Getting Started

[Sneaks]

Thus why I add more aprint lines than is ever possibly needed, so I can at least have a guess on the where. That is honestly my top annoyance so far in Civ modding.

 

[Zeppelin4]

My first game back in two months and I downloaded all your new updates. I'm not sure if I just got a great starting area or not but it seems I have no need to worry about resources anymore. I have plenty of food, cash, production, etc. Has anyone else run in to this? It makes for a boring game when I don't have to worry about anything.

I'm going to start a new game and see how it goes. I would also like to say I'm amazed on all the work you put in to this mod. A big thank you for your time.

 

[Txurce]

My first game back in two months and I downloaded all your new updates. I'm not sure if I just got a great starting area or not but it seems I have no need to worry about resources anymore. I have plenty of food, cash, production, etc. Has anyone else run in to this? It makes for a boring game when I don't have to worry about anything.

I'm going to start a new game and see how it goes. I would also like to say I'm amazed on all the work you put in to this mod. A big thank you for your time.

If you mean that you have some of everything, then that would probably be due to the mod combined with vanilla's starting luxury benefits. I personally prefer to occasionally encounter a start where I have to scramble because there's no something or other, but the consensus seemed to be to make the starts more equivalent.

 

[Thalassicus]

@Zeppelin4
Are you playing the 4.0 public release or the 4.x beta? One thing I'm working on in beta is reducing a few factors... I nerfed research-agreement science and river gold, for example.

How much stuff you have will depend on playstyle. War is more expensive now, so if you do a lot of conquering you'll probably have less gold than before. Units cost ~50-100% more than vanilla to purchase, upgrade, and maintain. Strategic resources are also 25% scarcer.

 

[Zeppelin4]

@Zeppelin4
Are you playing the 4.0 public release or the 4.x beta? One thing I'm working on in beta is reducing a few factors... I nerfed research-agreement science and river gold, for example.

How much stuff you have will depend on playstyle. War is more expensive now, so if you do a lot of conquering you'll probably have less gold than before. Units cost ~50-100% more than vanilla to purchase, upgrade, and maintain. Strategic resources are also 25% scarcer.

I was playing the latest public build. I'm 477 turns in on marathon and had over 5k cash and my cities are booming with my capital at 14 population. I play on prince setting with the Inca Empire. I use to play with limited resources but I saw you had put a reduction on them so I left it on default.

I felt like I had a abundance of everything and my choices which I had were many (A good thing) was just to add to the stock pile of everything I had. I did have a good starting area but not much better than other times with your mod on earlier versions and I never was this well off. I have yet to try another game for I have been busy over the last few days.

Update: I saw you said war was expensive now and that may be part of it for I have not done any fighting yet.

 

[Thalassicus]

Thank you for the detailed feedback. Some of what you encounter is because I feel vanilla favored warmongers too much, so I wanted to shift the balance a bit from warmongers like me, to builders like yourself.

Apart from that general war/peace balance I've been working at making the builder game more interesting. I balanced the value of farms/mines/trading posts for example, so it's more challenging to decide what to do with workers. I also balanced buildings for the same reason. In addition, I added bonuses to resources on some buildings and other stuff to add variety to build orders from one city to another. This sort of complex decision-making is what makes the game interesting for me.

I'm working on reducing the total gold and research available to empires somewhat, though still favoring peaceful players (since conquerors have inherent advantages in empire size).

All that said, if you want to further increase the challenge beyond these changes I'm planning, you might try going up a difficulty level. My goal is to make it so two equally-skilled players (one a builder, one a warmonger) would play on about the same difficulty setting.

 

[doktorstick]

Thal, you've probably figured it out by now, but you can try something like this:

$ find . -type f -exec grep -Hn '\[.*\]' {} \; | grep 429

Or whatever pattern you think might exist on line 429. Assuming, of course, you have unix-like tools or access to a unix-box

 

[Thalassicus]

I have a linux partition on my system, hadn't thought of that, thank you.

 

[Borya]

Sorry if this question has already been asked. Does this mod fix unit maintenance growing with time?

 

[Thalassicus]

In this mod maintenance is equal to /50 of the unit type. The exact maintenance of each unit type is displayed on the unit tooltip (such as on the tech tree).

 

[Borya]

Thank you. I couldn't find that point here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=9785184#post9785184

 

[Thalassicus]

It's part of the "Military units cost more to instant-buy, maintain, and upgrade." There's more details in the readme under the "Unit Training and Maintenance" section. I include all the details in the readmes because it used to take me 5-10 hours to update the forum threads.

