Getting Started

[Torvald]

Thal,

I just noticed that your latest beta version 2.0.0 no longer seems to contain the following mods:

Hover Info v1
Info Addict v10
Specialized Barbarian Units v2
Tectonics v6
WWGD v3

Why were they pulled - did they somehow interfere with the core Balance mods?
Or can they still safely be added separately?

Please advise,
Thanks.

 

[Ahriman]

since the yield is already at 1, the only way to get a value between 0 and 1 is creating a way where the bonus is situational, such as moving it to a building or tech (or other similar alternatives delaying the bonus).

Which is why we're suggesting considering moving the river bonus to zero, so the only advantage of the river is through the fresh water bonuses with various techs, and with river-requiring buildings.

The big problem with this is balancing with coastal starts that have fish resources that give 3+ gold per tile

 

[Thalassicus]

@Torvald
Version 2.0beta is simply what will be in the public release. It's just my work, and work of other authors my mods require to function properly. (ModBuddy has a feature called "associations" where we can set up these dependencies, but it's not implemented yet, sadly.)

The other mods you listed are all excellent mods I still use, but are independent of TBM. My mods don't require those or vice versa. I don't typically include them in public releases because those are few and far apart, and other authors will update their stuff in that time.


@Ahriman
It's very easy to balance coastlines and fish abundance now that I've learned how start location & resource placement works, we have full control over that.

For now though, over the next day or so I'm going to be totally wrapped up in transitioning to a dynamic tooltip system, so other things will be delayed a while.

 

[Ahriman]

@Ahriman
It's very easy to balance coastlines and fish abundance now that I've learned how start location & resource placement works, we have full control over that.

I don't think abundance is the issue, I think yield is the issue.

If we moved to a system where rivers didn't give +1 gold, the right solution would be to reduce the yield of fish resources, not to make them rare. Making them rare would be dull.

Still, I tend to think that leaving rivers as they are while reducing trade route income and increasing some unit and building maintenance costs would be a better way to make gold more scarce.

 

[V. Soma]

If gold balance be improved (for less gold in the world) for a build on Friday evening, I will give it a try,
otherwise it will be PWM testplay

 

[Seek]

Move +1 from terrain to Water Mill

Thats much too much power for a building that does other stuff too.

I think this is an excellent idea, I have no problem removing the other effects from the Water Mill. With riverside tiles so much stronger now this would be a great way to encourage settling on the river rather than one tile off.

 

[V. Soma]

An interesting mod about No AI bonus. Perhaps useful.

 

[Txurce]

An interesting mod about No AI bonus. Perhaps useful.

For our purposes creating a balanced mod where the AI receives no happiness bonus could have a major effect on the game, in that it would make luxuries valuable to the AI, expand more slowly, etc. The balancing could then be done via bonuses to science, production, and maintenance. Wouldn't this be much more controllable, not to mention understandable?

Sneaks did something similar in WWGD, but I don't know to what degree he nerfed AI unhappiness, as compared to this mod.

 

[Ahriman]

With riverside tiles so much stronger now this would be a great way to encourage settling on the river rather than one tile off.

For the human player.
What makes you think the AI player will do that, particularly if its forced into suboptimal (from its perspective) settlement patterns by increasing minimum settlement distance to 3?
I worry that such a change would increase the human-AI gap, because the human player would know to always settle on a river, whereas the AI wouldn't try so hard to do so.

Its also a bit bizarre. The river gold bonus represents the ability to use rivers as a trade-route highway. How would that be related to a waterwheel mill?
But most importantly, it fails to solve the actual design problem, which is that gold income is too high relative to expenses.

* * *

For our purposes creating a balanced mod where the AI receives no happiness bonus could have a major effect on the game, in that it would make luxuries valuable to the AI, expand more slowly, etc. The balancing could then be done via bonuses to science, production, and maintenance. Wouldn't this be much more controllable, not to mention understandable?

