Crazy Spatz's Alpha Centauri Mod

[Spatzimaus]

I just had a city state gift me a Nessus Worm.

Possibly OP?

Wow. Yeah, that one's my bad. City-states can't even build those (no Omnicytes), but since they're technically still on the list of city-state units, they can gift them. I'd removed the other Titan units from the list, but I'd left off the Nessus. It'll be fixed in the next version, or you could do it yourself by editing CIV5Civilizations.xml with this addition:

		<Row>
			<CivilizationType>CIVILIZATION_MINOR</CivilizationType>
			<UnitClassType>UNITCLASS_NESSUS_WORM</UnitClassType>
			<UnitType />
		</Row>

in the unitclass overrides table. So the heaviest thing they'd be able to gift would be a Gravtank, but no Titans. (I also removed the Orbital Death Rays and Labor Mechs from their lists.)

But I've had things like that happen before; I was doing a test game, Transcendence Era start, as Germany. I captured a Barbarian camp, and you know how it has a 50% chance of giving you a unit? Yep, got a Nessus Worm. (Considering a Transcend start has you starting with only Laser Infantry, since they're the highest resourceless land unit, getting a Nessus kinda threw off the balance of power.)

I'm assuming that you were in the Nanotech Era when they gave it to you, so at least your opponents had the technology to defend themselves. (Unless you'd pulled so far ahead that they couldn't. In that case, I highly recommend using the Tech Diffusion mod or one of its variants.)

 

[Spatzimaus]

for the hospital, there was no description of the effect while ingame

Confirmed. Also my fault. I added the TXT_KEY_BUILDING_HOSPITAL_HELP field, but I forgot to actually change the <Help> line in the Buildings table to point to that new entry (instead of pointing to the HOSPITAL_STRATEGY field that gives that little useless blurb). It's fixed for the next version. For now, you'll just have to remember what it does or go into the Civilopedia. (The next version will have quite a few Civilopedia improvements.)

 

[Darsnan]

Had anyone else completed a spaceship already? More specifically, check your tech tree: did you have Centauri Ecology already? (Having CE makes the spaceship parts go obsolete, which'd prevent you from building.

Yeah, that's what it was. I think the last time I'd played you had enabled everyone to build the spaceship, and I hadn't read in your notes that you'd changed this.

Played a game on Pangea/ King/ Standard. Here are some notes from this weekend's playtesting:

1. Didn't start with aluminum or oil. Not a huge problem in this game, though (it had been in previous games where it really hamstrung me), and I was able to acquire these resources as the game progressed.

2. Money was not an issue for me in this game, either, possibly because I started with a gold deposit right next to my capitol. Happiness WAS an issue all game long. It really stopped me from steamrolling the Siamese, and instead I had to take them out in stages, all the while building as many happiness facilities as possible to keep my head above water on the Happiness scale. Personally I'm not a fan of this game mechanic (nerfing conquest by overwhelming a player with unhappiness), as once I get on a roll I usually like to just get it over and done with, and not just prolong the inevitable.

3. When the (short lived) British Empire sued for peace, the tribute was much less than what I had previously seen from the AI's. I don't know if this was because one of the other AI's had already bankrupt the British or what, but I did think it was more in-line with a reasonable "first-offer" for peace.

4. Concerning Air Defense and XP: how come Air Defense units don't get XP when they engage aircraft?

5. Concerning the effects of multiple culture bombs: you can see by the sequence of pics that I culture bombed the Persians repeatedly to acquire a uranium mine. They never once went to war over this.

6. Concerning the Spore Tower and other NL: do you plan on implementing the ability to gather planet pearls when these units are destroyed?

7. Only had two crashes while playtesting (approximately 7 hours playing time).

8. Concerning research times: Penicillin took seven turns to research.

9. Tech beelines: went for Satelites, Advanced Ballistics, then Globalization. The AIs beat me to the UN and Sydney Opera House!

10. I really like the "Hacked" benefit from the HSA!

11. Concerning the effects of multiple culture bombs: took me a while, but I was able to steal a uranium mine from the Persians. I think I used four culture bombs to steal it. The AI never once went to war over this.

12. Probably a good thing I did steal the uranium mine, as the AIs do use nukes. It was very nice to see that the AIs don't reserve nukes just for humans!

13. Saw the Persians colonize a one tile island. Don't know what logic sequence prompted them to do this, as I saw no benefit to doing this. In the lower left-hand corner of the associated pic you can also see the original border with the Persians where the Uranium mine is well within their borders.

14. The AIs are still building ships in icelocked ports. I think this game was the worst instance of this feature. Like shooting fish in a barrel.

D

 

[Spatzimaus]

Yeah, that's what it was. I think the last time I'd played you had enabled everyone to build the spaceship, and I hadn't read in your notes that you'd changed this.

I had to. There was no other way for the Barbarians to get that tech, and City-States were getting it in a very unpredictable manner. So, I extended the mechanism involved to players as well; without this, the spaceship really hamstrung small empires or those that had been partially conquered by a neighbor, since to progress beyond a certain point they'd have to build a ship and simply wouldn't have enough productive cities to do so in any reasonable time.

