Gedemon's Civilization, development thread

[dunkleosteus]

I may be out of the loop here, but have districts (aside from the harbor) been removed entirely?

 

[Gedemon]

Not all, but Science, Culture, Religious and Entertainment districts have been removed, and the others are unlocked at later techs than in the base game.

 

[heinous_hat]

Playing a bit now with this past week's updates...

- Economy is no longer a spiraling whirlpool of debt, so long as you stay out of prolonged conflict. Having to supply a large army is an expensive prospect though, as it should be. I went from a big surplus into deficit spending pretty quickly, once I had to start cranking out units. Balance feels much better here, through one game at least.

- AI is building units now. It has little inclination towards combined arms, but this is still an improvement. Here's Gandhi employing a classic trebuchet defense...

Those things are tougher than you'd imagine. I managed to cut a hole down the middle, but couldn't do anything inside his territory due to the lack of supply. Do you plan to implement military tile shifting, like in the civ5 mod? Without taking a city, you can't get very far . Anyway, I'm curious to check Gandhi's available materials here, to see whether that's skewing his unit availability.

- Social stratification seems to be working. As my total population grew, and I ran short on luxuries, upper class pop noticeably declined.

- AI doesn't like to build housing very much, and when it does it's limited to upper class... I'm guessing because of the +. I don't think this was a problem in some of the older mod versions, but it needs encouragement. AI city population is generally low, as a result.

- Only one unit desync so far, and that resolved itself. No problems with cities, as far as I can tell.

- I didn't try with this game, but I seem to be able to play with all DLC packages except for Khmer/Indonesia. That one causes an eventual CTD, with nothing obvious in the logs. Searching for clues...

 

[Gedemon]

Thanx for the report.

And frontlines are planned, yes

 

[Gedemon]

Small update

- lower Combat Strength bonuses from "Organization Level" and "Strength in Numbers" promotions
- can't build adjacent Forts (less AI spamming)
- reintroduce previous Spy missions (Siphon Funds and Steal Tech Boost) on City Center
- update tables for Naval Equipment

 

[Gedemon]

Small update, I'm still mid-work for the code of the upgrade mechanism for the naval units, so the mod is surely broken for those units (except Galley/Trireme)

- bug fix : show correct values in production tooltip when there is enough reserved resource/equipment of one type before the end of the production
- bug fix : a city should no more reserve more resource/equipment than necessary when producing units/buildings

On a different subject, I need your feedback on the second draft for Civilization Selection & Dynamic History:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...spawning-dates-civil-wars-revolutions.624711/

 

[Gedemon]

Update on gitHub, with an important change in the way the mod is released, I'm now using an independent "Assets Mod" to keep the upload/download of the main mod as small as possible.

I've merged MOAR Units, Warfare Expanded and R.E.D. Modpack in the Assets Mod, and I'll merge other assets when required, so no other mod than the base mod and the assets mod will be needed

See installation instruction here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/installation-instructions.630069/

- move all assets to a mandatory external mod (easier to maintain on my side)
- add Modern Infantry units, using Assault Rifles

 

[Gedemon]

Small update:

- bug fix: the pathfinder wasn't able to find coastal routes

 

[Gedemon]

small update:

- bug fix: allow shipyard in coastal cities only

 

[Gedemon]

Update:

- add AntiPersonnel, PersonnelArmor, AntiPersonnelArmor, IgnorePersonnelArmor, VehicleArmor, AntiVehicleArmor, IgnoreVehicleArmor to the equipment table
- add current AntiPersonnel(AP), PersonnelArmor(ARM), AntiPersonnelArmor(AARM), IgnorePersonnelArmor(IARM) values in unit's flag
- use AntiPersonnel and PersonnelArmor values to resolve personnel casualties (death ratio) after combat
- raise captured equipment ratio from combat
- bug fix: use same transfer ratio for personnel and equipment for units healing (prevent medieval horseman -> knight -> medieval horseman loop)
- bug fix: make sure to request enough equipment in reserve (fix Quadrireme unit's not requiring the second ship for healing)
- add Tercio unit (maybe still buggy)

 

[washy]

I`ve played till renaissance, and notice that the AI is unable to grow big cities, maybe because the don`t make the new buildings to use all the new food resources, I mod your mod to add some wheat to the plains and grass to see if they grow better, i think they`re still buildings granarys and water mills

It`s `posible to make the resources appear in the improvements, something like this?
<ImprovementsResourcesProduced>
<Row ImprovementsType="IMPROVEMENT_FARM" ResourceType="RESOURCE_WHEAT" NumPerFeature="4"/>
</ImprovementsResourcesProduced>

Also the AI mostly build trebuchets and more trebuchets

I haven`t had crashes, but some units deshyncorization

Thank you for the mod, sorry for the rusty english

 

[heinous_hat]

@washy

In my recent games, AI population growth is stunted by lack of housing... it only builds 'upper class'. Check the AI city tooltips for building lists.

