Double Your Pleasure

[Bamspeedy]

As for no cities on tundra, it is not realistic. As a Canadian, I can assure you that there are cities (admittedly small) up there (Whitehorse is actually pretty civilized), and as long as you are south (in the N. hemisphere) of the tree line, trees can be and are planted. Cities on the coast do even better - as they do in the real world. I would suggest that the most realistic view would be to make tundra tiles settleable(?), one food, no shields, not irrigatable, not forestable (since growth is very slow and trees pretty scrawny even S of the tree line), plus one shield for mining. This would result in small cities in the tundra near bonus/luxury/ strategic resources; much like real life.

Yes in reality, there are cities on tundra. But like Kal-El said, the AI plops tons of cities up there. No cities on tundra does actually help make colonies useful for once. Seeing AI colonies would be an aspect to this game I've only rarely seen.

Playing on really big world maps I would worry about me and the AI hitting 512 cities (the limit) before many of the pacific islands were settled, because the AI put all those cities up in the tundra. I think the forests serve a good enough purpose as you can just put forests wherever you want/think a city should be in the tundra areas. The human of course can build anywhere in tundra by first planting a forest, but the AI isn't that smart so you would have to place forests where you want to encourage the AI to build.

Perhaps a request should be made/given to Firaxis to allow us to differentiate between tundra forests and other forests when we select where resources should appear and where we can build. Tundra forests (which is usually pine forests) and regular forests are given as two different options when you are placing terrain on maps, but not a separate option when deciding attributes for 'forests'. Thus, if you randomize resources you get fruit, silks, spices, elephants, and olive oil up in the tundra regions! And then seals appear at the equator , but differentiating between an artic coastal square and an equator coast is impossible on civ3 maps, so that is asking too much I guess.

 

[Anglophile]

Bamspeedy, as you are from Wisconsin, I will bow to your superior knowledge re 'frozen tundra'. Yes, the DyP rules do prevent the AI from settling on tundra but then oversettling has not been a problem in my games, nor have I hit the 512 cap - although I must have got close a couple of times.

Kal-el, I very much like the idea of reducing the minimum research time as that will bring the guns or butter tension back to the game. Given the AI tech trading propensities, a lower limit gives a large, infrastructure-rich civ (like mine always are) a chance to get/stay ahead.

By the way, I 'dumbed down' Theocracy since my view is that any Theocracy worthy of its God will have low science and high corruption - and a lot of cheap wanna be martyrs (i.e. no war weariness and either cheap or free units (can't remember)). Good for war, useless otherwise. The AIs are hardly ever in it and don't stay in it once more advanced govs are available. Thus I haven't seen the self-strangulation by Theocracy by AIs in my games.

 

[cat98]

Holy Mother of God...

*drool*

 

[KDan]

Been playing a huge world map game, well into the middle ages, and I went and decreased the resource requirements for ships even more. Maybe it's just bad luck, but all I've seen on the seas apart from a couple of canoes is one japanese caravel (and I know the seas pretty well, as I'm playing the English).

Daniel

 

[Danners]

Last night, my Roman empire was stretching as far as the eye could see... all of Europe, Africa, Asia and beginning to build on South America.

Something odd happened, i had 3 cities on Greenland and an Iroquois Canoe comes up, unloads ONE swordsman, and declares war on me. He loses, obviously, and the Canoe then spends 20 turns to return home! Bit of a pointless exercise. I would have also thought the Canoe would have sunk in the sea!

 

[RobO]

Danners, the ways of the AI are not easily understood

Once you get the appropriate tech every ship you have can move through sea / ocean with impunity (there's one tech for each, I think it is Navigation and Magnetism).

 

[Danners]

Yeh, that's fine about the Canoe.. but it took them 20 turns (which turned out to be about an hour!) to move from one of their cities to a remote one of mine. Unload one soldier, who is killed and then return home.

Greenland is almost all mountains, except for some resources and tundra. It was just pointless. Why build a Canoe when you can build a Frigate or a Galleon?

See, if i was going to war.. i'd build loads of Legionary's and Galleons, and transport 4 Legionary's over to the coastline, land and attack, then bring more and more and more

I did this against the Aztecs, they didn't like me trying to plant a spy in their capital. So they declared war, but then my Mutual Protection pact was activated and they ended up fighting 3 others too! tsk tsk.