(It also gives a motivation to finish up your ship ASAP after you've been beaten to the launch. But that's a minor point.)

1. Didn't start with aluminum or oil. Not a huge problem in this game, though (it had been in previous games where it really hamstrung me), and I was able to acquire these resources as the game progressed.

One consequence of the deposit size changes is that it's a lot easier to trade for a reasonable amount of these two resources now. I do think, though, that the distribution of strategics to city-states is still a bit skewed; they seem to get a lot of Oil but not much Coal, for instance, although that's probably because most city-states are coastal. It also makes them an excellent source of Omnicytes and Dilithium.

2. Money was not an issue for me in this game, either, possibly because I started with a gold deposit right next to my capitol. Happiness WAS an issue all game long.

I've seen the reverse in some games; right before I released this last version I played a game where I started with 7 unique luxuries within my first 3 cities' footprints. Happiness wasn't an issue, but money was a real problem. My current game (almost done) had me low on both, but that's more to do with the lack of rivers on my current map. On my initial 9-city continent, there was only one small river that supported two cities at most; losing that +1G per tile really hurts.

Personally I'm not a fan of this game mechanic (nerfing conquest by overwhelming a player with unhappiness), as once I get on a roll I usually like to just get it over and done with, and not just prolong the inevitable.

Well, that's exactly WHY I did it. I wanted a reason for the player to NOT finish off every opponent, and likewise, a reason for the AIs to not wipe each other out entirely. Having more civs still intact, even if only on a few minor fringe cities, makes a diplomatic win harder (since you can't bribe THEM to vote for you), and helps replace the conquered city-states by creating new "minor" civs to trade with.

I'm more than willing to welcome feedback on this; I could easily believe that the base unhappiness (4) is just a little too big and should be reduced to 3ish or something. But this mechanism in general serves a purpose, and so far it's done it well in my experience. In the vanilla game, and earlier Civ games, later wars were all in the "blitzkreig" model, over in one or two turns, which heavily favors a human player that can plan for it. This slower grinding war method, where you HAVE to consolidate your gains before advancing further, is more AI-friendly.

Also, note that this happiness change is contained within the Balance mod. So you could always play the Content mod without the Balance, or with someone else's balance mod instead, if you don't like the sort of gameplay I'm trying to encourage.

3. When the (short lived) British Empire sued for peace, the tribute was much less than what I had previously seen from the AI's.

I've seen this too; beyond a certain point the tribute goes back down, until a nearly-conquered empire will only offer a straight peace trade, no tribute at all. It seems to be more of a "so what?" response. Like, you've taken all of my good cities, so why should I give you anything?

4. Concerning Air Defense and XP: how come Air Defense units don't get XP when they engage aircraft?

You mean SAMs? I think it's because they're not actually involved in the combat. The fighter is attacking a city/unit, so those two entities will get XP, and the nearby SAM is just helping out with a bit of damage. Since the SAM takes no damage, no XP. (There's also a disabled "supporting fire" mechanism for ground ranged units that seems to do something similar.) If the SAM is being attacked directly then it'll get XP, but it'll also take damage.
SHOULD they get XP? Maybe, although it'd rack up quickly, so you'd have to lower the XP even more. (1 XP per fight?) The interception range for AA units is hard-coded (to 2 hexes I think), and you can have multiple units intercepting, so it adds up fast if there are enough units involved.

5. Concerning the effects of multiple culture bombs: you can see by the sequence of pics that I culture bombed the Persians repeatedly to acquire a uranium mine. They never once went to war over this.

Strange. Culture bombs are one of the few things basically hard-coded to upset people. (That and nukes.) But I hardly ever use Culture Bombs, since in an Ancient start it's now better to use most of your Great People to make their custom improvements, and the Landmark is pretty handy.

6. Concerning the Spore Tower and other NL: do you plan on implementing the ability to gather planet pearls when these units are destroyed?

If I can, yes, at least for the Spore Towers (probably not for the other Psi units, though). But unfortunately, in the absence of a good "unit destroyed" event, it'd have to be yet another thing that gets awarded on the following turn, and I'm not sure how to record who gets the reward. Also, adding more money into the system might require rebalancing a few other things, because in my experience by that point in the game, money is already a bit too plentiful. I could create a Barbarian Camp improvement under a spore tower, but it'd automatically be destroyed for being inside someone's border, and I don't want to remove whatever improvement was already on that tile.

9. Tech beelines: went for Satelites, Advanced Ballistics, then Globalization. The AIs beat me to the UN and Sydney Opera House!

I've seen this a lot. I generally beeline up the middle/bottom side, because it's where the spaceship parts are, while the AI grabs Atomic Theory (to get Uranium and the Manhattan Project) and then generally goes up the top side of the tree towards those Wonders. I think the Flavor ratings on the techs might need a bit of tweaking.