Also, yes... trebuchets seem to be popular

 

[heinous_hat]

In a quick experiment regarding the lack of AI housing, I put a flat +3 gold yield on all housing types through medieval. That made housing very common, perhaps to the degree that it crowded out development of infrastructure that provides resource -> food conversion. Critical food resource tiles also went unimproved (maybe due to fewer builders). So the result here was still low populations, but with plenty of housing space.

I'll try lowering the yield to strike a balance next time. I would guess it's better to apply pseudo-yields and weighting, but I'm not familiar with the usage.

EDIT: Question with luxury consumption by upper class population... does that remove the resource from stock (i.e. some luxury types won't be converted to food), or is it a parallel usage?

 

[heinous_hat]

Continuing the above experiment, I tried some different yields for housing levels to coax AI players into building more effectively. It worked pretty well, producing a good mix of housing types and better population numbers (7-12) by the industrial period. This was only slightly worse than my own cities @ Prince difficulty. Here's the recent data set I used... I only went as far as ancient and medieval.

Spoiler housing yield changes :

<Row BuildingType="BUILDING_ANCIENT_UPPER_HOUSING_1" YieldType="YIELD_GOLD" YieldChange="2"/>
<Row BuildingType="BUILDING_ANCIENT_UPPER_HOUSING_2" YieldType="YIELD_GOLD" YieldChange="2"/>
<Row BuildingType="BUILDING_ANCIENT_UPPER_HOUSING_3" YieldType="YIELD_GOLD" YieldChange="3"/>

<Row BuildingType="BUILDING_ANCIENT_MIDDLE_HOUSING_1" YieldType="YIELD_GOLD" YieldChange="3"/>
<Row BuildingType="BUILDING_ANCIENT_MIDDLE_HOUSING_2" YieldType="YIELD_GOLD" YieldChange="2"/>
<Row BuildingType="BUILDING_ANCIENT_MIDDLE_HOUSING_3" YieldType="YIELD_GOLD" YieldChange="1"/>

<Row BuildingType="BUILDING_ANCIENT_LOWER_HOUSING_1" YieldType="YIELD_GOLD" YieldChange="3"/>
<Row BuildingType="BUILDING_ANCIENT_LOWER_HOUSING_2" YieldType="YIELD_GOLD" YieldChange="2"/>
<Row BuildingType="BUILDING_ANCIENT_LOWER_HOUSING_3" YieldType="YIELD_GOLD" YieldChange="1"/>

<Row BuildingType="BUILDING_MEDIEVAL_UPPER_HOUSING_1" YieldType="YIELD_GOLD" YieldChange="2"/>
<Row BuildingType="BUILDING_MEDIEVAL_UPPER_HOUSING_2" YieldType="YIELD_GOLD" YieldChange="2"/>

<Row BuildingType="BUILDING_MEDIEVAL_MIDDLE_HOUSING_1" YieldType="YIELD_GOLD" YieldChange="2"/>
<Row BuildingType="BUILDING_MEDIEVAL_MIDDLE_HOUSING_2" YieldType="YIELD_GOLD" YieldChange="2"/>

<Row BuildingType="BUILDING_MEDIEVAL_LOWER_HOUSING_1" YieldType="YIELD_GOLD" YieldChange="3"/>
<Row BuildingType="BUILDING_MEDIEVAL_LOWER_HOUSING_2" YieldType="YIELD_GOLD" YieldChange="2"/>

The general idea was to make lower and middle types more attractive than upper in the early going. This seemed to get them "over the hump" as far as providing adequate population growth to maintain production. Subsequently, other building (non-housing) and unit construction benefited. AI players also did better at improving critical food resource tiles, though I assume just by virtue of having more builders available. Food tiles could use some sort of "builder bait", I think. Or perhaps a small yield of food resources from regular grassland or plains tiles would work... AI builds a lot of farms with only marginal benefit.

Food specialty buildings with a base yield also seem to get built more often than those without (e.g. butcher and fruit market are not common). I imagine markets help quite a bit, where they aren't lucky with fish or rice/wheat.

