Help improve the expansion pack!

[Thalassicus]

That would be fantastic!

Could you also post quick instructions about how to play mods in hotseat? Some people asked recently. Here's the thread: Playing mods in multiplayer

 

[Royco]

Hey.

Some thoughts after several playthroughs with 2nd latest files:

In the first game I got into producing wonders early, and I kept producing wonders more and more rapidly, having almost all "good" wonders.

2nd game Korea did the same.

King difficulty, std pace std size cont plus.

Maybe a handicap after first wonder is produced be good to make it take a little longer getting the 2nd one or until another civ got a wonder??
Maybe bigger cost for a new wonder based on how many you have???

Thoughts?

 

[Dunkah]

We have had this discussion several times on the forums before. Basically I am in your camp. Would like to see wonders diversified and spread out.

However the general feelings of the GEM community at large is that by building wonders you are taking away vital hammers and resources that could be put to better use elsewhere. And if you let another civ build all of the wonders it just makes their capital that much more enticing to take by force.

I have played a couple of games now testing this threory and it is true. I generally have a larger economy and more infrastructure and army when I stay away from wonders and it makes taking the enemy capital that much more fun when you end up with all of them anyway!

 

[Royco]

But its not cool when I ALWAYS want to play a peaceful diplomatic game, and there is one other civ with the same tactic just more hammers to produce wonders more and faster.
Or I am the one going mental on the wonders...
Thats why there NEED to be an option to limit runaway peaceful wonder lovers, for a more competitive diplomatic game.

If I had the skills and it was fairly easy to just write a modmod to go along with this, I would.

Anyone else

 

[mitsho]

I'd simply say you should move up a difficulty level. If the problem persists, repeat. If it still exists, we may have a problem. But I doubt it.

If you want to play on a lower difficulty level because you enjoy having all these wonders and not needing units to defend your cities, then there's no problem. Otherwise, just don't build those wonder.

It's a rookie mistake (not saying you're a rookie since it stayed with me for several years of playing civilization as well) to try to get all wonders. It's (nearly) an addiction. I suggest to try playing one game without building a single wonder to see the difference. Wonders are a bonus, if you're a good player, you can win without them

Runaway peaceful player's should be kept in check by conquest AI, the human player and catchup mechanisms (like espionage). I'm hopeful that with the rebalancing of unit vs. building upkeep costs, we can get to a more competitive late game AI again.

 

[KGPurrs]

I really wish for difficulty levels where the AI knows how to combat efficiently. Is it really that hard to program? It's not very complicated on our side, how complicated could it be to program? Spammy AI is boring.

Diplomacy is really dumb, there should be way more options to let the AI know consequences.

"Don't Settle Cities near my boarders!"

"Negative!"

"I denounce you!"

"Herp derp!?"

It should be this: "Don't Settle Cities near my boarders: Or I will declare war on you!"

"Ok I won't settle near you, no war is declared."

or

"Prepare to die! War is declared."

Kind of like when you have units near their boarders the AI comes to you asking if there will be a war. You press the war button.

Just one of many examples. Another off the top of my head: "Don't spy on me or I will declare war on you." If you catch another spy war is automatically declared. "I attacked your city state, rofl!" You do it again I war on you.

Now keep in mind my suggestion is not just so I don't have to press the war button, but there needs to be an ability where the AI understands if they do something stupid like that, war WILL be declared. Just a smarter AI is all I ask.

 

[ExpiredReign]

@KGPurrs

I whole-heartedly agree! It is so annoying to have the AI repeat actions that you've asked them not to do with absolutely no diplomatic ramifications. Yet if you do it they come down on you like a ton of bricks.

Recently played a game with India as my nearest neighbour. We were always at FRIENDLY or better. Gandhi sends over a GP and converts one of my cities. I ask him not to do it again. No change in diplomatic stance and all is fine for five or so turns then again a GP converts a city. I start a dialogue to ask him nicely again but there is no longer the option to do that (same thing thing occurs with stopping spies), so I denounce him. All the while our relationship shows as FRIENDLY. Two turns later he declares WAR and invades my lands.

Now if the AI knows about and keeps track of diplomatic actions, which the removal of the action button indicates. Why can't it modify its stance and actions accordingly?

Please someone look into fixing this stupidity

 

[Opera]

Is there a way to see how much local happiness isn't generated by a city? IE, if I have 3 local happiness in a 2 pop city, I have 1 happiness that could still be generated by the city. Can I see that without having to check every building/policies?

There's this mod but I'm not sure it would be compatible with GEM.

 

[Thalassicus]

I intend to add the city view UI update in the near future. I wanted to give the mod author some time of distributing the mod on their own, to get full credit for its development.

It's not very complicated on our side, how complicated could it be to program?

Many of the things we take for granted as human beings are incredibly complex tasks our brain learns at an early age. A walking human child instinctively does something that took whole teams of AI experts decades to recreate, and we still usually resort to quadrupedal motion:


Link to video.

Civ 5 warfare is easy for a human, but incredibly difficult to program in computers. This is partially because of a fundamental difference in architecture. We have billions of independent neurons working in unison, whereas computers use a simpler input-output model with a handful of processing pipelines.

 

[Shiroifushicho]

i really agree with Royco issue, in any difficulty mod, there is a time you can chain the wonders and nothing can stop you (or sometime one of your opponent). A handicap after a winder build? that sound great, like an exhaust thing. This issue actually ruins a bit the game, but you are not responsible for that, it's in the straight version of G&K too. But you could do something for it if you agree.

