General discussion thread

[Thomas SG]

Thanks for both!

The text is repaired. And I think I found a solution for the penalty. Compiler is running. Have to test it now.

€: Yes, it is working as expected and it's a very clean code solution. Good idea.

Thanks for enlightening me. Something along these lines could become a subtitle for CCV, though...

Yes, it could be a fantastic subtitle for CCV. What a pity that Grave is already using it.

___________

I've set the pyras and the great wall to 400 now while Zeus is set to 450. The difference is not so big as in the past but with a destiny of the new civics I think and hope its okay now and then. If not just tell me.

 

[Thomas SG]

The new patch is almost done. Just have to merge RevDCM 579. But be careful with the new patch. The AI may conk you. Why? I've teached the AI now how to use the FirstStrike Attack more efficient. The times AI bowman and artillery watching your army from the top of city wall and behind lines are over!!! They will bring hell-fire to your units.

 

[FOODy]

The new patch is almost done. Just have to merge RevDCM 579. But be careful with the new patch. The AI may conk you. Why? I've teached the AI now how to use the FirstStrike Attack more efficient. The times AI bowman and artillery watching your army from the top of city wall and behind lines are over!!! They will bring hell-fire to your units.

That're really cool news!
I've missed the "First Strike"-Attack from the AI and can't wait for the patch.

Thanks for your great work, Thomas

 

[CellKu]

The new patch is almost done. Just have to merge RevDCM 579. But be careful with the new patch. The AI may conk you. Why? I've teached the AI now how to use the FirstStrike Attack more efficient. The times AI bowman and artillery watching your army from the top of city wall and behind lines are over!!! They will bring hell-fire to your units.

Awesome! I just wanted to criticize that Better AI still hasn't taken care of that, as in my current game Zara was attacking me with swordsmen and axemen while his catas were still sleeping in his cities. I am looking forward to get smashed...

 

[Thomas SG]

Awesome! I just wanted to criticize that Better AI ...

That would be cool. But the BBAI team will not care about my changes and new inventions. They even couldn't have done anything without my code and functions. So don't criticize them - criticize me. But it took me a while to understand what's going on and how to teach the AI. And I must confess that it was me who did a damn miscalculation that made the AI almost unable to firststrike. But now it works and the AI will smash you.

 

[Thomas SG]

Awesome! I just wanted to criticize that Better AI still hasn't taken care of that, as in my current game Zara was attacking me with swordsmen and axemen while his catas were still sleeping in his cities. I am looking forward to get smashed...

Hm,... I read the post again. I think we've got a misunderstanding here. If the AI leaves collateral units at home we got really a BBAI problem.

But that's not what I am talking about. I'm espicially talking about bowman and artillery in an attacked city. Those defenders haven't used their firststrike capability to defend the city until patch A! And the FSA is now also used more often and better in land and sea combat as well.

 

[Thomas SG]

The patch 4.29A is online! -> Download

 

[CellKu]

Hm,... I read the post again. I think we've got a misunderstanding here. If the AI leaves collateral units at home we got really a BBAI problem.

But that's not what I am talking about. I'm espicially talking about bowman and artillery in an attacked city. Those defenders haven't used their firststrike capability to defend the city until patch A! And the FSA is now also used more often and better in land and sea combat as well.

Oh, I see. Sorry for my misunderstanding. But improving the defense skill is also an important issue. So, good that you were able to tackle that!

Btw, I think I have to withdraw my comment regarding catas. Yesterday, the AI tried to attack me with them - only problem was that it was the second (minor) stack a few turns after the big stack that I referred to in my previous post and the AI had already moved these catas to the city from which it started marching its first SoD to attack me. So I wondered why they didn't accompany the first (more threatening) stack. Well, it's probably to early to draw any conclusions.

Ah, and thanks for the patch!

 

[Thomas SG]

Question. How can a player create ? I am asking because I'm thinking about a change. I want to have a bonus from trade routes. But not the way The Lopez has done it. I'm thinking about +1/level per trade route.

So if your trade partner is a poor city you will get +1. If it is a developing city +3; up to +6 for a legendary city. But such a boost would be IMBA and a game breaker. So I would like to increase the culture output of buildings,... and set the required culture for victory to a higher level.

What do you think about it?

 

[CellKu]

Question. How can a player create ? I am asking because I'm thinking about a change. I want to have a bonus from trade routes. But not the way The Lopez has done it. I'm thinking about +1/level per trade route.

So if your trade partner is a poor city you will get +1. If it is a developing city +3; up to +6 for a legendary city. But such a boost would be IMBA and a game breaker. So I would like to increase the culture output of buildings,... and set the required culture for victory to a higher level.

What do you think about it?

