Getting Started

[Spendoza]

@Dhaeman - That makes sense, however doesn't answer my question. I will try and state it a different way.

With the purpose of learning I have been making my own versions of these mods (and others) with minor tweaks here and there to suit my tastes and I want to know what the easiest way to check/verify these balance tweaks are actually modifying what they are supposed to would be.
The GUI mods are easy to check because either its there or its not, but (for an example) how do I verify the lumbermill is +1?

Secondary query, regarding appending the civilopedia/tech tree:
Is this process (for someone with a basic understanding of coding) one that is simple yet tedious/time consuming?

I ask because I am an aspiring programmer and despite being only semi-familiar with the CiV, I believe I am fully capable of the task if someone can point me in the right direction...
Anybody need an apprentice?

 

[MasterDinadan]

The idea of giving libraries/universities a culture bonus is an interesting one. But there's no way to have them add culture that isn't city specific. That is, the extra culture will be used to acquire new tiles and will be subject to any city multipliers.

I did think of another idea, where each University would have a very small Cristo Redentor type effects. With a very small % decrease for each university, it will ease the burden of acquiring policies for a large empire with enough universities, but it still means you won't be building more cities just for that sake. The university discount would not even come close to countering the effect of the extra city on the price, but it would at least help.

 

[Thalassicus]

The Buildings and Wonders mod are now combined, as are the Improvements mods. Check them out on the Mod Browser! (Also updated in the first post's ZIP file.)


@QES
The AI has all sorts of issues, I haven't tackled those yet (other than a few adjustments to enhance their plot-improvement decision making). You're absolutely right about the AI getting some crazy-level bonuses, likely to counteract the horrible intelligence it shows in conducting large-scale combat.

It might be possible to restrict certain buildings to people with certain policies, haven't explored that. Even if it isn't possible now, it would be after the c++ part of the SDK is released.

You have some interesting ideas about buildings and national wonders, it would be an intriguing way to differentiate the various policies and provide cross-over benefits to what you can do in cities. I do miss the national park, sorta loved that one.

One thing to keep in mind is attempts to define some government types typically rely on a left-right one-dimensional political spectrum, where some things are hard to quantify. I find a two-dimensional charts represent such things better:

Spoiler :

I don't want to go too much into politics here, but when looking at history it seems fascism and communism fit into an authoritarian state category, despite differing viewpoints when heading there. To be honest I can't say much more than that from a gameplay perspective as I've only gotten the Autocracy tree once, and found it so unnecessary I've always gone for Order since then.

The trick with improving something like Factories is that by having a slightly higher tech level, it could dramatically change the balance of power between two civs. It's realistic to be sure, but from a gameplay perspective it can feel a little unfair to have too drastic of an advantage in buildings or units just from a few techs.

Your idea for some sort of grochery store in late game is an interesting one. Possibly something other than a food bonus though, as it would somewhat overlap with the purpose of the hospital/medlab at that point in the game (increase city population growth).

One difficulty with Autocracy, as mentioned in the policies thread, is no matter how much you improve it it's just not needed because of the very bad combat AI. I think Autocracy might actually be quite valuable once the AI is capable of waging late-game wars effectively. You have interesting ideas. I'll keep them recorded for when the AI is improved, if Autocracy still feels underwhelming at that point.


@MasterDinadan
These are really fantastic ideas. I love the thought of having culture be something that revolves around an exponentially increasing cost instead of dependent primarily on empire size. When I have time to start a culture mod, I'll use and credit your ideas as a starting point.


@PieceOfMind
As MasterDinadan mentioned, the reason is to keep wheat from becoming more powerful than it already is. For realism, I've been thinking about changing the name to "Farmers Market". A granary is used for storing things, and granaries in CiV no longer have a storage mechanic. They now increase food, and the "Fewer Rancid Resources" component increased food, so it seems logical to include it on the granary - simultaneously producing a new way to improve the value of granaries without reducing the /turn cost like I previously did in Fewer Bad Buildings (which has been updated in the combined Buildings and Wonders component).


@CYZ
It seems logical for the Harbor or Seaport to allow better construction of smaller ships, I've been considering adding a slight XP gain to these, though not sure yet.


