Double Your Pleasure

[IXIRandyIXI]

Alright...here's a couple things that I've noticed while playing:

Sometimes some less fortunate civs don't start by a river and therefore don't get that early (as in ~4000 BC) trade bonus. The Palace requires that you pay 2 gold each turn to maintain it, so these civs that don't start out by rivers usually have a -1 gpt straight from the beginning of the game. This can really hurt you early on when that 10 gold helps you work out deals for techs.

On the Huge World Map:

When you play as the Celts, there is no source of Iron for them very near the capitol. The only source of Iron that isn't immediately claimed by another civ's capitol is far off North of the Black Sea. That's not very far off, I know, but the chances of getting that spot before any of the numerous other civs that are settling around there are very slim. This leaves the Celts without Iron early in the game so they cannot use their UU and also take a beating from the other civs that do have Iron. I simply added an Iron resource near the Celtic starting spot to handle this problem.

 

[delmar]

Isak, are you getting some help from Firaxis for this "tweaking", ie. do they improve the AI algorithms, or you just try to change things in the editor to please the existing ones?

More generic question: what happens with mods like DyP in multiplayer games? Is it possible to play a Direct IP or PBEM game based on DyP? If so, do all the participants need to install the mod, or is everything sent along?

 

[Isak]

@Randy24242424: Yeah, starting out without a good river trade bonus can be a real drag. I can't remember why we decided to give the Palace a maintenance cost. Maybe it should be reconsidered, but I'll let that be up to Our Fearless Leader

@Delmar: Well, Firaxis have been quite helpful providing us with information on what makes the AI move and what doesn't. They haven't specifically changed stuff to please us though (I think ), so we're stuck with trying to make DyP work with the AI as it is (or is it the other way around?).

And yes, you can play DyP in multiplayer, any MP mode - or at least you should be able to. All players need to have the same version of the mod installed (as well as the same Firaxis patch) but other than that, no problem.

(and if there are problems, let me know cause I probably caused them somehow, and will then fix them in the next patch, as always )

 

[IXIRandyIXI]

Ever since I installed PtW and the PtW compatible DyP, the game has constantly been crashing for me. It's really killing the game for me too, when I forget to save (and I don't like autosaving, although I am going to start doing it now, if I decide not to use the PtW CD as a frisbee and delete all the PtW files on my computer) and it suddenly crashes. Then I notice my last save is 20 turns back...I usually get so frustrated I don't play for another few days. I'm not sure if it's PtW or DyP that is doing this, so I'm here asking: has anyone else that has been playing the NORMAL civ3 been randomly crashing? And also, have you been randomly crashing playing DyP? I never had a crashing problem in normal Civ3 so it has to be something with PtW...

Edit: I think I found the problem with all the crashing. I think it was a MP3 program I had going while playing the game. The music that comes with the game just get very boring and repetitive after you constantly listen to it hour after hour.

 

[Isak]

Before you do anything rash like throw away your CD or stop playing DyP Try uninstalling everything and reinstalling the game. I've seen a lot of people crashing because they didn't reinstall Civ3 before installing PtW.

So try the good old uninstall/reinstall routine. I'll recap if you've forgotten it :

Backup what you want to keep and then:
1. Uninstall all patches
2. Uninstall PtW
3. Uninstall Civ3
4. Delete the Civilization III folder manually
5. Install Civ3
6. Install PtW (no need to patch Civ3 before this)
7. Install Patch 1.14f for PtW
8. Install DyP 1.04x

If that doesn't help, feel free to email me about it, even though I haven't yet heard of any DyP players with random crashes, so I doubt it's a mod problem, but you never know. And I don't mind helping out anyway.

 

[Donegeal]

I don't post here often (if ever) but I was unable to find a good place to discuss this amazing mod at Apolyton.

I have been playing this mod exclusivly now for about a month and I fid it to be most incredible. There is virtualy no chance for a builder to do all that he would want to build as there is just too much (and this is a good thing).

I have changed mine slightly in some cases and added some other things that I have not seen disscussed here.