10. I really like the "Hacked" benefit from the HSA!

It still concerns me a bit. The range subtraction worries me the most, for two reasons:
1> It only applies to units that start the turn in your territory. A naval vessel that has the "can move after attacking" flag (which is free for the Leviathan, or is built into the Logistics promotion) can hop in, bombard, and pull back to avoid this. The same applies to air units, although that makes sense.
2> It's meant to counteract the "+1 range" benefit of the Command Nexus. But the CN's bonus is a lot more reliable, and if you're well ahead of your opponents on techs, you might easily get one without the other.
But overall, it seems to work pretty well.

 

[Spatzimaus]

To expand on something else I said, I'm evaluating Happiness and Gold again. Here's what I've found.

Happiness:
In my design, Happiness buildings basically fall into three categories:
Minor (+1 Happiness and other big effects): Aqueduct, Sewer System, Recycling Center, Temple, Hybrid Forest, Habitation Domes
Major (+2 or +3 Happiness and not-so-big effects): Colosseum, Theater, Stadium, Hologram Theater, Centauri Preserve (Those last two only give 2, but also are culture buildings)
Wonder (+5 or higher): duh.

The odd man out in that design is the Circus. Frankly, I'd like there to be several more buildings like that, things that add ~2 happiness but only to certain cities, not something you can put in all of them. But I don't want to add too many new buildings; I'll leave that to other mods for now.
Another alternative is to move more buildings into the Minor category. For instance, for a while now I've been considering tweaking the Monastery and Mint to each give +1 happiness (unmodded) but lower their other benefits (like making Mints only add 2G per deposit instead of 3). The Garden also could use a boost, and this'd fit well there IMO; +1 happiness makes it worth building even in cities that don't produce a lot of great people. The other possibility was the Windmill; it's just so WEAK now, since it's purely worse than the Workshop despite coming an era later, although if I added 1 happiness I'd drop the +2 production part and maybe up the 15% to 20% instead.
Also note that both the Garden and Windmill have terrain limitations; the Garden has to have fresh water, while the windmill can't be in a hill city. So this shouldn't add a huge amount of Happiness to an empire. (And really, wouldn't it make sense for Gardens and Windmills to make people happy?)
My worry is that it'll favor river cities even more than the current game does now, so I've been trying to find a counterbalance. One thought was the Observatory; instead of its current setup (+20% research, +3 culture) it'd be +20% research, +1 culture, +1 happiness. Since it requires a mountain, you're more likely to see it in non-river cities. Disclaimer: I'm an astronomer, so the idea of making an Observatory good is VERY tempting. If there were any other mountain-requiring buildings I'd consider them instead, but the Observatory is all we have.

The point, though, is that by keeping the base unhappiness large and having a variety of buildings that add happiness, it encourages civs to spend time developing their cities instead of staying in full war production; in the vanilla game, there are only 3 happiness buildings (not counting the Circus), so it doesn't take much investment before a conquered city isn't a drain on happiness, at which point it purely adds to your empire.
In my experience the AI handles this pretty well; I'm playing a King game now, where despite conquering two out of my 7 opponents, I nearly lost a diplomatic victory to Greece (they had 11 city-state allies, and you only needed 15 votes to win), because of a MASSIVE gold surplus from a lot of Golden Ages (three civs are above +30 Happiness, and Greece was +41 last I checked), and I still might get beaten to the spaceship. Four civs finished the Manhattan Project before I did... the game is still in the early Nuclear, so it's not over yet. I'm just starting a massive Normandy against Greece as we speak; their Fighter cover is brutal, and they have Modern Armor.

Also, I'm still intending to add those five mutually-exclusive national wonders I'd mentioned earlier. The first, the Magna Carta (probably at Navigation would add 5 happiness but have some other drawbacks. So the Happiness situation shouldn't be quite so dire in the future.

Gold:
I don't just mean how Gold is hard to get in earlier eras but eventually becomes plentiful. I mean specifically the gold-producing buildings. There are six if you include my content. See if you can spot the discontinuity:
Market (T4): +25% gold, +2 gold
Bank (T6): +25% gold
Stock Exchange (T10): +25% gold, +1 horse, +1 iron
Energy Bank (T15): +25% gold, +1 coal, +1 oil
Fusion Lab (T18): +25% gold, +25% research, +1 uranium +1 aluminum, but -1 dilithium
Quantum Lab (T21): +25% gold, +25% research, +1 dilithium, +1 neutronium

To me, the biggest problem is in the first two; the newly-added +2 gold to the Market is just too good, while the Bank is just too weak, and it breaks the increasing trend I'd established. But the flat gold boost is important, because adding 25% to an income of 0 isn't helpful. To quote Yosemite Sam, "two times nuthin' is STILL nuthin'." Unless your city has a bunch of Trading Posts, it doesn't add much.
So what I'm thinking is to remove the flat +2 and copy the Granary's method:
Market: +25% gold, +1 gold per Cow, Fish, or Wheat (I could add the other three Bonus resources, Bananas, Sheep, and Deer, but I like the idea of favoring the "common" ones. And really, it's a market; beef, fish, and grain are a lot more common than venison and haggis.)
Bank: +25% gold, +1 gold per Gold, Silver, or Gems (possibly paired with the Mint change mentioned above)

I'm also not a fan of the big gap between the Stock Exchange and the Energy Bank, but it hasn't been too crippling in practice.

