Getting Started

[Thalassicus]

@Maxii
Should be fixed now (working properly on my computer, at least, and uploaded a new version).

 

[truetom]

Ah Thal, you're too good. As I'm a PC analfabet I'd just like some more of strat resources, other things are great, can't live without them and will adapt to anything else you throw at me. If you do make something for me (and Dunkah), you have to speak veeeery slowly for me. But you could also answer if you can upload somehere some of the previous versions of the mod. Or it doesn't work that way?

 

[Maxii]

Thal, whatever you changed did the trick. The combined mod now shows the unit command UI both alone, and with all the mods I'm using. btw, the mods I'm using are all from the list of your recommendations, with 2 exceptions - PerfectWorld3 (map script) and the CS Diplomacy Mod.

 

[SSgtDuke]

I've played about 180 turns of 2.0.02 and took some notes. The new tooltips are great, but need some polishing.

• Hanging Gardens shows "++1 citizens in all cities". The bonuses in other tooltips are sometimes displayed like +N and sometimes it's just N. Would be nice if it's consistent (the +N version).
• Lots of tech tooltips have redundant information above and below the dotted line. The text below the dotted line that is basically just a copy of the bonus information above should probably be removed. Though some have a more interesting description below the dotted line that should be kept.
• Some tech tooltips also say something like, "Requires barracks", and then right below it, "Requires barracks in all cities". I think only the second one should be there.
• Lighthouse and Great Lighthouse both mention that they must be built on a coast, twice.
• Barracks shows the +Nxp text twice.

Did you remove the healing effect from the Fountain of Youth? I found it and neither the pop-up nor civilopedia mention anything about the healing effect. Probably a good idea.

The Stonehenge wonder screen (when you've built it) displayed "Cost:" and "Maintenance:" lines (without any values) in the bottom right portion. These should probably be removed. Below that was the normal useful information about the bonuses. Other wonder screens, like for Great Wall and Machu Pichu didn't display anything in the bottom right. Would be nice to see the bonus information there (like what I think is normal in vanilla).

Does Great Wall obsolete anymore? I didn't see any note about that like it used to show.

I noticed that defending units in marsh have -33% strength. That seems pretty harsh. Maybe -25% would be a bit more reasonable, like the opposite effect of defending in rough terrain.

Library appears to have an engineer specialist slot (obviously not intended). But when I clicked it the UI went a bit crazy and collapsed the Wonders and Buildings sections and my Workshop disappeared from the list. Something is definitely funky.

Also wondering if 2.0.05 should be save compatible with 2.0.02 and I should update before resuming play tomorrow.

 

[Thalassicus]

Something to mention: I could really use some feedback on the new building tooltip format (2.0.1 and up). Is anything confusing to understand?

Also... I'd like opinions on whether yall like having "cost to purchase:" modifier visible or not. Is that useful information?


@truetom
I'll see what I can do.

@Maxii
In this case it was just a simple error of not including the lua files properly for that UI element.

@SSgtDuke
Yep tooltips were very much a work in progress for a while there... by the time I got to 2.0.05 I sat down and looked at every single building on the tech tree to catch any errors, that version (or higher) should no longer have things like a double ++ sign.

Similarly with the stuff above/below the dotted line, I went through the entirety of the vanilla game's building_help text keys and deleted most of them, since the info is now above the dotted line.

Now, the issue with "requires" and "requires in all cities" is something that's not an error, national wonders really do have two separate, redundant entries. I removed the first one from them today, since "requires in city" doesn't affect gameplay at all if it is already requires it in every city. I think it's a leftover from when national wonders didn't need the required building in all cities. I chose this because I do want the tooltips to be accurate, and would rather not hide information that's there.

There's also an inconsistency issue I've been debating... in some places Firaxis said "Requires:" and in other places they say "Required:"... it's just a difference of one letter but annoys me, thinking about changing that too.

I did remove the healing effect of Fountain of Youth because the AI doesn't have a clue how to use it, and doesn't even try to settle near the Fountain.

I'll take a look at the wonder screen issues, thank you for pointing that out. I wouldn't have noticed otherwise since I have those hidden.

Great Wall does still obsolete but I haven't added that to the automatic-tooltips yet.

Units defending in marshes have always had a -33% modifier... it's hard to determine if that's intentional though. It used to be all flat land had that modifier, then they changed it for featureless flat land but not features, so I don't really know if it's a bug or they do want marsh to be a different terrain type.

Opposite of +25% is -20%... the -33% modifier is actually the opposite of +50%.

I think 2.0.05 should be compatible with *.02, I believe I've primarily made just UI changes. It wouldn't hurt to back up your old mod folder though.

I found the library problem, thank you. I'd added a slot to it but didn't specify what type it should be.

 

[Polycrates]

This is an interesting issue. I'm of two minds. On the one-hand, the AI will have no hope of actually making successful conquests if it doesn't build lots of catapults, and these can get really nasty once upgraded to trebs and cannon and artillery.

On the other hand, the AI doesn't always use them very well, and often advances them without sufficient support, which makes them easy to kill.

