Double Your Pleasure

[Pirateiam]

Just ended my dyp game in the year 1300. I am still fiddling with trying to slow tech rate down. I was playing Kal Els map with all CIV's at regent level. I had changed the min tech research time to 6 instead of 3. Still did not slow it down (only the human player I think). By 1300 I was part way in Industial era. I also think that the minimal research slider only corresponds to the human player since I had the most powerful CIV with 70% of wonders and pretty much all the science wonders ( I was Greek) and I was always behind 3 to 4 techs and would have to buy them from the AI players. I only needed 30% science level to keep every tech to the minimal 6 turns. After trying many things I have come to the conclusion that all research techs need to be increased by at least 35%. What do the MOD designers think?
By the way the biggest reason this bothers me is the fact that you guys made all these cool new units but I never get to use half of them because they are obsolete too quickly .

 

[Isak]

Pirateiam: Could you possibly send me a few savegames - preferrably 3-4 spread out over the entire period. I need to check how the AI has performed in your games, to find out what it is we need to balance. TIA Just email them to me at isak@privat.dk

 

[Pirateiam]

Isak,

I just sent you a few saves. Unfortunately they were were all close to the same time. I will restart another game and save through out the game time (every 30 turns?) so you can look at how the MOD works over time. I will play at regent level as the greeks and will not war monger so as to let all the CIVs develop. I will go back to your origianl MOD without changing any of the sliders this time. I will try to complete the whole game then you can see how it goes through the whole game ( I do not know how many complete games you guys have tested with the new MOD patch)
I have lots of time to test this MOD (VACATION YEAH) so if you want me to try anything specific let me know.

 

[Morbius]

a constitutional monarchy might be a good idea.
i generally think that having more different forms of government would be nice. it might kinda add to strategy.

hmm, i just finished another game, and im a bit worried:

in no game ever did i see an AI controlled warship. not a single warship -- never ever.
can it be coincidence? i played games with several islands, but apart from some occasional transports, i didnt see any ships ... neither ancient ones nor modern ones.

 

[sebanaj]

and it crashed when starting the game, and also crashed the game every time i tried to start a new game, even with no scenario.


I had to reinstall .76 version of the mod to make it work.

 

[Kal-el]

we are currently discussing new forms of government that might be added to the mod. the problem comes in distinguishing them from one another.

not sure what to do about the lack of navy. we can't set the governor to build everything often. we are going to set the governors of all the civs to build 'build' improvements often in hopes that this will increase their industrial might which will in turn allow them to build more units and more improvements more quickly.

 

[Kal-el]

here is what i have put together based on the above discussion.

new form of default government: Chiefdom

3 new techs:
Urbanization
Caste System
Autocracy

Rename Divine Right Feudalism (Feudalism has been renamed Vassalage)

The rest you can see from the image

 

[Kal-el]

the above image is just a rough draft. the final screen will look fit in with the other images.

 

[beorhtwulf]

So has Monarchy (the govt) been eliminated, moved to the middle ages, or am I just not seeing it?

 

[Hawk2112]

I'm seeing here a lot of people saying that they are having tech too quickly. I am playing 256X256 maps, with 8 civs (well, only 4 now other than mine....hey I got hungry! ) on the lowest level, and I am in the year 1988 and I still haven't gotten nukes. I adjusted the map size, but not the tech number. Perhaps dialing that back a bit will help with tech too soon.

 

[Dingocat85]

Originally posted by Isak
Pirateiam: Could you possibly send me a few savegames - preferrably 3-4 spread out over the entire period. I need to check how the AI has performed in your games, to find out what it is we need to balance. TIA Just email them to me at isak@privat.dk

While we're on a roll here, I've got my own savegame (attatched to this post), whose 'AI's are rather odd. Two of them, at least - the Japanese, and the Zulu.

I have Rights of Passage with both the Japanese & Zulu. They're both polite with me.
I have left activated on this turn (1485 AD) two Spearmen:

Spearman One is sitting in Zulu territory. Spearman Two is activated on a Longboat, poised to enter Japanese territory. I just activated the Zulu-dwelling Spearman to show you where he was - just fortify him, he's cool where he is . But move the other Spearman into Japanese territory. While the AI's doing its turn, notice:
(1) the Spearman with the Zulu, is completely ignored.
(2) the Japanese send in a horse archer, & declare war.

