Getting Started

[Txurce]

Thal, if I were to try TBC for the first time today, the first thing I would probably say is that the AI is OP. This is because you made every difficulty level one step harder. I'm not suggesting that you change this, although I've always been curious why you did it, since it's unavoidably confusing (and I don't know how many Deity + players are taking advantage of it). To lessen the confusion for the first-time mod user, I would suggest permanently posting this change in a prominent place in your mod description - perhaps even right at the top.

 

[Thalassicus]

I guess I didn't explain that very well, hm... well, I tend to think of things visually, so here's another way to describe it. These are the AI bonuses, from settler (1) up to deity (8).

I had three concerns with vanilla difficulty settings:

1. From trying out various difficulties I could feel it was erratic, confirmed after looking at the files. I'm not sure why they have such a jumpy line.
2. Even with straightening the curve, restricting ourselves to only four challenging difficulties meant there had to be a big leap from one to the next. So I decided to make it 5 challenging difficulties. That lets the difference between one and the next be smaller, more likely to find one in our "comfort level."
3. The game feels easier than Civ4. I found Civ5 Immortal about as challenging as Civ4 Emperor, so I made the curve slightly higher.

 

[bwoww78]

I recall seeing somewhere that in a newest version (beta 7.0?) that Rome's UA was going to be buffed from 25% bonus production to 50% for buildings already in the capital. is this right? i can't seem to find any evidence of that factoid anywhere now, but i'm sure i saw it somewhere. i've always really like Rome and it's legions (and with your new policy adjustments in Honor, i can't wait to try it out) but i've always found Ceasar's UA underwhelming...

if this is not the case, I suppose I would try and work up an individual mod myself, but i've never done it before and i'm not sure how well it'd work... any advice?

 

[black213]

It used to be 50% at one point, but it was reverted quickly.

 

[bwoww78]

Thanks black213. Might I suggest 33% as a compromise?

It affords a militaristic Ceasar some helpful builder support, and I've found the 25% kind of lacking. Just a suggestion (and sorry if it's in the wrong thread!)

 

[Txurce]

I guess I didn't explain that very well, hm... From trying out various difficulties I could feel it was erratic, confirmed after looking at the files. I'm not sure why they have such a jumpy line.

Even with straightening the curve, restricting ourselves to only four challenging difficulties meant there had to be a big leap from one to the next. So I decided to make it 5 challenging difficulties. That lets the difference between one and the next be smaller, more likely to find one in our "comfort level"... The game feels easier than Civ4. I found Civ5 Immortal about as challenging as Civ4 Emperor, so I made the curve slightly higher.

Actually you had never explained it - this one is very clear. My recollection is that the devs purposely chose a line that was pretty even and incremental through Emperor, then spiked for the two highest levels. That makes sense, given that most players use the lower ones, and those good enough to seek a further challenge then have to make a leap of sorts. But adding more interim levels, as you did, is always a good thing.

I realize that Civ 4 was harder on comparable levels, but I don't know anyone besides Sneaks who plays TBC on Deity. So I wonder why you didn't scale it to match vanilla, with Deity being equal, and everything else falling more equitably into place. Honestly, though, that's not a big deal. My main reservation is about what you call each level. From what I can see, King is equal to the vanilla Immortal. That's a difference of two levels, and would really throw me off if I came across TBC without knowing any better.

By the way, to argue against myself to some degree, TBC may be easier than vanilla in some ways because of the WWGD happiness adjustment (although I recall Sneaks did something to counter that).

 

[Thalassicus]

I swapped the Roman trait buff for +100% improvement speed for Legions. Augustus was high on the 5 favorite leaders poll so I don't feel he needs a further buff. I always felt his Legion building abilities were the weakest part of the leader.

It's easy to change though. In the TBC/Leaders folder, open "BL - General.xml" and look for this line:

TRAIT_CAPITAL_BUILDINGS_CHEAPER

Change the value from 25 to 50. Then add this to "BL - Language_en_US.xml"

<Update>
  <Where Tag="TXT_KEY_TRAIT_CAPITAL_BUILDINGS_CHEAPER" />
  <Set Text="25% [ICON_PRODUCTION] Production towards any buildings that already exist in the [ICON_CAPITAL] Capital." />
</Update>

@Txurce
Right, there's more to difficulty than just those numbers. Some parts of the game are easier (AI has to worry about happiness now), others are harder (AI gets some free experience on higher levels).

