem with the terraforming is that the game does not refresh the map's image for a terrain or plot change. It DOES show newly-added Features (Forest, Jungle) or Resources, but when you change a hill to a plain, it'll still look like a hill until the next time you enter the game. It's bad enough that hills aren't redrawn, but a mountain is a whole other level.

 

[dinobot386]

Something that I just noticed, although likely some mistake on my part since im sure you would have noticed and adressed this by now, but the AI isn't choosing any social policies, im not sure if its you mod doing this or not. Do created maps and basic TSL senairio maps have a tendency to do this to the AI?

 

[Spatzimaus]

After you said this, I did a quick check on my current game using the Players:GetNumPolicies function. According to that, two of the AI players (out of eight) have zero policies, despite an Industrial start that would have given them a number of policies at the start. Of course, entering that line into FireTuner crashed the game because I couldn't add a nil check, so it might not actually be a correct reading.

The rest had the usual assortment of numbers: 13, 12, 11, 10, 6, 5. (I, on the other hand, have about 20ish.) So if there is a problem, it seems to be isolated.

After I finish my current game I'll put a debug print into the Lua scripts to get a turn-by-turn readout of this.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Okay, brainstorming time. Today's topic:

Contingency Plans

When I started this mod, I had a whole bunch of ideas about how I thought it should work. Unfortunately, this grand design encountered the harsh reality of modding, which is that a lot of things just aren't possible. Over time, I've changed many of the proposed ideas into something more workable, and in some cases I think it's resulted in a better mod. But there are still a few of these remaining. Things where, for various reasons, I'm still using "placeholder" effects until the ones I want are in place. At some point, I'm going to have to decide whether it's worth waiting until the devs give us the tools we need. So I need to start deciding on some contingency plans for these, in case we never get the tools necessary.

So here's the list of "unfinished" mod elements, what they were intended to do, what they do now, and what I could possibly replace them with if the intended effect isn't workable. Suggestions on this last category are the reason I'm posting this. (That, and it's sort of a "Known Issues" list in general.)

1. The All-Terrain promotion.
Design: this'd allow a unit to move across both water and land. Only given to the Vertol, Gravtank, Nessus Worm, Former, and Gravship.
Current: just gives all the usual 1MP/hex, hovering, amphibious stuff. I've also got it, internally, disabling the embarkation promotions (which allows it to move across SHALLOW water), but it still stalls out at deep water so I'll probably remove that code when I post the next version.
Possibilities: Get rid of it; leave it as it is now and add some sort of Airlift logic; create two versions of each of these units, one with DOMAIN_LAND and one with DOMAIN_SEA, and swap them back and forth as necessary; change the Ocean terrain type to be just like shallow water but Impassable (although I'm not sure what that'd do to ships pre-Astronomy); figure out which Lua event governs unit movement and try overriding certain variables when a unit with this promotion attempts to move onto deep water.

2a. The Empath specialist.
Design: +1 happiness
Current: +2 food
Possibilities: The original design might still work, but adding happiness in general is problematic at present.

2b. The Great Empath unit.
Design: activated ability of either the Peace Bomb (immediately declares peace with all enemies) or Faction Bomb (immediately boosts relations with all city-states).
Current: no activated ability, but the Golden Age you get for sacrificing one lasts 50% longer than normal.
Possibilities: Not a clue.

3a. Negative-happiness buildings
Design: the Genejack factory gives -2 happiness as its drawback, instead of consuming a resource or requiring a specific terrain. The Children's Creche, Gravity Shield, and Robotic Assembly Plant each subtract 1.
Current: doesn't work at all. To compensate for this I've reduced the +Happiness from other buildings in the same eras (like the Hologram Theater).
Possibilities: It's easy enough to create a policy that subtracts happiness for all copies of a given building, but the stub in question is broken and gives double the intended benefit/penalty, making it impossible to get a -1. Also, it counts as having selected a policy for the purpose of costs and completion of policy branches.
Another possibility would be to change the downsides on these to something less Happiness-related in the first place. Like having the Creche be +10 food but -2 to production and research, while the Genejack is +50% production but -10% to research and gold, the Gravity shield subtracts gold and food (growth) while adding massive defense, and so on. My main worry about this idea is that the AI would be obviously bad at it, but you'd still come out ahead by building them all.

3b. The Dream Twister
Design: All other civs get -10 Happiness from now on, and go through a turn of anarchy when you first build it.
Current: the -10 Happiness appears in the UI but doesn't actually have an effect. Like the Empath or the happiness-subtracting buildings, it suffers from the fact that the SetHappiness function doesn't actually WORK.
Possibilities: Following the lead of my Jump Gate and tech-stealing wonders, it could be a simple random thing: if another civ has built the Dream Twister, then your cities have a small chance of rioting each turn and/or your empire as a whole has a chance of suffering a 1-turn Anarchy. Just remember that this is a T23 (endgame) wonder, so if its effects aren't IMMEDIATELY apparent, then it just won't work well.

