History Rewritten (Original Thread)
- Thread starter Xyth
- Start date
Duke Blackstone
John Marchman
I really like most of them. However several traits are weak, comparatively. Mercenary forces might have other in-game uses, but it still seems like there is no reason to adopt it
My thoughts on balance:
My thoughts on balance:
Problem with a friendship bonus is that they favour the player over the AI. Also very difficult to get the AI to understand when it's good to use them.
I think I will give Confederation '-50% maintenance for distance', just not sure what else to go with it yet. The way I imagine it, the civic represents city states like Sumer or Ancient Greece, as well as tribal confederations like the Iroquois.
I really appreciate your observation, very helpful. I've been working on these for weeks now and it's so easy to lose perspective after endless iterations. Comments on the ones you've mentioned:
Theocracy:
I agree, it needs something more. Priest specialists just aren't that great and are easy to get anyway so I think I'll drop that and put something else there instead. Or possibly make priests stronger.
Agrarianism:
That's supposed to read "-50% growth of cottage, hamlet, village". A penalty rather than a bonus. If it's still deemed too powerful at -50% I could raise the penalty all the way to 100%.
Mercenary Army:
I'm not much of a warmonger so I suspect I'm severely overestimating how powerful no war weariness is. I'll have a rethink on this one. At the very least I'll drop the civic upkeep to low.
Rationalism:
I'm always super cautious when adding research bonuses since the tech tree is so integral to success in the game. I can easily increase the specialist research bonus to +2 or +3. Worth noting that the happiness penalty is easily avoided by having no state religion - though that of course can be a penalty in its own right.
Suggestions and further criticism is most welcome. These are important to get right.
Lachlan
Great Builder of Civs !
Why the civics by default could be not having effects by themselves ?
Because we should have the possibility to return defaults civics
Because we should have the possibility to return defaults civics
Why the civics by default could be not having effects by themselves ?
Because we should have the possibility to return defaults civics
I'd like to give those effects too. Once I've got the rest balanced I'll look into it.
Civ IV rounds, -50% rounds to 0
When I played Civ IV on the PC, I really enjoyed the Rise of Mankind Mod series. The extra technologies and units added a lot to the game not simply because more is more, but because they brought a greater sense of the granularity of history to the game. For example, rather than simply discovering gunpowder and then fielding musketmen in great numbers to the exclusion of all previous types of infantry, in reality it took the Europeans 200 years from the invention of the man-portable firearm in the mid-1300s to the mid-1500s to field armies composed primarily of infantry armed with muskets. In that time there were numerous small developments in both technology and military strategy that increased the effectiveness of firearm wielding infantry.
Enough of the history lesson! The simplest way emulate this evolutionary element of history is to have more techs that do less, but I thought of another way that may or may not be possible in the bounds of modding.
Build the tech tree around innovations, expensive to research technologies that change a lot and are necessary to advance up the tree. After each innovation, however, could be refinements, 3 or 4 small techs that give slight advantages, possibly to pre-existing units and buildings, and that aren't pre-requisites for anything. I see this adding two things to the game. First, it would allow for further customization and refinement of one's strategy, and second, you would have to decide between how many refinements you want to research and how much you want to push towards the next big innovation.
There are, of course, some possible pitfalls. First, dead-end techs might be confusing to the AI. Second, unpursued refinements would eventually clog up the technology selection screen unless some way of removing unwanted techs from it or give them to the player automatically after a while was created.
Enough of the history lesson! The simplest way emulate this evolutionary element of history is to have more techs that do less, but I thought of another way that may or may not be possible in the bounds of modding.
Build the tech tree around innovations, expensive to research technologies that change a lot and are necessary to advance up the tree. After each innovation, however, could be refinements, 3 or 4 small techs that give slight advantages, possibly to pre-existing units and buildings, and that aren't pre-requisites for anything. I see this adding two things to the game. First, it would allow for further customization and refinement of one's strategy, and second, you would have to decide between how many refinements you want to research and how much you want to push towards the next big innovation.
There are, of course, some possible pitfalls. First, dead-end techs might be confusing to the AI. Second, unpursued refinements would eventually clog up the technology selection screen unless some way of removing unwanted techs from it or give them to the player automatically after a while was created.
davidtylr
Chieftain
What about education civic eg
Tribal - No effect
Religious - +1 happy w/ temple
+2 happy w/ Monastery
Missionaries can spread in any city
Elite - 50% culture
100% Great scientist
State - New units receive +2 experience
25% espionage
Privet - 50% less maintenance for school and universities
Free - Doubles the effect of schools and universities
or something like that
Tribal - No effect
Religious - +1 happy w/ temple
+2 happy w/ Monastery
Missionaries can spread in any city
Elite - 50% culture
100% Great scientist
State - New units receive +2 experience
25% espionage
Privet - 50% less maintenance for school and universities
Free - Doubles the effect of schools and universities
or something like that
Hmm, i'll have to look into that. Not a big deal in this case as -100% works for the civic. However, do you know if that applies also to maintenance for number of cities or distance? That would be a problem.
