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Thalassicus
Bytes and Nibblers
I think that's a bug in patch 1.0.0.62, timtofly. Coal seems to no longer appear on the top bar.
Hey there, great tweak-mods you make!
Can you please update your mod list in this topic here with correct names and versions?
It gets a bit confusing with all the renaming and merging. It's hard to track what's been updated and what has become obsolete. This "Combined" topic here is otherwise the quickest way to check what's new of all your many (main-) mods.
Thanks!
PS: For example, Terrain Improvements v9 is still named "Terrain Improvements" in the online browser but here on the board it's now called only "Improvements"? I just don't want to miss anything useful from you, that's all!
Can you please update your mod list in this topic here with correct names and versions?
It gets a bit confusing with all the renaming and merging. It's hard to track what's been updated and what has become obsolete. This "Combined" topic here is otherwise the quickest way to check what's new of all your many (main-) mods.
Thanks!
PS: For example, Terrain Improvements v9 is still named "Terrain Improvements" in the online browser but here on the board it's now called only "Improvements"? I just don't want to miss anything useful from you, that's all!
Thalassicus
Bytes and Nibblers
Sorry for the confusion. What you're pointing out is a thread name which only moderators can change... I periodically request that when necessary, but don't want to impose too much on their time. They're busy too and have other things to do. 
The best way to check what's new is the main page of the website (civmodding.wordpress.com) where I post information about each update for all the mods.
I do try and keep things up to date which I have full control over, though sometimes when I'm updating everything I can forget to change something somewhere. The mod list in this thread and on the site (civmodding.wordpress.com/details) both show "Terrain Improvements v9", which is also the one on the mod browser and in the combined zip file. If a version number or "last updated" date appears to be incorrect, just point it out and I'll get on it right away.
The best way to check what's new is the main page of the website (civmodding.wordpress.com) where I post information about each update for all the mods.
I do try and keep things up to date which I have full control over, though sometimes when I'm updating everything I can forget to change something somewhere. The mod list in this thread and on the site (civmodding.wordpress.com/details) both show "Terrain Improvements v9", which is also the one on the mod browser and in the combined zip file. If a version number or "last updated" date appears to be incorrect, just point it out and I'll get on it right away.
timtofly
One Day
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2009
- Messages
- 9,445
I meant to say as a resource on the map. The only non-luxury resources I get are horses and iron. I am on a huge map with two continents. There is no coal, oil, or aluminum that shows up on the explored map, therefore I cannot build any thing that needs these resources.
Thalassicus
Bytes and Nibblers
In my current game I have plenty of these resources. What other mods are you using?
Thalassicus
Bytes and Nibblers
I'm not certain... all my games are from post-patch. At the very least, you could load up the map in the world builder and see if the resources are in fact missing. It might make for an interesting bug report.
learner gamer
King
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2009
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- 657
@Thalassicus: Ive just started a game using your balance mods to try and work around what I perceive to be various imbalances in Civ 5 vanilla. Although my games only in its infancy, two ideas have already struck me that may potentially help with game balance, and Id be interested in your thoughts.
To be precise, I love your smokehouse
, but I wondered if youd thought of maybe using it to add some (even if only one) food to fish even if that came at the expense of one of the land based resources that the smokehouse now improves. The reason I mention it is because, as the smokehouse now stands, it can provide lots of food to land based cities, but I find that the lighthouse provides a smaller benefit to coastal cities. I just wondered therefore if you thought about whether it was worth balancing the impact that the smokehouse has across land and coastal sites. The nice thing, of course, is that making this tweak (if you think it's warranted) would also dovetail nicely with your change of building name from the granary, since smoking has been used to preserve fish for some time.
