Getting Started

The reason in the past I've specifically avoided creating such a bottleneck of techs around the modern era is because of the developer's clear design decision to allow a space race victory while skipping the bottom half of the industrial, modern and future tech tree - while the military techs require far more progress. This is one of those things I feel is a "fundamental gameplay characteristic." The merits of this decision of theirs can be debated, but I'd rather not change their design principle. Modern units are still using a strategic resource (whether it's Aluminum or Oil), so the other options aren't fundamentally different. Hope this makes sense. :)

But the only Industrial tech you can skip for a Space victory is Combustion, though! Ironic to say the least.
 
Dynamite and Railroads too. :) The developers also state about that tech (in the Civilopedia entry):

Here we're speaking specifically about the use of combustion inside of an engine (hence, "internal combustion") to create energy to turn a crank or move a piston.

Since knowledge of rocketry can develop without knowledge of the internal combustion engine (Chinese history), it's theoretically feasible to have space flight. I'd completely agree it doesn't make sense for mech infantry to not require combustion though... but it does seem the developers wanted a science victory beeline to be possible starting halfway through the tech tree, as a matter of gameplay. No bottom-half military techs cross into the top-half techs after Chemistry. :)
 
The reason in the past I've specifically avoided creating such a bottleneck of techs around the modern era is because of the developer's clear design decision to allow a space race victory while skipping the bottom half of the industrial, modern and future tech tree - while the military techs require far more progress. This is one of those things I feel is a "fundamental gameplay characteristic." The merits of this decision of theirs can be debated, but I'd rather not change their design principle.
I dunno; I think if its a design principle we disagree with, we should feel free to change it. There are lots of questionable design principles in the core game.
One could argue that they deliberately designed strategic resources so that they were really common - but we decided that was a dumb design, and changed it.

I think that a space race beeline should be possible only in the modern era, not in the industrial.
Both for basic logic, and for gameplay, since it affects much more than just the space-race itself, it also affects access to Mech Inf and other modern tech.
 
That's a good idea... I've never used the advanced start in Civ V, oddly enough. I just enjoy the first half of the game too much! :D

Seems like a good time to try though, thank you for the suggestion.

I don't have much time during weekdays, but I would set up a test so:

- duel sized, contintent, quick, conquest only. King or Emperor.
me and another civ, 2 CSs,
and start in Industrial Era

I would hope for me and civ starting in own continent, having 1 CS to "own",
and then see how it goes :)

if AI is too bad at naval, then same with pangaea
 
I see in your latest Balance - Combined (v1.09.10dev) that you have included the WWGD mod. Is there a reason that you packaged version 0.1 rather than the latest 0.3..?

Also have I missed the part when you have written about including the WWGD mod as well as the other (unknown to me)...

Liberation boost (v 1.1)
Specialized Barbarian Units (v 2)
Tectonics (v 6)
Better Japanese City Names (v 1)
Free-Research Balance Mod (v 1)
Hover Info (v 1)
Capitol Railroad Boost (v 1)

I am sure that they are all capable additions I just can't remember reading about your intentions to combine them or how they will add to the gameplay...?
 
Already running 6 pages further than my last input, was a busy week :P
And I must confess not reading as proper after page 41... :rolleyes:

About Arabia's UA:
Spoiler :
A new UA for Arabia giving it a bonus probably doesn't stack with Machu. The original ability didn't stack either as far as I know (pop * 1.25) + 1. Arabia gives a flat +1, and Machu increases the multiplier to 1.5

Spoiler :
If a pop 2 city is average: (2*1.25)+2=4.5, then a % UA should give (4.5-1)/2=1.75. Making it 40% UA.

If a pop 4 city is average: (4*1.25)+2=7, then a % UA should give (7-1)/4=1.5. Making it 20% UA.

If a pop 6 city is average: (6*1.25)+2 =9.5, then a % UA should give (9.5-1)/6±1.42. Making it 13% UA.

If a pop 8 city is average: (8*1.25)+2 =12, then a % UA should give (12-1)/8=1.75. Making it 10% UA.

If a pop 10 city is average: (10*1.25)+2=14.5, then a % UA should give (14.5-1)/10=1.35. Making it 8% UA.


If you take 10% as UA, then only cities from 9 pop and up get an increase in commerce profit. I find that a bit high for the quick conquests games. If you want to improve the value, I feel that 15% (around 5 pop) is better.
Another option is too change the linear formula to one exponential. This would reward the UA less on lower pops, but even more on higher pops. Which falls in line with high pops on above average spots in arid area's where Arabs live.

A different idea is to give oil tiles a +1 or 2 :civ5gold: per tile.