Hm, to be honest, I am not so sure about changing the way culture works.
And I don't understand what you are thinking about: getting culture from trade routes or buildings? Because first you write you want culture from trade routes and then you write that this would be a game breaker (what it probably will be, IMO).
And second question about your idea: Is it the player's own culture he gets (increased) or is it - as The Lopez did it, IIRC - foreign culture the player has to cope with?

Reg. the second option (culture from buildings): Why do you want to have more culture in the game from buildings? To get more land faster? It's already difficult to cope with a creative AI on higher levels if it quickly spreads cities and can construct buildings more quickly. So, the player would fall behind even more if the AI gets even more culture from its cheaper buildings.

About your question:
1.) You get culture from certain buildings and wonders.
2.) You can use the slider.
3.) You can use Artists (when you have certain buildings).
4.) You can "build" culture in your cities (later in the game, after drama or music I think).
(5.) a creative leader)

I think that's all, but I might have missed something.

(Btw, when I want to increase the culture radius of a city quickly after having built the city, I usually go for "building" it, if possible.)

 

[Thomas SG]

Okay. Lets make an example. Let's say I'm playing as the Germans and we are watching my capital Berlin. Berlin has got two trade routes.
The first route is to another German city, lets say Hamburg. And Hamburg is a city of CULTURELEVEL_DEVELOPING. With the system from above Berlin would get +3 per turn for this own trade route. +3 of own culture!
The second trade route of Berlin goes to Persepolis, the capital of the Persian Empire. This capital has already got CULTURELEVEL_LEGENDARY. So Berlin would get +6 per turn of persian alien culture.

That's the system I am thinking about. So we will get a massive culture boost. Of course in all cities. As a consequence the culturally victory would be much easier and come earlier in game. IMBA and unfair to space race... So we would need to balance it. But how can we do it? We can increase the needed culture for the CULTURELEVELS. But this is still IMBA because we don't want +2 from a library while a trade route gives us +3 or more. Right? So we could reduce the output from the trade routes. But I want simple integer values. Not 0.5 per turn. No. So we just could rebalance it by multipling all other culture values by factor 2 or something like that.

Is it more clear now?

 

[CellKu]

Okay, now I understand the mechanism. But what is your aim with that? Do you want to increase foreign culture in a civ's city - maybe to make conquering (and pacifying!) easier?
Or to destabilize an open civ a bit more (more revolutions)? (It's already quite difficult to stabilize your nation if you want to expand a bit. So, in the BCs, you are almost forced to build wonders to keep your empire together - at least on higher levels. So, please think about that, too.)

Or do you want to mirror RL, meaning that with foreign trade a country gets foreign goods/ideas/lifestyle/...? In that case you should include the moving of people (due to unhappiness or unhealthiness) into that concept (they bring their culture with them).

With regard to balancing: If buildings add more culture that reduces the value of artists and building culture. So you should think about balancing these too. And doesn't that reduce the value of the creative trait, as well? At least, you should make it that a city of a creative leader gets to second culture level (without buildings etc.) in the same time as now.

 

[Thomas SG]

Okay, now I understand the mechanism. But what is your aim with that? Do you want to increase foreign culture in a civ's city - maybe to make conquering (and pacifying!) easier?
Or to destabilize an open civ a bit more (more revolutions)? (It's already quite difficult to stabilize your nation if you want to expand a bit. So, in the BCs, you are almost forced to build wonders to keep your empire together - at least on higher levels. So, please think about that, too.)
Or do you want to mirror RL, meaning that with foreign trade a country gets foreign goods/ideas/lifestyle/...? In that case you should include the moving of people (due to unhappiness or unhealthiness) into that concept (they bring their culture with them).

All of it. But typically there is no problem with Revolutions because at BC there are more or less only own trade routes. And because I found a fantastic solution to handle the alien culture. And there are more side effects I want to have. I want to simulate the effects of open borders and isolationism. I want to simulate some of the effects of globalization. I want to simulate the inspiring effect of a well developed capital to the whole empire in the earlier eras. I want a new way to culture level poor without the creative trait and a monument.

And migrating people already bring their culture and religions into the cities. Never noticed? You see my preparations for the new civics have already begun.

With regard to balancing: If buildings add more culture that reduces the value of artists and building culture. So you should think about balancing these too. And doesn't that reduce the value of the creative trait, as well? At least, you should make it that a city of a creative leader gets to second culture level (without buildings etc.) in the same time as now.

And that's the reason why I asked for all ways to get culture. I though about double all of the other sources like buildings, traits,... But there is no need to do it. I've already the solution and I have done some tests.

Here is what I'll do.