4. Airlifting
This one's not my design and I don't have anything like it in my mod (other than the Space Elevator, I mean). I just put it on the list because the devs clearly intended it to be addable, given how many stubs for it exist, and it'd have a HUGE impact on game balance. If this were added, I'd change several of my current items to take advantage of it.
"Espionage" would be similar, except that I've already got three tech-stealing mechanisms in place now through various wonders. Religion is not going to happen.

5. Titans
Design: Titan units were originally intended to have 20 base HP instead of 10, and act like they had the Bushido trait of the Japanese (units fight as if they weren't wounded). This would make them extraordinarily tough to kill, without having to give them insanely high Combat ratings or regeneration.
Current: I give them a metric buttload of other promotions instead, and jack their Combat and RangedCombat ratings up to double what previous units have.
Possibilities: Unknown.

I'll post more as I think of stuff, but most of my "wish list" abilities have since been replaced by Lua logic that I actually like (see the Ranger and Troll).

 

[dinobot386]

I have an idea to help with the unhappiness buildings.

Have you tried instead of adding actual unhappiness, adding an extra citizen to the city that doesnt work tiles, requires no food and doesnt show up on the number of citizens in the city?

Possibly create a second hidden "population" that will add unhappiness?

 

[Spatzimaus]

Possibly create a second hidden "population" that will add unhappiness?

Not sure that'll work. Population is tied to many things: the city's base science output, trade route income, the number of available workers, the amount of food necessary to grow to the next size (even if it requires no food, the growth equation is still exponential with size). You can get around some of these by giving negative science and gold yields, but the growth thing is not so simple.

The biggest problem, though, is that city unhappiness increases at 1.2 unhappiness per population (minus a bit for certain policies, and half for India). There's no fractional population. While 1.2 is close enough to 1 that I'd probably do it anyway if there were no other issues, it's a substantial headache for larger empires. (And another thing: the 1.2 is in the Balance mod and the buildings in question are in the Content. I don't want to force players to pair the two, even if that's the eventual effect of most changes; if you look at the downloads on the front page, you'll see that there are a sizable number of people who grab the Content mod but not the Balance.

That's why the negative yield idea came up; it doesn't depend on other mods for balance, and wouldn't require Lua hacks.
(Also, how would you give -10 happiness to other empires with the Dream Twister? Put 8 extra citizens in their capital? Think about what THAT would do to the growth rate...)

The Policy method works, mechanically, other than the doubling issue (which they need to fix if only so that Secularism isn't so horribly overpowered) and the cost issue (which can be adjusted). Beyond that, I'm just not sure what to try.

 

[dinobot386]

Another idea I had which is easyer sounding now that I think about it.

You could nerf some happiness buildings in cities that have negative happiness buildings

Like the colloseum giving +3 on its own but only +2 with a genejack factory. Its sloppy at best but could get the intended results

 

[Darsnan]

Number of crashes. How many? What era are you in when they start being common? What era are you in when they become unbearable?

I get random non-repeatable crashes: this evening's first occured right when I got nuked (atomic bomb variety). I don't see any commonality in the crashes, except maybe there is a text pop-up always frozen on the screen (and here again these are just text blurbs that are present when the game freezes/ crashes).

Relative balance of units. Do you find yourself not using the Psi units?

No.

How about the Powersuit units?

Rarely, simply because my games don't last that long.

Are the Ranger and Troll too late in the tree for something with that little raw power?

Again - I've only built a couple of these.

I do feel that there aren't enough resrouces for the later units. A lot of the time I'm stuck building Laser Infantry because thats the only unit I can build.

Relative balance of Buildings and Wonders. Are there any Wonders you just don't find to be worth building (like the Weather Paradigm before that last patch)? Are there any that are so overpowered that getting it puts the game into Easy mode?

So far I like the blend and pace of buildings and Wonders. Last major game I played, why even though I won the Space Race I was soon overcome by the Siamese who then started pocketing all of the Wonders.

Resource distribution. Is there enough Iron? Coal? Oil? Aluminum?

The above resources have been in good shape as far as distribution is concerned in recent games. However I do seem to be seeing a trend whereby Uranium is a real gamebreaker: typically the games I play seem to take the form of getting nuked/ nuking others, to include AI versus AI nuking. There is no decision or thought process here - its just tech beeline for nukes, then build'em and sling'em before the AI's do the same to you.

Gold and Happiness. Do you have problems staying above 0 on both? At what point in the game do you not have a problem with either?

I'm getting better at keeping my head above water in both regards - jusat gotta learn the pace of the game and how to handle each item.

Pacing. On what turn number do you enter each era? On what turn number do you COMPLETE each era? (Don't count Centauri Ecology for the Nuclear Era for this one.)

I'll start documenting this in future games.

