Getting Started

[Txurce]

I like that direction with the national wonders, and I honestly wish there was more to do with this mechanic.

Ideas:

Science NWs

Tier 1: Royal Library - 3 Libraries - Does what NC does now

Tier 2: National College - 3-5 Univ - Rename of Oxford University

Tier 3: Academy of Sciences - 3-5 Public Schools + RL and NC - Specialist Yield +1 Science

Culture NWs

Tier 1: National Epic - 3 Temples

Tier 2: Hermitage - 3-5 Opera Houses

Tier 3: National Archives - 3-5 Museums + Hermitage +NE - Specialist Yield +1 Culture

Commerce NWs

Tier 1: National Treasury - 3 Markets

Tier 2: National Mint - 3-5 Banks - 15% gold from trade routes

Tier 3: Federal Reserve - 3-5 SEs + NM + NT - Specialist Yield +1 Gold

Happiness NWs

Tier 1: Circus Maximus - 3 Colosseums (would like to see rename to amphitheater

Tier 2: Baths of Trajan - 3 Aqueducts

Tier 3: World's Fair - 3-5 Stadiums + CM - Either +10 unmodded happiness or +1 happiness per city

Production NWs

Tier 1: Ironworks - 3 Workshops

Tier 2: Assembly Plant - 3-5 Factories + Ironworks - 75% production

Military NWs

Tier 1: Military Epic - 3 Barracks

Tier 1: Agra Fort - 3 Walls

Tier 2: West Point - 3 Military Academies - 50% GG spawn rate

I really like the names you came up with. Is the idea to nerf single-city NW builds, then create a middle ground for expanding empires to still get NW's? Obviously it hurts OCC... but that aside, the theory seems to be that if you're not puppeting everything, everyone is going to build at least three cities - and there should be some semblance of "progress" before a NW is earned. It makes sense, and is interesting to boot.

 

[doktorstick]

Although I’m no big fan of breaking existing game features, like National Wonders, I know it’s quite annoying if you currently build one for many turns and have to delay conquering a city just because of that. Sometimes you just forget you currently build one and blam: production for nothing.

It's not for nothing, eh? Don't the s save indefinitely if you switch around what you are building?

A general requirement of 3 sounds good, otherwise the poor Gandhi would suffer too much with too many cities as requirement. Also by forcing more cities, you are going to eliminate such feature-buildings on duel-size maps and no National Wonders at all with "One-City Challenge" game option then.

Aye. I like trying to win with one or two cities sometimes (witness my last one city game as Ghandi). It would be unfun not to be able to build National Wonders. I ran out of stuff to build as-is.

 

[Thalassicus]

Civ IV solved the OCC problem by allowing national wonders to only require 1 copy of the prereq building when that game mode is selected, which makes sense.

The very deliberate core design for Civ5 was that happiness be the limit on growth. They very deliberately moved away from having multiple mechanisms that achieved this

What then are the purpose of national wonders?

Sadly, I'm in the "they dumbed the game down" camp on this particular topic. I feel Civ IV's maintenance was the one iteration of Civilization that truly eliminated ICS at a fundamental level. I think it was removed because it was complex, but I personally like complex games, which is why I play Civilization. I've been spending months finding ways to mitigate ICS when that one mechanic took care of it completely.

I don't know of a way to replicate it with happiness in a way that wouldn't change Civ V at a basic level, which is why I've implemented dozens of small tweaks to mitigate ICS:

• Happiness per city, per population, per empire
• The buildings that boost resources
• Better buildings, especially at higher tiers, and weaker less-developed cities
• Buffed national wonders
• Shifted around and balanced policies
• Aspects of conquest like puppeting
• ...and so on

Another problem is even if I did have a way to take more drastic measures with happiness to curb expansion, there's no parallel method to prevent the AI from ICS'ing. I've been trying for a month, ever since the patch where they made the AI do ICS, which is why I started this thread a week ago: AI city distance?

 

[doktorstick]

In .08...

