Current v1.13 Development Discussion

[andrewv42]

There's not too much trouble involved in getting to 7 billion people by 2015, since 1 pop in civ represents an increasingly larger number of people as cities grow anyway. It might not be the most rational design choice, but it's better than giving players the stress of managing size 100 cities later in the game.

 

[citis]

The only way to represent this graph is:
Supermarket: +2 per tile (even peaks).

Remove health from animals too, it will help Aztecs. I would say also reduce their output. Biologically, plant resources carry much more energy than animals.

 

[LacsiraxAriscal]

Biologically and socially/culturally don't always equate. Energy isn't the only purpose of food either - you can have enough energy but be deficient in calcium, or a mineral.

 

[andrewv42]

Not to mention food isn't the only thing animals provide.

 

[Shadow Warlord]

It's amazing how one little changes makes people freak out. I think we should remember that when Leoreth makes these changes they're not always final, sometimes he just needs us to help beta test to see if they're good changes or not. A lot of his direction and development of the mod relies on our feedback.

 

[citis]

Biologically and socially/culturally don't always equate. Energy isn't the only purpose of food either - you can have enough energy but be deficient in calcium, or a mineral.

So animals help in health, not in food. A farmed tile with animal resource should bring more food than a pastured tile. The pastured tile should bring health and maybe some hammers.

 

[agentxorange]

So animals help in health, not in food. A farmed tile with animal resource should bring more food than a pastured tile. The pastured tile should bring health and maybe some hammers.

That doesn't make any sense. You should not encourage farming of a tile with a resource where farming it does not give you the resource.

 

[citis]

That doesn't make any sense. You should not encourage farming of a tile with a resource where farming it does not give you the resource.

It doesn't encourage farming the same way a farm isn't better than a tea plantation.

As for the Aztecs I was wrong. Aztecs lose 3(!!!), not only 2 health bonuses. They are the big losers of the last changes. Maybe floating gardens should have the same effect as harbours, else their 1st UHV is literally undoable. Also, giving the health bonuses to lighthouse instead of harbour might help too.

 

[Leoreth]

The problem with that is that newly founded cities with only one pop had ridiculously high excess health and happiness in the old system. Don't you think building infrastructure should be rewarded?

That's exactly the point. Health from grain resources was just too readily available as it was. Many civs have two of them within reach and with the obligatory Granary that was a lot of free health.

The thing is that in RFC, health resources are placed very liberally to allow high population when cities are close together. This not only means that civs tend to have a lot of them in their native area, but also that if you lack it, they're easy to trade for from those who do.

In consequence, health was really only something you had to manage during plague or as a jungle civ. Which is not really what vanilla BtS is like. With rainforest becoming a thing in the foreseeable future, the latter will not be as much of a factor. And I'm willing to reduce the plague unhealth if required.

So these resources exist mainly to provide food, not health, therefore it makes sense to cut their health effect in half.

On that note, maybe we really should remove health from grain resources from the Granary, as it is already the most important building there is, and move it to the Market?

Now how the health effect should be cut in half is still up for discussion.

The current decision was mostly motivated by seafood, because it makes sense to only have coastal cities benefit from seafood. The effect was moved from lighthouse to harbor to not delay it too much.

In general, I think it's more important to encourage infrastructure than handing out health for free. Actually, I hope this will make Aqueducts actually relevant in the game.

I don't really get why is it brought up that Granaries are either free or built anyway as an argument against this. If anything it makes the argument kind of pointless.

Now for the relative health of livestock versus grain. I don't really care that much, but if I cared this is the argument I would make. Grain makes up most of the world caloric intake exactly because it's a staple food. Grain keeps you fed, but it doesn't make you healthy. That's what everything besides staple food is for, meat, dairy and the like. I could add a link about skeleton comparison for hunter-gatherer compared to agrarian societies here but as I said, I don't care that much.

For most of the game, there even isn't an effective difference, as Supermarkets come so late. If anything, the previous situation where grain was more valuable for most of the game was more unrealistic. And afterwards? Just goes perfectly with the "late game population boom" argument, doesn't it? Not that this is in any way related to the topic.

Is Granary too powerful now? Well it hasn't actually changed in absolute terms, but in a relative sense maybe. I don't want to move health from grain further down the tech tree because that would become harsh (Market and Currency is very late imo). Not against splitting the effect into two buildings though.

Aztecs now are in even worse position, making their 1st UHV almost undoable! Given that England and Japan know compass by 1520, that's what happenned:
England lost 1 health bonus (wheet).
Japan lost 1 (rice).
Aztecs lost 2 health bonuses (crab, fish).