I changed the road back to three. Two was nuts (IMHO). Just as an example, take the Crusades of medievel period (RL). Send a Crusader from Iberia (or Rome, whatever) and it takes at most 5, maybe ten years for him to get to the middle-east to cause his havoc. Now with a complete road system in the DYP mod, using the large world map, the same path would take about 50 years (probably more, I don't have the game up right now). Now moving it to three doesn't completely fix this, but it makes it a tad more real (ok, I just couldn't STAND not being able to move my units around quickly, but I had to make some kind of agruement )

The other thing I did was I implemented "Underwater Cities". As your mod goes into the future with MI, I went into the future also by adding three units (ok, I'm not that great at modding or graphics, so I hijacked the last three kings and added unit folders for the new units with the graphics from older units).

The first unit I "added" was a Sub-Mariner. Using the graphic files for the Early Submarine, I changed the third King (I don't remember which) and add a like named folder with the sub graphics. I gave this unit 0 att, 0 def, move of 6 (like a transport), cost two pop points, made it a sea unit and gave it the ability to build cities.

The next unit I added was a Water Worker. I used the graphics of a Destroyer, 0 att and 0 def (just like a worker), cost one pop point, made it a sea unit and gave it the ability to build roads, railroads, Irrigate (for fisheries), Mine (underwater mines) and colonys.

The last unit I added was an Aqua Infantry. I used the graphics of Mobile Infantry and lowered the Attack and defense scores and again made it a sea unit. I did this cause with other testing I did on underwater cities, you could have as many MI in an underwater city and any sea unit with an attack value could just walk into your city, instantly kill all the defenders and capture the city. It is nessicary to have a sea defensive unit in the city to defend it.

I then made sure that coast, sea and ocean were places that could be settled and redid the terrain so that, for instance, oil could now be found in the coast, sea or ocean (however, the computer nevers puts ANY resourses, bonus or otherwise, in an ocean square). The roads, although funny looking on ocean, now connect the resourses and add then to the resourse tray.

There are two negative things with this:

One, the graphics for the cities is, um, still just like they are on land. I was wondering if there was a way to reserve one type of city graphic for use as underwater cities.

Two, I could not, for the life of me, get the AI to understand the units at all. I would mark the settler AI stragety before I switched it to sea and the little check make would stay, until I went to another unit and came back. The check mark would then be gone. Any Idea as to how to fix this? If not, then maybe this change should only be used in MP human games as it would give a tremendous boost to the human.

PS- Oh yeah.... I made all three units have a prerequisit of Intergrated Defense and gave them to all Civ's.

Did you guys discuss underwater cities when you made the mod?

 

[delmar]

How do you make sure that your mod/scenario is using your graphics and not the original one?

Edit: Never mind, I found the answer: in the editor, there is a "Scenario Search Folders" under "Scenario Properties".

In other words, how do you point from the "Double Your Pleasure with GFX.bix" file to the "DyP" directory that contains all the art work? I can create a bix file with the editor but I can't find the option that would let me specify the directory of the graphics. Or am I mistaken and this is not what's happening with the DyP mod?

 

[Kal-el]

We didn't discuss underwater cities when developing this mod, but I have been involved in a couple of discussions here on the boards.

I came to the conclusion that, while it would be cool, it probably wouldn't work with the Civ3 AI.

Here is the thread
And here are my thoughts from that thread.

But you could also allow a new settler unit to build cities in water tiles and a new worker unit that can build roads in the water. It would look pretty ugly, but I think it would work. I don't know how the AI would handle it, and I suggest not allowing roads in coastal tiles otherwise you will see bridges across the Pacific, and that might be a bit odd.

I guess I would recommend that the water cities only be buildable in the Sea, not the ocean or the coast. I also recommend that you only allow roads in the Sea and not the ocean or the coast. This will prevent transocean bridges and will also prevent ground forces from attacking your Sea Cities without transports.

Again, I have no idea how the AI will react to this. I think you definitely do not want to allow settlements in the ocean as that will give the AI just way too much room to plant useless cities.

The Ocean Liner (troop transport) available in the Units forum might make a good Sea Settler unit.

I can't think of any good sea worker units, but I guess for now the Civ3 transport would work.

And another thread on the subject. This one is a bit more interesting. Maybe because I didn't say very much.
Here is all I had to add to the conversation on that one.

there is only one way to find out if the AI will handle it properly. Test it.