D

 

[Spatzimaus]

No.

No, you don't build them, or no, you don't NOT build them (meaning you do build them)? I'd phrased the original question awkwardly, but I'll assume you meant that you don't use them.

So if you never use Psi units, why not? Do they just not pack enough raw punch? I'm looking at bumping up the Mind Worm from 45 to 50-55ish, because I realized that they're getting horribly outgunned by Laser Infantry (who they're supposed to slaughter; that's the whole point of the Starship Troopers reference I used for the LI). After all, both are 45-strength units, but mind worms get a penalty for being adjacent to an ally while LI get a bonus for the same. Of course, the psi trait I added would case the mindworm to lower itself to equality either way, but it'd make them far more dangerous to Skimmers and Vertols. Likewise, the other Psi units would get bumped up a bit: Isle from 45 to 60, Locusts from 60 to 75ish, and Nessus from 130 to 150.
Or is it their lack of mobility? I find myself gravitating (no pun intended) towards the Vertol/Skimmer/Gravtank/Needlejet combo simply because of the Blitzkrieg style of warfare. Worms are just slow enough that they can't do this, and their "loner" style works against a massed warfare strategy. (To be fair, this is why they're the Barbarian units.) One thought here was to give Mindworms the "Commando" promotion that lets Rangers (and now Doppelgangers) use enemy roads as their own; the Locusts and Nessi don't need that since they have the "all terrain 1 MP" promotions instead, but this'd give mindworms much better mobility on the attack.

Is it that you tend to leave the "psi" techs until a bit later than normal, mostly focusing on the bottom half of the tree? Not just because of units, but because of the Wonders and such? I've been trying to make the top part of the tree have better Wonders and more interesting units (the new Doppelganger is at Retroviral Engineering), but it's hard to keep balanced.

Or is it that you're generally the tech leader and so that +/-25% logic invariably works against you? Psi units were really intended to be used by three types of folks:
1> People who are behind, technologically, and need something capable of hurting assault powersuits and such
2> People who need combat units and don't have the Uranium or Aluminum to build the technological stuff; all you need for Psis are Omnicytes, and they're supposed to be common.
3> Barbarians

It sounds like #2 applies to you, but you're building Laser Infantry instead of Mindworms. That's backwards of what I'd intended, so I'd like to figure out why.

Rarely, simply because my games don't last that long.

Your games end before the middle of the Fusion Era? Hmm, I'll have to look at the balance again then. If you're not reaching the powersuits, then you're not reaching needlejets or gravtanks, and that's half the fun!

I think the utility of powersuits really depends on how useful you find the paradrop mechanism. If 6 hexes isn't enough to be viable, I can always bump that up a bit. (I was thinking of creating a second "Paradrop II" promotion that boosts it to 12 hexes. Not quite Space Elevator range, but enough to cross oceans.)

I do feel that there aren't enough resrouces for the later units. A lot of the time I'm stuck building Laser Infantry because thats the only unit I can build.

Okay, then would it be unbalanced for, say, every Fusion Lab to produce TWO Aluminum and TWO Uranium, since it's the only economic building that costs a resource? In my current game, I'm coming up very short on both of those resources, especially now that the Plasma Artillery and Vertol are 2-resource units. Maybe to keep it balanced I make it +2 aluminum and +1 uranium, or else have it require 2 deuterium (but boost the deposit size a bit), although I'm not sure what I'd do about the Quantum Lab then.

It led to some fun behaviors; I found myself making more gunships and SAMs than I'd intended, because I had a bit more Aluminum than I had Oil at the time and most of my Oil was being tied up in B17s (I was America) and tanks.

Alternately, I'm looking at upping the map distributions of uranium and aluminum again, probably at the cost of some coal and maybe a little iron (since both of those have hard minima now).

However I do seem to be seeing a trend whereby Uranium is a real gamebreaker: typically the games I play seem to take the form of getting nuked/ nuking others, to include AI versus AI nuking.

I've noticed this. AIs use Uranium for nukes, players use them for Nuclear Plants. One thought I had there was to up the flavor of the Nuke Plant significantly, so that AIs would be far more likely to build those (good for +production buildings in general), which'd invariably leave them no uranium for weapons. But that'd be abuseable in the other direction; the player could nuke with impunity, because the AI would never be able to make any nukes in response.

In the short term, I'm going to reduce the nuke flavors a bit, to encourage the AI to build conventional armies before stocking up on A-bombs. In the long term I'm still try to boost nuke-defense buildings, so that cities can better survive a nuking, but that won't help units caught in the open or improvements wiped out by fallout.

QUESTION: Would adding an SDI-type national wonder really make a difference here? The AI wouldn't acknowledge it, and would continue to sling bombs around, but if they're less likely to land then it won't be such a dominant part of the game at least.
For style reasons I'd prefer not to have this be too strong (it sort of violates the theme of narrowly-averted catastrophes I'm trying to promote), but I think a 50% intercept rate wouldn't be terrible, stacked with the various city defense modifiers. The question would be where to put it in the tech tree; I'm leaning towards Doctrine:Flexibility for now (since it's the first tech that depends on Lasers and Satellites), moving the embark bonus down to Advanced Ballistics.