Thoughts?

 

[Darsnan]

I'm more than willing to welcome feedback on this; I could easily believe that the base unhappiness (4) is just a little too big and should be reduced to 3ish or something. But this mechanism in general serves a purpose, and so far it's done it well in my experience. In the vanilla game, and earlier Civ games, later wars were all in the "blitzkreig" model, over in one or two turns, which heavily favors a human player that can plan for it. This slower grinding war method, where you HAVE to consolidate your gains before advancing further, is more AI-friendly.

As a game mechanic I think the unhappiness model is working very effectively the way its implemented: in my last game I had to stop my conquest of the Siamese several times and wait for cities to finish buildings associated with happiness (or wait for new Social Policies to become available that would enhance my civ&#8217;s happiness). I also couldn&#8217;t just buy buildings that I wanted/ needed in this situation &#8211; FYI on the tie-in here that the economics side of your mod seems to be in good shape. However from from an enjoyment perspective why I have to say that waiting around for my Happiness index to become bearable was relatively tedious. I also have to say that I do take a certain amount of pleasure/ pride in blitzkrieging an AI (or AIs), a la &#8220;Behold the Mighty Darsnan as he slices and dices the AIs defenses!&#8221;, as opposed to &#8220;Behold the Mighty Darsnan as he patiently waits, and waits (and waits) for his Happiness index to recover before finishing off a completely defenseless AI&#8221;. The end result is the same (i.e. the AIs are vanquished), but there is much less pleasure/ enjoyment personally speaking. I also think that this approach of overwhelming unhappiness goes against the mantra of &#8220;A game should be an interesting series of choices&#8221; as it pretty much forces a player&#8217;s hand in this regard.

To expand on something else I said, I'm evaluating Happiness &#8230;

&#8230;.The point, though, is that by keeping the base unhappiness large and having a variety of buildings that add happiness, it encourages civs to spend time developing their cities instead of staying in full war production;

From a strategic perspective I think this sounds good. And if you space out the associated buildings in the tech tree such that it allows a human the ability to conquer one AI without incurring crippling unhappiness, yet not be able to steamroll everyone without having to first plan for it, why think this sounds like a better approach.

D

 

[Spatzimaus]

I also couldn&#8217;t just buy buildings that I wanted/ needed in this situation

This part actually worries me a bit. I think the hurry costs are too high, now that I've reduced everyone's cash margins. In the vanilla game you'll be making enough money that purchasing buildings is at least possible, but in this mod, you'll only get that kind of money in a Golden Age.
I'm thinking of reducing some of the HurryCostModifiers; most are +25%, so I was thinking of reducing some of the lower-end buildings down to +0. I'd moved the Colosseum from +25% to +50%, so this'd allow me to move it back down to 25.

However from from an enjoyment perspective why I have to say that waiting around for my Happiness index to become bearable was relatively tedious.

Well, there are two factors here to consider.
1> If you'd built up more of a Happiness buffer before starting that war, you wouldn't have to wait like that. In the vanilla game, having +10 or so is more than enough to go all the way; in this mod, you'd need about +30 to get the same effect, and most people won't wait that long. (The AI will, though.) Once you get to Theaters and Stadia this shouldn't be a problem, so late-game wars WILL be all-or-nothing, but I'm trying to reduce the all-out earlier wars, because I want weaker civs to survive into the late game.

2> What I'm trying to encourage isn't actually this slow, steady, conquer-then-consolidate advance. What I'm shooting for is you grab two or three cities, then consider accepting a favorable peace treaty instead of "mopping up" all of his small cities. Mopping up in general is not fun to me, having to conquer all those little size 1 colonies just because they're in the way. Like I said, I'm trying to make the strategy the AI already uses a bit more favorable; the AI will often leave minor colony cities alone, or stop once their army fails against the enemy capital.

In the vanilla game, there's little point to puppeting a city after it comes out of resistance; you annex, and then move on as you build a Courthouse. With this method, you puppet until you can BUY a Courthouse. (450 gold!) This means that if you want a real offensive war, you have to have a decent cash surplus as well as a happiness surplus.
It also means that if you conquer a small city that has no good buildings in it, it really is in your best interests to just raze the thing, at least until you have the Communism policy (+5 production per city).

I also think that this approach of overwhelming unhappiness goes against the mantra of &#8220;A game should be an interesting series of choices&#8221; as it pretty much forces a player&#8217;s hand in this regard.

I would disagree on it forcing you into a single playstyle; it just changes the optima so that it's no longer a no-brainer to build up a massive army and conquer the world. This sort of thing still needs some work; unit maintenance right now is tiny compared to building maintenance, even if you have a huge army.

