Getting Started

[Spatzimaus]

Conquest is my preferred playstyle, so half a year ago I decided to make it more challenging. The most direct ways to slow down conquest are puppet/razing nerfs.

Not to plug my own mod too much, but the more direct way to slow conquest is to just make offensive military actions more difficult in general. For instance, I did two things that apply here:
1> Instead of +2 defense, the Palace gives +10. (This makes capital cities VERY hard to capture in the early game. You can still pick off lesser cities, but the one with most of the Wonders and such will be almost untouchable without a truly massive force.)
2> Every unit gets the Home Field Advantage promotion, which gives +10% when fighting in friendly territory and another +10% when attacking within friendly territory. End result: "skirmisher" tactics work well, where a defensive cavalry unit can deal disproportionate damage to an invading army and fortified infantry are very difficult to dislodge.

Attrition basically forces an end to wars well before you can completely conquer a foe, and you can't do the whole continuous war method in an environment like that.

 

[Thalassicus]

I do like combat changes to warfare, since I think combat is too easy on the whole. I took an economic approach that combines a few things:

• The biggest is cities lose 2 when captured instead of 50%. This has several effects...
  • penalty from each conquered city is nearly double, making it harder to conquer cities rapidly.
  • It takes twice as long for a city to start producing income, yet we must still pay maintenance on its buildings. This can make net gold quickly go into the red.
  • The city is better after it comes out of unrest. It's more desirable but also more challenging to conquer.
• Prevention of runaway games where a conqueror's research and army strength both explode exponentially:
  • Removed the 50% XP bonus in the Honor tree.
  • Puppet states generate less .
• Each captured city gives the defender a partisan at their capital. This is sort of equivalent to your homefield combat bonus, but scales with conquest speed. The faster the attacker wins, the more this ramps up to counter it.

The last point is why I disliked Firaxis' decision to increase city healing rates. It disproportionately penalizes evenly-matched wars, and doesn't do much to slow down steamroller wars. I think a city hitpoint bonus is better than a city healing bonus because it affects things more equally.

 

[BlahGTR]

Is anyone else having issues with the AI civs hoarding massive amounts of gold with this mod? I'm in a game right now and Arabia has 96497 gold, making 750 per turn, Pachacuti has around 80000 gold.

 

[Txurce]

Is anyone else having issues with the AI civs hoarding massive amounts of gold with this mod? I'm in a game right now and Arabia has 96497 gold, making 750 per turn, Pachacuti has around 80000 gold.

I haven't noticed a difference recently. I periodically have games like that, where I think something must be off - but that was true in vanilla as well.

 

[Thalassicus]

AIs horde gold in both vanilla and this mod. It's not possible for us to change this in a mod, because most of the fundamentals of the AI are in the c++ side of things only Firaxis has access to.

 

[Babri]

The last point is why I disliked Firaxis' decision to increase city healing rates. It disproportionately penalizes evenly-matched wars, and doesn't do much to slow down steamroller wars. I think a city hitpoint bonus is better than a city healing bonus because it affects things more equally.

I really hope Firaxis are going to realise their mistake & change it in the next patch.

 

[Roland Ehnström]

I'm having an interface problem with the latest version (v8.6.3) of this mod, see attached screenshot. It's the only mod I have installed, and everything is fine when I start a game without mods.

Edit: Created a bug report thread instead, sorry for this post!

 

[Seek]

DLL is on it's way!!

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=10678893#post10678893

 

[jacktannery]

Quick question: is it still neccessary to play without the 'quick combat' option in order to get the various treats that come with the honour policy tree, or has this been changed? I believe the patched vanilla version works with quikc combat.

Related question: if quick combat still stops many of the honour policy treats and aztec-culture-to-city from firing after a fight, does this gimp the AI when I play a non-war game as a non-aztec civ? Or does the computer get the full benefit of its policies and civ traits regardless of my advanced setting selections?

I've been wondering about that for a while.

 

[Txurce]

Quick question: is it still neccessary to play without the 'quick combat' option in order to get the various treats that come with the honour policy tree, or has this been changed? I believe the patched vanilla version works with quikc combat.

Related question: if quick combat still stops many of the honour policy treats and aztec-culture-to-city from firing after a fight, does this gimp the AI when I play a non-war game as a non-aztec civ? Or does the computer get the full benefit of its policies and civ traits regardless of my advanced setting selections?

I've been wondering about that for a while.