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I'm actually playing my current v 70 as Rome (used random leader selection-the best way to really test things IMHO) & I must say that I'm really enjoying the experience. 100AD, & I'm already in the Medieval Age, with access to Legions, Horsemen & Ballistas . So, yes, no real need to buff them too much more.

Aussie.

 

[Stalker0]

Thal, in the course of my playtests, there are a few things I'm noting:

1) I really hate engineering. This tech seems super bland to me. I've noticed I'm always going around it in the tech tree, because it never provides me what I'm looking for at that point in the game.

2) Strategic Resources are still too plentiful. I think the reason for this is that each spot seems to provide a minimum of 2 resources. I think that should be dropped to 1.

I like the frequency of the resources, as the spots themselves are useful for other things. However, I'm finding that I can in most cases field my entire military with horse/iron type soldiers early on, and then still have no problem fielding an oil/aluminum force later in the game.

3) I'm still not a big fan of militaristic city states. Perhaps that's because I generally play builder, not conquest games, but I feel the unit providing is too random to be worth it to me.

What if instead of the random unit, a military cs provided one of the following constant bonuses?

1) X% production bonus to military units
2) +Y XP for units produced.
3) -X% upgrade cost
4) +X% combat strength.


4) This one is completely aesthetic, but I always felt it strange that the garden didn't provide a least 1 point of culture...it seems like a cultural-esque building to me. Again, its mainly aesthetic, but it does provide a small culture bump to those that commit to it.

5) I'm not building water mills nearly as much anymore. Might be your intention, but its funny what a difference 1 food makes.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

2) Strategic Resources are still too plentiful. I think the reason for this is that each spot seems to provide a minimum of 2 resources. I think that should be dropped to 1.

Perhaps another solution is to have more things you can build, in each city, that actually consumes these resources. Perhaps things like smithies, banks, markets, stables & circuses could actually *use* a single copy of a resource-as well as generating potential bonuses based on the total number of the resources you have. Of course, this could work even *better*, IMHO, if bonus & luxury resources also became quantifiable.

3) I'm still not a big fan of militaristic city states. Perhaps that's because I generally play builder, not conquest games, but I feel the unit providing is too random to be worth it to me.

What if instead of the random unit, a military cs provided one of the following constant bonuses?

1) X% production bonus to military units
2) +Y XP for units produced.
3) -X% upgrade cost
4) +X% combat strength.

I concur regarding Military CS. I've got two as neighbours in my current game & though I want to remain allies with them in order to gain access to their luxury resources, I'm kind of getting sick of all the units they keep sending me ;-). I'm also wondering, is there a way of ensuring that, if you get more than 1 city state as a neighbour, they can't be of an *identical* type? I could have really used a Cultural CS in my little neck of the woods.

Aussie.

 

[Thalassicus]

1) I agree about Engineering, I originally had the mine/lumbermill production bonus there to spice it up.

Something I've been talking about with Gazebo is adding the fundamentals of CSD to this mod, since I feel localized diplomacy significantly enhances the game. It'd be the units themselves, and some diplomacy bonuses on the Agra Fort, possibly +50% and free promotions for diplomatic units, maybe also a friendship bonus with citystates. This will make that national wonder much more desirable for anyone going with a citystate strategy, and by extension make Engineering a more useful tech.

2) I agree about strategic resources. I originally had the nodes as 1 and 2 resources per deposit, roughly 50% deposits of each size. There were a lot of protests about 1-deposit sizes... I don't really remember the specific reasons, it's somewhere in the Combat thread. I still feel the 1-2 split is better and easier to balance. I also once asked how people felt about adding strategic resource requirements to early buildings (such as the Stable or Forge) and the response at the time was mostly mixed or negative, so I didn't pursue the idea further. If you feel this might be interesting (as I do) then I could explore some options in the next beta cycle.

3) I agree about militaristic citystates. I've had plans to change their effect for a while, but it's somewhat difficult because anything I do will have to be manually coded in lua. It's on my todo list though.

4) Garden did used to have an Artist slot. It seems reasonable to put a culture point on it, and I'll do so.

5) I felt Watermills were too desirable and generally spammed in river cities. My goal is to increase and improving our choices, and if a building's always built everywhere we can do so, it's not really much of a choice. This is why I made the building more situational and targeted for specific cities:

• Cities that really need extra production (like a military city).
• For the Great Engineer points.
• When we have the resources nearby.