They lost 6 cities before they sought peace. Wahaha.

 

[dos]

Thats the problem with Civ War. When you climb in everyone else wants a part of the action. My Zulu civ was steaming ahead on a large continent with 9 other civs and everyone was peacefull.

So, I attack the Romans and bribe the Egyptians to join me. They
are on the other side of the continent so im not worried that thay wil take the spoils, only do some political legwork. Next round the Romans and Persians ally against the Eqyptians, The Eqyptians ally with the Aztecs agianst the Persians and they attack the Americans(?). Next round the Aztecs and the Irrique ally against the greeks, the greek and americans ally agianst the Egyptians and the Babylonians declare war agianst the Romans, Persians and Americans. Three rounds later and I'm still only fighting the Romans, but the AI's are all fighting on three fronts in an orgy of destruction with whole parts of the continent being wiped out.

A Thousand years later, this orgy continues with myself having wiped out the Romans and Babylonians, Egypt the Persians, America the Irrique and the Aztecs the Greeks. In all this time I was at war with only one civ, but the AI's just kept on declaring war, not building improvements and slaughtering/sacrifising citys.

Has the AI got war fever or is there something that can be edited?

On annother point. Dragoon/Cavalry is the first unit that has three movement points. In the orig. Civ 3 movement point was only reached with the tank. This allows you to launch a Blitzkrieg
war much earlier in the campaign playing DyP. Most enemy citys are 3 block apart. Conquer one and build a railroad to it in one turn. Your army can now reach the next city in the same turn. Conquer that, build a railroad and keep on going. With an army of 25 Cavalry and 100 labourers I was able to take the Babylonians 5 citys a turn. Cavalry attack (12) Rifleman defence (8)? Since the AI does not Upgrade as religously as I do mostly pikeman and bowman was used to defend.

I think this unbalances the game a bit, as Cavalry came into being at the same time as the machine gun. Maybe a better defensive in the same era could help with this? The infantry unit
is very close on the tech scale, and I go for it first, but the AI doesnt and first researches other all other techs to it , giving your Cav the edge for a long time.

Richard

 

[Dingocat85]

Someone delete this post..I can't, for some reason...

 

[Dingocat85]

The AI needs some sort of desire-to-upgrade-units tag ...Ah well, more to beg Firaxis for

On another note: The World Map needs some way to keep Europeans out of Asia, and vice versa. Attatched is a screenshot image I took in 650 BC, as the Japanese; although not too good quality, you can see that the Indians have made contact with everyone (excluding the New-world Civs, of course)

That Worldmap game had a few barbarian camps added into Central Asia in that World Map game, but it looks like it didn't slow down AI contact at all

I suggest two changes:
1) Extend Asia back to its original size..Europe and Asia need their breathing space..to compensate for the additional 'Asian advantage' this makes, the re-added terrain should mostly be desert/mountain

2) LOAD central Asia with Barbarian Camps (at least 3x more), and set the Barbarian activity level to Roaming/Restless. This should make traipsing across Asia with a Ranger all but impossible, and would require some military action on the Civ's part, to make it across.

Both these changes reflect why Europe and Asia historically were separate for so long: Not only was the distance between them extensive, but it was almost guaranteed that you'd be assaulted by barbarians.. Only when Europe was in a relative state of peace, and had sufficient military prowess to beat back the barbarian hordes, was contact with Asia possible

 

[thestonesfan]

Is monkeying with the tech tree a huge hassle? Does the game automatically draw the squares and arrows for you? I've been thinking about trying to add a few techs.

 

[RobO]

Originally posted by thestonesfan
Is monkeying with the tech tree a huge hassle? Does the game automatically draw the squares and arrows for you? I've been thinking about trying to add a few techs.

It's a major p.i.t.a.

No, the game does not draw the arrows for you. It used to do so, but Firaxis took that out with a patch a good while ago.

You'll have to update the science advisr screen yourself. The position of the box and dependencies have to be specified in the editor, and the size of the box is specified somewhere else - I'm not sure where.