Playing with Quick Combat or in Strategic View doesn't give Germany its modded barbarian bonus, so you can extrapolate from there.

I also doubt the mod can override vanilla for AI benefits, but nor human ones (whether it's the Aztecs or the Germans).

 

[jacktannery]

Thanks Txurce, you've answered part of my question.

I'll try to be clearer: when Thal first introduced 'Spoils of War', he could only make it fire if extended combat animations were ON, due to a limit in the engine. Since then, the new patch gave this policy (with a different name) to the vanilla honour tree. I tried it in vanilla and the policy fires even in quick combat. Has Thal updated his honour policy (gp/culture per kill) to the new system, which fires even if quick combat is selected?

 

[Txurce]

Thanks Txurce, you've answered part of my question.

I'll try to be clearer: when Thal first introduced 'Spoils of War', he could only make it fire if extended combat animations were ON, due to a limit in the engine. Since then, the new patch gave this policy (with a different name) to the vanilla honour tree. I tried it in vanilla and the policy fires even in quick combat. Has Thal updated his honour policy (gp/culture per kill) to the new system, which fires even if quick combat is selected?

My understanding is that updating this isn't possible without access to the code - so it wouldn't work in QC.

 

[Thalassicus]

In the c++ part of the code only Firaxis has access to, they can tie effects in directly to combat.

However, in the lua part we can use, we can only tie effects into the combat simulator. It's used to hide unit flags during combat. This simulator runs whenever these conditions are met:

• Quick Combat off
• Not in strategic view
• Neither unit is a non-combat unit
• The attacker is not a nuke

Visibility is not a requirement for the simulator to run. In other words... if those 4 conditions are met and two AIs attack one another offscreen in the fog of war, it still runs the simulator (but obviously doesn't play an animation).

 

[Seek]

In the c++ part of the code only Firaxis has access to, they can tie effects in directly to combat.

So will the coming DLL (which didn't elicit any response) allow this?

 

[Thalassicus]

A thread was started on the main tbc forum about that.

Official word on DLL!

 

[The_J]

Moderator Action: The post about the problems with the installation have been moved to here.

 

[Giskler]

Is it intended that there are little to no strategic resources available? I installed the latest version (8.6.16) and I find myself playing with 2-5 of each resource which is really dull. I even tried playing with abundant resources and it had no effect. Not being able to build more than 3 or 4 units is very, very boring and ruins the game for me.

If its intended, where do I go to alter it so I can play with 2-3x the resources?

 

[Txurce]

Is it intended that there are little to no strategic resources available? I installed the latest version (8.6.16) and I find myself playing with 2-5 of each resource which is really dull. I even tried playing with abundant resources and it had no effect. Not being able to build more than 3 or 4 units is very, very boring and ruins the game for me.

If its intended, where do I go to alter it so I can play with 2-3x the resources?

My understanding is that iron resources were increased slightly by 8.6.9, and that this is the only change to resources in quite a while. The mod settled into its present distribution pattern well before the last patch. So if you've been using it for a while, you shouldn't be experiencing anything different.

Here's the link to Thal's detailed explanation of that pattern:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=10580832#post10580832

 

[Giskler]

My understanding is that iron resources were increased slightly by 8.6.9, and that this is the only change to resources in quite a while. The mod settled into its present distribution pattern well before the last patch. So if you've been using it for a while, you shouldn't be experiencing anything different.

Here's the link to Thal's detailed explanation of that pattern:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=10580832#post10580832

I updated from 8.6.1 which was the last game I played and in that one I had around 20 of each resource after I conquered my continent. In my current game I have 5 or less of each. I didnt delete my cache though, so I will try that before my next game.

 

[Thalassicus]

Each player's territory has 4 horses and 5 iron, and once we conquer an opponent we have 8 and 10. The abundant resource option increases this by 66%. Details are in the thread Txurce linked.

My classical-era army composition is usually something like:

• 3 swordsmen
• 2 catapults
• 2 chariots
• 1 horsemen
• 3 archers
• 2 spearmen
• 2 scouts

~15 units total

Any more units and the map usually gets overcrowded. Combined arms is the way to go - it's more powerful and strategically challenging than spamming one or two unit types.

Scouts are great Medics in this mod since they're stronger, very cheap, and can upgrade to the useful Militia. I try to get at least one scout to the Medic promotion from fighting barbarians. I also have 1 scout garrisoned in every city for Military Caste and fending off barbarians.