Perhaps this is an effect of the resource changes, but the AIs threw anti-aircraft gun after anti-aircraft as invasion units. Even the AIs in Future Tech attacked with AAGs. Songhai and America nuked each other into the Stone Age (their entire lands were covered in fallout), but still they attacked each other's cities with AAGs. I fended off AAGs against Greece with my artillery.

Is there a bias against Mech. Infantry as offensive units?

Another interesting thing I saw was France was consistently losing between 4800/turn and 5300/turn, and only had around 4000. I observed this both in trades with them and with the Info* mod (the one that shows graphs). One other civ was in a similar boat, but his loss was around 1700/turn.

 

[Thalassicus]

Mobile SAM or an actual AA gun? AA guns have:

• 0 offense flavor
• 5 defense
• 25 AA

Both that and the mobile sam DO have the "UNITAI_CITY_SPECIAL" ai type... I honestly have no clue what this does, they're the only units that have it (we can't view or improve the AI code directly with current tools).

Mech infantry have these AI types:

• UNITAI_ATTACK
• UNITAI_DEFENSE
• UNITAI_FAST_ATTACK
• UNITAI_EXPLORE

Three flavors:

• 9 offense
• 15 defense
• 3 mobile

It sounds like it might be something with the (hardcoded) city_special AI the aa units have, or they perceived the enemy to have lots of air units. I don't see anything in the files that might indicate otherwise unusual behavior. I doubt it's due to strategic resource changes, since both these unit classes were unaffected.

As for the gold, that's rather odd. I've made two main changes to the economy:

• Trading post income
• Unit maintenance

The second one couldn't result in the numbers you're seeing though, because even 200 giant death robots would only cost 4k, less than the 4.8-5.3k deficit you see. It might be a display error with the UI. I suspect this is the case since you're seeing them with a positive gold supply despite the deficits.

 

[doktorstick]

Actual AAGs.

 

[Thalassicus]

I see the problem:

Mobile SAM flavors

• 25 anti air
• 6 defense
• 4 mobile

AA gun flavors

• 25 anti air
• 6 defense

Exact same flavor values for AA and defense. I'll try increasing the Mobile SAM aa flavor, lower the aa gun defense flavor, and see what happens. The odd thing is they're building them over mech infantry... mech infantry have much higher defense value and also have an offense value, so the only reason I can see for building lots of AA is the city_special ai, or they perceive an air threat.

I'll then start a game with changed flavor settings in the modern era and run an autoplay between the AIs to see what they do. Thank you for bringing up the subject!

All these bug reports have been really helpful everyone, and since there's no way to tell if it's a vanilla or mod game issue at a glance, keep them coming! Even vanilla game bugs are a great way for me to fix some more problems in the unofficial patch! Thank you!

 

[Seek]

A few days ago when I was arguing for a nerf or move for the NC (Thal did the latter) in the Research thread I decided to test it for myself: play two games from the same start, one with rex and one with the one city NC rush with a rex afterwords if possible.

Random leader (Greece), Tectonics map, standard size, standard speed, emperor. Compared at turn 120.

National College version
(NC finished around turn 40)

• Renaissance era
• 3 cities (only, because I got completely walled off really early by Arabia)
• 71 /turn with specialists enabled and two academies worked.
• 23 techs
• 7 policies (most of Tradition, a couple in Rationalism)
• 20 /turn
• 1 wonder (Great Library but Porcelain Tower nearly finished)
• 0 city states (playing with CSD, no spare hammers for diplomats)
• 1 RA

Rapid Expansion version
(Note, I didn't remember where the goody huts were and actually got 1-2 fewer)

• Medieval era
• 6 cities
• 46.5 /turn (no specialists available)
• 17 techs
• 6 policies (Liberty mostly, and Piety because of happiness issues)
• 20 /turn
• 0 wonders
• 3 city state allies (one of each type)
• 0 RAs

All in all, fairly equally powerful empires. Though the NC is dominant in science by far (I hit 100BPT not long after), the other felt much more balanced and able to accomplish much more in the long run.

