Enhanced Golden Age

[Gangler]

This mod is an effort to alleviate the difficulty in achieving "natural" golden ages as the game progresses. Golden age progress is normally tied to happiness- a number that drops dramatically as a civilization expands, and does not naturally rise over time to match the increasing golden age threshold.

The mod adds two further sensible factors to golden age progress: culture and great person births. These factors were chosen because they can be intentionally developed over time and provide consistent, scaling golden age progress to help keep pace with the threshold.

The multipliers are in the defines for easy swapping:

Spoiler :

CULTURE_GOLDEN_AGE_PROGRESS_MULTIPLIER=1
GREAT_PERSON_GOLDEN_AGE_PROGRESS=15

I don't think the numbers are really balanced yet (especially for great people, which slow down as more are produced and so might need to scale with the ages). In addition, civs with golden age bonuses, great person bonuses, or culture bonuses may feel a little powerful.

Also, I'm pleased to note that this mod marks the first releasable modcomp since I initially started tinkering with CiV modding last weekend.

Happy (and Cultured, and Great Personful) Golden Ages!

Edit: Oh, and it's available via ModBuddy.

 

[xxhe]

Hi Gangler:
It's an interesting idea! I understand the part of culture, but could you explain a bit into how great people affect gold age?

 

[skodkim]

Hi

I really like the idea that Golden Ages not only depend on Happiness.

Gave the mod a try though and to me it seems greatly imbalanced right now. I'm in turn 191 and just had my fourth goden age! Some times it seems that I go from one to another in just a few turns. It's way too much.

And yeah: Pretty happy empire and ok culture output through City States.

Just thought I'd give some input. Would love to see this developed!

\Skodkim

 

[Gangler]

Gave the mod a try though and to me it seems greatly imbalanced right now. I'm in turn 191 and just had my fourth goden age! Some times it seems that I go from one to another in just a few turns. It's way too much.

Yeah, I actually tested it before I posted it to modbuddy, but never tried too hard to break it- I did a culture-heavy Piety Persia and literally had a never-ending golden age. Happily, I put the numbers in a define that is easy to change- I cut the culture bonus to golden age progression in half*.

Additionally, there was (and still is) an undocumented tweak that makes golden ages cost more as you gain more cities, similar to the cost increase for social policies (to account for how much culture you can pump out with new cities). I thought about upping this, but I'm leery of doing so as the increase already seems steep.

could you explain a bit into how great people affect gold age?

It's actually a very hard boost to notice, even when you're looking for it- it's a small boost to the golden age progress meter when any great person is born (however, it seems to be broken for Babylon's free great person, and may be broken for great people donated by city states). Right now it is 15 points, flat, but I was incredibly happy with this very quickly and changed it* to a flat 10% of the threshold for your next golden age (i.e. if you are at 500/1500, this will give you a boost of 10% of 1500 or 150, bringing you to 650/1500). Since great people have higher and higher thresholds for birth as more are born, I decided this was a fairer increase, but I don't know how to test this in a "try to break it" way.

*These changes are local and not yet posted to ModBuddy; I'll post the update soon(TM).

 

[killmeplease]

How exactly the culture modifier is calculated and applied?

 

[DisAstro]

As I understand it, currently culture is converted to gold age in a 1 to 1 ratio. Maybe this should be something like 1 gold age to 15 culture. Culture is just too common. Another possibility is the introduction of gold age per turn cap, possibily based on population size. Right now it's very imbalanced.

 

[Gangler]

Yes, on all counts. I need to run my cultural Piety Persia test to try to break something that I think is probably too low, like the aforementioned 1/15... but won't have the time for a couple days.

 

[Gangler]

Finally found a formula I'm happy (ish) with and uploaded a new version of this to ModBuddy. The new formula:

Spoiler :

f(c) = 3 * SQRT(c) - 2

f(1) = 1 --bonus at game start
f(4) = 4 --France with a monument in their first city
f(9) = 7 --any civ with fast Stonehenge
f(100) = 28 --starting to pump culture
f(400) = 58 --serious business (I think)

The curve is very steep, but not punishingly so, I don't think, and the bonus is noticeable for culture-focused civilizations.

Also, Great People will have the aforementioned boost of giving 10% of the current threshold as bonus progress.

Hope it's safer to use now.