The other notion that came to me concerns the watermill. To be precise, I notice that this building costs 120 hammers, two gold in maintenance and provides two extra food. This compares with the smokehose costing 100 hammers and one gold maintenance to get at least two extra food, maybe much more depending on the surrounding terrain. I just wondered as a result if you thought of making the watermill a more attractive build by getting it to provide that most precious of commodities in Civ 5 a hammer or two. Perhaps it could include a hammer when built and another hammer at machinery (which seems to me to be an unattractive tech at the mo' IMHO.) After all, watermills have historically been used to hasten the production of various foodstuffs, and you could justify adding another hammer at machinery by visualising that this tech improves the gear mechanism that drives the watermill's wheel. Of course, this kind of change might also make for some interesting choices re: city settlement and provide a way of boosting production in riverside cities bereft of hills and / or forests for lumbermills.
Look forward to reading your thoughts.
To be precise, I love your smokehouse
, but I wondered if youd thought of maybe using it to add some (even if only one) food to fish even if that came at the expense of one of the land based resources that the smokehouse now improves. The reason I mention it is because, as the smokehouse now stands, it can provide lots of food to land based cities, but I find that the lighthouse provides a smaller benefit to coastal cities. I just wondered therefore if you thought about whether it was worth balancing the impact that the smokehouse has across land and coastal sites. The nice thing, of course, is that making this tweak (if you think it's warranted) would also dovetail nicely with your change of building name from the granary, since smoking has been used to preserve fish for some time. The other notion that came to me concerns the watermill. To be precise, I notice that this building costs 120 hammers, two gold in maintenance and provides two extra food. This compares with the smokehose costing 100 hammers and one gold maintenance to get at least two extra food, maybe much more depending on the surrounding terrain. I just wondered as a result if you thought of making the watermill a more attractive build by getting it to provide that most precious of commodities in Civ 5 a hammer or two. Perhaps it could include a hammer when built and another hammer at machinery (which seems to me to be an unattractive tech at the mo' IMHO.) After all, watermills have historically been used to hasten the production of various foodstuffs, and you could justify adding another hammer at machinery by visualising that this tech improves the gear mechanism that drives the watermill's wheel. Of course, this kind of change might also make for some interesting choices re: city settlement and provide a way of boosting production in riverside cities bereft of hills and / or forests for lumbermills.
Look forward to reading your thoughts.
WickedSick37
Chieftain
- Joined
- Oct 5, 2010
- Messages
- 19
Well, he have added an engineer-slot to the watermill if I remember correctly. Imo that makes it worth it's cost ^^
Perkus
Prince
By the way, apparently this doesn't happen to everyone - it seems to be mod-related. See http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=395216. I'm pretty baffled by that...
learner gamer
King
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2009
- Messages
- 657
@WickedSick37: Yeah, I knew about the change; sorry I didn’t make that clear. 
It just strikes me that you’re having to use the food that the watermill gives you to feed the specialist to be able to benefit from the hammers that the GE slot will provide (until you get to adopt civil society in the freedom social policy tree.) As a result, if you use the GE slot, the food that the watermill gives you isn’t actually going to be available to fuel city population growth in this instance. Of course, I understand that popping an early GE thanks in part to using the slot that a watermill provides, magnifies its benefit hugely.
As I mentioned, this is my first game running Thalassicus’ mods and it's still in its infancy, so you’ll undoubtedly have a better feel for how all the changes that Thalassicus has made will dovetail than I do.
It just strikes me that you’re having to use the food that the watermill gives you to feed the specialist to be able to benefit from the hammers that the GE slot will provide (until you get to adopt civil society in the freedom social policy tree.) As a result, if you use the GE slot, the food that the watermill gives you isn’t actually going to be available to fuel city population growth in this instance. Of course, I understand that popping an early GE thanks in part to using the slot that a watermill provides, magnifies its benefit hugely. As I mentioned, this is my first game running Thalassicus’ mods and it's still in its infancy, so you’ll undoubtedly have a better feel for how all the changes that Thalassicus has made will dovetail than I do.