And if this is Lua-based, I can make the interception rate be higher for atomic bombs and lower for Planet Busters. Say, 75/50/25% for the three nuke types.

I'm getting better at keeping my head above water in both regards - jusat gotta learn the pace of the game and how to handle each item.

I was playing my test game last night; Industrial start, and I'm now in the mid-Digital. Thankfully, I just captured the only large Uranium mine on the planet before its owner had a chance to stock up, so I should be FAIRLY safe for a while. Although, I realized that by adding the Wall Street wonder (which adds 1 to each strategic) I just handed every AI a permanent 1-unit deposit of uranium for their bombs...
Anyway, I don't know how many times I was running short on cash in the Nuclear Era. I needed Golden Ages just to stay above zero (which meant I need a good Happiness surplus, which meant slowed expansion), and I couldn't afford to upgrade my units. And I realized that it was because I kept building. In the vanilla game it's always a good idea to build infrastructure, which means holding off on units until you absolutely need them, but in my mod, it seems like you really need to build units periodically, if only to keep your cities from racking up more building maintenance costs. Likewise, in the core game you can feel free to settle a new city as long as you have Happiness to spare, but in this mod you NEED that Happiness surplus to give enough GAs to stay afloat.

Don't get me wrong, I love the effect. I just think that the margin is too slim, that it's too easy for an AI to be crippled by poor choices if I cut it this close.

Looking back on it, I think the gap between the Stock Exchange and the Energy Bank is just too big. Or more specifically, said gap is filled with too many expensive buildings, be it the Stadium, Broadcast Tower, Research Lab, Medical Lab, Nuclear Plant, et cetera. One thought I had for this was to tweak a couple things. The Broadcast Tower and Research Lab were +100% culture and science, respectively, in the core game. I dropped both to +50% and didn't give them anything else to compensate. One thought I had would be to give them each +10% gold as well; still not nearly what they once were, but a little bit of an extra boost right when you need it. (It's like how the Medical Lab now gives +10% research in addition to its food storage.) Besides, it makes sense that research labs and TV stations would be moneymakers.

Alternately, the Stadium right now is +3 happy for 5 gpt, but also adds +1 culture and +2 gold. One thought was to replace that +2 gold with +5% or +10% gold; large cities would get much more out of a stadium than small ones, this way, and I never liked the idea of giving a flat +gold to something with a gpt cost. (Maintenance can be reduced by policies, and the +2 gained the usual multipliers, but it was still awkward.)

 

[Darsnan]

No, you don't build them, or no, you don't NOT build them (meaning you do build them)? I'd phrased the original question awkwardly, but I'll assume you meant that you don't use them.
So if you never use Psi units, why not?

I don't use them. I don't know if its because I've been conditioned to be very conservative when using strategic resources or because there's something better to build, but typically I don't build psi units.

Or is it that you're generally the tech leader

Actually, no! The AIs (those who haven't been nuked to oblivion) typically keep pretty good pace with me in regards to tech!

three types of folks:
1> People who are behind, technologically, and need something capable of hurting assault powersuits and such
2> People who need combat units and don't have the Uranium or Aluminum to build the technological stuff; all you need for Psis are Omnicytes, and they're supposed to be common.
3> Barbarians

It sounds like #2 applies to you

I'd almost go with #3 because I'm continually being nuked back to the Stone Age, but I think #2 is probably more applicable.

I'll also start documenting resources which are available in my games, so you get feedback for the mapscripts I'm utilizing (currently I'm playing on Standard-sized Pangea with low sea level), and you can then gauge whether there are enough resources available for the units and buildings in the associated eras.

Your games end before the middle of the Fusion Era?

Typically either an AI or I become an uber-juggernaut, so I terminate the playtest at that point. Also maybe it has to do with playing on Pangea maps, because all of the AIs have "access" to each other in regards to warfare?

Hmm, I'll have to look at the balance again then. If you're not reaching the powersuits, then you're not reaching needlejets or gravtanks, and that's half the fun!

In my SMACX mods I moved gravtanks down to Fusion Power because I agree they are so much fun to play with!

I think the utility of powersuits really depends on how useful you find the paradrop mechanism. If 6 hexes isn't enough to be viable, I can always bump that up a bit. (I was thinking of creating a second "Paradrop II" promotion that boosts it to 12 hexes. Not quite Space Elevator range, but enough to cross oceans.)

I'm a defensive minded strategist, and my typical approach is to absorb the CoD, then once the AIs offensive has been eliminated I go en masse over to the offensive. So I'm not sure I'm a good source for info on drop capabilities.

