Current (SVN) development discussion thread

[Leoreth]

Sorry for the sparse updates during the last two weeks, had to sort out the Hinduism/Buddhism dynamic with India's new spawn that took me some time. New commit is up now, which includes several other fixes I've applied during that time:

• India balancing (starting techs and goal, not finished yet)
• Buddhism is now founded by building a Hindu Temple
• Foreign (especially Seljuk and Mongol) troops moved out of Anatolia before they flip to Turkey
• Test: Byzantium should be immune to collapse as long as they control Constantinople now (not finished, intended as their new UP)
• Seljuks spread Islam on city conquest (they now have weaker versions of the Arab and Turkish UPs)
• New first Indian goal: control the Hindu and Buddhist shrine in 250 BC
• Persian UHV fixed and shouldn't fail early on anymore
• Turkish UHV display fixed
• Silk route yield decreased
• Keshiks now cause flanking damage as intended

I'm now working on prohibiting players from grabbing Hinduism early on, and finishing the new Byzantine stability UP. Then I'll playtest India and balance them further.

On the matter of China's stability: I've investigated the theory that this is due to cut contacts and "stability hits" associated with that, that's not the case (there is no such penalty). I'm quite inclined to extend their stable tiles into southwestern China and the eastern parts of Tibet and Xinjiang now (in Tibet, so that Xi'an's culture doesn't penalize them anymore, in Xinjiang excluding the Taklamakan area).

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

If you can expand that little row of stable Southern Manchuria tiles (the 3 of them) westwards to a total of 6 tiles
and include Northern Vietnam into your proposed Southwestern China expansion, I think that would be ideal.

EDIT: Time to experiment with Byzantine Conquest Victory now...

 

[Leoreth]

Preventing that is exactly what I'm working on now; I don't want it to become like the Roman Emperor title in previous versions of SoI where you could go conquering the world afterwards.

Currently it only caps your stability at -39 so you can't collapse from internal instability (collapses from lost wars still work and that's intended). So things like secessions still work. My goal is to change this so that they can collapse, but retain all cities in their historical area in this case (both human and AI).

I've also let Varanasi found Hinduism in around 2000 BC unless the player controls India. That makes it very difficult, but not impossible to found it with a 3000 BC civ. Babylonia, for example, could get it by beelining Mysticism->Meditation, but squeezing in Writing isn't possible.

 

[Kilroy Was Here]

The Indian Stepwell is exactly the same as the Aqueduct in both Production and health yield - is this intentional?

 

[Leoreth]

Yes. You can get it earlier, though (Masonry as opposed to Construction).

Maybe a slight decrease in hammer cost is in order as well, though.

 

[Kilroy Was Here]

Alright. I'm also wondering: How does India get the Shrines? The only wonder they really have available by 250 is the Bath, and that gives GE points (not that I'm complaining...)

 

[Leoreth]

Hiring priests I suppose. I haven't tested if that makes it actually possible, though.

 

[kieranjtaylor]

i'm on revision 41 i just use svn update which does not have some of the things mentioned it certainly does not have 1500B.C. or mughals and reborn Muslim Egypt/Maratha India i looked at the svn commit but as mentioned needs a password ect. but the svn update plays fine on windows xp, im close to the point were i will start a new game and new things to play with is always a bonus.

p.s. i had a crash after keshiks (only keshiks) withdrew from battle at several points (every time it happened) in my last china game although i just had to avoid that from happening and continue unimpeded.

in my 2nd last game i was Italy was devastated when Spain France Germany and Russia had all collapsed fairly early, i wonder if the Byzantium collapse can be put into some major European countries so they lose empires but not the homeland as it sucks when it happens it killed that game i was playing basically as the pope spreading my holy wisdom and tussling major powers so i could wrestle control of Italy(although foolishly i had not realised the Rome was not benefiting surely when the apostolic palace is built gold from Catholicism should be made from it and the church of the holy sep. canceled the church in the Levant was never really catholic anyway
.
also read ages ago about new countries the possibility of Brazil it this is to be eventually (although there are others countries and tweaks more important) i think Brazil should be on the condition of Portugal losing its homeland or collapsing and that it is a Portuguese colony.

out of curiosity has any body on any version of ryhes and fall seen Portugal do anything

 

[Kilroy Was Here]

I've actually seen Portugal win a space victory once or twice, and if they somehow manage to wipe out the Natives with Conquerors, they can get scary.

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

Leoreth, do you have anything to say about my proposed Manchuria & Vietnam additions?
It's not a big addition, tile-wise and I'd like to hear whether you are considering it or not.

 

[Power_of_Beer]

A few things I noticed:

The Mongols are a bit too stable imo. I saw them conquering the whole middle east + Greece, Constantinople and Egypt. After a period of instability they became more and more stable, getting 5(!) Vassals. Is it possible in some way to make the AI raze cities?

Same for the Indian civs, esp. Mughals. There is no way the AI will conquer India with such strong Mughals atm.

Now for the bad sides of the AI. Seriously, it brings tears to my eyes when i see the AI building cities. Spain, for example. I had a Germany game where they were the only colonial power. They wiped out Portugal, I wiped out France and had backwards England as vassal. Now, what does Spain do? They found 2 cities in Argentina, fine, those are good spots. But then, instead of getting all those juicy spots in Brazil, they kept settling that useless Argentinian/Chile cities, a total of 8 down there, leaving Brazil completely alone. Since they also had 7 cities in Iberia, their research was ofc also garbage.
Could name other examples as well. Japan usually has 7 cities on its mainland + some in manchuria, Russia tons of useless cities, Arabia, Ethiopia... the list goes on.
This results in 3 problems for the AI:
-more maintenance
-the good city spots (Kyoto, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Motevideo) are crippled by small cities that are 2 tiles away
-the research penalty for having more than 8 cities (biggest problem i think)

All in all I noticed a very slow tech pace from the end of Rennaissance and onward. In my Germany game, no one had Steam power in 1900 (except me ofc ). When you run a USA start, they are usually 2-3 techs away from everyone! Might not be that bad, but at least England should be very advanced (but they also build lots of useless cities in Canada).