So, you're suggesting removing all happiness bonuses, but increasing production, gold, science bonuses further to try to compensate?
Interesting idea.

I don't think it actually would make the AI value luxuries more though (in diplomacy at least, I think that value is hardcoded), and I worry that it would make the AI expand more slowly but still in a densely packed ICS pattern most of the time, leaving lots of extra space for the human player to grab.

 

[Txurce]

For the human player.
What makes you think the AI player will do that, particularly if its forced into suboptimal (from its perspective) settlement patterns by increasing minimum settlement distance to 3?
I worry that such a change would increase the human-AI gap, because the human player would know to always settle on a river, whereas the AI wouldn't try so hard to do so.

Its also a bit bizarre. The river gold bonus represents the ability to use rivers as a trade-route highway. How would that be related to a waterwheel mill?
But most importantly, it fails to solve the actual design problem, which is that gold income is too high relative to expenses.

* * *

So, you're suggesting removing all happiness bonuses, but increasing production, gold, science bonuses further to try to compensate?
Interesting idea.

I don't think it actually would make the AI value luxuries more though (in diplomacy at least, I think that value is hardcoded), and I worry that it would make the AI expand more slowly but still in a densely packed ICS pattern most of the time, leaving lots of extra space for the human player to grab.

That's what I'm suggesting. The AI won't value luxuries more, but its hardcoded trading for (and settling near) them will now pay off for them. If they are properly buffed elsewhere, they should still be approximately as competitive at every difficulty level. But their game play will be more like the human's, which should make it more fun.

 

[Ahriman]

But their game play will be more like the human's

I'm not sure that you can conclude this.
It *should* be more like the human, but its not clear to me that would necessarily happen, in part because we don't know much about what drives the city placement algorithm.

Very often I see an AI player build a creeping wave of cities ~2 tiles apart, often going in a long connected line in a single direction.
Optimally, we might want them to instead spread cities further apart - and hard-coding 3-tile limit is one clumsy brute force way to achieve that. But reducing their happiness might well mean that they still build out in a long-connected line of 2-tile-apart cities, just that they will do so at a slower rate. I'm not sure that's an improvement.

I wonder for example if there is something in the algorithm which puts too high an emphasis on the AI selecting spots that are already adjacent to its existing culture?

 

[Txurce]

I'm not sure that you can conclude this.
It *should* be more like the human, but its not clear to me that would necessarily happen, in part because we don't know much about what drives the city placement algorithm.

Very often I see an AI player build a creeping wave of cities ~2 tiles apart, often going in a long connected line in a single direction.
Optimally, we might want them to instead spread cities further apart - and hard-coding 3-tile limit is one clumsy brute force way to achieve that. But reducing their happiness might well mean that they still build out in a long-connected line of 2-tile-apart cities, just that they will do so at a slower rate. I'm not sure that's an improvement.

I wonder for example if there is something in the algorithm which puts too high an emphasis on the AI selecting spots that are already adjacent to its existing culture?

I don't know what would happen, either, but would like to find out. There are some interesting observations at:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=407981

In every game I play, only some of the AI build ICS-style. The rest build closely, but in a reasonable manner. I think this is because the devs assigned a certain number to be expansionist in each game.

 

[Ahriman]

That thread seems to imply that removing the AI happiness bonuses would break the game, because they don't sufficiently respond to unhappiness or plan for it beforehand (a very common AI flaw), and the AIs (and even city states) would crash into unhappiness and rebels.
That doesn't seem like an improvement to the game.

It seems like they tuned the AI parameters after giving it the happiness bonuses, which is very frustrating for our purposes.

Also, the fact that the AI doesn't repair its pillaged stuff easily enough is really damn annoying - though I thought that the vanilla patch was supposed to alter this?

 

[Txurce]

That thread seems to imply that removing the AI happiness bonuses would break the game, because they don't sufficiently respond to unhappiness or plan for it beforehand (a very common AI flaw), and the AIs (and even city states) would crash into unhappiness and rebels.
That doesn't seem like an improvement to the game.