 

[Txurce]

1) I agree about Engineering, I originally had the mine/lumbermill production bonus there to spice it up.

Something I've been talking about with Gazebo is adding the fundamentals of CSD to this mod, since I feel localized diplomacy significantly enhances the game. It'd be the units themselves, and some diplomacy bonuses on the Agra Fort, possibly +50% and free promotions for diplomatic units, maybe also a friendship bonus with citystates. This will make that national wonder much more desirable for anyone going with a citystate strategy, and by extension make Engineering a more useful tech.

2) I agree about strategic resources. I originally had the nodes as 1 and 2 resources per deposit, roughly 50% deposits of each size. There were a lot of protests about 1-deposit sizes... I don't really remember the specific reasons, it's somewhere in the Combat thread. I still feel the 1-2 split is better and easier to balance. I also once asked how people felt about adding strategic resource requirements to early buildings (such as the Stable or Forge) and the response at the time was mostly mixed or negative, so I didn't pursue the idea further. If you feel this might be interesting (as I do) then I could explore some options in the next beta cycle.

3) I agree about militaristic citystates. I've had plans to change their effect for a while, but it's somewhat difficult because anything I do will have to be manually coded in lua. It's on my todo list though.

4) Garden did used to have an Artist slot. It seems reasonable to put a culture point on it, and I'll do so.

5) I felt Watermills were too desirable and generally spammed in river cities. My goal is to increase and improving our choices, and if a building's always built everywhere we can do so, it's not really much of a choice. This is why I made the building more situational and targeted for specific cities:

• Cities that really need extra production (like a military city).
• For the Great Engineer points.
• When we have the resources nearby.

1) Engineering could be built up. But looking at it from the other end of the telescope, a lot of the techs could be slimmed down, by adding more techs. My biggest non-AI complaint about the present game is that the eras advance much, much too fast. This is a major project, of course, that would perhaps work best like CSD alongside TBC.

The alternative would be to cripple science; the problem with this is that it makes the Ancient era too boring. One answer to this, lifted from earlier versions of Civ, could be to grant each civ one or two techs at the start.

2) As Thal notes, the strategic resources amount question has come up before. I prefer not changing these values without a better reason than “I don’t need them,” because there have always been periodic posts from others who say they want more. (Like Stalker I don’t use all I have, because I’m also a builder and now generally play without using any SR’s, trading them instead.)

I feel more strongly about not putting resource requirements on additional structures because it seems to run counter to the small-deposit approach. I personally liked the feast-or-famine aspect of vanilla, which led to more varied games, but agree that the present approach is more equitable.

3) I agree that militaristic CS are lacking, although my roommate is a builder who always uses them to generate an army. Changing their yields to anything involving percentages strikes me as boring, as well as inconsistent with the basic CS approach. I recommend approaching this the way we do everything else – by buffing or nerfing. This could be as simple as raising the unit yield until it’s worthwhile for those who would use militaristic CS. Or to have a choice of the highest-powered foot, range, or mobile unit available. But what I would like best in the incorporating of Gedemon’s Mercenaries mod into TBC.

Going further afield, I would also like to see more of what Iceco is planning – scientific and commercial CS, along with the existing three varieties.

4) Not every cultural building has a specialist slot – the monastery doesn’t – but I think helping the cultural-victory cause is always a good thing.

5) I still build watermills for the three reasons Thal listed.

*) I would also like to see a buffed version of India soon!

 

[Txurce]

@Txurce
Right, there's more to difficulty than just those numbers. Some parts of the game are easier (AI has to worry about happiness now), others are harder (AI gets some free experience on higher levels).

I still think player instructions would greatly benefit if you permanently highlighted the fact that TBC is now level for level harder than vanilla. Players don't like to go backward, without good reason, You risk someone new to TBC trying it and saying "this is too hard for some reason."

 

[Zaldron]

2) I agree about strategic resources. I originally had the nodes as 1 and 2 resources per deposit, roughly 50% deposits of each size. There were a lot of protests about 1-deposit sizes... I don't really remember the specific reasons, it's somewhere in the Combat thread. I still feel the 1-2 split is better and easier to balance. I also once asked how people felt about adding strategic resource requirements to early buildings (such as the Stable or Forge) and the response at the time was mostly mixed or negative, so I didn't pursue the idea further. If you feel this might be interesting (as I do) then I could explore some options in the next beta cycle.