Thalassicus
Bytes and Nibblers
@learner gamer
I originally buffed fish, but there's a few tricky things about them:
One possibility is I could change fish to a base 1
1
, and improving it gives +1 +1. Currently it's 2/0 and +0/2. Then a benefit from a building wouldn't have the potential for multiple high-food tiles so early. I agree it would fit well with the "Smokehouse" name too, since fish were commonly cured in this way (and I think the civlopedia entry I added even mentions fish).
1
for the Watermill is an interesting idea. An alternative might be to increase the production of engineers +1... something I've considered since I increased mine production slightly. Even in vanilla 2 for an engineer isn't entirely appealing when a vanilla mined hill gives 3, more during golden ages, benefits from building and policy multipliers, and extra gold next to a river.
@Galucard
These mods don't affect unit formations. What other mods do you have installed? Some mods affect formations, like Kael's Queen of the Iceni mod.
I originally buffed fish, but there's a few tricky things about them:
- Fish can be very clustered. It's rare to see 4 or more cows/deer/sheep in one area, noticed it a few times but not too often. On the other hand, clusters of 3-5 fish appear to be much more common. I've had capital cities start next to 4 fish resources.
- Fish also provide +2 to the tile from turn one, unlike land food, which are +1 until improved. With an additional bonus, Fish could all be 41 tiles soon after researching pottery, very early in the game to have tiles that powerful.
- Land resources require more techs to improve (with the exception of Wheat, one reason I didn't include a Wheat bonus on the building). Cow and sheep require a pasture, and deer are the latest tech. Sea resources don't need a fishing boat to get their food bonus anymore.
One possibility is I could change fish to a base 1
1, and improving it gives +1 +1. Currently it's 2/0 and +0/2. Then a benefit from a building wouldn't have the potential for multiple high-food tiles so early. I agree it would fit well with the "Smokehouse" name too, since fish were commonly cured in this way (and I think the civlopedia entry I added even mentions fish).1
for the Watermill is an interesting idea. An alternative might be to increase the production of engineers +1... something I've considered since I increased mine production slightly. Even in vanilla 2 for an engineer isn't entirely appealing when a vanilla mined hill gives 3, more during golden ages, benefits from building and policy multipliers, and extra gold next to a river.@Galucard
These mods don't affect unit formations. What other mods do you have installed? Some mods affect formations, like Kael's Queen of the Iceni mod.
learner gamer
King
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2009
- Messages
- 657
@Thalassicus: Thanks for your thoughts. I understand completely where you’re coming from re: the fish. Re: the watermill, the ability to apply multipliers to base city production is another reason why I was thinking of adding 2 hammers to them (the second at machinery); when combined with the 2 hammers you get from the city’s central hex, a watermill would then give you 4 hammers in the city, already enough for a 25% bonus to give you a free hammer. That said of course, the advantage that adding a third hammer to an engineer specialist will give you is that the buildings that provide the engineer slots aren’t all confined to riverside cities in the way that the watermill is. You’ll still of course need the food to feed the engineer though - which has now been made slightly harder to get by your (wise IMHO) changes to maritime city states. Assuming the food can be found though, I just wonder if buffing engineer specialists even further is indirectly (albeit subtly) promoting the pursuit of some kind of specialist economy to obtain hammers. Don’t forget too BTW that engineer specialists see their value rocket (relative to a mine) if they can generate a GE.
As an aside, I’ve been having a further think about the watermill and I’m becoming more convinced by the minute that this building should boost hammers, not food. Giving it three hammers for instance (of which maybe one or two come at machinery) would make it pay back in 40 turns, identical to what you’ve amended the windmill to. In exchange, it could lose the food advantage that it gets.
