General discussion for civics

[Thunderbrd]

BtW the GW which is supposed to let you do both does not work.

Great wonder that is supposed to let you what? What's not working?

I get the rest of your point and agree that it doesn't need to be a tag exclusive to one civic category. Still, I think no matter where it is it needs to be well justified to be there.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

There is a Great Wonder that lets your city grow when you are building units with the food option active. Basically I think it is supposed to in essence "double" your food yield by having your food yield count both towards the cost of the unit and go into the grainery at the same time. That is, if you have a total food yield in a city of +20 you get that +20 contributing to the building of the unit and +20 in your store. It is supposed to only happen when you are building units with (and ). I can't remember which one it is, perhaps "The Great Zimbabwe".

 

[Thunderbrd]

There is a Great Wonder that lets your city grow when you are building units with the food option active. Basically I think it is supposed to in essence "double" your food yield by having your food yield count both towards the cost of the unit and go into the grainery at the same time. That is, if you have a total food yield in a city of +20 you get that +20 contributing to the building of the unit and +20 in your store. It is supposed to only happen when you are building units with (and ). I can't remember which one it is, perhaps "The Great Zimbabwe".

And it's not working huh? Maybe I can do something about that.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Committed more Civic tweaks to these 4 Civic categories up to the Information Era: Gov't, Rule, Power, and Society.

As I stated in the SVN change log thread I will not be doing any real tweaks to pepper2000's Civics he has added to the late Eras. Reason is simple, not enough game play feedback to even consider making any changes to them. Though I may have changed the Upkeep Cost on 1 or 2 that are in the Information Era. Making any Civic have Low or Extreme Upkeep at that stage of the Game can be very influential on the "Too Much Gold" balance issue. I prefer the Upkeep costs to mirror the age at this time. Otherwise many Civics will be skipped entirely or under valued. Atomic and Information Era Civics should be in the High Upkeep range as these 2 Eras represent the Old Modern Era. Keeping all Civics, opened in these Eras, in this upkeep range helps to keep the glut of Gold from being a completely out of control runaway train. Though the evidence seen so far may say that it already is, from other factors of mod gameplay. At least Civic Upkeep will Not be a large contributor to this problem.

 

[raxo2222]

Committed more Civic tweaks to these 4 Civic categories up to the Information Era: Gov't, Rule, Power, and Society.

As I stated in the SVN change log thread I will not be doing any real tweaks to pepper2000's Civics he has added to the late Eras. Reason is simple, not enough game play feedback to even consider making any changes to them. Though I may have changed the Upkeep Cost on 1 or 2 that are in the Information Era. Making any Civic have Low or Extreme Upkeep at that stage of the Game can be very influential on the "Too Much Gold" balance issue. I prefer the Upkeep costs to mirror the age at this time. Otherwise many Civics will be skipped entirely or under valued. Atomic and Information Era Civics should be in the High Upkeep range as these 2 Eras represent the Old Modern Era. Keeping all Civics, opened in these Eras, in this upkeep range helps to keep the glut of Gold from being a completely out of control runaway train. Though the evidence seen so far may say that it already is, from other factors of mod gameplay. At least Civic Upkeep will Not be a large contributor to this problem.

Nanotech and later eras are Science Fiction (more Science in Nanotech and more Fantasy in Transcendent) anyway, so here civics should have their own balance - they should feel unique compared to what was earlier.
That is civics in same category can be balanced between each other between Prehistoric and Information era unless some civics are clearly meant to be upgrade of earlier civics.

And then Pepper can balance Nanotech and later era civics with each other.

 

[tmv]

That is civics in same category can be balanced between each other between Prehistoric and Information era unless some civics are clearly meant to be upgrade of earlier civics.

And then Pepper can balance Nanotech and later era civics with each other.

And who is going to pay attention to the "boundary values", that is, compare Information civics to Nanotech civics?

 

[raxo2222]

And who is going to pay attention to the "boundary values", that is, compare Information civics to Nanotech civics?

Pepper I guess.

 

[JosEPh_II]

And who is going to pay attention to the "boundary values", that is, compare Information civics to Nanotech civics?

IF I can ever get a game into the area of concern I can then see how they interact during real time game play. Until then it would be guess work at best.

Are you getting games into this area tmv? If so I would like to see a save game please.

 

[tmv]

Are you getting games into this area tmv? If so I would like to see a save game please.

Sorry. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I seem to have lost my older save games when I got a new computer for Christmas. On one of the first space maps I actually got into Galactic Age (of course, I had long won by any definition, but I was curious about the new content from Pepper). I don't even know if that save game would still work, but if I find it again I can certainly upload it (so much for "show, don't tell").