Take my current game (nearly finished). Eight civs, on three continents. First continent was just me and a few city-states. Second, France and Iroquois. Third, everyone else. All were reachable without Astronomy, thanks to a few small islands in the ocean.
After filling my continent, I noticed a spot on the corner of France's area, a 4-hex peninsula blocked off from the rest of the continent by mountains, that had Incense (which I didn't have). So I settled there. France wasn't happy about this and started a massive assault on that colony, but because of the terrain and a bit of luck, I was able to destroy them all. As part of the eventual peace treaty, France gave me a couple dinky colony cities. After building them up, I took France's remaining cities (4 of them) in one shot. I spent a couple turns consolidating, then hit the Iroquois and took all of HIS cities (except for a small island city) in a few turns.

Then I found out that the five civs on the big continent were slightly more advanced than I was (a consequence of the Tech Diffusion mod, I suppose), and Greece was close to having all of the city-states in its pocket for a diplo win. So I prepared a massive amphibious invasion, which almost failed because Greece was GOOD. Alexander had only settled 6 cities, but had built infrastructure like you wouldn't believe. And his army, while small, was Jet Fighters and Modern Armor. So after taking his entire empire (razing a couple outliers instead of conquering), I recuperated. So far so good, right?

Nope. The Songhai were on a roll. They didn't have many tanks (but had a LOT of Infantry and Stealth Bombers), but they didn't NEED them; they had nearly all the Uranium in the world, and their words were backed with NUCLEAR WEAPONS. I watched them wipe out both the Persians and Aztecs by nuking the major cities and then mopping up with infantry... there was no pause there, because the Songhai were at +41 happiness before that war (nicely-timed infographic). Part of this was because the Songhai had conquered three local city-states in earlier eras, and so were doing just fine for luxuries. They even declared war on Greece at the last second of THAT war to grab their final city.
And I was clearly next, given how they were threatening me; I watched them rebase two Atomic Bombs to hit my Greek colonies. (The only remaining civ, Rome, was on the far side of Greece from the rest, with three city-states in between.) So I hit first; thanks to my new stadia in my core cities, Happiness wasn't an issue, and I managed to conquer the city with the nukes before he could use them on anything other than his own cities.

So in that one game, I saw a variety of different military strategies, especially in the later game.

And if you space out the associated buildings in the tech tree such that it allows a human the ability to conquer one AI without incurring crippling unhappiness, yet not be able to steamroll everyone without having to first plan for it, why think this sounds like a better approach.

That's basically what I've already done. But here's the math:
VANILLA GAME: 2 + 1/pop
MY MOD: 4 + 1.2/pop

The extra 0.2/pop is basically accounted for by the +1 from the Aqueduct, Sewer System, Recycling Center, and Habitation Domes; as long as your cities only gain 5 population between each of these, you're fine.

The extra 2 in the base value is only balanced right now by the +1 from the Temple, although I've reduced the Theater and Stadium as well. This is why I considered lowering it to 3. (If you're playing Egypt then your temple gives +2, if you're Persia then your Banks add another 2.)
But I think I'd rather go with what I proposed earlier, and change a few buildings, using some combination of the following:

Mint: was +3 gold per Gold,Silver; now would be +1 happiness, +2 gold per Gold/Silver.
Monastery: was +3 culture and +2 culture per Wine, Incense; now would be +1 happiness, +1 culture, +2 culture per Wine, Incense.
Garden: gains +1 happiness in addition to its +25% great people
Observatory: was +20% research, +3 culture; now would be +1 happiness, +20% research, +1 culture
Windmill: was +2 production, +15% prod for buildings; now would be +1 happiness, +20% prod for buildings

Very few cities wouldn't have at least one of the above, but it'd be very uncommon to see any city have more than 2 of them, even if I changed all five, so it'd basically add another +1 to +2, which'd nicely balance out the extra base unhappiness. The only question is whether these would be Unmodded Happiness (which avoids the population cap) or not; I'm leaning against unmodded for the Mint/Monastery (since they require local resources) and regular for the other three.

 

[Darsnan]

Well, there are two factors here to consider.
1> If you'd built up more of a Happiness buffer before starting that war, you wouldn't have to wait like that.

2> What I'm trying to encourage isn't actually this slow, steady, conquer-then-consolidate advance. What I'm shooting for is you grab two or three cities, then consider accepting a favorable peace treaty instead of "mopping up" all of his small cities.

With this method, you puppet until you can BUY a Courthouse. (450 gold!) This means that if you want a real offensive war, you have to have a decent cash surplus as well as a happiness surplus.


I would disagree on it forcing you into a single playstyle; it just changes the optima so that it's no longer a no-brainer to build up a massive army and conquer the world. This sort of thing still needs some work; unit maintenance right now is tiny compared to building maintenance, even if you have a huge army.

My comments are based on a sample size of two games using your current mod plus the latest patch, so I agree that I am far from being optimized to playing in the environment you've created. I'll see if I can do better with the Happiness issue in future games and report back then.

D

 

[Spatzimaus]

I'll see if I can do better with the Happiness issue in future games and report back then.

Well, I'll admit that my sample is a bit biased because my personal favorite civ is Persia, and they've got the best UB in the game, with a Bank that adds +2 Happiness. That obviously skews things, although I've been deliberately not using Persia or Egypt in my test games. (Seriously, compare the Satrap's Court to, say, the Krepost. Some civs' UBs just suck.)

