Getting Started

[Soverayne]

Playing as Mongolia I cannot use Khan's to create Citadels. Now, I have never played Mongolia in Vanilla so this might be normal. God are they powerful. So I can see that as a balance issue. I just wanted to be sure.

EDIT::
I am not sure if it was a glitch or what but my problem with not being able to constructing a citadel with Khans went away when i uninstalled and reinstalled the mod. Sorry if I caused confusion.

 

[Ahriman]

Hey all,
I've been out for a while finishing off the phd (I am now Dr. Ahriman). Looking forward to testing out the latest set of changes, looks like Thal has been really busy in recreating and reworking a ton of the vanilla mechanics, despite lack of code access. Nice job!

 

[Seek]

Welcome back and congratulations!

Yes, Thal's been very busy - the mod's better than ever.

 

[Txurce]

I've missed you, Doctor. Congratulations!

 

[Soverayne]

I am not sure if it was a glitch or what but my problem with not being able to constructing a citadel with Khans went away when i uninstalled and reinstalled the mod. Sorry if I caused confusion.

 

[Questdog]

Two small things:

1) I signed up on the website for email updates and have never gotten any. I thought I'd get a note whenever there was a new build, but I have yet to receive any.

2) Is there a way to tell which build I currently have? The builds come so frequent, I am sometimes not sure if I've already DL'd the latest.

 

[Kasdar]

I am wondering if v 7.0 of this mod affects strategic resources, ie. reduces the stack size or frequency. and if so in what file are these changes?

Edit I think I found where you have made these changes, if I simply prefix the file AssignStartingPlots.lua with a _ will that return the strategic resource placement to its original settings? or do I have to do something else?

 

[Thalassicus]

Welcome back Ahriman! Your direct, pointed feedback has always been helpful.


@Questdog
It doesn't send out emails when I update an existing post. For the next month's beta cycle I plan on making a new post for each week or so of beta builds, which should solve that problem.

The downloaded file includes the build number in the filename, but Civ deletes the file when installed. A workaround is to download it to a different folder, then make a copy into the Mods folder and install from there.


@Kasdar
Strategic-using units are more powerful than non-strategic units, so all other things equal, the first is clearly a better choice to build. My armies usually have 5-6 footsoldiers and 2-3 mounted units. Vanilla iron deposits are 4 or 6. This means there's no reason to build any footsoldiers but swordsmen with vanilla resource distribution. It doesn't encourage combined arms warfare, and requires no challenging tactics.

On the other hand, if we are limited to 3 swordsmen and 3 horsemen, we need to decide how to fill out the rest of our army. Archers, spears, or extra catapults? Strategic-using units become a core elite of our army supported by non-strategic units, which adds more depth to the game, and makes it more fun and challenging. I'd recommend at least trying it for a few games before deciding.

However, if you do want to be able to spam swords/horses you can disable AssignStartingPlots with an _ undescore as mentioned. Alternatively, when starting the game you can change change resources to "abundant" or "legendary under the advanced setup options.

 

[Kasdar]

Yeah I have played through your mod 4-5 times now, with Legendary and I seem to get no iron / other strategic resources anywhere near my start point when playing your mod, I dont have this problem with the default placement however.

 

[Thalassicus]

Try it in v7.2 with standard resource settings. I redesigned strategic resource placement from the bottom-up. I've played about six games with this new system on the Continents map script, and always have a few horses and iron within settling range of the start location.

Also keep in mind horses and iron aren't absolutely necessary since catapults have no resource requirement. It's perfectly viable (if slower) to capture cities with spears, archers, and cats.

 

[truetom]

It's probably been asked before: I liked colonies in Civ - was it 3? Any chance to have it here?

 

[Thalassicus]

Colonies would be somewhat beyond the scope of this balance mod.

 

[Kasdar]

I have noticed that while using your mod I dont seem to get any notifications, did you remove them? if so what file contains this change as I would like to get my notifications back.

 

[Thalassicus]

I haven't encountered problems with notifications. If you've checked off the Common Problems list, please post a thread in the Bug Report forum detailing any issues you've encountered.

 

[Kasdar]

Sorry the problem was from the tree growth mod.

 

[Ahriman]

Your direct, pointed feedback has always been helpful.

Thanks. It will be a while before I can give much in the way of sensible feedback though, so much has changed that I need to get a good feel for how things are working first.

Still, the overall play is very fun.

From a bit of play:
a) I really like the defensive bonus for spearmen. That was a great design decision. It gives them a role and makes them useful, but retains their overall inferiority to swords and horses. My only worry is that it makes them a bit too good at defending against ranged attacks - which dense formations should be vulnerable too - but maybe that is ok.
b) The first game I played, somehow the English managed to beeline to Fighters very early, and their large stacks of fighters absolutely annihilated my ground-based army, through focus fire.
Not quite sure how they got there so fast or were able to field so many. They could wipe out one of my units every turn.
c) It seems now that balancing wars are very important. The incentives are quite strong to pick not on the weak guy (because the gains from conquest are now pretty low) but on the strong guy. The main goal of most wars are to weaken the other players, not necessarily to conquer them, and so to try to cement your position as the main late-game superpower.
d) With the latest beta, I seem to be observing some nasty UI issues. Mostly its fine, but sometimes if I load a game the UI doesn't load, and I have to exit Civ5 to get it to work again.
e) I am very often getting horses near my start, but never iron yet.