Anyway, this kept my game interesting enough to play into the later stages, while observing some of the other mechanics like supply, combat etc.

 

[washy]

Im working on an idea using the religion system for adding unique units and civ abilities.
Every faith yield is now an ethnicity or nationality point, so your palace generate 2 per turn, like at turn 20 you found the pantheon, its gona be your civ first attribute, then like civ V at certain amount of faith you get a great citizen that found your ethnicity- nationality, and you can choose two unique building -unit - improvement and an attribute too.
With the new nationality point you get you can: buy apostols(great citizens) to Evangelize Belief and get more atributtes for your civ, or more modern unique units,
also to buy Mayors( a resource), that alow you to create the Town, a district like Neighborhood, it require 1 major, generate 1 of each housing and get adjacency bonus +1 food for farm or coast +1 production for mines and lumbermills, +1 gold for river or harbour, and add 1 gold 1 food and production for the trade routes to the city, it could not be build next to another or to the city center. Also the idea is you can build some improvement to the town, town market, administartion, etc

The nationality. ethnicity measure the cohesion of your empire,and send pressure like religion to other citys, every city you found get the "religion", like religious settler mod, and you can get bounus for each citizen folowing you nationality

 

[Gedemon]

EDIT: Question with luxury consumption by upper class population... does that remove the resource from stock (i.e. some luxury types won't be converted to food), or is it a parallel usage?

Yes, there used, but I don't remember which usage come first, eating maybe, but it's a kind of placeholder anyway.

 

[heinous_hat]

Yes, there used, but I don't remember which usage come first, eating maybe, but it's a kind of placeholder anyway.

Ok, thanks. My thinking was that since AI players were prioritizing upper class housing, the resource drain from luxury conversion might contribute to lack of food and low populations. But as it turns out, they don't really build fruit market anyway, so moot point... at least early in the game.

I went ahead with another experiment, giving some mixed yields to housing instead of just multiples of gold, and again saw good results. I assigned single yields of gold and culture to upper class, gold and production to middle class, and food and production to lower class... just a flat +1 across all eras. I wanted to see how well the AI valued these, and keep from adding too much of any single yield, since there's a lot of housing instances. They built all of the variations, and not to the exclusion of other important buildings.

In game, I found the small yield bumps from housing added a little granularity, but were mostly low impact. Culture from upper class housing was most interesting, since that contributes directly to border growth and conflict, and it seems thematic.

 

[Knasp]

I've been trying out a couple of games and I've noted some things:

• It's incredibly difficult to build a Galley. I think it has to do with the fact that Wood is a very limited resource, that is used for multiple purposes. All wood that the city produces is spent on making Hulls and/or Materiel and/or traded to other cities. The Galley unit needs Personnel, Hull, Wood and Materiel. That's 3/4 wood, (ignoring Stonemason for a sec). My cities hardly stock any wood, since it is all spent making materiel. First I made sure that my coastal city was working all the (2) wood/rainforest tiles it could. When that didn't work, I ordered my other 2 cities to only work forest tiles (and not to build anything requiring materiel). Finally, wood started to be traded with the coastal city, though production efficiency was quite low. I had everything needed except the "Wood". If I recall correctly though, I think I had a similar problem when I was lacking the Galley resource (in stock). Of course, I was running an enormous debt the entire time, in case that makes a difference.
  
  An easy solution would be to just remove the wood requirement for all units. Or make the city prioritise the needs of the current production over the Shipyard's and Carpenter's (and other buildings/cities/units) demands.
  For e.g:
  1. Wood for current production
  2. Resource for current production (requiring wood)
  3. Materiel for current production (requiring wood)
  4. Wood for other stuff
  Another solution would be to increase wood production by a huge amount.

• Another wood issue concerns trying to build chariots after researching Catapults. The city in question refused to make any Chariots (with the Stables), even when the city was currently trying to build a Chariot unit. Instead it produced catapults from the Carpenter building, materiel and other stuff.

• Coastal cities don't gather any food/fish/crabs from coastal tiles outside my borders anymore. They only gather Fish/Crab resources once the tile is worked, which can only be done after borders have grown to include the tile.

• Having to wait for the Monument building to grow the city and wish that it aquires the tile you want is tedious, especially when it comes to naval resources and getting Horses/Iron etc. I think adding back the possibility of purchasing tiles would be helpful at the moment, though that would require fixing the runaway debt issue (to afford the tiles).