Good point, but remember those wonder effects are really just gravy. Aquacities shouldn't have all the bonuses of Land Cities.

The cities would be limited in growth if you left the Sea F/S/C levels at their original values. However, sinc eyou are modding the game in order to allow cities to be built in the Sea, it is easy and probably necessary to adjust the values of sea tiles. You might also consider increasing the values of ocean tiles.

 

[IXIRandyIXI]

If you did want to test if the AI would build cities in the Sea tiles (along with roads), I would recommend making it a very early technology (like make it come with Mining) and set the difficulty to Deity and turn on Accelerated Production. It's just amazing how fast the AI expands with those settings.

 

[Donegeal]

Nope. The AI is just too stupid to figure it out. I made all three units available from the begining and none (moded for 23 civ's on one board) would build any of them. Bozos.

I guess it would have to be for a PBEM game only (unless you felt like garunteeing yourself the win...)

 

[Anglophile]

I am not sure whether it is PtW or DyP for PtW or the combination thereof but the AI is playing a much better game now. It builds ships more advanced than canoes and a lot more improvements in cities than previously. I have been beaten to Wonders such as Circus Maximus, which requires no less than three arenas. Your mod was always great but originally seemed to be too complex for the AI, essentially resulting in an easier game for the human. Now one has all the extra layers provided by your mod and a very competitive AI (at least as far as I've gotten in any of my starts - which is halfway through the second age).

I have made some minor mods to your mod. I have made Huge 250 x 220 (and have had it even larger). At this size, the default movement rates are way too slow so I have road movement at 8 which seems after some experimentation to be about right. Obviously, I have unchecked almost all the 'treat all tiles as roads boxes' for units and have movements of 1 or 2 for those whose boxes I've left checked. My first game with PtW/DyP I never thought to look at ship movements for this box and all of a sudden my ships (which all had movements of 8 or 9 for this era) had ridiculous movements; remodify the bic and try again. I have also modded the improvements to a limited, mostly cosmetic extent - changed a couple of names, 1 or 2 functions (obelisk became shrine, shrine became smithie) and changed the costs/upkeeps of a fair number - mostly lower cost (since there were so many things to build) and raised the upkeep (since my first runs with the mod always seemed to result in a large cash surplus). Besides increasing movement rates of all ships and all but the earlier land units (i.e. pre-musketman), I have left units (and Wonders) as is.

My only remaining issue is the rate of early expansion. I know that you have put a lot of thought into this and have created the Chiefton government and the higher food consumtion rate to deal with it. At least on Deity, this doesn't seem enough. Even on the huge land areas that I have been playing, most prime land is settled by 1500 BC and by 1000 BC the deserts and tundra forests/hills are settled and the jungles are being nibbled away at. For the record, in my last game the settings were 270 x 240, continents, 30% land, 12 civs. Land masses discovered to that point were my home continent (6 civs), a smaller 2nd continent with 4 civs with a still smaller island continent offshore dominated by one civ but with some other colonies on it. 1035 BC and nothing but mountains, tundra, jungles and some prety barren plains/desert areas with no bonus tiles unsettled and there are some significant inroads into the jungles. Was also getting fairly close to the 512 city cap. My current game, now late in the ancient era, I changed the pop cost of clan/shaman to 2 to slow early growth. This was because I had noted that there was little or no difference in expansion rate between Chiefton and Despotism - the tile penalty and the clan pop cost essentially offset each other. It worked as both my and the AI expansion was significantly slowed prior to Despotism - and then really took off. I figure a fully settled world by 500 BC so a partial success. I would like to see at least three rates - really slow for Chiefton, slow for Despotism and then another acceleration with irrigating (and optimally yet another with RRs or whatever gives the 'second irrigation' effect). You do get the growth spurts that would allow it but there isn't any expansion room left - which is both ahistorical and makes overseas empires possible only through conquest, not settling of underpopulated lands (possibly not a sentiment that will be greeted warmly by the native groups who were the underpopulators in our real world). While the editor allows enough degrees of freedom to have the different rates and PtW allows enough landmass to keep expansion going for a long time, the 512 city limit is the real roadblock (IMO) to a more historical rate of population growth/ civilization expansion as measured by % landmass occupied, i.e. 'civilized'. I am actually thinking of keeping the tile penalties even longer which would work but does make for a duller game and really penalizes poor starting positions. So, any chance that the 512 city cap will disappear (or become moddable). As well, will there ever be a way of increasing the total number of bonus tiles which also seems to have a hard cap? I know this isn't yours to do, just that you are a lot closer to Firaxis than I am.

