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Current (SVN) development discussion thread

Leoreth, you win the Internet.
Haven't checked if it worked, but tried to do my best. Most of it is hidden away inside the EXE.

Completed a 3000 BC Moors game in SVN before latest tech change, got steel around 1480, won in 1520.
... congrats?
 
New commit: minor text key fixes.
 
Latest SVN, 3000 BC M/N Spanish, steel in 1490. Didn't feel anything about tech speed change.
 

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Latest SVN, 3000 BC M/N Spanish, steel in 1490. Didn't feel anything about tech speed change.
I already said that it was never my intention to balance the tech rate around people like you.
 
New commit: more minor bugfixes.
 
I already said that it was never my intention to balance the tech rate around people like you.

I feel like being disliked. :(

Well, it is S/L and 3000 BC. I can't do this in 600 AD scenario.

Overall, with recent maintenance cost settings, it's favorable to beeline techs to reach later era, because it adds your size threshold. Spanish core expands after industrial era, so steel is crucial to expansion.
 
I feel like being disliked. :(
Not at all. I just don't think it's a good idea to use your performance as a metric for the overall game.

That said, maybe the first tech to advance the game to a new era should have twice the cost.
 
That sounds unfair.

Imagine there's a tech A that costs 10, and a teach B that costs 50. Both advance you to the next era. You produce 10 beakers per turn. You'd 'waste' four turns if you'd research tech B first, if you get what I mean.

A flat price increase could work - but why would you want to do so? Not that I'm opposed to it per se, I just don't see why...?
 
To combat excessive human beelining and the strategies youtien was talking about.
 
Spain's core expands at Renaissance, but the idea is still there for Italy and Japan.

I actually suggest rewriting the tech tree such that every technology has at least 2, preferably 3 or 4 prerequisites (except the first ones, of course). It is a lot more work, but seems a lot less like it is being brute forced and my guess is busy work if the ... any adjustment that is made involving straight-up tech cost will probably need to be readjusted later.

Era matters for some things but not for others, take for example Optics and Astronomy, which I believe are both Medieval Techs. AI Spain's first 3 technologies are usually Guilds-Compass-Optics, such that they get the last by Portugal spawn. Obviously this has two requirements, but say theoretically Optics also required Engineering, which unlocks Pikemen and Trebuchets. Then you also get Spain with a stronger military, better suited to taking Cordoba.
As for the other mentioned tech, say Astronomy requires Patronage. This one actually sort of makes sense, Patronage in this case is not so much used in the art sense, but rather that of funding for a cause - in this case, colonization. First of all, it gives Patronage a purpose other than wonders, but also helps to make Europe more culturally advanced before colonization happens, and Astronomy can then have a cost more on par with techs of its era, rather than being so expensive that it usually requires a Liberalism slingshot.

Now thinking about it more, maybe restructuring the tech tree is too much work, but those techs which advance to a new era could be the only ones with added requirements, say if 3/4 of the techs from the previous era are not researched, then cost is 2 or 3 times, regardless of whether one is the first or not.

Looking at your to-do list... are you ever going to do anything about the last set of proposed cores?
 
To combat excessive human beelining and the strategies youtien was talking about.

I'm curious about the Egyptians resurrecting as the Ayyubids. In the most recent games I've played, they've never resurrected, even with a shaky/unstable Arabia or no foreign power controlling Egypt. Latest SVN.
 
Spain's core expands at Renaissance, but the idea is still there for Italy and Japan.

I actually suggest rewriting the tech tree such that every technology has at least 2, preferably 3 or 4 prerequisites (except the first ones, of course). It is a lot more work, but seems a lot less like it is being brute forced and my guess is busy work if the ... any adjustment that is made involving straight-up tech cost will probably need to be readjusted later.

Era matters for some things but not for others, take for example Optics and Astronomy, which I believe are both Medieval Techs. AI Spain's first 3 technologies are usually Guilds-Compass-Optics, such that they get the last by Portugal spawn. Obviously this has two requirements, but say theoretically Optics also required Engineering, which unlocks Pikemen and Trebuchets. Then you also get Spain with a stronger military, better suited to taking Cordoba.
As for the other mentioned tech, say Astronomy requires Patronage. This one actually sort of makes sense, Patronage in this case is not so much used in the art sense, but rather that of funding for a cause - in this case, colonization. First of all, it gives Patronage a purpose other than wonders, but also helps to make Europe more culturally advanced before colonization happens, and Astronomy can then have a cost more on par with techs of its era, rather than being so expensive that it usually requires a Liberalism slingshot.

Now thinking about it more, maybe restructuring the tech tree is too much work, but those techs which advance to a new era could be the only ones with added requirements, say if 3/4 of the techs from the previous era are not researched, then cost is 2 or 3 times, regardless of whether one is the first or not.
Interesting ideas, but as you said it would be more work, and I really want to avoid a situation where players become too railroaded in their tech path.

Looking at your to-do list... are you ever going to do anything about the last set of proposed cores?
Oh, yeah, I've just added it to the list.

I'm curious about the Egyptians resurrecting as the Ayyubids. In the most recent games I've played, they've never resurrected, even with a shaky/unstable Arabia or no foreign power controlling Egypt. Latest SVN.
Not sure how that is related to my post you quoted, but the only thing I've changed here is that Egypt cannot appear during an Arabian collapse. That is mostly to help Turkey expand in the Middle East.
 
New commit:
- added UHV goal titles for Greece and India
 
Let's discuss about overall gameplay.