@Lazy Knight
Not intended to include both, I just grabbed all the Balance mods in my folder and forgot to delete the old version. The newly-updated zip should contain the proper mods. In regards to the readme file, that's somewhat experimental so thank you for giving feedback on it. Could you take a look at the readme for the new Buildings&Wonders mod and see if the icons display properly? These icons link to CivFanatics' files directly instead of including copies in the mod folder.

Oh, and why not start a new thread about reworking the cultural victory?

Sounds like a good idea, I will do so.


@Spendoza
Apologies for that, I had a slight bug in the Wonders mod that prevented it from being loaded. The game doesn't give us modders an error message if there's a problem, it just ignores the mod like nothing happened. Please check the mod browser for the new "Balance - Buildings and Wonders", this updates and combines both of the earlier Bad Buildings and Weaker Wonders components. Like always with updating any mod, delete the older versions.


@CYZ
I keep the zip file in this thread up to date with all the latest changes.


@Appassionato
If you're having difficulty creating mods, you might try using an existing one as a starting point, and make changes from there. I searched and found the city heal effect in GlobalDefines.xml, you could make a simple mod to change it like this:

<GameData>
	<Defines>
		<Update>
			<Where Name="CITY_HIT_POINTS_HEALED_PER_TURN" />
			<Set Value="2" />
		</Update>
	</Defines>
</GameData>

I agree with many things you point out. One thing I noticed about wheat/sheep is they seem to appear only on freshwater desert tiles, next to rivers, lakes, or an oasis - all of which do make sense to some extent. The game uses these special resources to balance out locations with poor tiles, such as wide deserts.

I'm definitely going to work on specialists once I have time (have a disaster recovery drill coming up at work in 2 days I'm preparing for).


@Spendoza
One way to check if your changes are taking effect is to add a small change at the top of your mod to something obvious, such as reducing warrior movement speed from 2 to 1. This is something that will show up on your starting warrior after creating a new game, so is an easy way to verify the mod is at least having some effect.

To check specific changes, take a look at page 75 of Kael's modder's guide. You can look at the actual tables Civ V is using in its database to see what the values are.

 

[heartCORE]

Mod sounds promising...but is this balanced for standard speed or does it scale?

I only play Marathon unfortunately =/

 

[Thalassicus]

It should scale without issues. I play on Epic speed, and others have indicated they've used the mod in Standard and Marathon games.

 

[Kadath]

Uhm, I'm having some troubles too. Suddenly the balance - fixes and balance-wonders stopped working, while balance - improvements is being loaded as it should. Now I even reinstalled the game from scratch, redownloaded the mods from the browser (switching to the buldings-wonders combo mod), but still the same result: improvements turn out as they should, as well as great person improvements and tech changes (such as +1 to mines after engineering), but wealth is still 10% (both the tooltip and the actual effect), still 2 science for TP marked in the policies tooltip, and the wonders seem to still be as in vanilla.

 

[Thalassicus]

The wonders component had a bug, corrected and updated in the combined Buildings and Wonders mod. Civ simply ignores parts or all of a mod if it encounters a bug, and provides no error message to indicate there's a problem, so it can be difficult to identify these things.

As for the fixes mod, I'll look into it. Thank you for this information. You shouldn't ever have to reinstall the game, I don't believe mods can do anything that would require that, and if you don't alter your game's base files you should be ok.

Edit: Aha! It was referring to the (no longer existing) Balance - Wealth.xml file in the mod, instead of the renamed Balance - Fixes.xml. Thank you for pointing this out, I'll get an update up.

 

[Kadath]

I did switch to the buldings-wonder combo mod, but it's still showing the old values for wonders. Buildings seem to work though, just did a quick check (Eiffel Tower 8 happiness instead of the supposed 12, while watermill is 1 maintenance now).

Oh, and I reinstalled just in case. You know, between several mod installations and uninstallations, crashes and so on, you never now when some nasty cache file, concealed who knows where, might be giving you issues

Just so it doesn't look like I'm on booze XD :

 

[Stalker0]

Been playing the mod for a while and loving it so far.

