Diplomacy

[SlightlyMad]

Sounds like you're being a warmongering menace to the world! The AI seems to react very poorly to player-initiated declarations of war, particularly if they're friends with the declared-on, although sometimes even if they hate them they'll still resent you for too much warmongering.

 

[QDI]

I clearly was not friend with him

How is "the warmongering menace to the world" evaluated? War declarations or number of cities captured?

QDI

 

[Gazebo]

I didn't even know it was possible to increase embarkation speed for just one unit class, though I didn't investigate thoroughly. It'd be cool if you can do it! They move so slow at sea.

Extensive testing tells me that no, we cannot change embarkation. I tried many different methods, with no success. All 'naval enhancement' promos impact DOMAIN_SEA units only. So....

I created a new, naval diplo unit for the Renaissance/Industrial era: The East Indiaman! It has a movement of 6, terrible LOS and is defenseless- think of it as a cheaper, faster-moving emissary that can only be on water. I tied it into a new National Wonder (East Indies Company) that requires 80% of cities to have a bank. The unit and wonder are available with Navigation and disappear after Telegraph.

The only problem is, of course, the AI. They don't know how to use DOMAIN_SEA naval diplo units, so this new unit could impact the balance of the game. I'll let you all decide. I did give the East Indies Company some nice bonuses so that if the AI DOES build it, it won't be wasted resources. Oh, and the AI is set to use the Indiamen as scouts- though they shouldn't build them anyways.

Check out link on CSD thread.

G

 

[Thalassicus]

The reason the paradrop from the WTO is underpowered is by that point the units are faster by simply moving on land. To paradrop a unit must stand still for one full turn, but with roads or railroads everywhere, a unit can easily move further than a paradrop allows. Even across water, I've often found it faster to simply move close, embark, then get back on land.

In addition:

• World wonder.
• Most citystates within a short paradrop range are usually allied already.
• Near the end of the game (or past it since the UN can be built earlier).
• Diplomatic units are still capped at a finite quantity.

Considering all this, I'd suggest the WTO's bonus lets diplomatic units paradrop anywhere in the world.

 

[Gazebo]

The reason the paradrop from the WTO is underpowered is by that point the units are faster by simply moving on land. To paradrop a unit must stand still for one full turn, but with roads or railroads everywhere, a unit can easily move further than a paradrop allows. Even across water, I've often found it faster to simply move close, embark, then get back on land.

In addition:

• World wonder.
• Most citystates within a short paradrop range are usually allied already.
• Near the end of the game (or past it since the UN can be built earlier).
• Diplomatic units are still capped at a finite quantity.

Considering all this, I'd suggest the WTO's bonus lets diplomatic units paradrop anywhere in the world.

When I first made it I had given it a paradrop range of 200– more than enough to circle the globe. I found, however, (and this may not be a problem now that the game is more stable) that paradrop ranges above 15-20 caused the game to crash– I'll look into this as a way to buff the WTO.

Any thoughts on the East Indiaman? Its fun (IMO), but it might imbalance gameplay.

 

[SlightlyMad]

I'd probably not invest into anything late-game like that when my hammers seem like they could be better spent on pumping out diplomats anyways, unless the benefit is really so dramatic as to make up for it. I'm also not really keen on adding anything that the AI isn't going to use effectively. The single best thing about this mod is that it actually makes the AI competitive in CS diplomacy, so I wouldn't want anything to negate that.

Is it possible to alter CS influence decay rate with a wonder? Instead of a wonder allowing you to build more units and send them over faster, why not just abstract the process and have it introduce an additional 10% or so slower influence decay?

 

[Thalassicus]

SlightlyMad has a really good point. No matter what the bonus is, it's going to be difficult to make the wonder more valuable than spending that production on additional diplomats. Maybe it should give a bunch of free Ambassadors in addition to the normal effect...

 

[juckie]

Or a combination off some?
-Increase your limit of diplo units
-Provide some units *maybe 1 per x turns (like a Mil.CS)*
-More influence/decreased rate of losing it?

 

[Gazebo]

SlightlyMad has a really good point. No matter what the bonus is, it's going to be difficult to make the wonder more valuable than spending that production on additional diplomats. Maybe it should give a bunch of free Ambassadors in addition to the normal effect...

That's my thought as well– we could either remove the free ambassadors from the UN and put them on the WTO or (if you like the UN buff) simply allow both to grant two free units.

We could also drastically reduce the cost of the WTO, make it a national wonder (perhaps rename it) and tie it to one of the modern buildings. There aren't very many modern national wonders.