But I leave the number crunching to you ;)


About German UA:
Spoiler :
The gold you get is the same as with just destroying the camp. So I feel that should be unchanged. Else you lose reliability of netting gold. In the early game, I sometimes want that gold more than a another unit. I would either adopt your idea of untrained/undisciplined warriors or them getting a -xx% for fighting vs their barbarian "brothers", this would decrease the snowball effect as well.
So weaken the unit, but increase chances to 66% or even 75%. You cannot sway them all, some tribes stay hostile - flavour.


About strategic resources (distribution):
Spoiler :
I really agree to an overall -25% availability. Do note though, that this change some civ's UA. Like Russia, who gets an overal hammer bonus with when there are more nodes. And there ability becomes more usefull, as they can create a bigger army, without having 10+ resources in reserve. This also makes Arabia's double Oil more usefull.
In that last regard, don't make oil to powerfull, because Arabia gets more overall power from it. If a whole era get's oil as it's dedicated resource, Arabia gets a very strong era (even though this is historically correct!).
I'm pro using multiple strategic resources for very strong units. And against replacing/deleting strategic resources. If any, you should get more options to use them in peace.


I saw you're tech pathing changed on Post 779 in this thread
Spoiler :
And I got an idea. Why not switch places of "Trapping" and "The Wheel"?
Trapping is a logical step for a circus (you need an improved source of Ivory, but you can't improve it without trapping). And trapping is an animal based tech, just like HBR.
Also, the wheel fits more in place in front of Civil Service, a farm bonus related to the Water Mill.

The only concern I can see, is that Mathematics require The Wheel(wheels), and Bronze Working(wood). But you could also change it's spot to require Writing and The Wheel. But as Currency follows in the path, it all gets mixed around. Ow, just leave the Mint at Metal Casting! Do you still follow? :P


Then there came some discussion about different units and their (little) uses;
Spoiler :
Why not give each non-strategic resource unit a +10% combat bonus when next to a different unit.
Thus, If you have a swordsman, next to it is a spearman and semi-behind them lurks an archer. Both the archer and spearman get a +20% combat bonus. This makes those units way more usefull to actually add in a war. Instead of just relying on strategic units. It also adds to the flavour of diversity.
This should be moddable, as there is already something like Discipline and flanking.
 
In that last regard, don't make oil to powerfull, because Arabia gets more overall power from it.
If we get oil to a place where it feels right and that makes Arabia feel too powerful, then we should nerf the Arabian ability (maybe +50% oil, not +100%).
Similarly for iron, horses and Russia.
 
I see in your latest Balance - Combined (v1.09.10dev) that you have included the WWGD mod. Is there a reason that you packaged version 0.1 rather than the latest 0.3..?

Also have I missed the part when you have written about including the WWGD mod as well as the other (unknown to me)...

Liberation boost (v 1.1)
Specialized Barbarian Units (v 2)
Tectonics (v 6)
Better Japanese City Names (v 1)
Free-Research Balance Mod (v 1)
Hover Info (v 1)
Capitol Railroad Boost (v 1)

I am sure that they are all capable additions I just can't remember reading about your intentions to combine them or how they will add to the gameplay...?

Thal's probably unaware there's a v.3 of WWGD. Liberation Boost gives liberated civs a running start with some units and gold. The Barbarian Units provide a more varied look to barbs over the ages. Better Names speaks for itself. Hover Info is a self-explanatory info tool; the Railroad Boost gives the capital the same production boost as a RR/harbor link does to other cities.

Tectonics and Free-Research are new, and so far unexplained.

Still missing from pre-patch days are the Emigration and Tech Diffusion mods.
 
Txurce said:
Tectonics and Free-Research are new, and so far unexplained.

Still missing from pre-patch days are the Emigration and Tech Diffusion mods.

Free-Research is a mod I compiled that limits GS science output by number of techs, similar to Civ4, and raises RA costs by era. More info: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=407257

Tectonics is an excellent mapscript I highly recommend. Afaik it's the first 'script to be included in Combined; happily surprised to see it here. See my sig for link.

I'm not sure if the other two are updated to work with the latest patch.
 
Hi

At first I have to say great mod! Thank you Thal for this one.

I have tested the new dev version (v1.09.10) and I had a few issues which i did not have in v1.09.07 (or before) (I did not test 8 and 9). I activated all of the mods in.
(I hope I do not double post anything in here, but I did not find any of my issues as I glanced through the last pages)

First there is a problem with gifting gold to city-states. The influence decreases steadily and when I was in the Industrial Era 250 :c5gold: gave me +0 :c5influence: influence, 500: -5(!) and 1000: -10(!), that seemed a bit unfavorable ^^

Next there seem to be strategic resources everywhere in the ocean. When I was crusing around with my Frigates (Industrial Era, did not yet see aluminium and uranium) and tried to bombard cities and enemy ships, I had everywhere an Strategic resource malus (-50%). I tested 20 tiles or more in one area :c5unhappy: ...