 

[Txurce]

a) I really like the defensive bonus for spearmen. That was a great design decision. It gives them a role and makes them useful, but retains their overall inferiority to swords and horses. My only worry is that it makes them a bit too good at defending against ranged attacks - which dense formations should be vulnerable too - but maybe that is ok.
b) The first game I played, somehow the English managed to beeline to Fighters very early, and their large stacks of fighters absolutely annihilated my ground-based army, through focus fire.
c) It seems now that balancing wars are very important. The incentives are quite strong to pick not on the weak guy (because the gains from conquest are now pretty low) but on the strong guy. The main goal of most wars are to weaken the other players, not necessarily to conquer them, and so to try to cement your position as the main late-game superpower.
d) With the latest beta, I seem to be observing some nasty UI issues. Mostly its fine, but sometimes if I load a game the UI doesn't load, and I have to exit Civ5 to get it to work again.
e) I am very often getting horses near my start, but never iron yet.

a) I think the spearman buff is great as well, and you raise a related point that I want to bring up. Now that arrow units have lost the Siege promotion - a good thing, probably, in terms of army balance - I would think that the civs with arrow UUs need a buff.

b) The AI build Fighters early only a clear minority of the time, but I've noted before how devastating it can be - even more against the AI. Given how static the AI tends to be, I like it. By the way, are you aware that Thal changed the play levels, so that the level you used to play at is now actually one lower?

c) I've been playing war games for the last couple of weeks, and arrived at the same conclusion - mainly trying to keep nukes in check.

d) Have you cleared your cache and ModUserData folder, as well as all earlier versions of TBC?

e) Getting iron instead of horses as a rule is probably a function of the civ you chose.

 

[Ahriman]

I would think that the civs with arrow UUs need a buff.

Longbows are devastating, they do not need a buff. Not sure about the others.

By the way, are you aware that Thal changed the play levels, so that the level you used to play at is now actually one lower?

yes, I noticed that, so I'm playing at Emperor.

The AI build Fighters early only a clear minority of the time, but I've noted before how devastating it can be

I wonder if they should be slightly weaker on ground attack, or have slightly shorter range, or maybe aircraft stacking limit? I don't think it should be easy to concentrate 6 fighters on a single unit ~6 tiles inside my borders.
Anyway, I need more testing experience. My main problem in that game I think was in staying friends with my English neighbors and joining them for wars with the other guys on the continent, while he stayed home, didn't conquer, took most of the wonders and teched. My poor cossacks were easy meat for the fighters (was quite a ways from biology and combustion to upgrade them).

d) Have you cleared your cache and ModUserData folder, as well as all earlier versions of TBC?

Yes, I thought so, but I'll check it again.

e) Getting iron instead of horses as a rule is probably a function of the civ you chose.

Entirely possible - I have played only as Russia and Ottomans.

 

[Txurce]

Longbows are devastating, they do not need a buff. Not sure about the others.

I wonder if they should be slightly weaker on ground attack, or have slightly shorter range, or maybe aircraft stacking limit? I don't think it should be easy to concentrate 6 fighters on a single unit ~6 tiles inside my borders.

1. Only nukes scare me more than longbows. I meant that the UUs have been degraded by the loss of the Siege promotion, thereby making otherwise powerful city killers like chu-ko-nus, longbows and war chariots merely powerful unit killers (each in its own way). But it could be argued that the game wasn't meant to be played that way, and that they are still as special as, for example, horse UUs despite their city-attack nerf.

2. I've never had 6 Fighters attack my units like that, and partly find it commendable! Total air superiority is pretty devastating. In theory you would need to pull back and research to catch up. That's what I had to do in a recent game (although not being hit as hard as you were).

Aircraft stacking limit is probably ideal anyway, although I don't know if it's achievable with TBC. I have been stacking bombers, and that's pretty brutal, too. Even less realistic than fighters killing ground troops is fighters taking cities, and that's what I've seen the AI do more vs other AI.

 

[Thalassicus]

Fighters do have a -75% penalty attacking ground units, so if they were able to cause significant damage, there really were a lot of fighters. Something to point out is I buffed AA guns significantly with lower cost and good defensive promotion availability.

One thing under discussion before you left is aircraft are very AI-friendly. They don't clog the map, don't have to worry about complicated tactical maneuvers, and can always stop to heal. I shifted late-game AI priorities towards aircraft to make the late game more challenging in war, and especially avoid map clogging. The number of aircraft is limited by aluminum, however, so there's an upper bound on how many planes a person can have.

There's a known bug where it's necessary to go to the main menu to load/reload a game. I'm not sure what causes this, especially since I've made no changes to how data is saved or loaded since January.

Horse/iron distribution depends on the surrounding terrain. Horses favor flat+open+arable land, and iron favors the opposite (rough, hostile land). Russia and the Ottomans have horse UUs, so I gave them terrain priorities that tend to favor horses.