My suggestions:
- prohibit city founding 2 squares from each other
- more liberal settler maps
- decrease tech penalty from 8+ cities
- increase general tech pace (esp. for the AI)

 

[Leoreth]

i'm on revision 41 i just use svn update which does not have some of the things mentioned it certainly does not have 1500B.C. or mughals and reborn Muslim Egypt/Maratha India i looked at the svn commit but as mentioned needs a password ect. but the svn update plays fine on windows xp, im close to the point were i will start a new game and new things to play with is always a bonus.

Don't know how that happened but 41 is not the most current revision, that should be about 196 I think. Try to update again. And you can't commit for good reason, I'd like to be the only one able to change things

Try that first and then see if your crashes persist.

Leoreth, do you have anything to say about my proposed Manchuria & Vietnam additions?
It's not a big addition, tile-wise and I'd like to hear whether you are considering it or not.

Like I said, I'm going to expand their stable zone there again so I thought you took that as a yes already.

My suggestions:
- prohibit city founding 2 squares from each other
- more liberal settler maps
- decrease tech penalty from 8+ cities
- increase general tech pace (esp. for the AI)

Getting the AI to decent city placements isn't very easy (much to the opposite). You should also note that many (though not all) parts of the maps are designed to host many cities close to each other, so that's often intended to have a realistic setup of historically important cities.

The problem with more liberal settler maps is that they're stability maps at the same time, so if I open up Brazil for Spain to settle I'll make it stable for them at the same time. It's possible to circumvent that by only making certain important spots settlable but leaving the hinterlands unstable, but this would only goad the AI to make itself unstable.

You have a point about the tech rate and the number of cities penalty. I'll have a look into that.

 

[Qiu]

2nd Indian UHV remains checked in 1000AD? although in latest SVN it displayed as 600AD

 

[Leoreth]

Yeah, was switching back and forth between those, which is why the text is messed up. Have to test that first.

 

[Leoreth]

Old Byzantine UP is replaced now, the newest version of their replacement now makes only cities on foreign territory secede if you control Constantinople in case of collapse.

The second Arabian goal now triggers IN 1300 AD.

 

[Power_of_Beer]

Some more things:

- The fact that everyone is at war with the Seljuks leads to (i guess) unintended consquence: everyone will open borders now, even Arabia, Turkey, Japan. When i met the new world they were also at war with Seljuks. This makes Portugal UHV a bit too easy i guess.

- Japan could use some more units on spawn, now that they appear so late. Human China can easily wipe them out (same for Korea)

- USA doesnt flip Savannah&Boston any more. They never play a role in late game, usually they vassalize to someone. I had a game where NA was completely empty and USA didnt have a single war. They didnt build a single additional worker, so their land was mostly unimproved in 1900 (that was really strange)

-Korea should at least get a free granary in the 600AD start

Minor stuff:
-Statue of Zeus (free Pagan temple) is useless when i comes with Aesthetics (too late), and its not particularly cheap.
-Could you move communism a bit back in the tech tree? Right now it only requires liberalism&scientific method and is cheap to research. That leads to some unrealisic early communist states. The civic combo with unlimited engineers+state property is pretty strong. I'd suggest to make Assembly line a prerequisite.

 

[civ_king]

Perhaps America should get free settlers with the immigration event?

 

[Leoreth]

Some more things:

- The fact that everyone is at war with the Seljuks leads to (i guess) unintended consquence: everyone will open borders now, even Arabia, Turkey, Japan. When i met the new world they were also at war with Seljuks. This makes Portugal UHV a bit too easy i guess.

Do you know in which scenario this happened? Was it 3000 BC perchance? Because I just noticed they were no minor civ there.

- Japan could use some more units on spawn, now that they appear so late. Human China can easily wipe them out (same for Korea)

Right. At least in case of the AI.

- USA doesnt flip Savannah&Boston any more. They never play a role in late game, usually they vassalize to someone. I had a game where NA was completely empty and USA didnt have a single war. They didnt build a single additional worker, so their land was mostly unimproved in 1900 (that was really strange)

Odd, that's not intended. Will test that.

-Korea should at least get a free granary in the 600AD start

Right.

Minor stuff:
-Statue of Zeus (free Pagan temple) is useless when i comes with Aesthetics (too late), and its not particularly cheap.

Yeah, that always only was an excuse effect anyway. I'd like it to be the equivalent of a shrine for "pagan" religions, i.e. give +1 or +2 gold per pagan temple in the world.

-Could you move communism a bit back in the tech tree? Right now it only requires liberalism&scientific method and is cheap to research. That leads to some unrealisic early communist states. The civic combo with unlimited engineers+state property is pretty strong. I'd suggest to make Assembly line a prerequisite.

Good point, I'll do that.

 

[Power_of_Beer]

Do you know in which scenario this happened? Was it 3000 BC perchance? Because I just noticed they were no minor civ there.

It was a 3000BC start, yep.

Are we supposed to be able to found corporation HQs already? Because currently, you cant.

 

[Cosmos1985]

About the Seljuks, I noticed that as well, in the 3000 BC scenario. (giving other civs diplo bonusses for both being at war against them)

About the Statue of Zeus, I actually quite like the current effect, although it for sure ought to be available earlier, and cheaper, agree on that. It also seems like a bad idea to have "pagan" mean the same, in the sense that if you control it you would then gain extra gold if Mayas or Ethiopia builds a pagan temple as well