And last, this seems to be connected to the Free-tech mod(?). The great Scientists do not have the ability to provide Free technology, but this does not seem to be intended according to the modinfo (in my opinion).
Edit: I just read the modinfo from Seeks thread how it works. But my GSc do not even have a bulb button...

Everything else is perfect :c5happy: keep up the good work Thal!

greets
 
Free-Research is a mod I compiled that limits GS science output by number of techs, similar to Civ4, and raises RA costs by era. More info: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=407257

Tectonics is an excellent mapscript I highly recommend. Afaik it's the first 'script to be included in Combined; happily surprised to see it here. See my sig for link.

I'm not sure if the other two are updated to work with the latest patch.

Wow. I'm glad Xink asked!

Tectonics sounds like it will make the game much more fun.

Free-Research is a game-changer. I liked everything you wrote about these benefits of Alpaca's mods, so look forward to trying it. I assume the present values are his. The GS nerf seems right at first glance. The RA nerf is so huge that the question might be, do you want to balance them or kill them? You pretty much say "kill" in your description. This may well make for a better game overall... although it may hurt the AI at higher levels more than the human player. What's the feedback on this? And would you rather I were asking these questions on your thread?

Thinking some more about it, the RA nerf may create a runaway AI - the one who racks up all that gold. Because my guess is the AI is programmed to make a deal whenever possible, and then auto-dials its brethren to see who has gold. So the rich AI could get way ahead of both the other AI and the human player.
 
Wow. I'm glad Xink asked!

Tectonics sounds like it will make the game much more fun.

Free-Research is a game-changer. I liked everything you wrote about these benefits of Alpaca's mods, so look forward to trying it. I assume the present values are his.

The tech rate changes between TBM and PWM are different - Alpaca has a straight 50% across everything, while Thal has a gradual increase in % by era. So I had to come up with a different formula, but it's essentially the same result: After the mid-Renaissance tier, GSs won't complete techs. The specific formula is ((.35x)^2)+450 where x is number of techs researched.

The GS nerf seems right at first glance. The RA nerf is so huge that the question might be, do you want to balance them or kill them? You pretty much say "kill" in your description. This may well make for a better game overall... although it may hurt the AI at higher levels more than the human player. What's the feedback on this? And would you rather I were asking these questions on your thread?

I don't mind answering them here as long as it's alright with Thal:mischief:. The RA mechanic seems pretty broken right now to me, and although there's been some anecdotal evidence saying that it's somewhat better since the patch, the ability to "game" it creates an enormous advantage for the player. See this thread for details. I asked Thal if a fix would be possible a while back, however it looks like the DLL access is required. So in essence, yes, I did want to kill it. Though I prefer to think of them as "rare and special things" as I described them in the mod description:p.

Thinking some more about it, the RA nerf may create a runaway AI - the one who racks up all that gold. Because my guess is the AI is programmed to make a deal whenever possible, and then auto-dials its brethren to see who has gold. So the rich AI could get way ahead of both the other AI and the human player.

I've played a number of games with it, and really rich AIs did happen, but only for a limited time, and later another one would get ahead, etc. But I'm hoping that it helps prevent runaway gold AIs, because they have something to spend their money on. I've only tested it on Prince and Emperor, so if you're playing at higher levels please give feedback, I would very much appreciate it. (The CostIncreases.xml is easy to adjust, so if you want to play around with pricing feel free.)
 
I don't think the issue with RAs is even the ability to game them; its that I think 250-300 gold is too cheap for a tech. Roughly speaking, it should be that 1 science ~= 1 gold, or maybe 2:1. But you can easily get 10:1 or more from an RA.

Mods which increase overall gold income just make the problem worse, because they make gold more available and so make it much easier to buy your tech advancement.
 
And last, this seems to be connected to the Free-tech mod(?). The great Scientists do not have the ability to provide Free technology, but this does not seem to be intended according to the modinfo (in my opinion).
Edit: I just read the modinfo from Seeks thread how it works. But my GSc do not even have a bulb button...

Just looked into this, there appears to be a bug - I'll upload a corrected version ASAP. Oops!:blush:

EDIT: Corrected version attached below.
 

Attachments

I don't think the issue with RAs is even the ability to game them; its that I think 250-300 gold is too cheap for a tech. Roughly speaking, it should be that 1 science ~= 1 gold, or maybe 2:1. But you can easily get 10:1 or more from an RA.

Mods which increase overall gold income just make the problem worse, because they make gold more available and so make it much easier to buy your tech advancement.

Given gold's disproportionate effect on the game, I hope that drastically reducing RA's will make for a better game, especially on Immortal +.
 