For what it's worth, the much derided CTP actually handled expansion rates better and arguably in a historically valid way by linking max cities to government type with happiness penalties for exceeding the limit. I could live with that in Civ3 as well. By the way, despite my whining (not about your mod) and the alterations I have made to your mod, the game I am playing is still clearly DyP so thanks for your long, dedicated efforts - it is a great mod.

 

[ChaoticWanderer]

ok first

started a new map on easy

and got something intresting a huge map of alot of jungles actually keeping the civs away from each other mine is at the end of a long thin eg of land the south is a small plains then north is nothing but a large jungle until it reaches the main land which has two fast moving races on it

the french are at the end of another long thing jungle filled land. and the germans are off to the far east over mountains and tundra

so far the bab's and arabs int he center are growing at a very fast rate and the germans are growing wella s well as the move south along an ampty plains but me ad the french are pretty much sunk with having to slowly build across jungles if it wsnt for my serfs would be dead.

just thopught the experience of heavey jungled alnd so far is intresting.

now somethoughts on what races should be added on guarenteed.

east europe east of germany and greece and west of russia. shuld be the austrian hungarian empire since the hapsburgs of austria was once one of the largest kingdoms of all time by controaling austria hungry and spainish empires

east africa south of agypt north and east of zulu. abyssia very very old empire still around today as ethiopia

west africa. a few ones her but i think ghana look best as of know

south america. ince

central america maya

far south east asia. thai.

pacific islands. polynesia

there are a few others that may fit. like south of russia and north of persia and the east toward mongols could be the hittites

but will keep thinking on that

still like pphoencia but with crathage in north africa and the turks not much land for them

anyway i think sort of sea roas would help. but i think it should be called like a trade route that would alow you to put luxeries and resources in the shallows and seas.



more thoughts later

 

[The Troquelet]

My experience with the worldmap + DyP:

England: stuck on their pitiful island. The landbridge to Ireland does help, but it's unlikely that they will make contact with anyone but France and possibly Germany, and since contacts are untradeable for a long time, they really suffer in technology.

France: the best civ to play in the Western group [All of Europe + Russia, Egypt, Persia, Babylon]. Guaranteed to have all of Spain to itself. Can settle most of its cities on rivers, and in fact the best positions are on deltas.

Germany: good land but slow expansion and exploration because of the forests. Generally squished between the Alps, Russia, and France.

Russia: good civ, slow expansion but virtually no competition for land, so can take it easy. Lack of access to sea might be a problem.

Rome: Three cities maximum - four after they discover canoes. France can EASILY beat Rome to the Carthage area [which has a nice luxury...] and Rome is mostly stuck on its little peninsula.

Greece: Like Rome, except that there is a possibility they could claim Istanbul and Miletus city spots thanks to the culture border. So slightly more powerful.

Egypt: TERRIFIC expansion. The largest civ by far. Can churn out settlers by the dozen - outexpanded me at one point. Probably not a good position for shields however. Grabbing the islands and conquering Greece and Palestine is a must.

Babylon, Persia, India: each of these had at most 2 or 3 cities by 1500 BCE. Maybe it's the position or something, but they barely expanded at all. Probably not good civs to play either.

 

[Kal-el]

@Anglophile,

Very interesting stuff there. I am only going t comment on a couple of things. I had initially set the first settler to cost 2 population but saw the AI struggle with it and the increased food consumption. Hence the addition of the Clan unit and the lower population cost. You are right in saying that the increased pop cost for the pioneer and the tile bonus counteract each other.

