HephMod: a mod combo-pack emphasizing balance, realism, and historical flavor

[Jaybe]

Hmmm.... New modern doctrines do not seem to be implementable.
Tried to apply a GG to Artillery Doctrine and couldn't: Only doctrine available was Trench Warfare, but should have had available Trench, Mass Production, Guerilla Tactics, Artillery Schools. :whine:

Yes, I am the most advanced, but I also modified them to be National Wonders (and just rechecked my modifications (in BuildingClassInfos) to be just like the others).

ADDENDUM: Holy War, Guild 1 and Guild 10 not changed from original in BuildingClassInfos. Guilds because I have not idea what they relate to.

 

[Jaybe]

Fighters & bombers no longer have Air Bomb orders available (though Air Strike is still there). [Clarification: The icon in the orders list is MIA]. Is there something I'm missing ... as in documentation I haven't read?

Blitzkrieg promos N/A to tanks, fighters or bombers despite having built the Doctrine (they get the Blitzkrieg, but Blitzkrieg I, II, III N/A).

NOTE: Any changes I have made to Doctrines (i.e., being National Wonders) worked with v0.9c with no problems. I work with copies of the new files and never use xml's from old versions.

 

[Winston]

Hi, it's been ages since I've posted on Civfanatics as I have been too busy to play civ - recently I've had more free time and I saw Heph's mod so I downloaded it.

Very pleased that I did too because I liked it very much - a big thankyou to all involved. I love the revolutions mod and it does seem to be more toned down from previous versions - that's good because it used to be very OTT and it totally gimped military victories - this version makes revs challenging but not insurmountable.

Over the past 3/4 days I have been playing a standard Monarch game with Queen Vic and my countrymen - just won last night with a domination win in 1902 and 7 vassals! This would have been pretty much impossible under some of the early revolution builds so it's good to know it's getting more refined.

I really enjoyed playing it and I was battling pretty much everyone from year 1 onwards (had minor civs and raging barbs so the action started early). The changes really added flavour to the game and added lots of historical depth. The reworking of the civics and religions is excellent and it forces the player to make choices rather than simply having winwin decisions. I also noticed that this mod has resurrected partisans - I missed those guys from civ2!

I like how each unit has more relevance in the game now - e.g. artillery are no longer completely superceded by bombers as they serve different roles - the skirmisher is a handy addition too.

The mod also seems very stable too although I did have one CTD error when I chose a religion (I think it was judaism) - no prob - just reloaded and chose toaism .

I have some suggestions/obsevations from my game as feedback:
1) The military doctrines are very very powerful - I dominated the game with a combo of superior seamanship and (later) entrenchment. Superior seamanship allowed me to spam super privateers and blockade my rivals for ages (maybe over 100 turns) before they were finally cleared out by destroyers - this gave me a massive lead and I was able to carry over the promos to upgraded ships.
Entrenchment was perhaps even more overpowered - it made my units pretty much unstoppable - I was at war for 90% of the mid/late game and when I built entrenchment I pretty much stopped losing units. I simply spammed paratroopers with entrenchment 1&2 plus tactically placed medic paratroopers and I killed off hundreds of infantry/artillery/cavalry for perhaps 9 paratroopers - no exaggeration.
SUGGESTION: perhaps these doctrine promos should be scaled down or the standard promos should be scaled up - e.g. combat 1,2 etc is totally inferior to entrenchment and seamanship - more should be done to encourage a choice.

2) I liked the exceptional, extraordinary etc promos but they just aggravated the problem highlighted above - it got plain silly when one of my paratroopers was given the avatar promo (4 first strikes plus 100% strength!) plus entrenchment 1&2 plus march straight out of the barracks ! That unit just cakewalked through everything and the enemy had no answer to it.
SUGGESTION: make exceptional and extraordinary pop up occasionally but hero etc is too much - maybe one could be a warlord promo (either hero/legendary hero - not avatar).

3) Heph, I know your going for the less is more approach and I really appreciate that but perhaps there is some room for some extra units for gameplay purposes - 2 that spring to mind are a pre-catapult seige weapon (balistae perhaps) and an industrial age AA gun to precede SAM infantry.

Anyway, thanks again for putting this mod together - it's one of the best I've played.

 

[DavidB1111]

Avatar is only possible if you win a lot of fights with one unit. That's the only way to upgrade from a weaker one. Don't know why you'd complain about a one-sided victory though.

Those are what I try for all the time. Just steam role with tanks, and your enemy goes splat.

 

[Puer]

There may be a bug with get great person done. See the pic & savegame.