--------------------------------------------

Unit Training and Maintenance

• Unit Attributes
  Unit attributes which are not a Unique Unit special ability now apply to only the unit they appear on. For example, Artillery upgraded to Rocket Artillery won't require set-up to fire. This is an innate attribute of the weapons they use (towed artillery pieces) that does not carry over when upgraded to a self-propelled chassis. What does carry over is training (player-chosen promotions like accuracy, logistics, etc) or Unique Unit special abilities.
  I left UU bonuses untouched because civilization balance appears to be partially designed around those bonuses persisting when upgraded. One example is the Ottomans would be a much weaker civ if their UU bonuses didn't stick around. In addition, Scouts retain their special ability when upgraded to Archers by Ancient Ruins.
• Purchasing
  140% purchase cost modifier for combat units, slightly higher than most tier 1 buildings. Barracks, walls, etc are 120%. (was 100%)
• Maintenance
  Unit maintenance is now equal to /50, minimum of 1. This is an initial setting I'm trying out and will adjust based on feedback.
• Upgrades
  +50% upgrade costs. In vanilla it's rather easy to buy an army and keep it around the whole game, without much reason to actually build units (much less structures like the Forge and Arsenal). The goal is to shift things slightly so it's desirable to upgrade the most experienced units and replace the rest through traditional building practices.
• Upgrade Paths
  You no longer have to delete experienced units in the modern era.
  
  • Battleship → Missile Cruiser
  • Submarine → Nuclear Submarine
  • Fighter → Jet Fighter
  • Bomber → Stealth Bomber
  • Frigates and Caravels → Ironclads → Destroyers
  • Scouts → Paratroopers

 

[SSgtDuke]

When upgrading a janissary, is it intentional that they keep the +2 heal on kill attribute but lose the attack bonus? I thought that might have been done for balance (to stop some crazy powerful mech inf down the line or something), but above you say they should all be intact.

 

[Thalassicus]

Losing the attack bonus was a bug, thank you for pointing it out. I've found and fixed it now.

For consistency's sake I treat all UU specials the same and balance each civ with that in mind.

 

[ChrisTheMean]

I didn't know where to post this, so hopefully this is OK.

I really enjoy this modpack and am using it exclusively now.

One thing I would like to see addressed is the inability to defend against nukes. I was thinking it would be nice to either give mobile SAMs a small chance to intercept them, or probably better, a missile defense 'project' or national wonder up on the top end of the tech tree. The reason I suggest this, is that when I am playing peacefully (tech, culture, diplo) I hate having the constant worry of getting my small empire nuked. Having it on the top end of the tree would be in line with the culture/defensive nature of that route. I often don't even go to rifling, etc until after particle physics if I'm going tech, so it would be nice to have some form of deterrent.

Thoughts?

 

[Ahriman]

I see no problem with nukes being a powerful weapon. I think if you are beelining for particle physics without getting rifling, then it is entirely appropriate that you get crushed militarily. You should not be able to ignore devoting resources to building up a decent military.

 

[Txurce]

I didn't know where to post this, so hopefully this is OK.

I really enjoy this modpack and am using it exclusively now.

One thing I would like to see addressed is the inability to defend against nukes. I was thinking it would be nice to either give mobile SAMs a small chance to intercept them, or probably better, a missile defense 'project' or national wonder up on the top end of the tech tree. The reason I suggest this, is that when I am playing peacefully (tech, culture, diplo) I hate having the constant worry of getting my small empire nuked. Having it on the top end of the tree would be in line with the culture/defensive nature of that route. I often don't even go to rifling, etc until after particle physics if I'm going tech, so it would be nice to have some form of deterrent.

Thoughts?

Obviously if you play to win without rifling (as I occasionally do), then you already know you are at the mercy of the AI. Therefore I'll view your proposal regarding a nuclear deterrent as having to do with nukes being the only weapon in the entire game which has no counter, and wanting at least a slight shot at stopping them - no matter how weak or strong your military.

In real life, of course, they have no deterrent other than Mutual Assured Destruction. This used to work in earlier versions of Civ, but doesn't seem to be the case in Civ 5. I think the game would benefit from much less use of nuclear weapons, since it's unrealistic as of this date. On the other hand, if we want to accept this lack of realism for its entertainment value, then there would be nothing wrong with having a Star Wars-like anti-missile system available as some sort of Future Tech. However, keep in mind that Thal tries to avoid creating new units. That's why I suggested less itchy fingers on the button as an alternative.

 

[ChrisTheMean]

I see no problem with nukes being a powerful weapon. I think if you are beelining for particle physics without getting rifling, then it is entirely appropriate that you get crushed militarily. You should not be able to ignore devoting resources to building up a decent military.

I don't completely ignore it in these cases- keep in mind that you can have mech infantry, mobile sams, destroyers, etc without ever taking rifling. I'm just saying that if one's primary focus is one staying ahead in tech while building enough military to defend, why can't I build anything to defend against this one type unit, no matter how I tech?

 

[Ahriman]

keep in mind that you can have mech infantry, mobile sams, destroyers, etc without ever taking rifling.

Which is something that is ridiculous. Replaceable parts should require Rifling (and ideally Electronics should require Combustion). You should not be able to make 7-tech-tier beelines.

why can't I build anything to defend against this one type unit, no matter how I tech?

Because the whole point of nukes is to have something that you can't really defend against.

I'm fine with aircraft, AA etc. being able to intercept nuclear bombers, but nothing can stop an ICBM.

 

[Txurce]

Because the whole point of nukes is to have something that you can't really defend against.

I'm fine with aircraft, AA etc. being able to intercept nuclear bombers, but nothing can stop an ICBM.

To repeat myself, this is seemingly true in RL. There's no reason to believe it has to be true in a game that also includes GDR's. As far back as Civ 3, there were techs to defend against nukes. These were techs that came in "the future," so realism wasn't particularly threatened.