As for fixing the resource dispersment, I doubt we will see any change in that department. The only thing I could recommend is using precreated maps or saving the game and editing the map before you plant your first city, though that would tend to take the mystery out of the map. :-(

@Chaotic Wanderer,
The Next Version of the mod will include the following 7 new civs:
Ethiopia - Starting in East Africa
Inca - Andes
Mali - West Africa
Polynesia - Hawaii
Siam - South East Asia
Sioux - Great Plains
Tibet - Central Asia

@The Troquelet,
Which civ were you playing as? I find that any of the positions can be succesful if the initial phases of the game are handled very agressively. By that I mean attacking anything you come in contact with. If you are the a militaristic civ you get Champions and they are very handy in clearing out the neighbors. If you aren't a militaristic civ, just expand as fast as you can and defend your cities as well as you can. The AI is generally not too warlike in the opening stages so a rapid ubndefended expansion is not necessarily a concern.

I love playing as Rome. If handled properly you can have all of Europe, minus England, to yourself well before 10AD. Just send out your champions right away and beat up on those Greeks right away before they get their Hoplite. If they get that you are gonna have to wait til you get knights to ensure victory, though Legionaires should be up to the task if you are willing to risk losing a few units in the process. The French don't stand a chance against your Champions and Legionaires. The Germans are a concern only because they too have Champions and so you have to be sure your cites are well defended or conversely make sure you can strike swiftly and decisively against any German cites and then force an unbalanced peace agreement on them once they are out of Europe.

 

[hbdragon88]

Maybe I should look on the site but...

Is the DyP whole scenario downloaded in one whole block? Or can it be downloaded in several bits? In a game-making program I downloaded, it was 10MB in size and I downloaded it in several bits.

 

[The Troquelet]

I was playing as France, on Monarch level. If you were referring to the Rome problem, the relatively poor start with too many plains and hills, and the farther distance to the Pyrenees by only two routes [since hills are impassable] makes it easy for France to gain at least 2 more cities than any other European nation, and since the average size by 1500 BC is 5 or 6 this is a big thing. However Isabella's Spain would probably balance things out and like you posted a human would make better use of the early Champion. But why not the Germans?

The good thing about France is that it is the perfect position for a builder civ. It is only ONE space away from the ideal empire center, [94-54], if you assume Europe to stretch from 82, 74 to 106,36.

There must be some reason for this because it's such an obvious mistake, but the nearest iron to Persia is on the Black Sea coast. Maybe there were no significant iron deposits in Persia, but how will they build their UU without iron? Saltpeter is even farther away, but they can easily conquer it IF they can build Immortals, so that's no problem.

 

[ChaoticWanderer]

polynesia should start more towards australia since the sandwich islands are so far away form any land its rediculas

also tibet???? ummmm a land of peace lovers that have never fought a war or ever tried to expand their kingdom? this makes no sense in such a militeristic and expansion based game

tibet could easily be replaced with another central asia clan.
alot of those. hittites where more of a force with conquering asia minor and inventing chariots

mali are good their are a few west africa nations that could be considered.

though wish for more better types of building styles for ancient africa and maybe celtics a more monolithic building style

 

[Isak]

CW:

I think you need to pick up a bit on Tibet's history

Here's a good place to start:

http://www.friends-of-tibet.org.nz/tibet.html

 

[mrgenie]

dear fellow players, I play mostly germany, Russia, USA, or the United Kingdom. the Tech-problem with the United Kingdom is very true, but therefore I suggest you give the united Kingdom also one city in Australia. they don't benifit militiraly of it because on a map of 180x180 australia and UK are so far away from each other, so no units can actually differ much in a ongoing war in europe, but at least the UK has the possibility to build some more cities and uphold some Tech along thench and germans. the other thing is russia, they have way too much possibilities to expand. When I play russia, no computer can beat me up not even in he deity mode. it's impossible to uphold against me if I have the possibility to expand (sorta, unlimited) The only thing I need to do is build Settler settlers settler and more settlers and then not very shortly after that building the first armys and I beat up the germans french romans and english in a couple of turns..so the russia thing is not very balanced. in my opinion! I dunno how to change this but I put on Kal-Els map the indians more north and the Mongols more into Western Siberia and my new game seems more balanced

 

[Kal-el]

Originally posted by hbdragon88
Maybe I should look on the site but...

Is the DyP whole scenario downloaded in one whole block? Or can it be downloaded in several bits? In a game-making program I downloaded, it was 10MB in size and I downloaded it in several bits.

Yep, One big file. Sorry for the inconvenience.