 

[JosEPh_II]

So is the consensus that I need to tighten the grip on the earliest Civics. Make you squeal in frustration over No Gold?!

I do know that there are still Tech that once you achieve them Boost Gold production tremendously. Civics can not mute all or even many of these type Tech Breakthroughs. Players need to understand this too.

Nor can we as a Team Mute WWs which are basically OP'd On Purpose. Other wise why have WWs at all! Those that complain about Too Much Gold Maybe should curtail their WW hogging??? Yeah, you really should, but you know you won't!

 

[raxo2222]

So is the consensus that I need to tighten the grip on the earliest Civics. Make you squeal in frustration over No Gold?!

I do know that there are still Tech that once you achieve them Boost Gold production tremendously. Civics can not mute all or even many of these type Tech Breakthroughs. Players need to understand this too.

Nor can we as a Team Mute WWs which are basically OP'd On Purpose. Other wise why have WWs at all! Those that complain about Too Much Gold Maybe should curtail their WW hogging??? Yeah, you really should, but you know you won't!

You should look at buildings that provide +% gold (both by themselves and from resources).
There are REGULAR buildings, that provide stronger boosts to gold than civics.

 

[Yudishtira]

You should look at buildings that provide +% gold (both by themselves and from resources).
There are REGULAR buildings, that provide stronger boosts to gold than civics.

From memory: Tapestry Maker, Gemcutter/Jeweller etc., Magic Shop. Maybe the precious metal and gem mines.

There are also some NWs: Treasury and I think Mint.

 

[raxo2222]

From memory: Tapestry Maker, Gemcutter/Jeweller etc., Magic Shop. Maybe the precious metal and gem mines.

There are also some NWs: Treasury and I think Mint.

I think market, bazaar, and few other such buildings have gold boosts too.

 

[JosEPh_II]

You should look at buildings that provide +% gold (both by themselves and from resources).
There are REGULAR buildings, that provide stronger boosts to gold than civics.

Tell me something I don't know. When many of these buildings were converted to % values from their original +/- integer values I voiced the opinion this was not good. But like most of the time I was ignored or called out for it. And most of this occurred long before I became a team member. Back when I was just a dedicated tester and player with an Opinion. Hydromancer used to call me Mr. NoNo! There was even a time were I had a gangster avatar and was name the Black Sheep of C2C. My History here is as long as StrategyOnly and Dancing Hoskuld as I was invited by both to play this new Mod at it's inception. In fact SO asked me to play his version of RoM after Zappara added in Rev to RoM in v1.0 when kalamachus(sp?) added Rev as a Modmod in 1.0.

But back on topic, yes buildings can be and have been adjusted before. But the major maint. penalties have always been thru Civics. And the reason for the proliferation of Buildings thru Hydro was because he originally used +/- interger values and Not % Modifiers, ie Yields vs YieldModifiers. T-brd was very instrumental in this change and still is.

EDIT: Additives added to other Additives is of course a much much slower progression than Multipliers multiplied by more Multipliers. And even the Warning that they can be abused is Lost because of All the multi-layered interactions that now exist in this Mod.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Whether flat +/- changes or % modifiers are more powerful has everything to do with scale. If you add +1% Production from a resource to a building, until you get 100 production, (or other modifiers push this number into significance) then the impact from this is +0 Production. Obviously, that's much less than +1. Once you have much higher base, say +300 production coming in as a base, then +1% is more valuable than +1 because it's bringing in an additional +3 production.

Point being, at the beginning of the game +/- means a lot more than an equal amount of % mod.

A +1, where +200% modifier and 100 base exists, is also more impacting than a +1% because with all that existing % modifier, the +1 becomes a total of +2 while the additional +1% would mean just another +1 from the base its modifying.

Therefore, it is overly simplistic to say one is more impacting than the other. It's all about context as to which means more at the time it is applied.

+/- 'change' adjustments are sources or drains.

+% modifier adjustments are scaling magnifiers or dividers. They are the result of a process that alters the output of that yield or commerce. A Bank or Market is a good example. They aren't sources of gold so much as they are ways the city enhances the process of gold transactions and thus facilitates the increase in the physical collection of currency (or other hard measurable value items) taxation that takes place. Banks facilitate the expansion of businesses by offering seed capital loans and markets make it easier for folks to shop in a more centralized location, making product sales more frequent.

Thus these example buildings get modifiers, as opposed to +/- changes, which specific vendor locations, like hat makers or furniture shops, get because of the sales taxation they produce.