Edit: I cleaned civ4 cache folder and I was unable to reload my savegame. Seems that's was a issue I let you know...

Edit2: So far this didn't reproduce

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

Heph, I'd like to check out the readme/changelog/info/whatever for A bit more natural mod. know any link or anything that might serve? thanx in advance

 

[Puer]

Is there a feature that's will automatically turn on avoid city growth if city will be unhappy next turn?

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

there is, in Fall Further and Orbis ( two modmods based on Fall From Heaven )

 

[Puer]

Thanks [to_xp]Gekko. Is it possible to merge this feature with HEPHMOD BEYOND v 1.0 BETA for BtS 3.19? What must be done?

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

it needs DLL work. you could ask Sephi, who has recently imported it into his Wild Mana modmod.

 

[Puer]

[to_xp]Gekko, thanks again for information
One question more - is it possible to turn on automatic production only to city buildings (no units, wonders etc are built)

Hephaistion, I noticed a revolution releated bug.
I started as Roman, emperor difficulty.
On turn 950BC there was civil war and I was offered to swap to Korean - I agreed.
I noticed that game difficult was changed to noble when I finished game

Start as Roman first save, emperor difficulty: AutoSave_Initial_BC-4000.rar
Turn 950BC when swap was done, noble difficulty (unluckily i don't have save one turn before anymore): swap 950BC.rar
Last turn as Korean, noble difficulty. Click end turn to get conquest victory: last.rar.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

One question more - is it possible to turn on automatic production only to city buildings (no units, wonders etc are built)

not sure about that, I thought that's how it worked by default

 

[Hephaistion]

@Winston: Welcome to the thread! Very glad that you're enjoying the mod. Super-units can be an issue, but are usually countered by the AI either by their own superunits or by throwing wave after wave of men at them. I also feel that doctrine promos are too powerful, but I had to beef them up in order to get the AI to choose them over normal promos (AI doesn't always appreciate the extra features or "two-in-one" packages that come with doctrines because the SDK AI files tend to prioritize one quality over all others depending on unit type: what would be really awesome is if some SDK modder out there could change those files to make the AI always select a doctrine promo over a normal one!). I intend to do a complete rebalancing of the doctrine promos once I get them all working properly.

@Jaybe: Thanks for the report on the modern doctrines. Frustrating. Especially Blitzkrieg, as I created two different promotion trees, one for land and one for air, just for that doctrine. Will look into the modern doctrines being unbuildable: could others please post if they are able to build modern doctrine wonders?

@Gekko: attached is the A Bit More Natural mod changelog.

Haven't done any playtesting lately due to family concerns, job searching, etc., but I hope to get back to it soon, especially to fix the modern doctrine wonders.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

nice changelog, thanx Heph

 

[Hephaistion]

OK, looked into the problems with modern doctrine wonders and found fixes.

1) modern doctrines were not buildable because they were not put on the list of buildable buildings for great generals in UnitInfos. Dumb error -- really wish I'd looked into that a month ago.

2) Blitzkrieg promotions were trickier: a) apparently one can no longer give units that do not actually cause collateral damage bonuses to collateral damage; in previous versions, this was worked around by giving units collateral damage LIMITS without actually making them cause collateral damage, but this no longer works; result = flaming arrows, greek fire and blitzkrieg (armor) promos no longer give bonuses to collateral damage. b) air units could not get blitzkrieg promos (or any doctrine promos) because the original placeholder promotion ("PROMOTION_DOCTRINE_ONLY") that restricts doctrine promotions to doctrine wonders did not have UNITCOMBAT_AIR in its tag.

Good news is that all modern doctrines wonders should now be buildable and previously non-functional doctrine promotions now work. I could restore the collateral damage bonus promos if I gave the relevant units small collateral damage abilities, like +5% (archers, triremes, tanks) -- opinions? Note that fighters will still not be able to select Blitzkrieg promos; this is WAD. Don't worry, though, they'll get a bump when I create an air unit tree for the Power Projection doctrine!

Extract attachment to HephMod Beyond/Assets.

EDIT: Fixed air bombing missions, too: you now have the full array of Dale's combat mod bombing options! If you downloaded the hotfix before the time stamp on this edited post, please redownload!

 

[Hephaistion]

Hmmm.... New modern doctrines do not seem to be implementable.
Tried to apply a GG to Artillery Doctrine and couldn't: Only doctrine available was Trench Warfare, but should have had available Trench, Mass Production, Guerilla Tactics, Artillery Schools. :whine:

Yes, I am the most advanced, but I also modified them to be National Wonders (and just rechecked my modifications (in BuildingClassInfos) to be just like the others).