1) The very initial game still seems a bit slow mainly because your adjustments are terrain based and not cost based. However, once the first worker is out things move right along.

2) You may wish to update the tooltips on many of your changes. For example I didn't know the granary and collossus were different until I really paid attention to this thread.

3) Since your interested in improving buildings, I would definately take a look at the harbor. Not only is the building weak, it makes the compass tech less desirable. Honestly, I think the +1 embarked movement should be given at compass not astronomy.

4) Policy wise I definately like the changes you've made, especially to mandate of heaven. However, I think the tradition tree still needs work. The +1 food is just not as good as many of the other intro techs. And the 50% growth rate in the capital is limited by the fact that growth really slows down around 10 pop...so this tech doesn't do much.

It would be better to go patronage and maintain maritime food bonuses (even with your changes).

 

[Kadath]

Been playing the mod for a while and loving it so far.
2) You may wish to update the tooltips on many of your changes. For example I didn't know the granary and collossus were different until I really paid attention to this thread.

Tooltips should already be different if the mod is active and working. I don't have the updated tooltips and pedia entries for wonders 'cause that component is actually not working for me, but granary tooltips do show the bonus to food resources.
Civilopedia entries need an update text from the xml (such as the pyramids' description changing it to 75% now), so if there's a typo it can actually happen that the tooltip says one thing and the wonder actually does another, while or maintenance modifications, for instance, should show up on the fly.

Look here how the Granary should show up:

 

[Kadath]

Found the bug with wonders, Thalassicus, it's a missing line at the end of the modinfo file:

<Actions>
<OnModActivated>
<UpdateDatabase>Balance - Buildings.xml</UpdateDatabase>
<UpdateDatabase>Balance - Wonders.xml</UpdateDatabase>
</OnModActivated>
</Actions>

Line in bold was missing

 

[Thalassicus]

@Kadath
Thank you for finding that. I remember now why that was a problem: the ModBuddy interface often refuses to accept changes to the "Actions" tab of mod properties, and takes some effort to get that done. After several minutes trying to add it I'd given up and moved on to other parts of the mod, then forgot to come back and get it working.

@Stalker0
1) It's true the start of the game can be a bit slow. I've been hesitant to make any changes that would dramatically alter the early game, as that sort of thing can amplify throughout the rest of the game.

2) As Kadath mentioned, the tooltips should be correct if you have the latest versions of the mods installed. If you find any tooltip errors, please point them out and I'll fix them right away.

3) I've been thinking about the Harbor for a while and have been having several discussions about it in PM's and various threads. Here's some ideas that have come up. One or more of these might be implemented for the Harbor (but obviously not all of them):

• or to water tiles
• , , and/or to water resources
• or on the harbor itself

These would solve both issues of the harbor itself, and overall weakness of coastal cities.

4) I'm glad you like it! There's been some concerns on the social policies thread that the change to Mandate of Heaven might make it overpowered for a few specialized niche situations and still useless for other situations, however. I've been thinking of other ways to improve it that would make it less situational.

One thing to keep in mind with Tradition is it contains the powerful +33% wonder production bonus. That tree is also very powerful for one-city challenges, so it's difficult to balance for both OCC and normal games. Extra food also allows you to get more population sooner, which leads to more science. A cultural civ or one that pops a cultural ancient ruin can get the policy very quickly, and it has an immediate impact, unlike the other two opening trees. As a result of these considerations, I've left the tree largely as-is.

 

[QES]

A few thoughts on a another playthrough (I actually finished!).

Notes:
Japan Diplomatic Victory on turn 723ish circa 2030's
Prince Difficulty
Continents, Standard Size, Random Resources, Epic Progression

I played a culture whore. I had a small pennisula which was insulated from the rest of the world and this let me try to make a little industrial/economic powerhouse.
I only ever made 3 cities.