The thing is, As long as no land units enter Japanese territory, theres no War.

Any ideas? Is this my fault, or the AI's?

Regards,
Dingocat85

PS: Post #950, Woohoo!

 

[Dingocat85]

Originally posted by Isak
Pirateiam: Could you possibly send me a few savegames - preferrably 3-4 spread out over the entire period. I need to check how the AI has performed in your games, to find out what it is we need to balance. TIA Just email them to me at isak@privat.dk

While we're on a roll here, I've got my own savegame (attatched to this post), whose 'AI's are rather odd. Two of them, at least - the Japanese, and the Zulu.

I have Rights of Passage with both the Japanese & Zulu. They're both polite with me.
I have left activated on this turn (1485 AD) two Spearmen:

Spearman One is sitting in Zulu territory. He's just activated so you can see where he is - he's cool where he is , just fortify him.
Spearman Two is activated on a Longboat, poised to enter Japanese territory. Move this guy into Japanese territory. While the AI's doing its turn, notice:
(1) the Spearman with the Zulu, is completely ignored.
(2) the Japanese send in a horse archer, & declare war on the other guy.

The thing is, As long as no land units enter Japanese territory, theres no War.

Any ideas? Is this my fault, or the AI's?

Regards,
Dingocat85

PS: Post #950, Woohoo!

 

[IXIRandyIXI]

Well, now that we're giving savegames to show our problems...

Here's a savegame at 30 AD (I was hoping for 10 AD, but wasn't watching the date. Oops!). This is on Kal-El's World Map v1.5.

For some strange reason, the Japanese are in Ireland. This seems to happen in 1/2 of my games. I have no idea what it is that is causing this. I might use that Reveal Map feature in Civ3MultiTool on a few World Map games just to watch what the Japanese are doing for this to happen.

Also, you can see that the main leading civs (me being one of them) are researching technologies a bit ahead of the historically accurate time period. I think the reasons for this are:

1) There's only one era of technologies to cover a large part of the game (Ancient Times), 4000 B.C. to about 1000 AD (is that right?). Is there some way to make the technologies just in the Ancient Times cost more, to slow it down a bit?
and 2) The difficulty I'm playing on. I play on Monarch difficulty, so the AI is getting more and larger cities faster (and therefore technology/gold) than the AI would on a lower difficulty.

The savegame is attached to this post.

Also, I believe one big problem in this mod is that there are so many buildings, which is good, but many of them cost so much that they take a very long time to build. I think that some building costs need to be lowered a bit, so you can keep up with the upgrades you're getting from technologies, and afford to stop building improvements/wonders and make an army.

I lowered the cost of the Obelisk to 2 (same as Harbor), which I think is fair. I also lowered the Barbarian Rider's stats to 3/3/2, so Pikemen have an even larger chance of defeating them. It just wasn't fair.

Edit: Oh yes, I forgot to add this! The Air Ship's defense should be lowered to 1, or even 0. If I remember correctly, the Air Ships had practically no way to defend themselves when up in the air (against other airplanes, that is), and were fairly easy targets for the airplanes of that time. And they weren't really used for bombing, mostly scouting.

 

[Kal-el]

beorhtwulf,

Monarchy is still available in the Ancient Age, just changed the name from Divine Right to Feudalism.

Despotism is now available with Autocracy.

 

[Morbius]

airships were used for bombing in WWI.
Paris suffered regular raids during March 1915, and London experienced its first attack in May 1915.

those zeppelins could take lots and lots of bullets before they were going down, so lowering the defense might not be a good idea.
they were pretty vulnerable to the heavier guns, firing from the ground, tho ... hmmmm

 

[IXIRandyIXI]

Okay, well, maybe they were used for bombing. It makes sense, they're high up in the air, somewhat hard to shoot down...

But I remember watching a TV show about Manfred von Richtofen, and when they talked about the airplanes running across enemy air ships, the air ships were pretty much easy targets for the airplanes (that is, if the airplane was armed). Anyways, I think the Defense attribute represents the unit's ability to fight off the enemy, and not just take a beating from it and survive. I can't really picture an air ship shooting down an air plane.