It seems like they tuned the AI parameters after giving it the happiness bonuses, which is very frustrating for our purposes.

Also, the fact that the AI doesn't repair its pillaged stuff easily enough is really damn annoying - though I thought that the vanilla patch was supposed to alter this?

On the other hand, Sneaks' WWGD mod apparently nerfed happiness, and none of the effects mentioned in that thread occur playing with his mod. Keep in mind I said "apparently," because I'm not sure what he did. Almost all the commentary in the WWGD thread is about diplomacy.

 

[truetom]

I must say this has gone a bit too far for my taste. Do you have any former versions stored somewhere, Thal?
Had to format C: and lost my mods and saves.

 

[Ahriman]

Can you describe which features you think are too far for your taste?

 

[Dunkah]

I agree with truetom, and please keep in mind... it's not that I am not a fan or ungrateful or don't appreciate the hard work you guys do...

But the game plays inherently different without the normal styled Iron deposits. It's kind of cool and perhaps this can be added in the same directory as the abundant and glorious start sections (or whatever they are called).

I mentioned this before... but I think balancing out Swordsmen with another counter unit like Axmen would be more like what the Civ players are used to and definately what I would like to see. So you don't get iron, big deal you have copper instead, or horses... Each one of those should be sufficient enough to wage some type of early war by themselves, despite what the next Civ has for resources.

Having excess Iron may seem like a waste but it's typical Civ. Little to no iron just feels wrong.

I'm not a modder, and I love your mods, without which Civ would definately be broken, but it seems to me you are straying away from vanilla a whole lot. What happens when the next update comes out? Perhaps you should use that as a marker stone for what goes too far. Seems to me you will have to re-write a whole lot of stuff when the time comes.

Don't make changes just for the sake of making changes. Balance what is broken and then stop. This is the best mod out there, and this makes me not want to play it anymore.

Sorry if that seemed harsh, no ill intent meant. I can't rule out that I really don't know what I am talking about.

Edit: Perhaps you could set Cats so that as long you have access to Iron or Copper they would be able to be built, (either resource but no strat cost requirement). Perhaps a horse based siege weapon of some sort? (Is there such a thing?) Or perhaps a non resource using seige engine like a battering ram.

I loved scouting my enemies borders before I went to war to find sources of iron, then stationing a fast moving unit to go in and take it out... then blocking/ cutting trade routes... it's fairly easy to cripple someone with an all Iron based army.

 

[Txurce]

Having excess Iron may seem like a waste but it's typical Civ. Little to no iron just feels wrong.

There is 25% less iron, which I wouldn't call "little to no iron." The problem with vanilla isn't "excess iron," but that it was feast or famine for the human. With this mod, you are more likely to get some of it.

 

[Ahriman]

I can definitely see how some people wouldn't like the new limited resource approach.

Having said that, I think its a huge improvement, and I'm glad its been adopted. Sorry it doesn't suit you.

The problem with vanilla isn't "excess iron,

Actually I strongly disagree. Excess strategic resources (most particularly horses, but also iron) is a huge problem in vanilla, in that it makes strategic resources very common and thus meaningless, because they are almost never a binding constraint.

Lower levels of strategic resources makes them much more meaningful.

 

[Txurce]

I can definitely see how some people wouldn't like the new limited resource approach.

Having said that, I think its a huge improvement, and I'm glad its been adopted. Sorry it doesn't suit you.


Actually I strongly disagree. Excess strategic resources (most particularly horses, but also iron) is a huge problem in vanilla, in that it makes strategic resources very common and thus meaningless, because they are almost never a binding constraint.

Lower levels of strategic resources makes them much more meaningful.

You strongly disagree? Why am I not surprised?

That lower levels are more meaningful according to some (including you and me) doesn't mean that "feast or famine" isn't one of the main benefits... as anyone who has complained of his game being spoiled due to no iron will attest.