I posted this because I'm not crazy about the small number of cities requirement idea for National Wonders; it should be a reasonable and balanced choice to expand or not - which I think is Thal's point - and I found that to be true.

 

[Thalassicus]

Thank you for that comparison Seek. Even if it's only one game, I agree with you that in practice, the national college isn't as powerful as it might seem. Since it now requires an additional tech, a rush to the NC is delayed 10-30 turns compared to vanilla (depending on game speed) which is a long time to halt expansion.

I'm running an autoplay in the modern era right now and seeing that AA-gun unit spam doktorstick described. I traced the anti_air flavor through the files to the military strategies file, these two strategies are the furthest I can go:

• MILITARYAISTRATEGY_NEED_ANTIAIR
• MILITARYAISTRATEGY_ENOUGH_ANTIAIR

I think the problem is in the core game code, it's not reaching the "enough antiair" conclusion soon enough. Since AA guns have the same antiair flavor as mobile SAMs, but cost less, it concludes it needs to spam the AA-gun unit. Doubling the mobile SAM flavor did result in it building more of that unit type, still only AA though.

If the "need_antiair" strategy is in place it does nothing but build that one unit type because the strategy's flavor is set to +75, a colossally high number (most strategies are around -10/+10). I think they did this to counter the player complaint that the AI didn't defend against air well enough, but accidentally went overboard.

I'm going to run more autoplays in the modern era to see if I can get the AI to build a better mix of units.

 

[Sneaks]

You touch upon one of my biggest issues with the NW system as it stands. Expansion should indeed hurt in some form or another. However, the requirements of a building in every city ignores this very basic idea: Cities can and should be specialized. I have had instances where I might have the top 4-5 science producing cities in the entire game, but I am disallowed from building a national university because my size 2 city on the border of my empire does not have the same level of technological advancement as the capital which has existed for eras longer.

The reason city maintenance is a much more appealing negation to expansion to me is that it flows much smoother as a game progresses, and can reasonably be overcome after infrastructure investment. As it stands, a player that wants to play with 15 cities is more or less disallowed from building any non-tier 1 national wonders. Every time the game removes things from the player as a means of balance, I consider it poor design.

 

[Thalassicus]

Every time the game removes things from the player as a means of balance, I consider it poor design.

Sort of like removing...

• Promotion saving
• Policy saving
• Early game scientists

...to try and solve:

• Insta-heal
• -25% policy cost effects
• Lightbulbing techs

The point of balancing is to enhance choice, and removing options reduces choice. It's a quick and absolute way to solve imbalances because the balance equation itself is removed, but doesn't really deal with underlying issues.

 

[Txurce]

Cities can and should be specialized. I have had instances where I might have the top 4-5 science producing cities in the entire game, but I am disallowed from building a national university because my size 2 city on the border of my empire does not have the same level of technological advancement as the capital which has existed for eras longer.

The reason city maintenance is a much more appealing negation to expansion to me is that it flows much smoother as a game progresses, and can reasonably be overcome after infrastructure investment. As it stands, a player that wants to play with 15 cities is more or less disallowed from building any non-tier 1 national wonders. Every time the game removes things from the player as a means of balance, I consider it poor design.

That "cities should be specialized" seems like a very subjective opinion. I see the point that a good-sized empire with specialized cities may be deprived of a NW, but my response is, so what? Your empire has the advantage of having more cities - cities that you chose to keep small because it suits some other part of your approach. I have the advantage of getting more NW's, because I passed up the advantage of REXing or ICSing.

I still like the thought behind your earlier proposal, but think it has to be considered very carefully, or it will penalize small empires over mid-sized ones.

 

[Txurce]

The AAG is definitely the military unit of choice for some of my AI. However, it is definitely not always the case, and that's what's most odd about it.

Curiously, CS build them in much smaller proportions.

 

[Thalassicus]

I think what Sneaks is talking about is how we were rewarded for specializing in Civ IV. We'd have our military city, gold city, science city, GP city, etc.