Thoughts:
1. I like my factory adjustments. While not quite rushing to steam power (factories), I did manage to get them about in sync with history, if not a bit late. (On epic everything seems to happen MUCH later than in history). The 100% (up from 50%) production boost and 3 engineers is NOT as powerful as one might imagine. In the epic progression, costs are SO high that the difference between a factory and no factory is really just a few turns. I noticed something akin to 25% fewer turns to produce a building or unit.
2. I like my wealth adjustment. With the factory at 100% boost and 3 engineers, it becomes possible to milk wealth a bit more once you've a productive city. Granted this means your production city isnt producing anything else, but that is the downside.
3. Strategic resources come in two flavors. A) "I dont have any" or B) "I cant spend what i have" I'm pretty sure that my seed gave me "fewer" resources than normal, as everyone seemed starved for resources. But once you had city-state contacts, resources were plentiful and useless. (I noticed that if i try this strategy i keep as small an army as possible.)
4. With everything "scaled" there is nothing really different from the standard progression to epic, other than odd research timing and unit movement (with more turns units move equivocally faster). However, there are not really "more units" or "more buildings" the long build times are a pain.


So, I've come to a bit of a conclusion. Units, but not buildings, need to be cheaper. In a way, this would have multiple consequences. It would mean that when investing on infrastructure, it would be longer and laborious. When one is gearing for war or defense, requisition should be quick, but expensive (in money, not production). I think there might be a way to balance this, and with the oddity of resource management, we have a simple solution at hand.

The Idea:
In the ancient era, it was difficult to outfit a group of archers with bows, or a cadre of soldiers with spears and shields. At that time, that was difficult, and took production hammers. Later in history, it becomes easier to produce minor craftwork, and small arms become more complicated. The game represents this by increasing the amount of required to build units. The argument is that the more sophisticated the weaponry/armor, the more production it requires. While true, it also denies the other natural progressions which exist in tandum with the evolution of the sophistication of the weapons. In essence, the game denies us the idea that things become easier over time.

Fielding a group of soldiers with muskets should be easier than fielding a group of ancient soldiers with spears. Why? Because small arms are common place in the renaissance. And there are beurocracies, arms makers, and the like suited to the task, there is, in effect, a full support structure in place. The game argues that this is represented by improvements and buildings. However, it belies the fact that armies got BIGGER over the ages, not just deadlier.

The strenght of a unit could be said to represent both the type of arms and armorment of the men in it, AND the size of the unit. However, given that CIV is prone to absolutes, the "numerical size" of any miltiary unit is not obvious. What IS obvious is the difference between having two swordsmen units and one. That numerical difference is key.

In the theory that being able to field larger militaries woudl suit a game with this kind of progression, the increase cost in then is completely arbitrary, and meant only to stymie that which would be ideal. Also - since production times are so long, controling valueable resources becomes moot. If one never reaches their max capasity for iron-requiring units, the value of iron becomes binary. You either have it, or do not. You can either make swordsmen, or not. With production times as long as they are, if you can get even a couple, you'll be fine.


And the Rub:

What if costs for military units were greatly reduced, but the strategic resources needed increased?

I think it would be easy to divide units by era and obvious influence.

Ancient, Classical, Medieval, Rennissance, Industrial, Modern, Future

Units in each era would require more strategic resources that previous era's developed, but NOT be more expensive than their previous counterparts.
So, upgrades of units (units which obsolete others) would cost the same amount of to make as their lesser brethren, but would require more strategic resources per unit. This would mean that one could produce units more quickly (with the advances in production), but one would run into monetary and resource limits more quickly.

For example, a simple progression:
Warrior - W Cost (Ancient)
Swordsman - X cost + iron (Classical)
Longswordsman - X Cost + 2 iron (medieval)
Musketman - Y cost + 2 Iron (rennisance)
Rifleman - Y cost + 3 iron (industrial)
Infantry - Y cost + 3 iron (still industrial, just an upgrade)
Mechinized Infantry - Z cost + 3 iron
Paratrooper - Z cost +2 Iron +1 Aluminum


This is an example, and only to show something we might do. The army sizes might be limited by resources INSTEAD of by production speeds. This would give production-heavy specialized cities more to shine on, instead of being able to "pump units out at all" they would do it quickly - and it would mean any town could contribute to the war effort, some would just be better at it than others. It would also make trade for strategic resources MUCH more important.