Okay, then would it be unbalanced for, say, every Fusion Lab to produce TWO Aluminum and TWO Uranium, since it's the only economic building that costs a resource?
Alternately, I'm looking at upping the map distributions of uranium and aluminum again, probably at the cost of some coal and maybe a little iron (since both of those have hard minima now).

What, more Uranium!?! Noooo!!!!

Focusing on your "Alternately" comment above, then I think this is a good idea in taking "baby steps" for adding more strategic resources. This way others playing on different maps (and exersizing different mapscript options) can report back if they are seeing something significantly out of kilter with your minimalist tweaks.

In my current game, I'm coming up very short on both of those resources, especially now that the Plasma Artillery and Vertol are 2-resource units.

I don't think I've built a single Plasma Artillery, either because I haven't had the resources, or I was hoarding what little resources I had available.

AIs use Uranium for nukes, players use them for Nuclear Plants. One thought I had there was to up the flavor of the Nuke Plant significantly, so that AIs would be far more likely to build those (good for +production buildings in general), which'd invariably leave them no uranium for weapons. But that'd be abuseable in the other direction; the player could nuke with impunity, because the AI would never be able to make any nukes in response.

I agree with your assessment here. Question: since we already have the Denouncement diplomatic mechanic available (which I am interpretting loosely here to mean "I dislike you but not enough to go to war"), is there a way to mimic this in regards to whether the AI initiates conventional warfare versus nuclear warfare? Say put some code in there that rates how much an AI hates another player (human or AI) such that if the rating falls above Denouncement then the AI goes to war (as it does now), but that if the AI doesn't hate the other player enough (i.e. they aren't at "seething"), then it doesn't use its nukes. Say also put some code in there whereby the AI assesses whether the opposing player has used nukes in the recent past. So the "diplomatic" levels would look something like this:

Friendly
Neutral
Guarded
Denouncement
War (conventional)
War (repeatedly push the Big Red Button)

This would eliminate the ability of a human to automatically abuse the system in that if the human uses nukes, then the AIs would then be able to "consider" this in their own decision-making abilities regarding nuclear warfare. Or to put it another way, it then becomes a choice for a human player to make whether they initiate nuclear warfare or not.

I was playing my test game last night; Industrial start, and I'm now in the mid-Digital. Thankfully, I just captured the only large Uranium mine on the planet before its owner had a chance to stock up, so I should be FAIRLY safe for a while. Although, I realized that by adding the Wall Street wonder (which adds 1 to each strategic) I just handed every AI a permanent 1-unit deposit of uranium for their bombs...
Anyway, I don't know how many times I was running short on cash in the Nuclear Era. I needed Golden Ages just to stay above zero (which meant I need a good Happiness surplus, which meant slowed expansion), and I couldn't afford to upgrade my units. And I realized that it was because I kept building. In the vanilla game it's always a good idea to build infrastructure, which means holding off on units until you absolutely need them, but in my mod, it seems like you really need to build units periodically, if only to keep your cities from racking up more building maintenance costs. Likewise, in the core game you can feel free to settle a new city as long as you have Happiness to spare, but in this mod you NEED that Happiness surplus to give enough GAs to stay afloat.

I've found that starting on Industrial, you need to build units because you always need to replenish the stock. Also currently because of the economic constraints you also need to make decisions ( ) on which buildings to produce in various cities. I personally like that. In regards to expansion, what size map are you playing on? I'm on Standard currently, and have adapted myself to your mod whereby I can "keep my head above water" so to speak in regards to Happiness and Gold. Blitzkrieging the AIs though is generally not an option.

Looking back on it, I think the gap between the Stock Exchange and the Energy Bank is just too big.

Too big for a human player to adapt to, or too big for the AI to deal with? As stated above, why I have adapted myself such that I can eak it out under the map settings I've detailed above.

One thought I had for this was to tweak a couple things. The Broadcast Tower and Research Lab were +100% culture and science, respectively, in the core game. I dropped both to +50% and didn't give them anything else to compensate. One thought I had would be to give them each +10% gold as well; it makes sense that TV stations would be moneymakers.

I like the idea/ concept of Broadcast Towers being money generators, and it can be explained thusly: the subliminal messages implanted within the broadcast shows/ commercials induce a larger percentage of the targeted populations to spend their hard earned credits on directionally planned revenue streams. Or to put it another way, "we're funneling money towards planned objectives".

D

 

[Spatzimaus]

I don't use them. I don't know if its because I've been conditioned to be very conservative when using strategic resources or because there's something better to build, but typically I don't build psi units.

My goal is to change this, so that they become viable units in their own rights. But they're not quite there yet. Bumping up their power might help a bit, and increasing their mobility, but I don't want to take it TOO far, because the Mindworms (like the Laser Infantry) are really supposed to be on the "cheap" end of the spectrum, something you could send on raiding missions and not care too much about the fate of. It's the later Psi units that are supposed to be hard-hitting.

