Development thread for 1.5

[gilgames]

it was an 12OO ad. scenario (I hate to w8). but the game it to see how it looks in late game. how companies doing, do you agree that russia should look like as it is? ottomans really so strong? why france cant stay on their feet? (they ressed 3rd time like 15 turns before) In 15OO aragon was the superpower Portugal was great and suddenly collapsed england is small but always ridiculous ect..

But yeah, I had a nice run with sweden and had a long gone FUN...

 

[AbsintheRed]

Well, the 1200 AD scenario can lead to even more interesting situations lategame than the normal 500 AD start.
I try to primarily balance for the original start date. Also, the 1200 AD scenario is not perfectly up to date ATM (neither with map changes, nor with companies)

 

[2phunkey4u]

It's fine now. I'd advise against BUG in this instance because a quick overview of all possible corps from the city screen rather than having to bring up an advisor or the 'pedia is a nice feature.

 

[DC123456789]

Not sure if it's a bug or not, but should be fixed regardless: cities that a rising civilization flips should probably get free defenders if they don't have any military units in them; otherwise, it's really easy to reconquer cities that flip away just by abandoning it right before it flips.

Also, there's a slight problem with provinces that flip back to potential (from historical) - if you don't lose all your cities there, then you'll have a city in a potential province (which won't change unless you acquire or re-acquire another city in the province), which IIRC isn't how it's supposed to work. This happened to me with France and Picardy.

 

[AbsintheRed]

Yeah, IIRC I only reset provinces to potential on 2 ingame event types:
- Reset the respawning civs originally potential provinces to potential
- On some rare occasions, when another civ spawns and flips away some of your territory

In this case it must have been the second.
Most likely I just forgot to change it when removed Picardy from the English spawn zone.

 

[DC123456789]

Do respawning civs automatically get their capital when they respawn? I just had Germany respawn, taking independent Juterborg and Frankfurt from me, but not any of the other 6 or so cities I had in the German respawn zone, which was very strange.

Edit: Also, now that we have Prussia, does it still make sense for Germany's respawn zone to include Brandenburg?

 

[AbsintheRed]

Not sure if it's a bug or not, but should be fixed regardless: cities that a rising civilization flips should probably get free defenders if they don't have any military units in them; otherwise, it's really easy to reconquer cities that flip away just by abandoning it right before it flips.

Do respawning civs automatically get their capital when they respawn? I just had Germany respawn, taking independent Juterborg and Frankfurt from me, but not any of the other 6 or so cities I had in the German respawn zone, which was very strange.

Yeah, the vanilla RFC system bleeds from many wounds.
Will probably require a complete overhaul at some point, instead of just small patches here and there.

Edit: Also, now that we have Prussia, does it still make sense for Germany's respawn zone to include Brandenburg?

Will adjust it

 

[El Bogus]

I just encountered a bug where the cultural borders of a city didn't expand the way they were supposed to.
EDIT: Slupsk is the city I meant.
Edit 2: Hmm, the turn later the borders expanded.

 

[gilgames]

Ok I hate plague: here is a germany game in numbers. during a whole game i built 1OO workers and lost 8O (have 25) of them. aprox 5 to enemy, the rest to plague! similar numbers for ships and basically to any stack. I attached the file, to see it yourself. and there is one more plague to come before the end. (ps: i took aragon before uhv deadline) also plague tend to spread EVERY single city!!!! always! and it kills minimum 5O% of population! I hate plague. It also make impossible to reach the lead if you r raped in every 1OO years. Does not kill too much military but all the others. I will have a russia game soon with more numbers

 

[AbsintheRed]

Ok I hate plague: here is a germany game in numbers. during a whole game i built 1OO workers and lost 8O (have 25) of them. aprox 5 to enemy, the rest to plague! similar numbers for ships and basically to any stack. I attached the file, to see it yourself. and there is one more plague to come before the end. (ps: i took aragon before uhv deadline) also plague tend to spread EVERY single city!!!! always! and it kills minimum 5O% of population! I hate plague. It also make impossible to reach the lead if you r raped in every 1OO years. Does not kill too much military but all the others. I will have a russia game soon with more numbers

Then plague is working as designed.
It's supposed to ruin your economy, kill a rather big percentage of your population, and as many workers as possible.
On the other hand, most military units are preserved, mostly for gameplay reasons.

Btw, you can significantly reduce the death rate, if you heal your units when they are not at full health.
Do not move with them constantly when there is plague nearby, let them rest.

 

[AbsintheRed]

@El Bogus @gilgames
Btw I can't open any of the savegames, I guess it's with a different version of the mod.
Pls state if the uploaded save is not with the latest SVN version.

 

[AbsintheRed]

On plagues:
Everyone else also feel that they are too harsh on your economy and/or too annoying with killing off too many workers?

 

[Force44]

On plagues:
Everyone else also feel that they are too harsh on your economy and/or too annoying with killing off too many workers?