Most of the gold glut in the beginning seems to stem from just having access to a lot of +1 gold sources. Those sources that give a bit more don't really make that much of a difference independently.

We can look at gold control from a variety of angles and sources.

We could say "lets take out half the buildings giving gold" but that would start invalidating half the techs that were there to give them. We could say "let's cut down on how much gold the buildings are giving" but most are already at a mere +1 and cannot be reduced further. Sure they could be made +1% or something like that to take advantage of this stage of things but that's really changing the meaning of the building, as explained above.

We could make units more expensive, but we're giving enough free units at this stage of the game, at least on tribal warfare, to be able to cover most all military needs to reflect that the government really isn't 'employing' soldiers in this sort of society. They are all volunteer and also contribute to the tribe in other ways still.

We could look at traits and see if that's what's causing the sensation of zero gold challenge, but when your traits aren't helping in that regard, that's not only not the issue, you also have a situation where nobody would have cause to want to select a financially beneficial trait on that merit and would not be unhappy with traits that penalize you on gold, imbalancing the trait selections.

We could increase base upkeep amounts but when you have only one city, distance and # of cities is certainly not much of an issue at this point. Had I started to see major drains as soon as I planted new cities, I might have considered that it was possibly not so problematic that there isn't any trouble until then but I haven't seen new cities costing much either so that's one place where maybe we could cinch down a little.

Then I'm looking at civic modifiers. They aren't that intense at this stage considering how low the overall accumulated gold totals relatively are so that's not doing all that much. Yes, I think +10% gold on tribal warfare is unnecessary given how much its saving you already in free units. But even that wouldn't make a big difference at all. There aren't many adjustments directly to gold taking place at this stage so either we'd have to really put some in or...

Looking at the civic upkeep expenses I see that I'm spending 0. I'm not on the base civics for many of these and yes I do have a -10% from traits (which is completely useless if the total is 0 anyhow btw) and most of them are at 'Low' upkeep rating. Somehow 'Low' means 0? I don't know why because I'm not too familiar with the formula for deriving civic upkeep. Maybe someone can help me understand it. But it seems to me that at least a little expense, like 2-4 gold for each Low upkeep civic at this stage, would be VERY helpful for enacting at least a little gold stress.

I'm not asking for a ton of gold stress, just... enough that it matters to improve your gold. At this time, gold is the least important variable because I can completely ignore it (on Immortal diff) and I never have to reduce the slider or build wealth or make choices to somehow improve it. I can upgrade everything as soon as it comes up without having to save up to do it and no events cost me enough to worry. I can completely ignore that side of the game - and that means if I did select financially beneficial traits, or prioritize building gold generating buildings, I'd be making completely wasted selections. That's my only real concern is to make everything matter, including gold.

I point to civic upkeep because at the moment, it looks like selections that would improve or penalize civic upkeep amounts can be completely ignored as being irrelevant. Perhaps that's not true later in the game. Maybe higher upkeep ratings might be better on earlier civics? I dunno.

I'm not attacking anything here, just trying to help open discussion on what we should do and why.

 

[raxo2222]

@Thunderbrd is it possible to add upkeep from city size?
City size could be scaling factor for total maintenance cost of city.
Identical cities one with 10 pop and other with 20 pop should have different maintenance costs.

Also didn't you want to add gold modifier or something like that in eras, so each era could have different maintenance scaling?

 

[Thunderbrd]

@Thunderbrd is it possible to add upkeep from city size?
City size could be scaling factor for total maintenance cost of city.
Identical cities one with 10 pop and other with 20 pop should have different maintenance costs.

Also didn't you want to add gold modifier or something like that in eras, so each era could have different maintenance scaling?

There are a number of things I have planned but I also plan to take it easy for a bit so I'm trying to look within the scope of what we have to balance things out for now.

I think that city upkeep may scale to size and I also think that civic upkeep may scale to overall population, but don't quote me on that. I haven't studied the upkeep system well enough to say these things for sure.

 

[JosEPh_II]

es, I think +10% gold on tribal warfare is unnecessary given how much its saving you already in free units. But even that wouldn't make a big difference at all. There aren't many adjustments directly to gold taking place at this stage so either we'd have to really put some in or...

That +10% is for Capitol city only. The Civic before it Banditry gives +5% in Capitol City. And since both of these Civics coe into play right before and at Tribalism you only (generally unless you capture a rivals Capitol) have 1 city. So you want that lone City to be running at a deficit? That can be arranged If that is really what you want.