The best general strategy is, expand in early game at all cost. I always left only 1 unit in each city, all others out to conquest. If AI has some basic aggressive ability, a small army would be enough to destroy my civilization. But in the game I only have to care about scripted enemies.

DoC enables knights on feudalism, not guilds, and longbowmen need guilds, so in 600 AD scenario, you can mass knights and catapults to conquer 1/3 of Europe plus Egypt and Levant, using slavery & warrior codes and upgrade from chariots. Once you have an empire and no match in neighbourhood, tech speed is really not a problem.

And, European civs are fast to grow, this makes slavery even stronger. Happiness problem? Sugar island in Azores, Fur on Inverness (Vikings, Spanish and French can settle Edinburgh one turn after English flipping), silver in Spain and Oslo, dye in France, Italy and England, and there are cotton and gold in Egypt. In fact, you don't need a stack of doom, 8-10 units are enough to sweep the continent one city after another.

This all-out strategy is doable because AI doesn't prey on your when you out, only Vikings sometimes send huscarls, and it is scripted.

In 3000 BC scenario things are even easier because you can use guaranteed wins against barb city. Besides, AI ancient civs just can't do anything without scripted helps. Egyptians and Babylonians always die with their techs far behind. Greeks and Persians stand a chance but Greeks often destroyed by scripted Roman conquerors, this is not elegant. And Ethiopians is never an active civ, their only value is slave trading.

Vanilla RFC controls expansion with tech penalty and stability, and DoC's system now is too good for imperialist players like me.
 
Let's discuss about overall gameplay.

The best general strategy is, expand in early game at all cost. I always left only 1 unit in each city, all others out to conquest. If AI has some basic aggressive ability, a small army would be enough to destroy my civilization. But in the game I only have to care about scripted enemies.

DoC enables knights on feudalism, not guilds, and longbowmen need guilds, so in 600 AD scenario, you can mass knights and catapults to conquer 1/3 of Europe plus Egypt and Levant, using slavery & warrior codes and upgrade from chariots. Once you have an empire and no match in neighbourhood, tech speed is really not a problem.

And, European civs are fast to grow, this makes slavery even stronger. Happiness problem? Sugar island in Azores, Fur on Inverness (Vikings, Spanish and French can settle Edinburgh one turn after English flipping), silver in Spain and Oslo, dye in France, Italy and England, and there are cotton and gold in Egypt. In fact, you don't need a stack of doom, 8-10 units are enough to sweep the continent one city after another.

This all-out strategy is doable because AI doesn't prey on your when you out, only Vikings sometimes send huscarls, and it is scripted.

In 3000 BC scenario things are even easier because you can use guaranteed wins against barb city. Besides, AI ancient civs just can't do anything without scripted helps. Egyptians and Babylonians always die with their techs far behind. Greeks and Persians stand a chance but Greeks often destroyed by scripted Roman conquerors, this is not elegant. And Ethiopians is never an active civ, their only value is slave trading.

Vanilla RFC controls expansion with tech penalty and stability, and DoC's system now is too good for imperialist players like me.
You are also literally one of the best here.

Lets try to avoid what is going on with Eu4, where some extremely good player does something, and then the devs nerf the hell of anything they used to achieve said impressive result, making everyone's day even more miserable.
 
You are also literally one of the best here...making everyone's day even more miserable.
Which is why the mechanic should reward a solid, historical game. Some ideas:

1. Periphery penalties scale by era as well, to where they are equivalent to as they are now in the modern era. This helps to resemble the old expansion civics - you are able to do more outside of going straight down the historical path as the game progresses. Call the current penalty for not being in historical or contested area 2 :mischief:. Proportional to this, the penalty scales approximately:
Ancient - 12
Classical - 8
Medieval - 6
Renaissance - 4
Industrial - 3
Modern/Future - 2
Which translates to: don't try to pull anything interesting until you are somewhat established. The classical penalty is not much of a problem for Rome or Greece since their UHV areas are historical territory. Lower penalties in the later eras

2. Make steel a renaissance tech. This does not relate directly to the problem, but it is on line with Steam Power, which is one.

3. Worse and more certain results from bad stability. In the past, I had talked about some sort of critical turn limit to how long one could go with bad stability and not collapse. Here is another that goes along with (1) and might also discourage beelining: each era transition (and/or certain technologies) has a stability number associated with it that one must be above in order not to collapse to core. As well as discouraging early foreign area expansion, it also simulates better those empires that have their distinct eras, and then become irrelevant without directly penalizing specific civilizations.

4. Nerf coast tiles. If one looks at youtien's Straight English or if he were to post his core from the above Spanish game, one sees that he is getting a lot of his population from 2 food coastal tiles. Either subtract the number of worked coastal tiles from population when doing the modifiers or do something to harbors, like make it such that only fishing and whaling boats provide additional food, not every single tile.
 
4. Nerf coast tiles. If one looks at youtien's Straight English or if he were to post his core from the above Spanish game, one sees that he is getting a lot of his population from 2 food coastal tiles. Either subtract the number of worked coastal tiles from population when doing the modifiers or do something to harbors, like make it such that only fishing and whaling boats provide additional food, not every single tile.
You might be right on the money here.
 
You might be right on the money here.

I suggest making harbors to transform 1 commerce into 1 food. This way players would need to decide if they want harbor in one coastal city, but maybe not in the other, where extra commerce is more important and land based food can support sea going merchants vs fishermen...
 
OMG are you serious? Coast tiles are fine as they are.
 
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