Actual unit costs might not look at all like my progression, but I would advocate heavily for a reduction in the and and increase in strategic resource requirements. This also would make fascism very useful, as well as patronage's line.

 

[QES]

These would solve both issues of the harbor itself, and overall weakness of coastal cities.

I dont know if i think coastal cities are weak. I had my capital last game within range of 4 fishies, i had the colossus, among other nice bonii.
Kyoto reached 37 in size O_o and held most of the worlds wonders. Easily half or more of its total area was water.

I will agree that without the colosus, and fish the sea is a bit meaningless. Buildings should be able to fix that. As the point of the sea was less about "what's immediately in the area," but rather "what's out there in the world."

Sea-cities should be focused on coat tiles, which more or less could represent shipping coming into the docks.

I think coastal cities need about 5 total buildings spread out through the ages.

Lighthouse - As is. (local fisherman bring in more food)
Docks (classical era)- coastal or river city, Connects to trade route, +1 per trade route, +1 along river tiles
Harbor - +25% Production of naval units, +1 to coastal tiles , +1 merchant slot
Seaport - +1 per sea tile (better than per resource), +25% production of naval units, +1 Merchant slot
Wharf (industrial era)- Adds 1 to all sea tiles for each fish resource worked.

A few notes on the ideas above
-It would be nice if having enemy ships near a city turned OFF these buildings' bonii. This would make blockades very dangerous and make sea warfare more important.
-Docks bring the trade route effect earlier and affects rivertowns too. Roads were not a major connection of trade-routes until empires formed. Rivers and the sea were first. Presumably the rivers connect to the ocean and then back to the capital to produce the connected trade route.
-The Wharf produces a LOT of food, however this is in the industrial era when populations should be getting big and specialized anyway. Also it'll produce unhappiness naturally. Just remember that each coastal tile is a tile without an improvement. So the biggest effects would be on those towns which havent had much love for most of the game.

 

[Kadath]

3) I've been thinking about the Harbor for a while and have been having several discussions about it in PM's and various threads. Here's some ideas that have come up. One or more of these might be implemented for the Harbor (but obviously not all of them):

• or to water tiles
• , , and/or to water resources
• or on the harbor itself

These would solve both issues of the harbor itself, and overall weakness of coastal cities.

Personally, I always felt coastal cities were quite strong: especially if supported by a nearby river, you just need a couple farms to ensure a good growth together with the food-gold income coming from water tiles. The seaport is then what makes 'em uber if they're lucky enough to have a couple of water resources (and usually they do). With such a setup, unless the city is on the tip of a very thin peninsula, you are free to work all other tiles as you see fit, wich makes easy to heavily specialize 'em.
Also, as this collection of mods already increases production (either directly, or from boosted farms, resources, et cetera), further boosting an area might be too much imho, especially if you're playing a water heavy map.
What I would do now that improvements and resources are pretty much settled and working nicely, and it's time to find new usefulness for underwhelming buildings, is search it outside of mere + to some productive value, so going from *balance* to *new elements*.

The Harbor itself could be left more or less as it is now, useful for connecting oversea settlements (you just need one on the new continent, then you can go on with roads) and give a small boost to ship production for small cities and fishing villages: it's really not much more than this, boosting it would make the later seaport look silly.
But make it a prerequisite for a new building comparable to the barracks tree for water units. It would work as the groundwork for a more modern, industrial shipyard, fitted for larger coastal cities, not only boosting ship production but giving 'em either an XP bonus or a free promotion emulating stronger hulls, at the further cost of 1 iron maintenance for the building (should be available once iron is most likely obsolete for your land units, so we also find a use for it). Modern ships are HUGE, and need A LOT of metal... I live in Genoa, just next to the shipyard and the steelworks, when I say huge I really mean it, lol
We get an use for harbors, an use for iron late game, a feature to even out land and water units, and in a way that would still force us to limit the number of shipyards regardless of abundance of water resources + seaport combo (so even in an archipelago map, you would still probably have just a limited number of cities crunching out battleships, which is more realistic). This would also encourage city specialization: as right now we already end up with just one or two heavy production cities specialized in building units to keep maintenance of barracks buildings under control, we would do the same specializing one or two coastal cities to be our main fleet producers: Italy has - of course - lots of coastal cities, yet 90% of the whole national ship building is done in 2-3 major hubs.