Strictly it is not an answer to your question but I don't feel that plagues are too harsh on my economy or annoying with killing off the amount of workers they do.
Do any units die at all when suffering from the plague but supported by double healers (medic I + woodsman III) ?

 

[AbsintheRed]

Yeah, I meant anyone of course
Anyway I'm willing to adjust plague damage even for 1.5, if the majority of playtesters says it would be better.

Putting your wounded units near double healer units is usually more than enough.

 

[Tigranes]

1/3 of Europe got decimated during the Black Death -- we need at least 1 major Plague to represent that.

 

[jekke]

actually no, I don't think plagues in the current version is too harsh... I have seen worse

I have another suggestion though: often the very first thing I do in the game (after the spawn) is checking whether civs I have contact with can trade some techs to me. One of the best traded partners here btw is the Pope. The whole thing just doesn't feel right, and since you can't trade away techs you haven't researched yourself (correct me if I am wrong), maybe initial techs you start with could be flagged as untradeable too?

 

[AbsintheRed]

1/3 of Europe got decimated during the Black Death -- we need at least 1 major Plague to represent that.

Yeah, it's supposed to be deadly. I don't want to make it way too annoying to the player though, gameplay dictates that we won't have them as deadly as they were in real life.
Btw in the game, the Black Death in the 14th century is stronger (more deadly) than all the other plagues. As it was historically.

actually no, I don't think plagues in the current version is too harsh... I have seen worse

So you say it should be somewhat more harsh?

 

[AbsintheRed]

I have another suggestion though: often the very first thing I do in the game (after the spawn) is checking whether civs I have contact with can trade some techs to me. One of the best traded partners here btw is the Pope. The whole thing just doesn't feel right, and since you can't trade away techs you haven't researched yourself (correct me if I am wrong), maybe initial techs you start with could be flagged as untradeable too?

Actually I'm toying with the idea of removing tech trade altogether from the mod.
While I always hated it, unfortunately it's deeply integrated into the way we play Civ IV, many strategies revolve around it.
So I haven't decided on this yet, needs some further consideration.

Valid point about the Pope though.
In the beginning he has some valuable techs, which you can easily trade from him.
Later he is always way too behind, so you can get some gold from him for your techs every now and then.

 

[jekke]

So you say it should be somewhat more harsh?

No, it doesn't have to. I would say, on the harshness scale, it is currently in the acceptable range.

Later he is always way too behind, so you can get some gold from him for your techs every now and then.

Exactly.
You see, there are two things in the tech trade mechanism. First, you can get shop around for techs and get maybe 5-6 techs for your single one, and second, you have a source of money throughout the game. Question is, which is the biggest evil, so to say.

Could it be (potentially) coded so that you only can buy a half of a tech, and the other half you have to research yourself anyway?
Could it be done so that, mathematically speaking, the tech trade and money trade exist in different spaces, so you only can trade tech for tech and not for money?
What concerns that old funny guy in Rome, is another thing. I'd say, strip him off all of his money and techs. He's there only for building churches and chewing gum.

 

[AbsintheRed]

Exactly.
You see, there are two things in the tech trade mechanism. First, you can get shop around for techs and get maybe 5-6 techs for your single one, and second, you have a source of money throughout the game. Question is, which is the biggest evil, so to say.

That's because of some of the base mechanics of RFC type mods.
Civs have different production and research modifiers. On top of that, number of cities is also a huge contibutor to the number of beakers needed for a tech.
A given tech can cost multiple times as much with a big empire than it would with only 1-2 cities.
So in the beginning (right after your spawn, when you are very small) it's unavoidable that you can get way too good tech trades. Later, when you have a decent sized civ, you will have a much harder time to get a fair trade.
That's also the reason a small AI civ and a big AI civ values the very same tech on very different levels.
For example AI Byzantium will usually give you whatever it has for a new tech. They usually have much more cities than you in the early game, on top off that they have the worst production modifiers.

While these are certanily not gamebreaking, they can get somewhat annoying, and they provide a fairly big advantage to the experienced human player.
And I don't really see a solution without getting rid of the tech trade system (which is very immerson breaking anyway IMO, even without looking at these issues).
I would much rather have a tech diffusion system, similarly to the one we have in Realim Invictus. So you can get various discounts on your techs based on it's availabilty in your neighbours / civs you have a trade agreement with / the global average.
That also has it's problems, but probably would be much better.

Could it be (potentially) coded so that you only can buy a half of a tech, and the other half you have to research yourself anyway?
Could it be done so that, mathematically speaking, the tech trade and money trade exist in different spaces, so you only can trade tech for tech and not for money?

Neither of this is solvable, not without rewriting the whole diplo trade system.

What concerns that old funny guy in Rome, is another thing. I'd say, strip him off all of his money and techs. He's there only for building churches and chewing gum.

Yeah, I already disabled tech trade with the Papal States, will be up with the next commit.