In V, the nature of things means city focus is mostly gone, just about every city can be the same. National wonders sort of force us into non-specialization, and science is no longer tied to improvements, so science-focused cities don't really exist anymore either. Specialists themselves are also very limited in vanilla, making it difficult to have a "specialist city," one reason I added specialist slots to a bunch of stuff.

The capital tends to be a wonder and/or science city, but not really out of any choice of our own... there's lots of stuff that only boosts that one city and we can't decide where those boosts go.

 

[Seek]

I still like the thought behind your earlier proposal, but think it has to be considered very carefully, or it will penalize small empires over mid-sized ones.

I like the proposal as well. A dynamic percentage-based system rather than the flat number system may be a good compromise: if you have the prereq building in, say, 75% *or more* of your cities, the NW would be unlocked. I don't know if it's possible, but it would avoid the downfalls of both sides of the argument.

I think what Sneaks is talking about is how we were rewarded for specializing in Civ IV. We'd have our military city, gold city, science city, GP city, etc.

Following this, perhaps more NWs should be % boosters.

 

[Thalassicus]

I agree about NW's as boosters, one reason I added a bunch of % and pop-based bonuses lately... basically I'd like to find some way to reward thoughtful, strategic specialization.

Percent-city requirements to build NWs aren't an option with the tools.

 

[doktorstick]

I've upgraded to .14, but I've also added the Tectonics mod. Do you know if I will still have less SRs as per the balanced mod?

 

[Thalassicus]

I think so, since Tectonics doesn't override "AssignStartingPlots.lua," which is where I make the strategic resource changes. I actually haven't played the Tectonics script since I started those strat resource adjustments though so I can't say for sure... easy to check though... just start a game, open LiveTuner and use the active player -> modern era techs button. It'll reveal the map and all resources, quick way to inspect resource placement.

I've updated to .15 beta, where AIs should build a much better mix of units in the modern era, instead of just spamming AA guns. However, I've been basing adjustments off watching autoplays of their wars on modern start/immortal/standard/pangaea, so results might vary in practical gameplay. For each military strategy, in order of priority I've roughly emphasized:

Offense

1. Bombers
2. Tanks
3. Guided missiles
4. Rocket artillery

Defense

1. Bombers
2. Mech Infantry
3. Guided Missiles

Range

1. Guided missiles
2. Bombers
3. Rocket artillery

Mobile

1. Helicopters
2. Tanks

Threatened by enemy air

1. Fighters
2. AA units (generally only 10%-50% of their army now)

They should also now prioritize higher-tech units over lower-tech ones. Air and missiles used to have extremely low priorities and therefore never built - I greatly increased their chances of constructing missiles in particular. Missiles are near the end of the tech tree but are basically ideal AI units: no pathfinding, experience, resources, or per-tile restrictions to worry about. I have the priorities set up where they shouldn't build missiles exclusively though (in theory).

 

[SuicideMW]

I think I found a critical bug with the latest beta release.

I started a new game as Babylon and as I was obtaining more and more techs, after obtaining Writing, I was given a Great Scientist, which is the unique ability of the civ. Apparently, pressing the beaker icon is supposed to give you a certain amount of science towards the next tech you're researching, but all it does is absolutely nothing.

At first, I thought it may have been due to a conflict with Tech Diffuser. So, I started up another game with the mod not enabled and the same thing happened. I haven't checked to see if it will happen again if I get another Great Scientist the old-fashioned way, but figured I bring this to your attention.

EDIT: After getting my next Great Scientist, I can confirm that the unit doesn't have the option to give any addition science. I think the issue may be in the DiscoverMission.lua file, though I'm having somewhat of a hard time pinpointing the issue at hand.

 

[Madfox]

Hello Thal,

still playing with the mod I encounterd a problem wich I had before. In 2.0.11 beta I lost the Unitinterface again. Wenn turning off the barbarian mod the interface was back. So the problem is caused somewhere in the barbarian mod. I will try the latest version this eving to see if it is still occuring.

Keep up the good work, madfox