I don't see where you get these results, all of them lose one grain and two seafood health. England has fish and crab, Japan has fish and clams.

Still, I'm aware that the Aztec UHV is tough and luck dependent with European and Asian competition. I plan to address that, which is exactly why I got this change over with before that.

 

[Panopticon]

Well done Leoreth, health was not a binding constraint 97.5% of the time in the old system, but now it might be.

 

[soul-breathing]

Cut off these 6 health points would make the late game(after Industry Era, all cities with factory and coal plants) very hard to play, with coorporations and Free Market, many cities would have about 10 more unhealth points than health points. You need to keep your city population on a low level, or just adopt Environmental Economy. They will both slow down techs and decrease commerce and production a lot.

Leo, would you do something to make it more balance?

 

[agentxorange]

"Or just adopt Environmental"

I mean, shouldn't there be a good reason to take all the civics? Anyway, once you get Supermarket and Hospitals in cities you already have enormous amounts of excess health. The late game is not the concern. Also, for the scope of the mod, the Modern era has never been as important as the others, since most the UHVs are done before that.

 

[LacsiraxAriscal]

I'm all for encouraging people to build more infrastructure, although I think this requires some good playtesting to get just right. India's UP seems totally useless to me though; just inverting it would be a lot better I think.

Anyway, here's all I think is needed to fix the Samarkand problem I outlined earlier. As the city name doesn't seem to link to an XML text file I think this is all that's needed but correct me if I'm wrong. Certainly the Afro typo exists in Barbs.py, and then there's just a minor one in Citynamemanager where I think a Greek conquering would only change name when it was called "Afrasiya". I'm no coder but I think this should fix it.

EDIT: oops, just realised I did this on last-but-one revision and forgot about the barbs spawn you added. In any case you can see the change that I've made - literally only a letter in the indies spawn. And it's working fine for me on test runs anyway.

 

[Publicola]

I have *very* mixed feelings about this latest round of changes. On the one hand, I do understand the comments that health has not been the constraining factor that it usually is in vanilla BTS games, and (more significantly) that the presence of so much health available so early on really does run counter to the historical population record.

On the other hand... so many other hands. First, the way DoC is currently set up, the biggest challenge in the game is the other players, not the environment. While yes, historically the environment ("nasty, brutish and short") was the biggest obstacle to human progress, that isn't the way the game is set up, and trying to make it be so just nerfs everyone and makes everyone miserable.

There's also the fact that these latest changes will throw all kinds of things out of whack, and rebalancing everything so life still goes on will take a lot of time and effort that could be better spent on all the other changes that are already under discussion on this board. This is one of those 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' moments, I think.

Back to the first hand, yeah, it makes sense that seafood resources should only benefit coastal cities (preferably coastal cities in the vicinity), at least until the advent of better transportation and/or food storage. That said, isn't there a better way to address that issue than by nerfing any sea-resource benefit to any city except after infrastructure is created? It reminds me of the old proverb, that there are two ways of touching your nose: the first by lifting your hand and touching your nose, the second by wrapping your arm around your head and touching your nose from the other direction.

I love some of the changes you've made recently, but after this I'm honestly not sure if I'll update to version 1.13 once it's released. Yikes...

 

[Visard]

Mountains could give health to cities that are next to them.
Mountains usually provide small amount of fresh water in forms of small mountain streams.

So I would suggest that either city gets when it is next mountain or aqueduct gets additional when city is next to mountain.

And how about bananas? They are now the best health resource. Is this intended?

 

[soul-breathing]

"Or just adopt Environmental"

I mean, shouldn't there be a good reason to take all the civics? Anyway, once you get Supermarket and Hospitals in cities you already have enormous amounts of excess health. The late game is not the concern. Also, for the scope of the mod, the Modern era has never been as important as the others, since most the UHVs are done before that.

But there're lots of important civs need to play in Modern Era, such as Russia, Amarica, Prussia, Japan, and all New World civs. Certainly it shouldn't be ignored. I don't know if you have played as Canada, when this 6 health points cut off, Canadian cities will be unhealth at the population of 7 or 8, obviously it's a little ridiculous, same to the other New World civs.

As I experienced, adopt Environmental means it almost impossible to discover all techs before the end of game under Emperor or Paragon, because of less commerce than Free Market.

Also, even when you build supermarket and hospital, still there're cities unhealth>health about 3 or 4 points, because of coorporations produce many unhealth. Things will turn well after you can build recycling centers, but it's a little too late.

And what's more, as I said before, cut off health from these 6 resource means it almost impossible to complete some Ancient Civs' UHVs in Emperor, such as Egypt, Babylon and Maya(Although Maya is impossible even before it...)