Also maybe it has to do with playing on Pangaea maps, because all of the AIs have "access" to each other in regards to warfare?

Very likely. Try a Small Continents map sometime; sharing a landmass with maybe one other civ makes for a very different game.
Take my current game; 10 civs, and my starting continent was just me and France. (Industrial start, so I didn't start with NOTHING to fight back.) I was in the middle of churning out an army when France declared on me, so I took the opportunity to wipe him out. Then I jumped to a nearby continent where Arabia was by himself, and took him out. (I had to, he had most of the Uranium.) At that point it was a good thing no one else was within easy reach, because everyone hated me for being a warmonger (despite the fact that France declared on ME?).
My next target is England, who already conquered Egypt, finished a spaceship two turns after I did (despite starting it later), and just beat me to two Wonders in the Digital era (Maritime Control Center and Merchant Exchange). But I'm not sure I CAN invade them amphibiously at this point, at least until I upgrade my existing combat units to Skimmers/Vertols/etc.

I'm a defensive minded strategist, and my typical approach is to absorb the CoD, then once the AIs offensive has been eliminated I go en masse over to the offensive. So I'm not sure I'm a good source for info on drop capabilities.[/quote

I'm not thinking so much of the "first strike" sort of paradrop. More of "I need to get reinforcements to the front but don't have time to embark/move/disembark/walk to the front". Assault powersuits are supposed to be the counter to first-strike armor/bomber waves, since they generally outgun a Gravtank (70+50% vs 90) and have an interception bonus against air units.

Obviously if you're on a Pangaea map, the paradrop is less useful since you can just railroad them right to the front. But if you've got an undeveloped area between you and your opponent, or a narrow channel of water, then it becomes a really good ability to have.

What, more Uranium!?! Noooo!!!!

I'd say your complaint isn't really about the amount of Uranium in the world, it's that what it's being used FOR is disproportionately damaging. One unit of Uranium results in far more carnage than one unit of Aluminum or Oil. So if I can tone down the Nukefest, possibly with SDI or more building defenses, then I don't think it'd be so bad to add more uranium to the map.

This is also the reason that I did what I did with the Supercollider. For everything beyond iron and horses I now have one Wonder adding +100 units. (After playing with these in-game, I'm thinking of lowering it to +10, and reducing some of the other effects of these wonders.) Generally speaking, these come a few techs after the building that gave +1 to each, so the Energy Bank gives +1 oil and coal, and then the Planetary Energy Grid gives +100 to the same two resources.
But in the case of Uranium, the Supercollider actually comes BEFORE the Fusion Lab. In my current game, I just rushed the collider with an engineer, because I needed the uranium THAT badly... I'm still not sure whether that's a good thing.

I don't think I've built a single Plasma Artillery, either because I haven't had the resources, or I was hoarding what little resources I had available.

When they were an Aluminum-only unit, I'd say the Plasma Artillery were the best all-around unit in the game. Now, it's just so hard to find the Uranium to make them, which means I've left quite a few of my units as Rocket Artillery and SAMs, which actually was a nice dynamic for the game. (At least, I did this pre-Collider.)
If there's a little more Uranium on the map then I think the balance will be fine.

is there a way to mimic this in regards to whether the AI initiates conventional warfare versus nuclear warfare?

Very little of empire-vs-empire diplomacy is adjustable through mods, unfortunately. I mean, there's no Lua function I can find to set one empire's relationship with another; there's only a Minor-to-Major adjustment. (That's why the Empath Guild does what it does.)

In regards to expansion, what size map are you playing on?

Standard. I was having a hard time with Happiness until I hit the Stadium, and a hard time with money until I hit the Energy Bank. Now (late Digital), with Hologram Theaters in most major cities, I'm at +100 Happiness, and because I'm in a REALLY long Golden Age (20 turns from launching first, plus three or four spare great people) I'm earning ~500 gpt.

Too big for a human player to adapt to, or too big for the AI to deal with?

A little of both. The gap between the Stock Exchange and the Energy Bank isn't prohibitively large, but it's large enough that you have to change your strategies as you go to reflect the current reality of economics. That sort of adaptation isn't something the AI does well, which is why I'm a bit worried about it.

he subliminal messages implanted within the broadcast shows/ commercials induce a larger percentage of the targeted populations to spend their hard earned credits on directionally planned revenue streams.

Or in one word, "Advertising". In the real world, broadcast networks, research labs, and professional sports all make money. Not as much as high finance (stock exchange), but significant amounts. So I'm okay on the realism side of things, and I think putting some stopgap money generators in there will help in the long term.