FWIW, I’d then be tempted to go even further and remove the improvements you’ve made certain hexes receive from the smokehouse, and add them back to the hexes themselves. You could then return the granary to its traditional role as a storer of food, even if at just 5% or 10% - and remove its ability to provide 2 extra food to compensate. As Krikkitone’s post in the attached thread shows, a 5% storage rate would mean, for example, that 2 food (identical to vanilla’s granary boost) gets stored at 4 pop, 6 food at 10 pop, and so on:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=388877
The ability of the granary to store food could even be made to rise to 10% or as much as 20% upon the discovery of some other tech; calendar would’ve been ideal IMHO had it sat somewhere similar to where it was in the Civ4 tech tree. Of course, any changes here BTW would obviously result in downward changes to the food stored by the hospital at biology.
In all, these changes would (i) give riverside cities precious early hammers (ii) keep the granary in its traditional role as a food storer (and make it better able to support city growth, since the amount of food required to grow to the next pop rises exponentially in Civ 5, as the previously mentioned thread shows) and (iii) reward players for improving their hexes. Of course, this makes non-trivial changes to the mechanics used in Civ 5 - in particular, it would make starts a little less even. These changes would also sadly undo your good work with the smokehouse (unless you retained it as another building (EDIT: eg. available at construction) to avoid increasing tile yiellds on cattle etc. and keep starts even). As a result, I can understand completely why making these changes wouldn’t necessarily appeal to you. But I’ll throw the ideas out there and see if anyone wants to look at using them.
Moving on from the granary, does the modding community have access to the code that governs how the AI chooses where to expand borders in a city? I ask BTW because at the mo’ I currently have the AI ready to add a plains hex to New York when it next pops its borders – even though it has a perfectly good cattle hex within reach!
I’m just wondering if there’s some way of allowing the human to over-ride the AI choice of hex that the city gets at the next border pop.
One last thing Thalassicus; as my game progresses, I may well come up with other ideas, some good, some bad, some ugly - I’m sure.
Where would you like me to post any thoughts; in this thread, your separate mod threads, or elsewhere?
I understand completely where you’re coming from re: the fish. Re: the watermill, the ability to apply multipliers to base city production is another reason why I was thinking of adding 2 hammers to them (the second at machinery); when combined with the 2 hammers you get from the city’s central hex, a watermill would then give you 4 hammers in the city, already enough for a 25% bonus to give you a free hammer. That said of course, the advantage that adding a third hammer to an engineer specialist will give you is that the buildings that provide the engineer slots aren’t all confined to riverside cities in the way that the watermill is. You’ll still of course need the food to feed the engineer though - which has now been made slightly harder to get by your (wise IMHO) changes to maritime city states. Assuming the food can be found though, I just wonder if buffing engineer specialists even further is indirectly (albeit subtly) promoting the pursuit of some kind of specialist economy to obtain hammers. Don’t forget too BTW that engineer specialists see their value rocket (relative to a mine) if they can generate a GE. As an aside, I’ve been having a further think about the watermill and I’m becoming more convinced by the minute that this building should boost hammers, not food. Giving it three hammers for instance (of which maybe one or two come at machinery) would make it pay back in 40 turns, identical to what you’ve amended the windmill to. In exchange, it could lose the food advantage that it gets.
FWIW, I’d then be tempted to go even further and remove the improvements you’ve made certain hexes receive from the smokehouse, and add them back to the hexes themselves. You could then return the granary to its traditional role as a storer of food, even if at just 5% or 10% - and remove its ability to provide 2 extra food to compensate. As Krikkitone’s post in the attached thread shows, a 5% storage rate would mean, for example, that 2 food (identical to vanilla’s granary boost) gets stored at 4 pop, 6 food at 10 pop, and so on:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=388877
The ability of the granary to store food could even be made to rise to 10% or as much as 20% upon the discovery of some other tech; calendar would’ve been ideal IMHO had it sat somewhere similar to where it was in the Civ4 tech tree. Of course, any changes here BTW would obviously result in downward changes to the food stored by the hospital at biology.
