Getting Started

[pyccos]

try verify integrity of ur game and defrag worked for me

 

[Torvald]

Thal & others,

I have happily been playing Civ-V since September, including using numerous mods to enhance the game. My favorite batch of mods have been the Balance series created by Thalassicus, and I've really enjoyed using the individual components so far.

I'd now like to try installing the Balance - Combined mod, but first would like to enquire about some of the individual Balance components I'd downloaded in previous months, to see if they're still okay to use, or have been absorbed/replaced since then.

Here are the earlier Balance components I'd like to ask the status of:

Balance - Crossbow upgrade to cannon
Balance - Embarkation
Balance - Farms
Balance - Fewer Weak Wonders
Balance - Greater Person Improvements
Balance - Less Rancid Improvements
Balance - Mine & Lumbermill
Balance - Specialists & Great People

Thanks in advance.

 

[Tomice]

Balance - Crossbow upgrade to cannon
Balance - Embarkation
Balance - Farms
Balance - Fewer Weak Wonders
Balance - Greater Person Improvements
Balance - Less Rancid Improvements
Balance - Mine & Lumbermill
Balance - Specialists & Great People

Thanks in advance.

Not sure what "farms" changed, but all other are still included in Balance-Combined somewhere, usually bundled in packages like "B-Improvements".

Crossbow -> to cannon was abandoned, however, it was OP. Instead now promotions "switch" from ranged to melee version when ugrading, you don't lose them anymore.

 

[Thalassicus]

Thanks for pointing out the baths prereq issue, fixed it. It still (erroneously) required a Colosseum be present in the city you want the baths.

@Markolainen
I honestly thought AIs received production/tech modifiers and such, that's how it's worked in previous versions of Civ. Even if not though, the AI inherently 'knows' about changes to improvement yields and such. I tweaked it further to make them 'like' farms a bit more than usual. In general, I've seen them put improvements at the same locations I do.

About city healing, that was brought up in the city defenses thread here, and these was my thoughts:

Regarding city defenses, I agree... I also feel city healing is too high. It's why I kept base healing at the pre-1.135 value in the Combat mod (1.135 increased it from 1 to 2 and added the modifiers from city strength).

I still strongly feel increasing city hitpoints through defensive structures is a better solution than increasing strength or healing. Improving strength disproportionately hurts tech-inferior forces, while improving healing hurts long sieges while not having any effect on quick city captures. A boost to hitpoints for each defensive building affects all armies and attackers equally, improving city durability with minimal side-effects. Unfortunately, this isn't possible with current tools.

I might include the railroad "central station" building in the city dev mod... would make sense to make it part of the core mod.


@black213
Culture is inherently more powerful than other yields, so we gotta make sure to not overdo it.


@Txurce
Considering how early gains in Civ have exponential effects, I want to be very careful with the Pioneer. Even being able to settle your second city 1-2 turns sooner can have a cascading benefit on the rest of the game. The biggest benefit is it moves twice as fast in rough terrain as a normal settler... sort of like an 'ignores terrain' bonus already, which is why I left it off for now.

Minutemen are fun to spam with a quick beeline to them... but a huge pain to upgrade. The main benefit is having all future gunpowder "footmen" units ignore terrain costs, which provides a lot of flexibility. You run into the same "saves turns" phenomenon as with the Pioneer... if you can get to a target a few turns earlier that means you can kill it earlier, which is basically the same end result as a combat bonus.


@CuraditO
Did you try deleting the cache folder:

\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\cache

You might also try verifying the game like pyccos suggested. Other than this I don't really know. I've never encountered the issue you describe, so I suspect it's something from another mod, cached data, and/or data corruption.

1. Balance - Crossbow upgrade to cannon
2. Balance - Embarkation
3. Balance - Farms
4. Balance - Fewer Weak Wonders
5. Balance - Greater Person Improvements
6. Balance - Less Rancid Improvements
7. Balance - Mine & Lumbermill
8. Balance - Specialists & Great People

1 is obsolete, promotions now update in the Combat mod. 2 is also part of the Combat mod.
3, 5, 7 - Now part of Terrain Improvements mod
4, 6, 8 - Now part of City Development mod
(see signature for links)

 

[Tomice]

I might include the railroad "central station" building in the city dev mod... would make sense to make it part of the core mod.

I consider it a bug and would like to see it implemented. It's ok that the capital doesn't receive gold from trade routes, but this makes your capital much worse as production city than any other city post RR.

 

[Torvald]

Thal,

Thanks for letting me know all those older separate Balance mods have now been consolidated into others.

Will therefore promptly delete all of earlier files from my Mods folder, and will replace them with the updated mods from your "Balance - Combined" v1.08 file.