In fact, I was thinking of killing two birds with one stone. The Stadium is just a bit too good at the moment, because it gives +3 happiness at a point in the game where your empire's happiness is just starting to go through the roof (because of the Theater, mainly). The thing keeping it in check was supposed to be that one era later, you get the Children's Creche (-1) and Genejack Factory (-2), with the Hologram Theater then doing the same before you get the Gravity Shield (-1) and Robotic Assembly Plant (-1). The one-era delay between building the stadium and building those others was intentional, to create a Golden Age right about the time you're assembling spaceship parts, but it wasn't supposed to be permanent.

But those negative-happiness buildings don't work, so until they do, I think I'll drop the Stadium to a measly +2 happiness, boost its culture another +1 (to +2), and have it be a sort of combo happy/culture/money building.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Okay, I played for a few more hours. (I'm not going to get much more playing time in this weekend, unfortunately. A few highlights:

> City-states can build national wonders. This makes sense, but what was disturbing was when one of my allies completed Wall Street and suddenly gifted me one uranium, one aluminum, one coal, one oil, one omnicytes, and so on. I should probably ban the four mutually-exclusive wonders I added.

> The KGB is too good, or else I'm just insanely lucky with it, but I was getting a good number of techs with it.

> I control half the world, and I now get techs every ~4 turns. That's just way too fast; frankly I wish there was some sort of hard-set minimum number of turns for techs.

> Money's too plentiful for me in the late game. Even in non-golden ages I'm now earning 600+ gpt in profit now. It's allowed me to buy my way to a diplo win (just waiting for the next vote; I have 13 out of 17 city-states allied).
One culprit: the Planetary Transit System. +33% trade income is just too good. What I WANTED for it was +10% trade income and then something else, like road/railroad maintenance cut in half or road movement increased. But I could never get any of those other effects to work right. But then I thought of something that would:
+10% trade income, and all of your units gain +1 movement point as long as they start the turn within your borders. (I've already got nearly identical logic in place for the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm, so I know it'd work.) Giving your workers a third movement point would be really nice, and it'd also help for shuffling land units around your empire (handy when dealing with a Spore Tower spawn) or getting them to the front lines faster. It wouldn't help very much for attacks, but that's part of the point.
But in general, the money excess is caused by a lot of little things. For instance, Hollywood adds +1 gold to all Artist specialists empire-wide. Since this +1 becomes more like +2 once you count the Market, Bank, Stock Exchange, and Energy Bank, and you'll already be working a lot of Specialists if you have the Statue of Liberty and the right policies, it adds up fast.
Or resources. By adding more strategic resources, I increased the likelihood that a given hex will have a resource on it. Resource improvements generally add gold. So it may not seem like much of a difference, but it's a problem.
Also, the trade route equation I use is a bit more generous to large cities; great for stopping ICS, but in the late game it might be a bit too much.

> Anecdote:
The clear #2 civ in my game was England. Three times in a row, they beat me to a Wonder by one or two turns; I could have let it go, since I was on my way to an easy cultural win (four and a half branches done), but I just couldn't live with myself if I sat back. So, once I got my Skimmers, Vertols, and Plasma Artillery, I did a massive amphibious invasion. England had one continent of ~10 cities, plus about eight small island cities (some of which were nicely developed); they hadn't really conquered anyone, because the only other civ on their continent (Egypt) was trapped between two city-states and couldn't spread out much, so England got the bulk of the continent. They also had most of the Aluminum in the world (but thankfully little uranium), so had a very modern military.
A half-dozen turns later, I'd grabbed two large cities of England's, one of which had two of the Wonders I'd been beaten to (Human Genome Project and Maritime Control Center), I was threatening a few smaller cities, and I'd blown up the majority of her field units, so Elizabeth sued for peace, with the usual "take everything I have" offer...
...or so I thought. I accepted it, and when the smoke cleared, she still had a core of 6 cities, all in the teens or low twenties, and two good island cities. She'd offered the things she could afford to lose, really, even though they were still good cities. Still, it wasn't a bad time to make peace, or so I thought; she'd done a number on my military, sinking two battleships and two stealth ships, killing two plasma artillery and two modern armor, and wounding pretty much everything else I had. Sure, the kill ratio was still FAR in my favor, but it still wasn't pretty. (Terrain was definitely on her side. And I have to say: a 100-strength city, with a Plasma Artillery, a Battleship, and some jet fighters in it? TOUGH to crack. So I figured it was a good time to take a break.)
Five turns later, she beat me to the Virtual World by one turn. Grrr...

Now I'm loading up on Planet Busters, so I can finish this war the RIGHT way.

----------
Bottom line: new version will be early next week (probably Tuesday, unless I find a major bug). Besides the little balance things, I found that the Monolith feature isn't loading correctly for some reason, so I have to debug that first.

 

[Faerillis]

Spatz your mod seems incredible and the tech changes so far have made this my favourite Mod by far. However I'm having some trouble at this point. It appears that I cannot build the Apollo Project. Admittedly I have not had the opportunity to see if this effects all characters/playthroughs or just this one. I am currently playing on a Large Map as Babylon

 

[Kemystul]

okay, you're gonna think I'm crazy, my standard map with this mod so far has been Huge Earth maps starting in the ancient era, I tend to play at marathon speed as well cause I like a long game. A little crazy I know...