- the new system will become optional ('Culture by Trade')
- +1: own culture/turn: for a trade route with a fledgling or developing city
- +2: own culture/turn: for a trade route with a refined or influential city
- +3: own culture/turn: for a trade route with a legendary city
- plus same amount of foreign culture if the trading partner is a foreign city

 

[CellKu]

All of it. But typically there is no problem with Revolutions because at BC there are more or less only own trade routes. And because I found a fantastic soultion to handle the alien culture. And there are more side effects I want to have. I want to simulate the effects of open borders and isolationism. I want to simulate some of the effects of globalization. I want to simulate the inspiring effect of a well developed capital to the whole empire in the earlier eras. I want a new way to culture level poor without the creative trait and a monument.

These are very intriguing ideas!
Just remember that as soon as you get sailing and writing (and then OB with another civ), you get foreign trade routes. So, that can be fairly early. Maybe you could decouple "culture" and the national "composition of a cities population" in the BCs?

Regarding civics: Do you intend to do something along the lines of what lemmy101 did with his civics?

And migrating people already bring their culture and religions into the cities. Never noticed?

No, unfortunately not. Because usually I just loose people due to unhealthiness...

You see my preparations for the new civics have already begun.

Great! But please have in mind that if you think about implementing "realistic corporations" (such as they choose where to open their HQ) that will influence the civics as well!

And that's the reason why I asked for all ways to get culture. I though about double all of the other sources like buildings, traits,... But there is no need to do it. I've already the solution and I have done some tests.

Here is what I'll do.

- the new system will become optional ('Culture by Trade')
- +1: own culture/turn: for a trade route with a fledgling or developing city
- +2: own culture/turn: for a trade route with a refined or influential city
- +3: own culture/turn: for a trade route with a legendary city
- plus same amount of foreign culture if the trading partner is a foreign city

You seem to be quite adavanced in your implementation. So, I am eager to see how that develops!

Oh, and I would like to ask you again to bring back the old civic screen (maybe a bigger version of it) - at least as an option. I often overlook something in the huge RevDCM civic screen and I find it a bit annoying to handle. And I would prefer to scroll within a civic than through the whole civic screen.

 

[Thomas SG]

You seem to be quite adavanced in your implementation.

The code has got exactly 10 lines in the SDK (lines with {} not counted). Wow! The main work is to make it optional and the new code for the city interface. But both was not required for the tests and is not existing at the moment. But even that can be done easily and fast.

 

[karadoc]

I've been thinking about implementing a trade-culture system like you are describing but I too am concerned about messing up the game balance...

My current thinking is that I might restrict the effect to foreign cities — ie. foreign cities that you have trade routes with get some of your culture in addition to their own culture. That way it will not directly affect how quickly a city can reach legendary culture. Also, since even a little bit of culture can make a big difference early in the game, I'm thinking of restricting the effect to cities with influential culture and legendary culture. Maybe something like this: trade routes to an influential will give you 10% of the culture-per-turn of that influential city; legendary cities could give 20%. I'm not sure how much difference this would make to the game. Probably not very much!

What I'd like is that if a civ chooses to run high culture (maybe going for a cultural victory, maybe not), then long term foreign trading partners should end up with roughly 20% of that foreign culture in their cities. I don't really want to be messing around with the culture-level thresholds or the culture bonus for buildings or anything like that.

 

[Thomas SG]

I've been thinking about implementing a trade-culture system like you are describing but I too am concerned about messing up the game balance...

If you want to you could test it. The Culture by Trade Routes mod is finished. I've done all SDK, Python (for BUG) and XML stuff. And it's optional as promised. And because of the way I've implemented it the AI knows about the benefits from the trade routes. So there is no trouble for the AI calculating the cultural victory or something else like that.

But I would prefer to finish the migration stuff first before I release it as a version 4.29B. But if you can't wait... But the changes to the migration stuff would break the savegames again. Keep that in mind.

 

[CellKu]

Thomas, you might want to take a look at the development thread of The Lopez resource stockpiling mod. That might go very well with your immigration mod. Seems very promising I think. Perhaps you could add some ideas what would be good to add there.

Btw, I saw you updated your feature thread. Do you intend to add the immigration feature as well? I think it would be worth it.

 

[Thomas SG]

Btw, I saw you updated your feature thread.

I've updated the version. You can download 4.29B with the new migration system (last part of it will come with the new civic system) and the new optional Culture by Trade Routes mod.

Do you intend to add the immigration feature as well? I think it would be worth it.

Not at the moment.

 

[karadoc]

If you want to you could test it. The Culture by Trade Routes mod is finished. I've done all SDK, Python (for BUG) and XML stuff. And it's optional as promised. And because of the way I've implemented it the AI knows about the benefits from the trade routes. So there is no trouble for the AI calculating the cultural victory or something else like that.

Sounds good. I've got a few questions though:
- Is the mod available as a zip? I prefer to avoid installers when I can.
- Does the foreign culture from trade routes affect the area surrounding the city, or only the city tile itself?
- I'd like to see how it was implemented. Is the source code available somewhere?