I was passing by this to say that what you've done with this mod is really awesome... The day i tested it i said "waaaaww i'm totally agreee for that, these guys finally understood civ fan's !". I was yelling and pointing out all great stuffs you added to the original game. Seriously go on ! don't despair too much with player critics you can see everywhere, in the end you can't satisfy everyone. But your work on this is like the messiah for me... and for tons of gamers i know trust me.

Cheers!!!! keep it on !

 

[AnthonyG]

@KGPurrs

I whole-heartedly agree! It is so annoying to have the AI repeat actions that you've asked them not to do with absolutely no diplomatic ramifications. Yet if you do it they come down on you like a ton of bricks.

Recently played a game with India as my nearest neighbour. We were always at FRIENDLY or better. Gandhi sends over a GP and converts one of my cities. I ask him not to do it again. No change in diplomatic stance and all is fine for five or so turns then again a GP converts a city. I start a dialogue to ask him nicely again but there is no longer the option to do that (same thing thing occurs with stopping spies), so I denounce him. All the while our relationship shows as FRIENDLY. Two turns later he declares WAR and invades my lands.

Now if the AI knows about and keeps track of diplomatic actions, which the removal of the action button indicates. Why can't it modify its stance and actions accordingly?

Please someone look into fixing this stupidity

Oh man, this exact same thing happens to me all the time and it's stupid. Furthermore, if you have declared an alliance, which I've done in the past, then any denouncing or DOW gives you a diplomacy hit rather than them: x hates you because 'you denounced one of your allies'. Pfft, unbelievable.

 

[Shiroifushicho]

Oh man, this exact same thing happens to me all the time and it's stupid. Furthermore, if you have declared an alliance, which I've done in the past, then any denouncing or DOW gives you a diplomacy hit rather than them: x hates you because 'you denounced one of your allies'. Pfft, unbelievable.

It's true that it's really annoying and it's less realistic than it would be our history. But i think civ devs made that to simulate a basic human player behaviour. When you playing against people on internet you often overreact like the cpu does in this case.
May be the religion thing is not complex enough in the game to imagin a realistic leader behaviour. We might need more choices / opportunities / ways to develop a religion.

 

[Dunkah]

I think the simple reason for this behavior is that Ghandi doesn't want to stop converting your cities. He is lying to your face. As proven by his willingness to quickly jump to war.

The Ai has been programmed to act more like a human player than a role playing game. So Ghandi wants to win. He thinks he has an upper hand on you. He is nicely backstabbing you hoping that you will not do anything based on your friendship with him.

Bottom line is that it is a game. And all of the AI players have been programmed to win. Mostly.

Having said all that, there should be other reprocussions that you can do to a violation of his word. You should be able to revoke open borders, revoke alliances etc once he breaks his word to not convert your cities.

Even assasinate his Civilians. Civilian units should be able to be killed at any time without a declaration of war, and the AI should decide once it's unit has been killed if they want to do something about like declare war.

 

[AnthonyG]

That's pretty much it, Dunkah: more options, even if they are somewhat illusory or weak. I mean, why can't we even use the same (limited) ones as the AI? E.g. 'get those troops away from border or declare war already', 'hey, we're friends and I'm broke/unhappy, so how's about 600 gold or those spices, buddy?', 'Stop getting so friendly with Monaco, leave their protection to me, OK?' ...

and some new ones: 'erm, I warned you once already not to convert my cities and you broke that promise, next time it'll be (automatic) war - hear that world?! (S)he's been warned twice and promised on both occasions not to do it. It's now out of my hands'.

 

[Hambil]

Once I've got my religion I just set automatic faith purcheses to Inquisitor. It will plop one down in every city that gets a religion. They prevent conversion completely.

 

[Jinzor]

• Icon for the Mentors Hall and Warehouse buildings.
• Icons for the Recruitment and Carvel Hull technologies.

Hey there, I can do CiV-style icons for you (as many as you want, doing these kind of graphics in my free time is fun for me. I can re-do existing ones made for the mod if you want). Add me on Steam if you're interested:

http://steamcommunity.com/id/JinRenegade

This is some of my previous work for CiV icons, all graphics are completely original, not work taken from other people or from Google (forgive the aliasing on the edges, I edited the background colour out quickly with the magic wand tool just to show you what they look like with a transparent background):

Military Airbase

• Ingame - http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=138694477
• Process - #1 - http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/...aryAirbase-CiVBuildingIconWIP_zps4006c343.png
#2 - http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x176/JinRenegade/MilitaryAirbase-CiVBuildingIcon2_zpsf641aaac.png

Military Airstrip

• Ingame - http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=139011286

Casino

• Ingame - http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=139011268
• Process - #1 - http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x176/JinRenegade/CasinoIcon_zps6f9d69d5.png
#2 - http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x176/JinRenegade/CasinoIcon_zpsba0346d2.png

 

[albie_123]

...woah.

Those are some of the highest quality original icons I've seen for CiV.

 

[sukritact]

@Jinzor: Brilliant work! Anyway, just so you know, I've already made and sent an Icon for Tyrian Purple.

 

[Gedemon]

great icons !

would you allow use in other mods ?

 

[Jinzor]

great icons !

would you allow use in other mods ?

As long as the person who's using the icons credits me, then I say sure, why not. The person might also want to ask the guy who I originally made the icons for as well just in case (the above icons I made were done for the "Airports Plus: Leisure and Travel" mod by "kingchris20").

EDIT: I just made another one for that mod now, doesn't take me long to do.

Cruise Port

• Ingame - http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=139228293
• Process - #1 - http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x176/JinRenegade/CruiseLiner_zps6c3c6094.png