EDIT: Also, as an argument against boosting *all* coastal tiles, especially with food: do we really want to see even that settlement on the very tip of an antarctic peninsula be easily able to grow into a metropolis? Even in reality, the sea isn't a source of food comparable with intensive farming and livestock farming. If they weren't supplied by mainland for food, modern coastal metropolis wouldn't be metropolises at all. Just think of England: since the Industrial era, being an higly populated island England never was self-sufficient for its food needs. WWII pointed it out pretty well: they could still fish, no bullets to waste on fishing boats, but any major food shipment from oversea was shutted down by the german navy; result: a starving London, with people growing potatoes on flower beds.

 

[MasterDinadan]

If the goal is just to create water tiles that can be "improved" then I propose that said improvements apply only to coast tiles, not ocean.

It would deter people from many tiny-island-mega-cities just because they got the few key buildings and worked every single water tile in radius for massive food and gold.

@Stalker0
1) It's true the start of the game can be a bit slow. I've been hesitant to make any changes that would dramatically alter the early game, as that sort of thing can amplify throughout the rest of the game.

That's what Advanced Start is for, right?
Though this feature seems to be strangely absent in the game despite being mentioned in the rulebook and referenced in the XML... Am I missing something?

 

[Thalassicus]

I really like the shipyard idea. Ship construction speed, XP, use for iron in the late game... I experimented with a very similar idea years ago for Civ IV when it came out. I think this might be my first true add-to-game mod, you really have a good point in that regard.

I read through everything since my last post, will write out more detailed replies tomorrow (or later - some things coming up at work), getting tired and going to head to sleep soon.

Just one point on water tiles, here's the reason I feel they're weak:

1 1 - Unimproved coastal tile, requires Sailing
2 1 - Improved coastal tile with Lighthouse
2 1 - Unimproved riverside grasslands
2 2 - Improved non-river grasslands with TP
2 3 - Improved river grasslands with TP

Even with a lighthouse, water is still worse than just about anything but deserts, mountains and snow. Something feels a little wrong with this, both in gameplay (weakens coastal cities) and realism. Coasts have a huge impact on society, a lot of major population centers around the world are located on the coast or sea-navigable rivers, and all the biggest metropoli in the US (but DFW) are located on the coast.

 

[Kadath]

Even with a lighthouse, water is still worse than just about anything but deserts, mountains and snow.

Sorry, got it into an edit while you happened to be writing this reply, so if you look at the bottom of my previous post you can see why, in my opinion, water should actually be worse - at least food wise - than anything else but desert, mountains and snow

Just another idea on the fly, though: what about a SCIENCE boost for water? Maybe water resources only, to keep it further under control? Jungles do get that now emulating how in the real world - both for sometimes being still partially unexplored and unexploited, and thanks to their great biodiversity - they are a source of research - medical in particular. Well, the ocean too has exceptional biodiversity, and represents a similar "source". What we can't find anymore on an overexploited land, we are beginning to find in the depths of the oceans. Still, it's more relative to medical research, not military for sure, but so are jungles, and the game doesn't care for the difference

 

[CYZ]

The problem is not so much that water tiles are that weak compared to land tiles. The problem is that resourced water tiles are stronger and empty water tiles are weaker.

By increasing water tiles in general coastal cities with several resources become overpowered. It would be best to add a buff that would either effect all water tiles equally or resourceless watertiles only (if that;s possible at all).

I like the idea of +science, possibly for a later era when you have some sort of research institute all water tiles in the city give +1 science. That would keep the buff quite small (and late in the game).

 

[Thalassicus]

+2 for fish and whales with a University or Research Lab, perhaps? Or +1 with each of a Uni, School, and Lab.

Increasing only resourceless water tiles I think would be easy. There's attributes for increasing tiles, and resources, and you can give the resources a -1 penalty to whatever (plantation-ing Bananas actually does this, -1). So any sort of non-resource buff could be done through this method.