 

[Morbius]

actually, i was wondering whether the zeppelins had machin gun platforms or something ... i guess ive once read it somewhere, but im not sure anymore ...

 

[Pirateiam]

Well so far my test game has been pretty interesting. It is the year 1100 AD. I lead the scoring by 300 to 400 with Egypt right behind me ( I am Greek). Right now most of the Civs are about half way through the Industrial age. The only remaining lands to colonize are parts of the South American continent and Australia. One good thing that I have seen is for some reason this game I have seen much more AI fleet activity ( there are 4 of us from Europe all colonizing South America at the same time, which should get interesting soon). I had flagged this issue before and I think it has to do with the flax resource. Very few wars so far I have only been in two both started by the AI. I have tried to remain passive so as to watch the AI perform. The problem with too fast of tech really comes down to a missing time period. Why did Firaxis jump from the Middle ages to the Industrial age skipping one of the most important ages???? Ok I bet all of you guys can guess what it was…… Yep the Renaissance or the Enlightenment, the period that got us to the Industrial age. Does anyone know if the upcoming editor patch will allow us to add eras? If not I think DYP should really think about increasing the late ancient techs and early industrial age techs to compensate. Isak - I have over 20 saves so far and will hopefully finidh this game tonight and will e-mail you the saves and a list of bugs, typos, missing or incorrect wonder graphics etc…. I will then start a random map as you asked and try that. One thing would you guys mind if I edited a bunch of the techs to increase rate and try that after the random test? As to Japan having weird starting places that is a CPT issue. Most maps did not allow Japan the ability to start on there home Island so I do not think the CPT sets them up in the right place.

 

[Kal-el]

First a question for those of you who are still burning through the tech tree at an alarming rate: Has DyP at least slowed this down a little compared to the origianl game?

The ancient age seems to represent the Copper Age 5000 to 2000 BC, the Bronze Age 2000 BC to 0 AD and the Dark Ages 0 to 900 AD. Thats roughly 6000 years of history crammed into the first era.

The middle ages represents what we consider the middle ages 900-1350 AD, the Renaisance 1350 to 1600 AD and the Age of Enlightenment 1600 to 1800. So that's 900 years in the second era.

The Industrial age is roughly 1800 to 1950. Doing the math thats 150 years in the third era.

And then the modern era is supposed to go from 1950 to 2050. So 100 years.

From what i have heard, it will not be possible to add eras.

As for Japan, I have played as the Japanese and started on the Islands.

 

[Higher Game]

Obelisks have no maintenence. Free buildings should be very expensive, and wonders that grant free buildings (Big Ben, Sun Tzu, etc) should be very hard to obtain. I like the idea of requiring a resource to make a wonder, but it would be even better to require a certain # of resources.

For example, a normal civ could make a 6/2/2 knight but someone with 4 iron should make a 6/3/2 knight. Or you should require a lot of copper to make Big Ben. That kind of stuff.

Governments shouldn't be based off of what we have today. There should be 3 main types of governments. One should be military based, one should be building based, and another should be trade based. Governments that incorportate too much of one or a combination of them tend to be too powerful. Also, a government should never go obsolete. Social Democracy is comes after regular Democracy, but some would argue that ordinary Democracy is better. The early governments should be very different but the later ones shouldn't be worlds different from their earlier forms.

For example, Communism and Despotism shouldn't be much different. Democracy shouldn't be much different from Social Democracy. Monarchy should be between Despotism and Democracy. Theocracy is too similar to the overpowered Civ 2 Fundamentalism. Theocracy needs a change, really.

Also, DyP needs less freak units like the Crusader or the Cavalry. Industrial and Modern units have too many hps, and this makes combat very long. I do like watching the battles, though. So I think that units should have less hps and less cost, to reflect smaller groups of soldiers. As is, 1 Cavalry could represent 100,000 soldiers. That is why they should be cheaper and have less hps.

BTW, I just came back from a trip to north GA. I haven't played DyP for about a week, so be easy on me.