I do think that the unhappiness is a bit heavy, mainly because in my test games the AI civs are spending a little too much time in NegativeHappinessLand. In the late (post-Theater) game they'll do just fine, but there's not enough before then.

So that brings us to the discussion of possible solutions. I'm going to do one of the following:
A> Change the base unhappiness values to 3/7 instead of 4/8, which'd still be higher than the vanilla 2/5, but the +1 from the Temple would basically balance that.
OR
B> Leave it at 4/8, but add those changes I mentioned above, where up to five existing buildings (each of which is tied to a specific resource or terrain feature) each give +1 happiness but have reduced effects in other areas.

Stylistically I'd lean towards "B", but in terms of the KISS Principle, A is probably better. So I'm still undecided; given my past record I'll probably go for the more complicated solution (B), but I'm just not sure.

Also, one other related issue. I'd changed the Temple to be a split happiness/culture building, and I like what it does to the game's balance, but it's still in the Culture building chain (requires the Monument, is a prereq for an Opera House). One thought was to pull it out of that; have the Opera House require the Monument directly, and have the Temple require no other buildings. This'd allow you to build/rush it in a city right away, instead of having to wait for a Monument. I've had times when I'd rush a Colosseum because the Temple wasn't available yet, and this'd help avoid that.
My main concern is that this'd make Egypt too strong in the ancient era, given how strong the Burial Tomb is. (The Mud Pyramid Mosque, the other UB Temple, is pretty good too.) But I think that's manageable.

(Note: for mechanical purposes you can't have the Colosseum require the presence of a Temple. Well, you CAN, and it'll work for Ancient Era games. But then the game won't give your cities the free Colosseum in an Industrial or later start, because the Temple has a higher ID (and later prereq tech?) than the Colosseum and the logic goes in order. Yes, it's that badly written.)

--------
And on an unrelated issue, I've been thinking of reworking Piety a bit. I was thinking of increasing the base policy (currently a simple +2 happiness) to also add +2 culture per Wonder, and then change Fundamentalist to be +1 happy per Broadcast tower, plus some military benefit (like cheaper rushing of military units) instead of its current culture benefit. Thoughts?

 

[Charybdis]

Not sure why, but I'm getting "plant a jungle" as the recommended thing to do for workers in a lot of jungle tiles.

 

[Charybdis]

Also as a side note, have you ever thought about creating something that could use the sheer excess of resources in later years? Right now I have 52 iron just chilling there and that'll only go up as I fully expand my continent and stock exchanges spread.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Not sure why, but I'm getting "plant a jungle" as the recommended thing to do for workers in a lot of jungle tiles.

You sure you're using version 18? That's something I thought I fixed a version or two ago. (The bug was that it wasn't considering the loss in resources from the chop before deciding whether a new Jungle would be an upgrade.) Although from your later resource discussion it sounds like you've got the Stock Exchange change, so presumably so.
I think the problem, then, is that the Plant Jungle option has a Flavor, while all of the default improvements are left at zero. So all other things being equal in terms of yield, the game'll think planting a forest or jungle is a good idea.

Unfortunately, there's no XML table for "allow this improvement only if the tile does/doesn't have a given Feature". I've got several other things that could use something along these lines.

One thing I was considering was to MAKE it be a good idea to do. Think about a forest; if the game suggests planting a forest, on a forest tile, then you know it still might be worthwhile. After all, it'll chop the forest, giving you 20 production, and then replace it with a new one. (Lumber companies do this all the time!) So all that really needs to be done for Jungles is to have a jungle chop give you something (20 food?). And it doesn't have to be ANY jungle chop, it can be limited to those chops used by the terraforming logic.

Also as a side note, have you ever thought about creating something that could use the sheer excess of resources in later years?

Yes. Then no. Then yes again. Then no again, and I've pretty much stuck at "no" ever since.

For a long time, I thought that you should get +1gpt for every unused unit of a strategic resource. (Although this'd require a massive gold rebalancing, of course.) The biggest problem is that this horribly favors large empires, but the problems go deeper in general; certain terrain types become MUCH better, and certain resources tend to cluster, so it wouldn't really be fair. Also, it's just not possible in XML, although not too bad in Lua.

The second idea was to add several new buildings that consume obsolete resources. Like a "Steel Mill" that costs you one or two units of Iron and adds production, or a "Racetrack" that costs you a unit of Horses and adds gold. There are just two problems: first, these resources are just too plentiful, so again, it's a pure monetary gain. It has the same basic balance problems as the first idea, but at least is easy to do in XML.
The bigger drawback here is just that I didn't want to bloat up my balance mod with a ton of extra buildings.

And that brings us to the Stock Exchange, Energy Bank, Fusion Lab, Brood Pit, and Quantum Lab. Five buildings that add strategic resources (one for Brood Pit, two each for the other four), well after the point where you unlocked those resources normally.
These free resources are SUPPOSED to be surplus; if I'd intended to pay the user for unused resources, I wouldn't have given that bonus to the Stock Exchange. The goal is that once you have these, it's effectively like the earlier units/buildings no longer need that resource. So this only has value if you were critically short on a specific resource, like if your map had very little Coal, so once you got the Energy Bank you were finally able to build those Factories you'd wanted. But if the map had plenty of Coal, then that bonus has no value. Or maybe the Songhai have all the Uranium and are nuking other nations before invading (which is what they did in my last game), so a Fusion Lab would give you just enough uranium to make your own nukes.