The happiness I've learned to adapt to, and can keep my head above the water just fine as long as I can find more than 3 different happiness resources.

The gold, I can stay above zero, but with marathon speed it's hard to buy anything unless I start "selling" happiness resources to my neighbors (the AI is more than willing to pay nearly 1K for a happiness resource and that's usually enough to buy a building or a unit, more If I've went commerce.)

By the Nuclear age, my gold starts to sag and I can usually only prevent a full-scale collapse by spec'ing into Order for the maintenance reduction. This is also the age where I start seeing lots of bankrupt AI's. I'm guessing this is partly due to the increased cost of everything at marathon speed.

I'll be trying the run from stone-age to transcendence victory again later tonight I'll keep notes on it as well. It should be interesting.

 

[Spatzimaus]

However I'm having some trouble at this point. It appears that I cannot build the Apollo Project.

There is one thing in the game that disables the Apollo project: the Breakout. If one of the other civs has launched a spaceship already, then each turn there's a random chance that wild mindworms will start spawning around the world. Once that happens, no more civs can launch spaceships.
The easy way to check is to see if you have the Centauri Ecology tech. If you do, then you can't build a spaceship. (But then you don't NEED to, because the main reason to build the ship is to get that tech...)

I did this on purpose; I didn't want the AIs who've fallen behind to be wasting production on a ship just for the other minor benefits (free policy, golden age), and it encourages players who've barely lost the space race to finish it up ASAP before it's too late.

By the Nuclear age, my gold starts to sag and I can usually only prevent a full-scale collapse by spec'ing into Order for the maintenance reduction.

That's not a function of Marathon speed, that'll happen on any speed. It's what Darsnan and I were talking about a few posts up: there's a gap in the Nuclear Era where Stock Exchanges no longer give you enough gold to pay for all the building upkeeps, but where you're not up to Energy Banks yet. A player tends to build more buildings than the AI, and so starts racking up the building maintenance VERY quickly, but yes, the AI can easily bankrupt itself if it's not careful.

In the next version I'll fix this by giving three late-Industrial/early-Nuclear buildings (Broadcast Tower, Research Lab, Stadium) a small gold benefit (+5% or +10%, still working out the math), but tone down the early-Digital +gold things a bit to compensate. I'm also looking at tweaking some of the tech yield increases. So it should be smoother in v.0.21, with your gold staying comfortably above zero.

Also, side note: have you built Wall Street or Hollywood yet?

Second side note: be careful with Earth maps. If they're ones that hard-set the locations and/or sizes of resource deposits, then they won't work with my mod (because for obvious reasons, there'd be no Omnicytes, Dilithium, or Neutronium on the map).

 

[dinobot386]

I played a game and over several hundered turns I never got any techs aside from the first one from the KGB, and was behind several empires technologically, So your ether really lucky or im just unlucky

 

[Spatzimaus]

So your ether really lucky or im just unlucky

Probably. Another part of it might be that the chance of gaining a tech with it will depend on how many other civs have the other tech. In an Industrial start, on King difficulty, the AIs will be consistently out-teching you for the early part of the game, so there'll be many chances to steal. Now that I'm in the late game, only one or two civs are really keeping up with me technologically, so it's not happening nearly as often.

What I'd like to do, ideally, is create a counter. Sort of like how Happiness leads to Golden Ages; each time the game tries to steal a tech but fails, add one to the counter, and the chance of stealing each time will depend on how high the counter is. So let's say it's 1% per counter. Someone else gets a tech I don't have; I'd have a 0% chance of stealing it on the first turn, 1% on the second, and so on; if other civs get that tech, then it'd go up more quickly. This'd remove some of the randomness from the situation; if you've had a run of bad luck and haven't stolen a tech recently, then your odds will be much better than the guy who just stole one.

Unfortunately, counters like that are not well-supported in Civ5 modding right now. You can do some things with the savedata-type functions, but it'd be hard to do what I'd described.

 

[Faerillis]

There is one thing in the game that disables the Apollo project: the Breakout. If one of the other civs has launched a spaceship already, then each turn there's a random chance that wild mindworms will start spawning around the world. Once that happens, no more civs can launch spaceships.
The easy way to check is to see if you have the Centauri Ecology tech. If you do, then you can't build a spaceship. (But then you don't NEED to, because the main reason to build the ship is to get that tech...)

I did this on purpose; I didn't want the AIs who've fallen behind to be wasting production on a ship just for the other minor benefits (free policy, golden age), and it encourages players who've barely lost the space race to finish it up ASAP before it's too late.

No, no one else has launched a ship yet. Not that it really matters, I can't stop Alexander from getting a Diplomatic Victory