In all, these changes would (i) give riverside cities precious early hammers (ii) keep the granary in its traditional role as a food storer (and make it better able to support city growth, since the amount of food required to grow to the next pop rises exponentially in Civ 5, as the previously mentioned thread shows) and (iii) reward players for improving their hexes. Of course, this makes non-trivial changes to the mechanics used in Civ 5 - in particular, it would make starts a little less even. These changes would also sadly undo your good work with the smokehouse (unless you retained it as another building (EDIT: eg. available at construction) to avoid increasing tile yiellds on cattle etc. and keep starts even). As a result, I can understand completely why making these changes wouldn’t necessarily appeal to you.
But I’ll throw the ideas out there and see if anyone wants to look at using them. Moving on from the granary, does the modding community have access to the code that governs how the AI chooses where to expand borders in a city? I ask BTW because at the mo’ I currently have the AI ready to add a plains hex to New York when it next pops its borders – even though it has a perfectly good cattle hex within reach!
I’m just wondering if there’s some way of allowing the human to over-ride the AI choice of hex that the city gets at the next border pop.One last thing Thalassicus; as my game progresses, I may well come up with other ideas, some good, some bad, some ugly - I’m sure.
Where would you like me to post any thoughts; in this thread, your separate mod threads, or elsewhere?
Thalassicus
Bytes and Nibblers
The individual threads are good if you have ideas relating to a specific mod. If it's more general thoughts, or ideas that cross between multiple mods it's okay to post here.
While changing watermills from food to hammers might make sense for realism or other perspectives, I also try to keep things relatively close to what the developers seemed to intend. It looks like they wanted a way to give every city +4 in the early game, and spread it over two buildings, with the second bonus costing more than the first. If possible I want to keep the watermill close to this original role, just increase its value slightly. With the production increases for mines and lumbermills at Engineering, production isn't as much of a concern as it was in vanilla, and giving too much of a bonus on the Watermill might both a) make production too easy and b) increase the value of rivers too much.
Another big factor here is terrain design in Civ V. The developers designed V so they can have big landscapes of massive mountain ranges and hills beside them, large marshes and forests, etc. To do this they had to de-emphasize terrain slightly, so start locations and zones of the map can remain relatively balanced. If rivers are made too valuable, it could skew balance between river and non-river areas.
In another thread I saw an idea to add an Aqueduct building with 25% food storage in the classical or medieval era, and reduce the cost and effect of Hospitals by half. This would provide the food storage mechanic you're thinking about and also bring back a classic building in a similar role (improving the upper bound on city size), while not having a riverside requirement.
While changing watermills from food to hammers might make sense for realism or other perspectives, I also try to keep things relatively close to what the developers seemed to intend. It looks like they wanted a way to give every city +4
in the early game, and spread it over two buildings, with the second bonus costing more than the first. If possible I want to keep the watermill close to this original role, just increase its value slightly. With the production increases for mines and lumbermills at Engineering, production isn't as much of a concern as it was in vanilla, and giving too much of a bonus on the Watermill might both a) make production too easy and b) increase the value of rivers too much.Another big factor here is terrain design in Civ V. The developers designed V so they can have big landscapes of massive mountain ranges and hills beside them, large marshes and forests, etc. To do this they had to de-emphasize terrain slightly, so start locations and zones of the map can remain relatively balanced. If rivers are made too valuable, it could skew balance between river and non-river areas.
In another thread I saw an idea to add an Aqueduct building with 25% food storage in the classical or medieval era, and reduce the cost and effect of Hospitals by half. This would provide the food storage mechanic you're thinking about and also bring back a classic building in a similar role (improving the upper bound on city size), while not having a riverside requirement.
Perkus
Prince
I saw that Aqueduct idea, and I like it. There is too huge a leap in city growth from 0% food storage to 50% after Hospitals arrive. It also makes it difficult to manage happiness resulting from the suddenly doubled growth rate. Aqueduct would make this more gradual. Admittedly, you do have the choice of not building hospitals to manage the growth, of course.
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