Kal-el and Isak does that part of the editing for DyP - Thank God

 

[Anglophile]

The AI not upgrading obsolete units is a problem. They seem fine about building whatever the best offensive/defensive units are at a given time, but never seem to upgrade. I wonder if this is because they never have any money, mostly I presume because they use their entire income stream to buy techs from each other.

I have also been thinking about how to get them to build the later naval units. DyP has the ability to build these units tied to a bunch of strategic resources and this seems to 'discourage' the AI. Perhaps the strategic resources could be linked to buildings, e.g. shipyard, naval shipyard, whatever, instead. These buildings would have the coastal flag and would provide production bonuses. Of course, the AI wouldn't build them but then on the high levels, they don't really need production bonuses, just some sort of inclination to build more modern (than canoes) ships. As the English, it is only right that I rule the waves, but sending the occasional French fleet to the bottom of the sea would make that much more satisfying.

One final point/question, actually series of questions. It seems to me that adding a bunch of bonus resources - as I had in my modded version of the LWC and DyP has - doesn't seem to greatly increase the total number which appear, i.e. you get more variety, not more resources. So I did two things, I made all bonus resources more valuable by upping the food and/or shield value by 1 to 'encourage' the AI to use them. I recognize that this is somewhat contrary to the design philosophy of DyP which wants to slow early expansion. However, on the size of map I play, early expansion is a requirement not a problem. This seems to have worked and the AI has expanded more vigorously than in earlier runs at DyP. Of course, I am also playing a later version of DyP so my observation is statistically meaningless (n=1 and no baseline). Nevertheless, it sped up my expansion so I will keep it. The other thing I changed was to make cows and sheep strategic resources so I could control (increase) their appearance rate, which I dialed up to 700 or maybe 900. I also changed the names of a couple of the DyP added improvements and tied them to sheep and cows. The woolshed added one content person (nice warm sweaters in those bitter northern nights) and tannery was tied to some early units (leather armor). The last bits were floss, the point was to generate more bonus resources to accelerate early expansion, after the enabling techs are discovered and this worked. So my questions are:

- is my observation that more bonus resources doesn't affect the quantity which appear correct?
- is there any limit on the total number of resources?
- is there still a limit of 8 on luxury resources?
- is there any limit on the number of strategic resources?
- is there any chance that the editor will ever allow the creation of new terrain types so that we can keep the elephants in the tropics and walruses in the polar regions?

 

[thestonesfan]

I read a couple tutorials about the tech tree, and it does sound like a royal pain. I'm going to refrain from adding any, but I think I'll try renaming and moving some, like making a pretty worthless tech like Free Artistry into Tactics or Leadership, to stretch out the early gunpowder advances. Basically, I want to use Dark Sheer's Musket Infantry and Smoking Mirror's Flintlock Rifleman.

 

[canabliss]

some ideas for future releases...

carriers.. having a defense of 20 while battleships have a 16 means that if your stack of navy units is attacked, the first to defend is the carrier. since battleships have such a high attack rate they almost always will kill a carrier and leave the escort ships untouched. i changed my game to give carriers a defense of 12 and changed battleships to a/d 30/20. this way if you are attacked the big ships will fight it out first and also it means escorts for carriers are critical.

apc..... i havent seen the ai use one of these yet, so i took them and trucks out. if i could i would remove mech infantry and have only apc with an a/d of 1/22, but since the ai can figure them out they become a human unit only( but great for mp )

theocracy.... no matter what i do to try to keep the ai from going to and staying in theocracy, the no maintnace flag intices them too much and they almost always end up there.im thinking about taking it out too .

east india company.... not sure you get the commerce bonus when building this wonder, i think that it only increases movement but have to test it out again (right as i built it i got attacked and sidetracked from my testing)

in my latest game (DyP world map ) i flaged the ai civs to build workers, air and navy units often, and have seen aztec battleships in my waters. it has also allowed the ai to build some railroads which i havent seen much before( maybe because of the theocracy worker rate). its an emperor game and in the modern age my biggest, best wonder city(american comm. and indus.) is still only half the culture of the #5 city on the top 5 screen. the french (as indus. and expan.) built the first 20 wonders in the game and have built alot of culture stuff throughout there empire, where egypts capitol has built a library and a couple of small wonders. i like this because france was surrounded and need culture to keep there ground and they built it, where egypt didnt have close neighbors and didnt need it, but i still havent caught up to egypt in military strength.

i'll have a save game for you soon with most of these changes in it soon and ill post it here so you can see the ai devolpment.