P.S. I agree with Tomice's suggestion to include the Capitol City Railyard ability in your next round of mod updates. Had been using a separate mod to add that capability, but it no longer seems to work after the most recent game patch.

 

[MisterBenn]

Hi there Thal, thank you for putting these mods together, I couldn't imagine playing without.

Do you have any control over what the AI offers to the player in the "capitulation deal" once they have decided they are desperate to buy peace? They are far too generous and offer multiple cities quite easily. In my current game I was behind France on score, they DOWd, I repelled them and took a city. I was ready to accept peace since I was at my happy cap, but they came to me first and offered five cities more for peace! Those cities came with several luxury resources and my stagnation was over. Later in the same game, I was steadily beating back the Mongols and they offered me 8 cities!

I hope you have some sort of control over this and that it is not completely determined by vanilla. Even if the AI is completely beaten these offers are the complete last resort since it always dooms them to death or mediocrity and often the aggressor ends up more able to keep pushing than they were. The AI should either make smaller offers first, perhaps give border cities to an ally or friend instead, or perhaps just not make those handover offers altogether. In the time it takes for the aggressor to clean up the cities, they may themselves change priorities or get attacked and have to reconsider...

 

[Thalassicus]

I suspect it's something in the c++ (most AI stuff is) but I'll put it on my todo list.

 

[Tomice]

I don't think this has much to do with this mod, but do you guys think barbarians are more passive lately? Especially archers, they often don't attack even if they could!

 

[Thalassicus]

@kiwijase
I've been investigating your problem and it's very puzzling. My debug output states the Ottomans lose a city at coordinates (28,36) but that's in the middle of the Atlantic. I have a function called doCityCapture that handles various things if/when a city is captured. The game passes it four pieces of information: city ID, position of the city, who lost it, and who gained it. When this activates at the end of your turn in that savegame, the position the game sends is (28,36).

I'm going to try and find what the actual problem is when I have some free time... but until then you can continue your game by doing the following. Open "BC - General.lue" in the Balance - Combat mod folder. Find this line:

lostPlayer:InitUnit( getBestUnitType(lostPlayer), pCapitalCity:GetX(), pCapitalCity:GetY() );


Comment it out by adding -- to the front:

--lostPlayer:InitUnit( getBestUnitType(lostPlayer), pCapitalCity:GetX(), pCapitalCity:GetY() );


Then save the file. Your game should progress properly then, though the partisan mechanic will be disabled. I haven't seen an issue like this in any games I've played so it's been difficult to find out why the game is sending wrong position information.

 

[CBG68]

@Tomice - I would have to agree. I had an instance where there was 1 archer outside a camp and 1 inside and only the 1 outside attacked my unit. If both would have attacked I more than likely would have had retreated, but the way it turned out I destroyed both of them with the same unit.

 

[Xink]

I suspect it's something in the c++ (most AI stuff is) but I'll put it on my todo list.

It would be great if you could indeed do something about this as I have always wondered what will trigger the AI during a peace deal to either offer you half their empire, when they are only just losing, or not accept peace at all when they are nearly annihilated.

Some of their offers of peace are difficult to understand

 

[Sneaks]

You can currently edit peace treaty willingness, and thresholds for various states of war winning and losing. However, it is impossible to tell it what to offer in a peace deal at the moment, except perhaps luxury resources, which would require editing their happy values.

 

[kiwijase]

Your game should progress properly then, though the partisan mechanic will be disabled. I haven't seen an issue like this in any games I've played so it's been difficult to find out why the game is sending wrong position information.

Thanks, I appreciate you looking at this. I am also happy to hear I can salvage this game, as I was really enjoying it at the time.

Thanks for the explanation too, I have been curious how the code works.

 

[juckie]

Playing this mod for a while now, and I've noticed (and remembered!) one thing I don't like.

Sheep and cow tiles never improve while other tiles can improve because of tech.
I suggest placing a +1food on sheep and cow tiles, with the discovery of Rertilizer.

Rationale: The grass grows better, be it for humans, or animals.

A likewise thing happens with Deer and Fish, they do not get better. Not that I see a rationale-back-upped idea. Only fish don't really need it. And as much as I like the mod Granary, I'm not building it everywhere just for food. It's still the least liked resource.
If there is any;
Compass for Fish. With better sea technologies come better fishing methodes.
Rifling for Deer is a bit far away, but better gear improves hunting. Machinery could be a cheaper tech in a pinch.

 

[truetom]

I don't think this has much to do with this mod, but do you guys think barbarians are more passive lately? Especially archers, they often don't attack even if they could!