 

[citis]

But there're lots of important civs need to play in Modern Era, such as Russia, Amarica, Prussia, Japan, and all New World civs. Certainly it shouldn't be ignored. I don't know if you have played as Canada, when this 6 health points cut off, Canadian cities will be unhealth at the population of 7 or 8, obviously it's a little ridiculous, same to the other New World civs.

As I experienced, adopt Environmental means it almost impossible to discover all techs before the end of game under Emperor or Paragon, because of less commerce than Free Market.

Also, even when you build supermarket and hospital, still there're cities unhealth>health about 3 or 4 points, because of coorporations produce many unhealth. Things will turn well after you can build recycling centers, but it's a little too late.

And what's more, as I said before, cut off health from these 6 resource means it almost impossible to complete some Ancient Civs' UHVs in Emperor, such as Egypt, Babylon and Maya(Although Maya is impossible even before it...)

Nerfing late era and making environmentalism relevant are good sideefects in my ears. Since the effect is the same for all late civs won't have serious problems, they are weakened, but their rivals are weakened too.

Canada's pop remaining low is historical, so let it be this way. North north America shouldn't have a lot of population anyways.

As for the corporations trade away the resources and problem solved.

 

[Leoreth]

Cut off these 6 health points would make the late game(after Industry Era, all cities with factory and coal plants) very hard to play, with coorporations and Free Market, many cities would have about 10 more unhealth points than health points. You need to keep your city population on a low level, or just adopt Environmental Economy. They will both slow down techs and decrease commerce and production a lot.

Leo, would you do something to make it more balance?

First off, I agree with the point that conferring a purpose to Environmentalism is a good side effect of this change. Of course I also don't want to make it the only viable choice.

Unhealth was added to corporation in the current amounts because health was too easy to manage before. So if it turns out that it is unmanageable in the current setup I will reduce it again.

Another option would be to add another health building somewhere in the tech tree.

Also, unlike unhappiness unhealth has a tendency to balance out itself without player interference. By that I mean, with unhappiness you need to control your city size or waste maintenance on unhappy citizens. Unhealthy cities stop growing on their own.

Anyway, here's all I think is needed to fix the Samarkand problem I outlined earlier. As the city name doesn't seem to link to an XML text file I think this is all that's needed but correct me if I'm wrong. Certainly the Afro typo exists in Barbs.py, and then there's just a minor one in Citynamemanager where I think a Greek conquering would only change name when it was called "Afrasiya". I'm no coder but I think this should fix it.

Yes, will get to it later.

I have *very* mixed feelings about this latest round of changes. On the one hand, I do understand the comments that health has not been the constraining factor that it usually is in vanilla BTS games, and (more significantly) that the presence of so much health available so early on really does run counter to the historical population record.

On the other hand... so many other hands. First, the way DoC is currently set up, the biggest challenge in the game is the other players, not the environment. While yes, historically the environment ("nasty, brutish and short") was the biggest obstacle to human progress, that isn't the way the game is set up, and trying to make it be so just nerfs everyone and makes everyone miserable.

I've come to consider this a flaw of DoC, not a virtue. This has only really become apparent to me when I went back to play a couple of BtS games (K-Mod to be specific). Happiness and even more so, health are rarely things you need to pay attention, at least as soon as all those resources become available for trade.

It was mostly a question of plopping down your cities and watching them grow past size 10 before you even had to think about these things. What are Aqueducts?

There's also the fact that these latest changes will throw all kinds of things out of whack, and rebalancing everything so life still goes on will take a lot of time and effort that could be better spent on all the other changes that are already under discussion on this board. This is one of those 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' moments, I think.

I think it's more one of those "you need to cut down the bushes to plant some flowers" moments.

I love some of the changes you've made recently, but after this I'm honestly not sure if I'll update to version 1.13 once it's released. Yikes...

This is not directed at you in specific, but I get the impression that many reactions here are based mostly on a first off reaction to the change itself, not actual game experiences.

As far as the development process goes, I've come to like the crowbar method. If there's a problem, identify the root cause and attack it. This method is likely to go too far, but it is easier to balance things in the other direction by repairing the damage that has caused, than small incremental improvements.

And how about bananas? They are now the best health resource. Is this intended?

Not explicitly, but it kind of makes sense.

 

[ezzlar]

Between giving full food from resources from 3000bc and letting growth be limited by unhealthiness and letting food bonuses grow by tech I far prefer the latter. I really dislike the idea of running unhealthy cities for a few thousand years.

 

[cudfather]

@bananas:
https://youtu.be/eaScyfSHc-Y?t=1m