Current (SVN) development discussion thread

[Cosmos1985]

A surprising bug if ever I saw one; religious victories can't be turned off! Even if you turn it off, you can still win it - I just won a secular victory by accident
And yes, I am sure - it didn't show up in the "victory screen", just the enabled forms of victories.

 

[JujuLautre]

But the act of slavery creates more unhappiness, opening more citizens for slavery ...

True, but I guess it still should be less than being able to use half of a city's population. Also, sorry if I was not clear, but I was thinking about using the old "1 unhappy per whip" rule.

It seems to me that it would greatly limit the power of slavery as time passes by. Once you have a big enough empire, a new city will start over-happy. Hence, beside chaining 1-pop whips and build warriors, I am not sure how you would be able to exploit slavery too much.
OK, I just realized that you can get the military out of a city at happy cap to be able to create unhappiness and suddenly whip. But even then, you would not be able to do that repetitively (unless, again, you want to chain-build warriors).

Anyway, that was just a random thought, so you're free to ignore it. I mainly thought of it as a counter to the "I will whip away colonies to get rid of the science penalty". If you cannot whip happy citizens easily, you would be forced to either keep colonies small by restricting the food, or grow them to happy cap,i n which case you would hit the penalty.

 

[Chep]

I think moving the only drafting option away from the last column is a bad or at least mean choice.

There are 4 ways to lower your population:

- lose a city
- let citizen starve
- enslave population (whipping)
- draft military units

the first two are usually not an option, slavery is supposed to be obsolete in the industrial and modern times, which leaves drafting.
However civs like the Americans or the Dutch need to run Republic and thus have only the options to either let their people starve or go back to the archaic slavery-civic. Especially America is sort of screwed here, as their cities grow randomly due to immigrants, they start with a very low amount of troops and could really, really use some drafting options. but without Republic there's no statue of Liberty :/

Also, while many countries like France or Germany recently stopped drafting their military, it is and was a valid option for many democratic nations.

I really think it should be reinstated as a military civic option or added back into the game via some other way that allows "democracies" to use it.

 

[Leoreth]

Use the no growth button.

Seriously, you're over-obsessed with reducing your population.

 

[Chep]

well, of course I am, I want to do research and that is impossible once the population is high.
does the button prevent cities from growing via immigrants?

still...with America I hit the population-limit in ~1830 without having expanded beyond US/Canada-territory (the Mexicans even hold Las Vegas and France still owns Quebec).
So any conquests from here on slow down my research considerably.

Using the "avoid growth"-button in every city for (almost) the entire game just is annoying as it means that your empire will be incredibly inefficient.

Basically removing the draft-option while still limiting tech-cost via population means Slavery stays the most powerful civic even in modern times.

Also it robs the Americans partly of their UP, as the population-growth via immigrants becomes a nuissance that has to be counterbalanced by using inappropriate civics (to either draft or whip the immigrants).

Sure, I could just let the cities grow and then regularly starve them by running max specialists, but that seems even weirder and more counter-intuitive.

Short: by moving the draft option you just strengthened Slavery and made the Industrial/Modern Era even more counterintuitive to play which increases the problems users new to DoC will face.

 

[youtien]

well, of course I am, I want to do research and that is impossible once the population is high.
does the button prevent cities from growing via immigrants?

still...with America I hit the population-limit in ~1830 without having expanded beyond US/Canada-territory (the Mexicans even hold Las Vegas and France still owns Quebec).
So any conquests from here on slow down my research considerably.

Using the "avoid growth"-button in every city for (almost) the entire game just is annoying as it means that your empire will be incredibly inefficient.

Basically removing the draft-option while still limiting tech-cost via population means Slavery stays the most powerful civic even in modern times.

Also it robs the Americans partly of their UP, as the population-growth via immigrants becomes a nuissance that has to be counterbalanced by using inappropriate civics (to either draft or whip the immigrants).

Sure, I could just let the cities grow and then regularly starve them by running max specialists, but that seems even weirder and more counter-intuitive.

Short: by moving the draft option you just strengthened Slavery and made the Industrial/Modern Era even more counterintuitive to play which increases the problems users new to DoC will face.

Not impossible, just slower. Remember my Chinese game? Space race victory in 1700s. Not fun, really.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Maybe we could do away with these tech limitations altogether and give everyone an inverse of the Chinese UP: Every tech that has not yet been discovered costs 20% (the exact number can be tweaked of course) more than usual.

 

[The Diocletian]

I don't min/max in this game, so I don't really care about my population, etc, but I feel that the lack of ways to conscript units is both odd and ahistorical.

The United States, the Netherlands, and Britain are countries that have implemented conscription, and countries like Brazil and Russia still have it implemented. They should definitely be able to conscript.

 

[Leoreth]

I've already said that the modern era population limitations are not balanced right now and will be increased. Please give me some time to actually do something (no commits since last weekend) before complaining about a dozen different symptoms of the same problem.