• I think it would be a good idea to reduce the build time (production cost) for all buildings by 50% and units by 50-25% on Standard speed. Reducing building times makes sense since there are now so many more buildings, for just the early game, and you don't have time to develop your cities. The slow build times combined with the slow and uncontrolled cultural border growth, means that building Settlers is the only way to efficiently grow your empire and acquire strategic resources. I tried playing on Online/Quick (which was better) and I also tried to editing the "Buildings.xml" to cut the building times by 75%, which was a bit too much.

• It's a bit strange that copper and iron can be acquired from most tiles, even tiles without those specific resources or mine improvements. I've had a hard time getting the wood needed for chariots/ships but it's been relatively easy to aquire copper and/or iron. Same goes for the Wheat resource, which is plentiful everywhere.

• The automatic gathering of resources and the automatic conversion of those into materiel and stuff, doesn't seem like an ideal solution. The player should be allowed to choose what to produce, i.e. how the resources are spent, to a greater degree than what is currently possible. You want to be able to stock up on resources to use them for a specific purpose, or at the very least, the city should always prioritise its current production above other endevours. Maybe you could add a city project called "Prioritise production for export" to have the city produce stuff to send and trade with other cities.

• The upgrade function for units should count all swords combined when determining unit type. For e.g. I had a Spearmen unit with 48% spears and a combined 52% Iron and Bronze swords.

• Only bug I encountered was that Rice, Food and Banana icons (maybe more?) were sometimes missing in the cities mouse-over boxes. Though weirdly enough, the icons were only missing in some of the cities, while other cities' boxes showed the icons.

• Last and least, in the city's detailed resource tab there's a spelling error. In the section "Resources Demand", if you hover over the "U", enemy is spelt "ennemy".

 

[Gedemon]

Ok, thanks. My thinking was that since AI players were prioritizing upper class housing, the resource drain from luxury conversion might contribute to lack of food and low populations. But as it turns out, they don't really build fruit market anyway, so moot point... at least early in the game.

I went ahead with another experiment, giving some mixed yields to housing instead of just multiples of gold, and again saw good results. I assigned single yields of gold and culture to upper class, gold and production to middle class, and food and production to lower class... just a flat +1 across all eras. I wanted to see how well the AI valued these, and keep from adding too much of any single yield, since there's a lot of housing instances. They built all of the variations, and not to the exclusion of other important buildings.

In game, I found the small yield bumps from housing added a little granularity, but were mostly low impact. Culture from upper class housing was most interesting, since that contributes directly to border growth and conflict, and it seems thematic.

Thanks, please post the updated code, I'll add it.

• Coastal cities don't gather any food/fish/crabs from coastal tiles outside my borders anymore. They only gather Fish/Crab resources once the tile is worked, which can only be done after borders have grown to include the tile.

• Having to wait for the Monument building to grow the city and wish that it aquires the tile you want is tedious, especially when it comes to naval resources and getting Horses/Iron etc. I think adding back the possibility of purchasing tiles would be helpful at the moment, though that would require fixing the runaway debt issue (to afford the tiles).

• The upgrade function for untis should count all swords combined when determining unit type. For e.g. I had a Spearmen unit with 48% spears and a combined 52% Iron and Bronze swords.

Thanks for the detailed reports, a lot of points I agree on, so I just keep the one that I'd like to clarify first

Coastal cities should gather resources from outside your borders, the border on sea is a placeholder until I found a better solution for the harbor district placement, it can be removed any time, so the collection outside border must work (if it doesn't, it's a bug). The UI change to show which sea resources are linked to a city is nearly the top of the to do list BTW.

Tiles ownership will be guided by population migration, I do not plan to make a placeholder until then, as I'd like to work on population ASAP.

Units should already count all swords combined, if not it's another bug, I'd like a screenshot.

 

[Knasp]

Tiles ownership will be guided by population migration, I do not plan to make a placeholder until then, as I'd like to work on population ASAP.

Is it possible to change how far apart cities have to be? If the minimum distance can be lowered to just 2 tiles, then you could quickly build another settler and put them on the strategic resource. It's annoying to be blocked from using the tile, simply because the tile happens to be too close to found a new city, but too far off to be reached in the near future.

Or if there was some other way you could direct which tile to acquire, but I guess that would take UI coding? So what about temporary tile ownership? Whenever one of your military units is "Fortified" on a tile adjacent to one of you currently controlled tiles, you gain ownership of the tile (military occupation). But if the unit stops its Fortified stance, ownership is lost.
Alternatively, is it possible to give a unit the ability to expand borders? Like a culture bomb, or an action that can only be taken when standing on a border adjacent tile?