I'm probably just having a ridiculous string of bad luck, but I can't remember the last time in TBC that I actually had coal available to me. I'd say I've played at least three "tall" science/culture type games with about four-to-six cities (obviously taking up huge swaths of land each though) where there was no coal available. That's not terribly concerning in itself as I didn't have a ton of cities.

Then I played a game where I went liberty expander with probably 8-10 cities, taking close to half my continent and still no coal in my land. I think there were two total on the continent (which I shared with, as I recall, three other big civs).

Finally in my most recent game I did early warmongering and conquered my entire continent (two other players; four continents for eight players total, standard map size). There was only *one* coal deposit on the entire continent, under control of a CS that the AIs had been allying back and forth (so it'd be tricky to jump in and grab it that way).

It just seems that there's way too little coal such that you almost never get to build factories.

The other resources seem fine or a hair high. For example in that warmongering game (Alexander admitedly) I was not able to build a full swordsman army, so I supplemented with CC and hoplites and the balance there seemed really good.

 

[SlightlyMad]

3) I agree about militaristic citystates. I've had plans to change their effect for a while, but it's somewhat difficult because anything I do will have to be manually coded in lua. It's on my todo list though.

We've discussed adding a peaceful xp-granting mechanic to the game, where a unit fortified in a fort or city would get some small amount of XP every turn. Maybe this could be the militaristic city-state bonus? That would mean that instead of constant warmongering for XP, a diplomatic-focused player could use militaristic city-states to keep their army strong.

 

[Txurce]

I'm probably just having a ridiculous string of bad luck, but I can't remember the last time in TBC that I actually had coal available to me. I'd say I've played at least three "tall" science/culture type games with about four-to-six cities (obviously taking up huge swaths of land each though) where there was no coal available. That's not terribly concerning in itself as I didn't have a ton of cities.

Then I played a game where I went liberty expander with probably 8-10 cities, taking close to half my continent and still no coal in my land. I think there were two total on the continent (which I shared with, as I recall, three other big civs).

Finally in my most recent game I did early warmongering and conquered my entire continent (two other players; four continents for eight players total, standard map size). There was only *one* coal deposit on the entire continent, under control of a CS that the AIs had been allying back and forth (so it'd be tricky to jump in and grab it that way).

It just seems that there's way too little coal such that you almost never get to build factories.

The other resources seem fine or a hair high. For example in that warmongering game (Alexander admitedly) I was not able to build a full swordsman army, so I supplemented with CC and hoplites and the balance there seemed really good.

In my last two games I've had the opposite experience, but generally find coal and aluminum to be relatively lacking. I actually like this curveball, and having to figure out something drastic if I want factories, but feel that TBC should be consistent in its approach to all strategic resources.

 

[Txurce]

We've discussed adding a peaceful xp-granting mechanic to the game, where a unit fortified in a fort or city would get some small amount of XP every turn. Maybe this could be the militaristic city-state bonus? That would mean that instead of constant warmongering for XP, a diplomatic-focused player could use militaristic city-states to keep their army strong.

This is an interesting option that could work independently or with the other suggestions.

 

[Catastrophe90]

Thal, in the course of my playtests, there are a few things I'm noting:

1) I really hate engineering. This tech seems super bland to me. I've noticed I'm always going around it in the tech tree, because it never provides me what I'm looking for at that point in the game.

3) I'm still not a big fan of militaristic city states. Perhaps that's because I generally play builder, not conquest games, but I feel the unit providing is too random to be worth it to me.

What if instead of the random unit, a military cs provided one of the following constant bonuses?

1) X% production bonus to military units
2) +Y XP for units produced.
3) -X% upgrade cost
4) +X% combat strength.


4) This one is completely aesthetic, but I always felt it strange that the garden didn't provide a least 1 point of culture...it seems like a cultural-esque building to me. Again, its mainly aesthetic, but it does provide a small culture bump to those that commit to it.