It's always been my contention that from Game start up to Tribalism your only City should not be burdened with huge deficits. Why? because you only have 1 city and therefore are actually already limited in what you can do. Making it impossible to research because you have no gold for the research slider would elongate the Preh era. You definitely would not be hitting Ancient Era (Sed Life) at 10,000Bc or even 6,000BC if that was the case. There are already early civics with -5% scattered about. This could be increased to slow research down even more to make it harder to get to tribalism too early. Perhaps this is what I should be doing. Because realistically maint cost in early game is not real but just a game mechanic to curb the influx of gold that allows faster research. Maint Cost. would realistically not even show up as a real time hinderance until after Sed life is accomplished. BUT that again would disrupt the Game play mechanics of this Mod's "machine works".

Going back to back breaking early Maint costs is a viable although, for me anyway, not the preferable way to control gold in the earliest part of the game. The maint cost do ramp up obviously the longer you play and as the eras advance. And Maint cost can really put the screws to empire building if need be. But would the players be happy over it? No. But would the Modder's be happy with it? Since we are making this for a select few now.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Somehow 'Low' means 0? I don't know why because I'm not too familiar with the formula for deriving civic upkeep. Maybe someone can help me understand it. But it seems to me that at least a little expense, like 2-4 gold for each Low upkeep civic at this stage, would be VERY helpful for enacting at least a little gold stress.

It never did before. So sometime in the past someone fiddled with the Upkeep costs mechanism. Hmmm...……. Only None is supposed to be 0 cost. Of course you do realize that while having only 1 city until Tribalism the Low Upkeep for Civics during that timeframe would be small. And if the formula that is used to multiply these Upkeep cost times number of cities was adjusted too low then Yes the Upkeep Low could be rounded down to 0 for this timeframe. Probably something the Modder who changed/adjusted the Upkeep formula may not have thought of. And it was Not me. Let that be clear now.

 

[Thunderbrd]

And it was Not me. Let that be clear now.

I don't care who it is. This is not about playing blame games to me. It's about making the game work well. It's good to see we agree that at least it should cost something. I think a review in the code on the formula that calculates civic support costs could be in order just to sort out what's taking place there. Maybe a minimum amount of 1 enforced on low could at least help.

It's always been my contention that from Game start up to Tribalism your only City should not be burdened with huge deficits

Well, what do you mean by deficits? At first, as you observe, your national gold totals IS your first city totals. So unless it goes under 0 per turn at 100% research, there's no deficit, right? Or are you using the term differently and you mean no penalties? If some penalties are necessary to bring thing down to pretty much that golden 0 per turn at 100% average ideal, then that's good, imo, for a few reasons. 1st, it gives you room to grow numbers or reduce penalties on improved civics to show that these civics are improvements and thus were well earned by the techs that unlocked them. 2nd, it gives meaning to making gold a priority selection to boost. What's the point of worrying about techs, civics, buildings, traits that improve gold if you aren't being a little stressed by it?

I know there's not a lot of room before the AI starts to find things unmanageable but it's far more forgiving than the target of 0 per turn at 100%.

So I guess to put it another way:

And since both of these Civics come into play right before and at Tribalism you only (generally unless you capture a rivals Capitol) have 1 city. So you want that lone City to be running at a deficit? That can be arranged If that is really what you want.

If by 'deficit' you mean that it's running at less than 0/turn total at 100% research, and this is what's necessary to keep that from happening due to other penalties taking place here, then I agree that we need it. If we're in the positive at 100% and all the units we want, then we have room to eliminate it. It's ok if +1 gold doesn't mean a full +1 gold until civics improve. Doesn't stop buildings from accumulating gold nevertheless since the decimal totals from buildings are tallied into the end total, which is where it is then rounded down. A building giving +.5 plus one giving +.5 = still gives a total of +1 in the city the way it pans out in the end.

Making it impossible to research because you have no gold for the research slider would elongate the Preh era.

When it gets too stressful, that's true. But to upgrade or afford some room for insurance against events, you should either have had to have some good things happen during exploration - goodies often give some cushion gold and being first to find natural wonders helps too, or be willing to slow your research to save up a little - or spend some time generating wealth in the city, which I've been known to do when it was a bit more stressful. Sure it can easily swing too far the other direction and require building wealth every few rounds to compensate natural losses, and it sucks when it's TOO straining, but if it's not straining at all, that's a total lack of tension we're allowing and making entire strategies moot.

Spending some rounds at less than 100% just means it means something if you were able to find some gold from goodies to avoid having to drop your research for longer.

You definitely would not be hitting Ancient Era (Sed Life) at 10,000Bc or even 6,000BC if that was the case

I hit it at around 12k BC this game.

not the preferable way to control gold in the earliest part of the game

What do you propose is the best way to control gold at this stage?