ADDENDUM: Holy War, Guild 1 and Guild 10 not changed from original in BuildingClassInfos. Guilds because I have not idea what they relate to.

You should change Holy War, because it is a doctrine wonder buildable with Theology. The Guild buildings can be built with a Great Merchant if you have access to the right resources and give commercial bonuses that scale the more lguild-specific luxuries you have.

 

[Jaybe]

You should change Holy War, because it is a doctrine wonder buildable with Theology.

You misunderstand me. I hadn't changed Holy War because I thought that it SHOULD be an exclusive/WORLD Wonder.

When is a a doctrine not a doctrine? When it is a Holy War -- a religious crusade (or jihad).

 

[Jaybe]

I could restore the collateral damage bonus promos if I gave the relevant units small collateral damage abilities, like +5% (archers, triremes, tanks) -- opinions?

I like collateral damage abilities as I see it representing disruption on the battlefield caused by dismay of enemy prowess. Or panic of the thought of enemy tanks (or even cavalry!) having broken through the front line.

Perhaps Anti-Tank units (which I perceive as Anti-Tank GUNS, not RPG infantry despite the unit category) should be immune to collateral by armor (but NOT by siege*).

* And while you're at it, feel free to make Siege units NOT immune to collateral by siege also (except maybe trebs, since they could be far enough back to avoid it until cannons updated to siege howitzers (Engineer Corps)).

 

[Winston]

@Heph: It's good to know you're on the case - I didn't realise it was an AI issue. Maybe as a stopgap measure you could alter the upgrade costs of units depending on promos. Here are my thoughts on some stop gap measures:

IMO the most nerfed is drill as it has had no improvement but combat/guerilla etc have - also many of the doctrines ignore 1st strikes. Therefore, I think each drill promo should reduce the upgrade cost of a unit by 20% so drill 4 = 80% cheaper.

The second most nerfed is combat1,2 etc as the doctrine promos give even bigger bonuses so these should reduce upgrade costs by 10%.

The ancient, classical, medieval, and renaissance doctrines should all increase upgrade costs by 25% per promo so doctrine 1,2,&3 = 75% more expensive to upgrade.

IMO the doctrines represent specialisation in tactics that ultimately become obsolete and outdated whereas the drill promos represent general increases in morale, training and supplies (they become general but dependable tactical units). The generalist units become more adaptable and can move with the times more easily. This also gives an interesting choice for the player - do you build up units for this war (doctrine promos) or the next one (common promos).

Industrial and modern doctrines (apart from mass production) should have higher support costs (doctrine promos 1, 2 and 3 should each add 1 to the unit support cost) so players are discouraged from simply spamming units with doctrine 123 promos and walking all over the opposition. The modern promos largely represent technological advantages and it costs big bucks to maintain a technological lead.

Anyway, just some thoughts.

 

[Hephaistion]

Thanks for your thoughts, Winston. I hadn't considered using upgrade costs as a balancing factor: it hurts the player more than the AI, since the AI gets a progressive upgrade discount by difficulty level. I also like the idea of drill promos making it cheaper to upgrade (sadly, I seriously doubt the AI is programmed to consider this factor in choosing promotions). The upgrade cost discount is a nice beef to drills, since adding more first strikes makes the drill promotion line crazy powerful when combined with units like longbowmen. Don't underestimate the power of collateral damage protection, however, since the AI loves to spam siege units against your stacks!

I worked with Zebra9 a couple of years ago on a Python project that would remove inappropriate promotions on upgrade: for instance, when melee units become gunpowder units, it would remove city raider promos so you couldn't have infantry with city raider. This would work with doctrine promos as well. I never implemented it because it was a big job and I wasn't able to get it to work quite right. Perhaps I'll take another crack at it someday for use with doctrine promotions so that advanced units aren't using inappropriate doctrines.

I have considered the battering ram and AA gun units that have appeared in other mods. AA gun will definitely make an appearance (as perhaps will AT guns). Battering ram I am less in favor of, as early siege techniques (rams, towers, earthenwork ramps, etc.) are already included in the civ model for city raider promos. It is already assumed that units will use these factors in a siege, whereas the invention of the catapult c. 4th century b.c.e. introduced a sea-change in siege warfare. Unfortunately, civ does not model encirclement: when a city is under siege, realistically it should not be able to work ANY squares outside of the city itself and starvation should cause combat penalties for the defenders (both for fatigue/disease and for morale).