 

[Anglophile]

One further thought on encouraging the AI to build more modern naval units; if you unflag the ocean movement benefit from navigation/magnetism, would that cause the AI to build more modern ships or even, shock/disbelief, upgrade old ones?

 

[Kal-el]

WOW!!! Lots of comments, and me with so little time. I will try and take them in reverse order.

Anglophile 1: Removing the ocean movement flag will also prevent trade over oceans. For some inexplicable reason the trade over sea and trade over ocean flag are tied to the abiltiy to freely cross those terrains.

Canabliss: Sorry I can't respond to all your suggestions right now.

theStonesfan: I am redoing the entire tech tree, with 44 techs in each era. I already had a place for Dark Sheer's Musketman and have made a place for SmokingMirrors Infantryman. I have also included SM's Cuiraisser.

Anglophile 2:
a)I believe you are correct
b)I think so, but don't know what that number is
c)no
d)not that I am aware of
e)not that I am aware of

The most any unit is tied to is 2 resources. The AI did not have a problem with that number before, I don't know why it would have difficulties with it now.

Dingocat85: Stretching Asia Back to its Original size!?!?! You act as if the editor is some sort of paint program that I can just highlight an area a pull it!!! If only that were the case. I could definitely throw in some more Barbarians and increase the size of the desert and mountain range, but here is a possible scenario where that wouldn't matter.

All Civs in the game:
Japan makes contact with China
China makes contact with India
India makes contact with Persia
Persia makes contact with Babylon
Babylon makes contact with Egypt, Greece
Egypt makes contact with Zulus
Greece makes contact with Rome, Germany, France, Russia
France makes contact with England

Everybody trades contact and maps

Everybody knows everybody and pretty darn quickly too. No amount of barbarians are going to stop that from happening.

What I am doing to resolve this issue, and what has already been implented in the version we are working on, we're one step ahead of you on this issue, is pushing back map trading to Navigation and Contact trading to IIRC Nationalism. That ought to solve some of the problems with that issue.

dos: I don't know what to tell you about the Cavalry Blitz issue except that I have once again gone through and rebalanced the A/D/Ms of the units in an attempt to strengthen the defenders against such attacks. I don't want to tell the AI to build defenders often as that might cause them to not build improvements. The governor issue is one that requires a lot of work.

Canabliss, I will try and get to your suggestions later. If I haven't by next week (we are really busy with PtW) then post a link to that post and remind me.

 

[thestonesfan]

Actually, Cavalry had a movement of 3 in the original game, but they could not blitz. Personally, I thought it was too much. I didn't like how you could build loads of cavalry and run over everything, when in history it was always the infantry that did the bulk of the fighting. I mean, did anyone ever use infantry for an offensive in the game? I never did. Did Napoleon or Lee? I'd say so!

I'm talking about the original version here, not DYP.

Land sakes...44 techs per era! I don't envy that job.

 

[Bamspeedy]

I am redoing the entire tech tree, with 44 techs in each era.

Holy Cow! Now I understand why you want to lower the minimum # of turns/tech to 1 or 2.

- is my observation that more bonus resources doesn't affect the quantity which appear correct?

One way to check this out is to use the C3MT saved game editor. You can get map statistics that show how many of each resource is on a given map by loading a save. One save that I just loaded up has 34 for every single bonus resource (but I don't remember who's map it was). I haven't added any bonus resources, but you could use that tool to check how many of each resource you have before and after adding in extra bonus resources.

Likewise, you could use it to check to see if it actually gives more on bigger maps (comparing a 180 X 180 map to a 256 X 256 map, for example). It is possible that it only allocates so many for a 'huge' map, not taking into account the size differences between one huge map and another. Thus, a very large map may seem bare when randomly placing resources.

 

[Kal-el]

Bamspeedy,

Could you do that test, please?