I've also noticed them building hordes of siege and using them terribly. Particularly when they're on the defensive and their army has been mostly cut to shreds. They're great at using one or two to fortify in cities and pound the hell out of attackers, but not so great beyond that. I know nothing about the AI workings, but if it was possible to cut down siege build proirity when they're on a defensive footing that might help without crippling them on the offense.

I agree that there needs to be more naval balancing. I'd like to see battleships be considerably more resistant to fire, while destroyers go down in a few shots, and I'd like to see subs able to come close to 1-shotting a destroyer (and getting almost 1-shotted in return).

Yep. Battleships have the advantage of firing range, so they're better against land targets who can't retaliate, but their actual punch and fortitude isn't so amazing and they're sooooo slooooow (hate to bring realism into this, but even though real battleships may have been just as useless as the civ ones, they were actually very fast - around the 30 knot range). For me, the speed is the real killer - they just can't get where they need to go quickly enough to be useful. With oil as scarce as it is now, they're definitely not worth it. I'd be tempted to try giving them +1 speed and destroyers -1 speed.

I think Firaxis intended this originally (they certainly announced it), but then my guess is that they couldn't get the AI done so that the AI escorted them appropriately, so they went with the current method in order to avoid giving the human player a large advantage in its ability to escort a naval fleet.
I don't like the lawnmower method though, particularly when the AI is still incompetent at blocking civilians, I'd prefer to see a method where naval bombardment did 5 damage to transports (not 4 damage from land bombardment) but couldn't run them down anymore, so 2 bombardments = death for any transport.

I'm glad they didn't actually - having to manually ensure every unit always has an escort on top (especially when the escort doesn't have the same speed) would be hellish.
I agree with removing the overrunning though - I actually didn't know it existed until recently and was just doing bombarding embarked units only, and it felt really right, gameplay balance-wise. Embarked units did feel a little tough - is their bombardment toughness a flat value or based on relative strengths of the units? - and I agree that something closer to two hits from a same-tech ship is a pretty good ballpark amount.

 

[SSgtDuke]

in some places Firaxis said "Requires:" and in other places they say "Required:"

I personally prefer "Requires:", but whatever as long as it's consistent.

Units defending in marshes have always had a -33% modifier... it's hard to determine if that's intentional though. It used to be all flat land had that modifier, then they changed it for featureless flat land but not features, so I don't really know if it's a bug or they do want marsh to be a different terrain type.

Opposite of +25% is -20%... the -33% modifier is actually the opposite of +50%.

I certainly wouldn't want to be stuck in the marsh when attacked, but I think -33% is too extreme. -20% sounds good, a bit worse than being attacked on dry flat land, but not so devastating.

 

[doktorstick]

Why is their a penalty for defending in a marsh? Presumably the defenders are fortified in less-marshy parts of the marsh and use the terrain to their advantage since they understand it. The attackers, however, are trying to move (through a marsh) to get to the defenders.

Though, I can understand why bombards into a marsh would give benefit to the attackers.

 

[Txurce]

Does the AI try to win the game, or prevent losing?

The AI doesn't try to stop you from winning, and is very inefficient in its own efforts, but I lost my first two post-patch Immortal games to an Iroquois science victory (1820) and an Arab diplomatic victory. My girlfriend plays on King and if she hasn't won by around 1950, someone else usually does.

 

[Txurce]

Something to mention: I could really use some feedback on the new building tooltip format (2.0.1 and up). Is anything confusing to understand?

Also... I'd like opinions on whether yall like having "cost to purchase:" modifier visible or not. Is that useful information?

I haven't played with that patch yet. As for "cost to purchase" graphics - I like all information.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Library appears to have an engineer specialist slot (obviously not intended). But when I clicked it the UI went a bit crazy and collapsed the Wonders and Buildings sections and my Workshop disappeared from the list. Something is definitely funky.

This happens a lot in mods made before the December megapatch, and I had the same problem in my own mod. What this means is that the Library has been modded to have 1 specialist slot, but there's no specialist TYPE assigned any more. (Pre-patch it had Scientist slots, but when they removed the slot they changed the number to 0 AND removed the type declaration.) So the slot is unusable, and the UI has no idea how to handle it, which results in the behavior you saw. It probably said "Engineer" because that was the type of the last slot you'd examined before checking the Library (meaning Engineer was still in the local variable).
The simple fix for this is that instead of just using the Set to change the SpecialistCount for the Library, it should change the SpecialistType to SPECIALIST_SCIENTIST at the same time.

You see similar behavior if you use other unset variables. For instance, assign a nonexistent Icon Atlas to some new building or promotion, and the picture it'll use in-game will be a randomly-changing copy of other pictures in that category, eventually crashing the game most likely. So it's a pretty consistent indicator of unset variables if you know to look for it.