The Iron bonus at the Stock Exchange is supposed to be nearly useless; the Trebuchet and Longswordsman are the last units that use it, and those will have been replaced by resourceless Cannon and Rifleman/Infantry units. Horses at that point are really only good for Cavalry. The Oil from the Energy Bank is similar; you don't really need Oil any more when the units that used it have all gone obsolete in favor of Aluminum-based units. (Which makes no sense if you say it out loud, which is why I'm looking at having the Modern Armor, Stealth Bomber, etc. require both Oil AND Aluminum.)
But, the thought was that this would be generic enough to go forward. So if someone decides that later units need multiple resources, then this changes. For instance, the Battleship and Tank could require Iron as well as the Oil, which'd make the Iron bonus for the Stock Exchange valuable in iron-poor locations. Knights/Lancers should require both Iron and Horses. And so on. (Heck, you could make Artillery require horses, given how many WW1 and WW2 artillery units for other nations were towed that way.)

 

[Ogenvi]

I tried play with Alpha Centauri Mod, but when I make a match and click in start a new match, Civilization crashes. I removed all mods, but it's the same, doesn't function.

I belive that I do something wrong, but I don't know what.

Thanks

 

[Spatzimaus]

Okay, when you have a crash like that, the first thing to do is make sure FireTuner was running. It'll tell you what went wrong. If you don't have the SDK installed, then go do that first.

Second, how consistent was this? How many times did you try it? The vanilla game has the ability to crash on startup, occasionally, and it has nothing to do with my mod. The culprit seems to be AssignStartingPlots; if it ever ends up creating a map that has no deposits of a given strategic resource (which can happen by random chance) then a couple of later routines will fail. (In fact, this should happen less often in my mod than in the vanilla game, because of my Coal override that forces a minimum number of deposits.)

For obvious reasons, this happens more on certain map types, so what map type were you running? (And if the answer is Great Plains, Highlands, Lakes, or any real-world scenario map, then I've already said that the mod is incompatible with these.)

Third, a quick version check. Did you download the March 1st game patch (v.217) or not, and are you using v.0.18 of my mod (the one linked on the first page) or v.0.16 (the one linked on page 20)?

 

[Ogenvi]

I didn't download the patch :/

 

[Spatzimaus]

Okay. If you're still running with the old .167 (December) patch, then you won't be able to use anything later than v.0.16 of this mod. It should be linked a page or so back, although I'm going to remove it in the near future and I wouldn't recommend it in general.
(Besides, why not use the latest patch? A lot of the things it changes are things I'd already put into my mods anyway. And the turn speed increase makes a HUGE difference in playability.)

If you're not even using the .167 (December) patch, then there's no way any of this will work at all, and you're just out of luck. The same would be true of most of the other big mods as well.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Okay, so a new version won't be out until probably after this weekend; I don't have the free time I'd hoped for during this week. The only question now is how extensive the changes will be in the next version, and for that, I REALLY need feedback from the fifty-odd people who downloaded within the past week. Specifically, I need some answers to the following three questions:

1> I think city-based Unhappiness is just a bit too high. There are two options:
A: Lower the base city unhappiness from 4 down to 3
or
B: Leave it at 4 and add +1 Happiness to the several buildings I'd mentioned earlier (some combination of Garden, Mint, Monastery, Windmill, Observatory) while slightly reducing their other benefits to compensate
QUESTION: Which of these would people prefer?
(Note that the Courthouse is bugged in the vanilla game to generate too little Unhappiness. So the Unhappiness should be even higher than it is now, if the programmers had done their jobs right.)

2> Certain strategic resources stop being useful too quickly, most notably Oil. You see this mostly in the endgame, where there's a huge stretch where Aluminum is almost all that matters and Uranium is only used for a couple rarely-used units and is generally spent on buildings.
So I was planning to change the resource requirements of various units, with your primary battle units requiring multiple resources. So Tanks would require Iron and Oil, Modern Armor require Oil and Aluminum, and so on. This'd obviously require rebalancing the number of units in some types of strategic deposits, especially if I go further and have Vertols and/or Needlejets require Uranium as well as Aluminum. (This'd also be used to fix a few screwy conceptual issues. For instance, why does a Trebuchet require Iron, but the Cannon and Artillery it upgrades to DON'T?)
QUESTION: Does this seem like a worthwhile change? It's something I think should be done in general, but I'm not sure if it's worth the balance headaches or the inevitable confusion from players who can't understand why they can't build unit X.