As far as the Indiaman experiment is concerned, what if I give it combat capacity (limited, say, to being just a bit weaker than a frigate, as they historically were) so that IF the AI does build it, it isn't completely useless? I've always been less than impressed with Civ5s naval options (in reality, all civ games have this problem), so perhaps another renaissance/industrial age ship would be of value?

Ultimately, however, the only reason I am experimenting with this is because embark values are static and terrible. Perhaps, the East India company should just be a coastal FO with gold bonuses and we should raise the universal embark value?

G

 

[Gazebo]

Is it possible to alter CS influence decay rate with a wonder? Instead of a wonder allowing you to build more units and send them over faster, why not just abstract the process and have it introduce an additional 10% or so slower influence decay?

I don't think there is an option to reduce decay except via policies. Seek and I tried to do this a few months back with the Kremlin (long story). Not sure if it is possible to unlock a special policy via a wonder– if so, we could have an off-listed policy (perhaps a wonder tree?) with bonuses such as this. If only we could speed embark this way...

One possibility for embark speed improvement I attempted was using the <DoubleMove>true</Doublemove> tag for the <PROMOTION_TERRAINS> header (along with TERRAIN_OCEAN and TERRAIN_COAST), but it didn't work.

 

[Gazebo]

Any thoughts on my last two comments? Yes/no?



Edit: got bored and posted a new version including some of the changes. See the CSD thread for the download (last page).
G

 

[Thalassicus]

I usually tend to avoid things the AI can't use properly.

I don't think there's a lua event when a building is built, though I haven't checked for sure. With SetIsHasPolicy (I think that's the name) you can give or remove policies from players manually.

 

[Gazebo]

I usually tend to avoid things the AI can't use properly.

I don't think there's a lua event when a building is built, though I haven't checked for sure. With SetIsHasPolicy (I think that's the name) you can give or remove policies from players manually.

Agreed. New version of CSD should be totally AI friendly.

On a side note, is the 80% requirement for buildings part of vanilla code or something you added, Thal? Having a problem w/ CSD's buildings without your mod loaded. If vanilla...damn. If yours, I'll probably need to add whatever code
you wrote to CSD to make it function independently.

 

[Iceco]

It's code he added.
I asked for the same a week or so ago and he gave a pretty good reply back then.

 

[Gazebo]

It's code he added.
I asked for the same a week or so ago and he gave a pretty good reply back then.

Excellent. This was my assumption (that he had created a new piece of code) however I wasn't sure if he or someone else had made it. If you don't mind, Thal, would it be okay if I added this little bit of code to CSD to make it independent of TBC?

If you would prefer, I can also create two versions of CSD, one that is dependent upon TBC (80%) and one that is like vanilla (all cities).

Up to you (the community).
G

 

[Thalassicus]

Sure, it'd be fine to use it Gazebo. In an ideal world I'd offer the patch as a standalone mod and other mods could include it as a dependency... but Firaxis never fixed the dependency part of modbuddy.

 

[QDI]

I sure wouldn't be the only one happy to have CSD included in TBC

QDI

 

[Gazebo]

Sure, it'd be fine to use it Gazebo. In an ideal world I'd offer the patch as a standalone mod and other mods could include it as a dependency... but Firaxis never fixed the dependency part of modbuddy.

Yeah, funny that. Maybe there's hope yet.

In any case, I had a bit of difficulty getting the 'buildings percentage required' table to function correctly in CSD...I could get it to work, but as soon as I enabled your Balance mod both stopped working– I'm assuming it is a redundancy problem. As a result, I've gone back to the vanilla 'all cities' requirement for national wonders for CSD. Once I get the new version stabilized I will create a second CSD for use with TBC that is dependent on (but does not include) the percentage-required tweak. Perhaps we should simply attach the TBC version of CSD as an optional mod within TBC (i.e. can be turned on and off)?

G

 

[Iceco]

Wouldn't it simply suffice to include

<Building_PrereqBuildingClassesPercentage> 
     <Building>BUILDING_...</Building>
     etc.
</PrereqBuildingClassesPercentage>

Then when your mod is used alone, it doesn't mean anything, but else it will be called by TBC's mod.

 

[Gazebo]

Wouldn't it simply suffice to include

<Building_PrereqBuildingClassesPercentage> 
     <Building>BUILDING_...</Building>
     etc.
</PrereqBuildingClassesPercentage>

Then when your mod is used alone, it doesn't mean anything, but else it will be called by TBC's mod.

I tried that and it caused woes (game would crash at map load)...maybe I just had a typo (tried it a 2AM). I'll try again this afternoon while I have coffee.


Edit: It doesn't crash now, but enabling TBC requires players to have buildings in all cities AND 80%...thus the 80% is irrelevant.
G