Opposite of +25% is -20%... the -33% modifier is actually the opposite of +50%

Except that all combat percentage modifiers are additive, not multiplicative, so you need to be really careful with logic like that. If you had terrain that gave -33%, and then the unit got +50% from, say, fortifying (or from two +25% promotions), then it'd be 17% stronger than before, not just back where it started. Or if they have +25% from a Wonder like Himeji Castle, or an adjacent bonus, or certain Policies, or the bonus from the various terrain-based promotions...

This is why the -50% penalty units get for not having enough of the strategic resources they use isn't very crippling. To an unpromoted unit, sure, it's crippling, but once you start stacking those percentages it's not a big deal.

 

[SSgtDuke]

Why is their a penalty for defending in a marsh? Presumably the defenders are fortified in less-marshy parts of the marsh and use the terrain to their advantage since they understand it. The attackers, however, are trying to move (through a marsh) to get to the defenders.

I think it's more along the lines of getting ambushed while crossing a marsh. If you fortify in the marsh for a turn then you can negate the penalty.

 

[Thalassicus]

Yeah, civ's additive multipliers are crazy.

I fiddled with the flavor values for siege units and crossbows a bit, and while doing so discovered what appears to be a serious flaw in their AI code. They only have offense, defense, and ranged flavor values, nothing about cities. This means the AI is probably clueless about the vs-city penalties Firaxis recently added.

Still, hopefully this tweak will improve things a bit. I discovered the Catapult flavor was set higher than any other ranged unit, even Artillery... and found Crossbows were the lowest ranged flavor of anything.

 

[doktorstick]

I finished the game I describe half-a-dozen posts back. I won the cultural victory. My few destroyers were enough to prevent the Chinese from building the last SS part while I got my last two policies and build the Utopia project.

Is it right to require a culture win to require six complete policy trees and build a 1500 wonder? That's a pretty steep requirement, especially considering a cultured civilization isn't all about the s. Since they don't expand much, they are less likely to have access to coal+aluminum+uranium for factories+hydro+nuclear plants. Before those boosts, it could take a good 30+ turns to build the thing.

 

[Thalassicus]

Good question, and I've only played a cultural victory a few times so I don't really have enough experience to answer it.

What do you think would be good ways to improve going for a cultural victory? More artist specialist slots on buildings like the Museum or Hermitage, perhaps?

 

[Txurce]

Is it right to require a culture win to require six complete policy trees and build a 1500 wonder?

How does this compare to vanilla's five trees but no new-era SP's?

 

[Seek]

Good question, and I've only played a cultural victory a few times so I don't really have enough experience to answer it.

What do you think would be good ways to improve going for a cultural victory? More artist specialist slots on buildings like the Museum or Hermitage, perhaps?

Make the Great Artist contribute culture! You mentioned doing this before, and I for one am eagerly looking forward to it!

How does this compare to vanilla's five trees but no new-era SP's?

Not too different - by the end you're getting SPs in 5-10 turns. My last Culture Vic I had forgotten about the six tree req lol and iirc had to wait ~30 extra turns before I could build the project.

 

[doktorstick]

How does this compare to vanilla's five trees but no new-era SP's?

Off the cuff, I would say it is worse. It prevents an earlier era cultural victory since without the bonus SPs, you have more SPs to get. It also makes it take longer even with the free SPs, because with each SP, you increase the cost of the next SP. Then you have to throw up a wonder.

I don't have a feel for how vanilla played out because I have been playing with balance most of the time. (I only got the game for Christmas. Heh.)

 

[Polycrates]

What do you think would be good ways to improve going for a cultural victory? More artist specialist slots on buildings like the Museum or Hermitage, perhaps?

I'm no expert on cultural victories so someone please tell me if I'm being an idiot, but this is something that strikes me every time I get a bit cultural....

One thing I would suggest as an option would be to switch one of the culture buildings from a +n culture building to a +n% culture building (and I'm thinking Opera House as the obvious candidate, for perhaps +50% culture).

The reasoning for this is that there's very little reason to focus culture in a given city at the moment (prior to Hermitage/broadcast tower/freedom). Generally, you're better off going horizontal with culture before going vertical - simply because it's both better value and gives more return on investment with regard to giving (and evenly spreading) new city tiles. There's not much incentive to go vertical and build specific "cultural meccas" before the late game. And there's not much reason to favour artists in one city over another either, except which one needs more border pops. Sort of seems like production cities become the de facto cultural cities by virtue of being able to build more of the buildings faster. Contrast this to science cities, where vertical investment pays off in spades.

It also seems a little odd that culture doesn't increase in a Golden Age...

 

[doktorstick]

@Polycrates
I agree with a fair bit of what you write. The devil's in the details, as they say. I don't want to see GAs become uber-bombs as the mechanism to increase culture. Use them for border bombs and landmarks (maybe grossly increase the landmark bonus so you create a mecca in lieu of growth/production tiles). This would lend itself toward the +n% path for buildings, too. I wouldn't be opposed to converting a few buildings to +n% to keep pace with research +n% buildings and production +n% buildings, even if it meant tweaking the culture requirements for SPs. Increasing culture with golden ages would be nice since you can use your GA for that, too.

I find myself missing the border wars from cultural meccas from Civ4.