1) Funny, Engineering tends to be my second Medieval Era tech (just after Civil Service). I don't care that much about the Agra Fort, but I LOVE the "allows bridges over rivers" part. I tend to be a builder who settles around rivers as much as I can (the only times where I don't have rivers in my territory are either I start in the middle of Siberia or I'm playing Archipelago), so instead of taking 3 turns for a worker to go from one city to another (2 to cross rivers, 1 to actually travel the distance), it now takes only a single turn with Engineering. Plus, it allows me to cut down the size of my military, since I know that my army can reach anywhere in my 5-6 city territory within a 1-2 turns instead of being bogged in Rivers and taking forever. Also, it leads to Metal Casting and Workshops (and thus the Ironworks). Sure, I wouldn't say no an extra bonus at Engineering, but I like the tech a lot as it is. Of course, you might all disagree with me. It's fine, Engineering. Someone still likes you as you are.

3) Yeah Military CS are kinda weak relatively to the others. Siam also doesn't get a bonus with them either as far as I know. Maybe allow them to gift other civ's UUs randomly would make them a bit more interesting (if they already do that, increase the chances?). That would make things a bit more exciting IMO. However, a small thing I noticed was that Military CSs tend to build a lot more units than the others, making them a pretty decent ally in war. Maybe that's why their ability was made weaker to compensate?

4) Does the Garden have an Artist slot in TBC or am I confusing it with something else?

Just my 2c.

 

[Seek]

We've discussed adding a peaceful xp-granting mechanic to the game, where a unit fortified in a fort or city would get some small amount of XP every turn. Maybe this could be the militaristic city-state bonus? That would mean that instead of constant warmongering for XP, a diplomatic-focused player could use militaristic city-states to keep their army strong.

I agree with Txurce: this would work well in addition to the current mechanic. Stalker's other ideas are only useful for brief periods, thus not motivating one to keep the mil CS for any length of time, while XP harvesting is better the longer one keeps the alliance.

Edit: Just wanted to add that the vanilla effects of the mil CS are very useful if you have a small empire where hammers are at a premium. I don't think that unit spawning should be thrown out the window here. I also like the idea of UUs though; maybe a new set of units can be created similar to how the barbs have semi-unique units? Oh, and again similar to barbs, maybe the units spawned could have local movement promotions! (Desert Power, Guerilla, etc)

Re: Engineering - it's great if there are lots of rivers (as someone noted) or if there are lots of forest tiles around. With the nerf to Villages/TPs, forests are much better served with a lumber mill. The Agra Fort could use a buff, IMO - perhaps now that the AI is coded to respond to citadels the AF can deal damage?

 

[Thalassicus]

@Txurce
You know I avoid adding new stuff like the plague.

I've changed science before in the 0-5-10-20-etc way that avoids the boring-ancient-era problem, but I didn't feel the values were entirely finalized. I've been thinking about slowing down research further... the reason I've hesitated is the original values were added to the core game. I want to avoid the 'cried wolf' syndrome:

Devs: How's this for science?
Me: Let's slow it down like that.
Devs: Okay, sounds good.
Me: Oooh wait now let's try this!
Devs: Make up your mind!


@Zaldron
I think your experience with coal is relatively unusual. I typically have enough coal for factories in 50% of my cities. I generated several dozen test maps when experimenting with resource balance, and each civ generally has at least one coal deposit within their sphere of influence (closer to them than neighbors). This is on large continents & pangaea with normal resource settings.

Something to point out is the game's resource-placement algorithm is somewhat of a mess, which makes it difficult to modify easily.

In actuality it does this:

1. "I'm going to place a strategic resource on this plot"
2. What terrain type is it?
3. For that terrain, roll an arbitrarily-chosen random number, and if it's various values, place this resource or that resource.

In addition, it has a totally different system for "large" nods vs "small" ones.

The better way to do it would have been a simple table cross-referencing terrain types and resources. It's heavily integrated with the rest of the game, though, so the work required to clean it up would be at least ~5-10 hours. It's been at the back of my mind but I haven't had the motivation to do it yet.

Regarding the Garden, it originally had an artist slot at the game's release that was removed in the March patch, presumably because they buffed artist yields.

The AI responds to citadels but I suspect that's hardcoded in the c++ to only refer to that one improvement type. I think there's no building attribute for dealing aoe damage around the city.


The basic idea I've had for militaristic citystates is:

• Alternate between gifting best ranged and melee unit.
• Gifted units start with free experience based on era and friendship level with the citystate.

I prefer tying in the garrisoned-get-XP bonus to Oligarchy since that policy is underpowered.