It's bothering me that the population limitation is viewed as some sort of game mechanic that you have to min-max against, or even as a way to limit general tech speed which it is not. It's not supposed to impact you unless you overexpand, and if it doesn't, the threshold is wrong, not the available civic options or other aspects of actual gameplay.

As for drafting, I don't view it as a normal draft or even compulsory military service, but more like WW1 type mass conscription. And I certainly don't view it as a form of population control both from the game mechanics and representation point of view.

 

[Hojsimpson]

Nobody liked my idea?

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Nobody liked my idea?

Now that I´ve actually read it, yes, I do.

The problem is your post was the last one on the previous page and I didn´t even know it existed until I went back to see what idea you were referring to.

 

[Chep]

From my perspective the population limit was intended as a way to prevent some civs from becoming too powerful without the "traditional" 10-city-limit of RFC.
This limit had let to people playing with a few very powerful cities that often used resources intended for multiple cities or even civs.

The population limit however causes it's own set of problems, especially when the Great Lighthouse, Slavery or the Silk Route is involved as these give great boni to small cities, which together with the stability mechanics encourage the player to found as many cities as possible (sort of like in classic civ1-4).

I think a combination of these 2 approaches would be better to reach the intended goal.

But on to drafting:
Of course drafting is not intended to be used for population control. In the case of the Americans, you could draft 3 citizen per turn...this wouldn't really affect a big US with >>150 citizen. However if you're rather close to your limit, it could help you to allow for a slow expansion (3 turns of drafting with "no growth" everywhere equal 1 size 9 city)
You're right that this part of my "complaint" about the lack of drafting is linked to the unbalanced population numbers for each era.

But most importantly drafting is an option to get militar units quickly, like Slavery or Mercenaries.
Currently "modern" societies have neither of these 3 options in DoC, which seems weird as drafting (even when compared to WW1-, WW2- or Vietnam-style drafts) and buying (e.g. Blackwater) military units are essential parts of warfare for most modern democracies.
(not to mention that a Pantheon-Greece with drafted units could become even more powerful)

 

[Visard]

Is it really necessary to have specific mechanics to increase tech cost? Why we can't slow down big empires with just increased maintenance costs? Isn't maintenance cost affected by both population and number of cities? Big empires could also have increased inflation.

 

[Leoreth]

The thing with drafting is that if I associate it with Professional Armies, everyone will be able to draft because it's still kind of the standard lategame military civic. And that's definitely not what I want. Direct unit production should be the norm, especially in the late game where there's plenty of production available, and drafting should be a war economy type choice where an oppressive civic like Autocracy that competes with a peace civic like Republic seems like the natural choice.

Is it really necessary to have specific mechanics to increase tech cost? Why we can't slow down big empires with just increased maintenance costs? Isn't maintenance cost affected by both population and number of cities? Big empires could also have increased inflation.

That's maybe a better approach. But it's also less direct and therefore even harder to balance.

 

[Lone Wolf]

To what extent the whole thingy is really a problem? On Eath18, for instance, England has a good tech rate if it has 3-4 cities, even though it rarely gets more then that.

 

[youtien]

The thing with drafting is that if I associate it with Professional Armies, everyone will be able to draft because it's still kind of the standard lategame military civic. And that's definitely not what I want. Direct unit production should be the norm, especially in the late game where there's plenty of production available, and drafting should be a war economy type choice where an oppressive civic like Autocracy that competes with a peace civic like Republic seems like the natural choice.


That's maybe a better approach. But it's also less direct and therefore even harder to balance.

And maybe increase base unhappiness and unhealthiness by each era like RI did.

 

[adhiraj.bose]

You definitely need one client to download the repository, I've linked to Tortoise because it's the easiest method in Windows. How are you even able to play the mod on a Mac though?

Sorry for the late reply, I'm busy in other things right now. I play on a windows but I normally use a mac for everything else but gaming. Does Tortoise come for mac too ?

 

[Leoreth]

It doesn't. Apparently Mac OS has its own in-built SVN client though (with little comfort functions I assume), or you have to look for alternatives yourself. I'm not a Mac user so I can't help you much here.

 

[Atlantic Pacf.]

Some things from the 1700 AD scenario, SVN 599 (I believe; how can I check for sure what revision I'm on?)

Spoiler :

Why can't Brazil flip any cities?

Spoiler :

You probably know this, but Persian is not Arabic. Even if you use the Ancient Persian names in the CNM, it would be more accurate. (c.f. Old English vs. Modern English)

Spoiler :

Why does Islam not have a holy city?

 

[Leoreth]

Some things from the 1700 AD scenario, SVN 599 (I believe; how can I check for sure what revision I'm on?)

Right-click -> Tortoise SVN -> Show Log.

The Muslim holy city problem in the 1700 AD scenario has already been fixed.