I agree. Also, "raging barbarians" option is far from it. It's not as overwhelming as it could get in Civ4. 50% more barb units would be better, especialy in the begining.

I could agree with Juckie, Compass should improve fishing. As for hunting, the reason for goes lower as the time progresses and in modern times hunting is turistic only - at least closer to developed cities. Maybe it could get one gold instead of food in modern times?

 

[Tomice]

Sheep on a hill for instance give 1 food, 2 with pasture, 3 with smokehouse in the city. That's the same as a farmed riverside hill gives after fertilizer (only in TBM, not vanilla).

It is true that sheep lose their special strenght after fertilizer, they are more "average" after this tech. Not sure if it's desirable to keep sheep (and other bonus ressources) especially strong over the course of the game, but it's a reasonable request.

 

[juckie]

I could agree with Juckie, Compass should improve fishing. As for hunting, the reason for goes lower as the time progresses and in modern times hunting is turistic only - at least closer to developed cities. Maybe it could get one gold instead of food in modern times?

Thanks!
I do totally agree with your arguments. I also thought about the "for sport" / tourism aspect, but there is one slight "problem" with giving it commerce. It gets doubled during Golden Ages, so that could quite improve the tile if it isn't next to a river already.

Sheep on a hill for instance give 1 food, 2 with pasture, 3 with smokehouse in the city. That's the same as a farmed riverside hill gives after fertilizer (only in TBM, not vanilla).

It is true that sheep lose their special strenght after fertilizer, they are more "average" after this tech. Not sure if it's desirable to keep sheep (and other bonus ressources) especially strong over the course of the game, but it's a reasonable request.

Well, a riverside hill is more common than sheep on a hill. And it also has an extra coin.

And yes, at the start bonus resources give more than other tiles. But don't forget, you don't always want a smokehouse due to maintenance, hammer cost/investment.
A Civil Service river-hill-farm tile gives the same food output as a sheep-hill-pasture tile. So quite early on, a bonus resource isn't better anymore. In fact, it only gets better with a building, while the river tile gets a "free" food with tech.

What I mean is that in the end, while I really like the mod's granary (and fertilizer change), bonus resources still add little to the strategic placement of a new city. It's now just a whole lot better than in vanilla (IMHO).


I also got another mention/suggestion. I feel that the Arabian UA isn't quite that strong. Yes the UB is very good, the UU is decent, but I find the UA lacking.
-The oil is correct, but not used that much (-by me). And Russia has something similar, but better. Horses and Iron are both more common, and usefull.
-The trade route part could also be tweaked (Paper Maker (for example) makes way more gold than these trade routes do), to maybe a flat +2, or an adjustment in the math?

As they are a mercantile civ (even though the leader is famous for scientific and cultural pursuits) already, I suggest a +2 coin on oil resources. This could also be beakers, where it represents the scientific interest is has.

I feel it helps a lot if all civ's are considered balanced (by this mod playing community), so how would you rank the current civ's?

 

[Txurce]

I also got another mention/suggestion. I feel that the Arabian UA isn't quite that strong. Yes the UB is very good, the UU is decent, but I find the UA lacking.
-The oil is correct, but not used that much (-by me). And Russia has something similar, but better. Horses and Iron are both more common, and usefull.
-The trade route part could also be tweaked (Paper Maker (for example) makes way more gold than these trade routes do), to maybe a flat +2, or an adjustment in the math?

As they are a mercantile civ (even though the leader is famous for scientific and cultural pursuits) already, I suggest a +2 coin on oil resources. This could also be beakers, where it represents the scientific interest is has.

I feel it helps a lot if all civ's are considered balanced (by this mod playing community), so how would you rank the current civ's?

I don't find Arabia weak, due to the double resources. The oil bonus doesn't do a lot for it offensively, due to the units needing oil not being essential, but it can be a good thing to trade and make even more gold.

Speaking of oil, it could be worth considering a buff to the Panzers by removing the oil requirement. This would be no different than with the Egyptian UU, and has some historical validity in that Germany made do with less oil by pioneering synthetics. Germany is also generally viewed as one of the weaker civs.

 

[Thalassicus]

Sadly, we can't do much about Arabia's unique ability. Traits are very inflexible, we have few options for them. Ideally I'd like to change it from +1/city, to say +10% empire-wide trade route income.

I like the idea of Panzers being spammable. I do feel tanks in general are still underwhelming though, so it's probably better to buff the base unit and hit two birds with one stone.

In particular, I think I'm going to reduce mech infantry to 3. It's been suggested several times and seems like a good option, as it fits the pattern of footsoldiers vs mounted in earlier eras. This will buff the relative value of tanks, and in turn Panzers.