3> I want to add several new National Wonders in the pre-Future eras (mainly Renaissance and Industrial).
Four of these would basically specialize your individual cities; for instance, the "Hollywood" national wonder would boost a city's culture at the expense of its production and research, would have all Artists generate +1 gold, and would either create the Hit Movies luxury (working almost exactly like the Information from the Planetary Datalinks) or just add a flat +Happiness. Or the "Red Cross" wonder, which'd boost research at the expense of production and gold, have Scientists generate +1 food (health), and would give all units trained in that city the Medic promotion. (The other two: Wall Street, which besides the economic boost would give you one unit of each strategic resource, and the Three Gorges Dam, which boosts production and gives units trained in that city a bonus when adjacent to friendly units.) These four would be mutually exclusive, no more than one per city.

Others, though, would be intended to fill what I see are conceptual gaps. For instance, I want to add the KGB (or "Intelligence Agency", but I dislike the generic names they've used) as an earlier tech-stealing wonder along the lines of the Planetary Datalinks (but weaker).

The problem is this: of the five I mentioned, at least two (probably four) would have to be placed in the Content mod instead of the Balance mod, because they'd use Lua stubs or XML entries I put in place for my future content. I generally dislike putting early-era content in the Content mod; currently, the only thing that really violates that pattern is the Combat Engineer. This sort of thing would really blur the line between the two mods.
QUESTION: Should I be adding earlier-era content into the Content mod, or try to keep it exclusive to the future eras? (If the latter, then putting these into the Balance mod would require some major modification.)
The ideal solution, mechanically, would be to create a third mod with the Lua functions and such, and then have the other two require it. But given how many people seem to use one mod and not the other when I have two, I think that's just asking for trouble.

So there are the questions, and the answers can be as simple as "B/Yes/Yes" or "A/Not really/Don't care".

 

[JWSIII]

A/Yes/Earlier Era additions to content mod imo

 

[Darsnan]

1> I think city-based Unhappiness is just a bit too high. There are two options:
A: Lower the base city unhappiness from 4 down to 3
or
B: Leave it at 4 and add +1 Happiness to the several buildings I'd mentioned earlier (some combination of Garden, Mint, Monastery, Windmill, Observatory) while slightly reducing their other benefits to compensate

I like option B better, as it would put a player into a position where he would have to plan research branches in coordination with his military/happiness ambitions. Question: do you plan on scaling back the gold production in regards to your option B? If so, then because I think your economic model is already in pretty good shape (i.e. I typically have enough gold to skimp by but not enough to dominate with), then by shaving off just a bit more gold production would then put a player moreso into a position of having to consider the economic ramifications of a conquest strategy as well (i.e. this would introduce a third choice a player would have to make when considering research options).

2> Certain strategic resources stop being useful too quickly, most notably Oil. You see this mostly in the endgame, where there's a huge stretch where Aluminum is almost all that matters and Uranium is only used for a couple rarely-used units and is generally spent on buildings.
So I was planning to change the resource requirements of various units, with your primary battle units requiring multiple resources. So Tanks would require Iron and Oil, Modern Armor require Oil and Aluminum, and so on. This'd obviously require rebalancing the number of units in some types of strategic deposits, especially if I go further and have Vertols and/or Needlejets require Uranium as well as Aluminum.

Because I start my games in the Industrial Era, Iron doesn't have nearly as much significance as in an Ancient Era start, so making Iron a prerequisite for Tanks sounds like a very good idea from a Later Era starting perspectice.

3> I want to add several new National Wonders in the pre-Future eras (mainly Renaissance and Industrial).

QUESTION: Should I be adding earlier-era content into the Content mod, or try to keep it exclusive to the future eras?

My vote is "Exclusively for the Future Eras", cuz thats all I play.

D

 

[OokeDan]

First, i really enjoy your mods, Alpha Centauri & the Balance mod.
Playing with a Civ as a tactical/strategic leader, i'm almost at the industrial era (Prince, Epic).

1> B
Add +1 happiness for the Garden. AI love to build Hanging Gardens.
Windmill only adds production, why not adding +1 food, like the Granary.
Leave the Mint as it is.. labor>mining>smelting in the early era's, happiness was a no-no.
Observatory.. browsing the atmosphere and beyond, adds science, nothing more.
The Monastry.. +2 Culture each turn is a yes, just leave it as it is.

From Wiki:

There were many buildings in a Monastery, including a: church, chapter house, dormitory, infirmary, cloister, smithy, stable, balneary and pigsties. Another building which might be in a Monastery is a school.

2> Yes, adds more realism.

For instance, why does a Trebuchet require Iron, but the Cannon and Artillery it upgrades to DON'T?

Because you need the early infantry (swordsman, longswordsman) against AI in ragemode.
2 longswordsmen, they do some mighty damage to an AI musketeer unit (honor, discipline).

Cannons and Artillery, long production, high damage, low defense.
I always flank them with cheap Horseman/Cavalry. AI always leave them wide open.
Trebuchets are faster to build then Cannons though.
Tanks.. should be Iron and Oil, not Aluminium.

3> Both no.
AI like building Wonders.. let them build while i'm moving my 2 squads with 6 Riflemen, 2 Cannons, 4 Cavalry & 1 Great General on 'just passing through'.

Signed,
OokeDan