@Xink
I often just dump my whole /mods folder into the dev package, so if people want to test an identical game they can do so. :)

I've since updated to v3 of wwgd. Some of those other mods are described a bit in the "recommended" section of the 1st post of this combined thread.


@Txurce
I used Emigration to specifically solve the "ignore unhappiness" exploit. Since Firaxis added rioting or something at -20:c5angry:, I feel it's unnecessary now. I played with tech diffusion for a while but found it's not working... probably because of changes to the lua file in the patch. I was waiting to see if Afforess would update it, but might just do so myself.

Tectonics is a map script I loved back in the Civ IV days. I took it and modified it a bit back then to my own preferences, and it's the standard one I played on. I feel Civ V has much more realistic terrain than IV so I'm unsure it's necessary anymore, but I've still been trying it out for fun.

Seek explained his mod. :)


@juckie
I wonder if something like +1:c5gold:/N:c5citizen: in every city would be interesting for Arabia? It's possible to do by making the trait alter the palace to put a new building in every city (cumbersome I know, but would work!). So basically any building effect we can use for a unique trait. This would essentially be the same effect as a trade route bonus, as trade is dependent upon population. I'm not really sure it'd fit them thematically though.

Another idea is I could give them one of the unused Policy effects (see the bottom of this post). This would be possible by creating a 'dummy' unused policy and giving it to Arabia in lua code on turn 1. Perhaps improve Arabia's merchant specialists +1:c5gold:?


@Kirschi
Wow I didn't realize the influence change would drop it to 0 eventually! Ooops well that's what testing versions are for... :crazyeye:

The problem is the influence formula is rather obscurely hidden. It's hard to figure out how to modify the multiplier and divisor (only two factors we can change) to do something as simple as 50% :c5influence:/:c5gold:. Increasing the divisor actually drops the influence gain, and doubling the multiplier apparently results in that drops-to-0 thing you encountered. It's very frustrating. :badcomp:

I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean about strategic resources in the ocean, I haven't seen that.


@Txurce
I do think RA costs are a bit off. Techs increase approximately 2x per era while RAs increase 1.5x. I think it might be better to start off RAs at 200 (in classical... you can leave off describing the ancient era cost for obvious reasons :D) and double it per era. Also, I discuss RAs further in the Research thread.

Thalassicus said:
The ideal solution I see is marekb's suggestion (discussed on page 2 of this thread) combined with increasing cost per agreement (like golden ages) instead of per era. This of course isn't possible yet, but eventually it's what I want to do. The per-era route is one I've seen many mods take so I guess I'll finally give in to pressure. The main problem is the nerf to isolated starts, which are already sorta weak (average expense per agreement is higher for them with the per-era shift). I don't really like replacing one problem with another... but since the problem of late-game research pacts is probably bigger than the issue of isolated starts, it seems like an acceptable temporary tradeoff.

It'd be great to find a way to counterbalance the nerf to isolated starts with a buff in another way, and am open to suggestions. I've started exploring the start location placement code and that might be a route to take... though the code is so insanely complicated (over 10,000 lines) it'd be very difficult. I'm wondering if there might be a better option somewhere out there.


@Sneaks
Sure! Though I'd advise against including the testing version of course, as there's still bugs and balance issues.
 
(Also, I might need your help getting a new version of CCMAT to not explode).

Given that the modpack featured mods that mostly have not been updated since October, and that lua usage went way up, things have gotten tricky.
 
Wow I didn't realize the influence change would drop it to 0 eventually! Ooops well that's what testing versions are for... :crazyeye:

The problem is the influence formula is rather obscurely hidden. It's hard to figure out how to modify the multiplier and divisor (only two factors we can change) to do something as simple as 50% :c5influence:/:c5gold:. Increasing the divisor actually drops the influence gain, and doubling the multiplier apparently results in that drops-to-0 thing you encountered. It's very frustrating.

Is the present version playable, he asks before jumping in?
 
@Sneaks
I've mostly got my hands full (also leveling with a friend in cataclysm, working and doing evening classes :crazyeye:), but will try and help in any way I can.

@Txurce
Naw let me get this fixed. I've just got to be un-lazy and look up the influence formula... someone calculated it for me a few months ago. :shifty:

Edit: Ahh here it is...

GOLD/GOLD_GIFT_FRIENDSHIP_DIVISOR - Turns*(constant)*(mult and divisor ratio. E.g. 2/3 being the default)

rounded to the nearest multiple of visible divisor. Ugh. That was boring to find out.

So if you want to nerf gold gifts, increase the GOLD_GIFT_FRIENDSHIP_DIVISOR. The above formula actually isn't perfect, as it would imply eventually higher bribes get much more efficient and they do not (they are in fact exactly the same ratio, they just get rounded better).
 
Back
Top Bottom