I'm planning a big overhaul of the tech tree in 0.9. I like your suggestion and I'll see what's possible and what's not when that time comes.
I was originally planning education as a seventh category but I decided not to in the end mostly because there's only so many bonuses available to civics before they start overlapping too much. The other factor is that I wanted to avoid too many categories where the final civic is the 'best', a la Legal and Labour. Otherwise civics become less about choice and more like very small tech trees.
I'll definitely revisit the idea later though.
That's a good way to put it. I'm very curious, what you're going to do about the Civics. Maybe it's a good idea to look at the leader traits at the same time with some tacit synergetic combined strategy paths in the back of the mind. (I think, that's especially hard to understand, why they removed the leader traits from Civ V completely.)
@Dylz: Don't quite get your innovation idea, but sounds interesting.
@Keinpferd
Here's an example of how it could work:
Gunpowder is an innovation, and gives access to the first cannon unit. It opens up three refinements:
Arquebus - gives access to a powerful but expensive first gunpowder unit.
Dynamite - workers get a bonus building mines and roads on difficult terrain
Fireworks - some kind of happiness bonus
It would also be a pre-req for another innovation, Interchangeable Parts. This would give access to musketmen, a cheaper, more mass-produce-able gunpowder unit, and three more refinements:
Volley Fire - musketmen get a bonus against melee units and a first strike opportunity
Bayonet - musketmen get a bonus against mounted units
Precision Timekeeping - ships get +1 movement (look up John Harrison on wikipedia for the rationale)
Here's an example of how it could work:
Gunpowder is an innovation, and gives access to the first cannon unit. It opens up three refinements:
Arquebus - gives access to a powerful but expensive first gunpowder unit.
Dynamite - workers get a bonus building mines and roads on difficult terrain
Fireworks - some kind of happiness bonus
It would also be a pre-req for another innovation, Interchangeable Parts. This would give access to musketmen, a cheaper, more mass-produce-able gunpowder unit, and three more refinements:
Volley Fire - musketmen get a bonus against melee units and a first strike opportunity
Bayonet - musketmen get a bonus against mounted units
Precision Timekeeping - ships get +1 movement (look up John Harrison on wikipedia for the rationale)
Only on the cottage growth, I know I've seen increments of 10 work properly for number of cities and distance along with multiples of 25
I need a short break from working on civics so I'm going to open up discussion on another topic: founding religions. I dislike how getting religions is yet another tech race and I want to separate this mechanic completely from the tech tree. There are several modcomps out there that change religions to be founded by great prophets (and require SDK changes to work effectively, ruling them out) but I have another idea:
• Each city has a % chance of founding a religion and becoming a holy city when it goes up a culture level
• Which religion is still founded is player/AI choice like it is currently
• % chance would be higher for leaders with the spiritual trait
• % chance would increase with certain buildings in the city, e.g Monument, Royal Cemetery
• I'll probably add a few more buildings to further increase this chance
• % chance would increase with certain technologies
• % chance would decrease for each other religions in the city
• % chance would decrease if a city is already a holy city
• Number of possible religions would scale with number of civs in game
Obviously this would take a lot of balancing and additional thought but for now I'm throwing it out as an idea to see what you all think.
• Each city has a % chance of founding a religion and becoming a holy city when it goes up a culture level
• Which religion is still founded is player/AI choice like it is currently
• % chance would be higher for leaders with the spiritual trait
• % chance would increase with certain buildings in the city, e.g Monument, Royal Cemetery
• I'll probably add a few more buildings to further increase this chance
• % chance would increase with certain technologies
• % chance would decrease for each other religions in the city
• % chance would decrease if a city is already a holy city
• Number of possible religions would scale with number of civs in game
Obviously this would take a lot of balancing and additional thought but for now I'm throwing it out as an idea to see what you all think.
Skwink
FRIIIIIIIIIITZ
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Well, I kinda like being able to choose what religion I found. Perhaps, there could be an option to disable/enable this feature? If so, It would be awesome!
Duke Blackstone
John Marchman
Cool idea, would be fun gameplay. I would argue its not entirely realistic, if thats a consideration. Many religions were founded by wandering tribes in the desert, not mega-culture centers. Perhaps new religions could be founded to benefit the weakest civilizations? Add a multiplier based on your position in the power graph?
-'No city could be a holy city for more than 1 religion' if added, please give it an option to be able to be turned off. I know you want that for balance, but super religious cities like Jerusalem started hundreds of wars over the last 2 millennia. And i like reenacting the crusades
Well, I kinda like being able to choose what religion I found. Perhaps, there could be an option to disable/enable this feature? If so, It would be awesome!
You'll still be able to choose which religion you want in this new system, a menu would popup just as it does with the default 'Choose Religions' option. The AI will pick it's favourite religion if it's still available, otherwise a random one.
The difference is that religions are no longer founded by technologies, rather by the culture of your cities and some other factors. Actually I might make certain technologies increase the % chance of founding a religion in a city, so that research has some influence but is no longer the only avenue.
Not entirely true. While each tribe have their own gods and beliefs, a 'religion' is formed when tribes gods and beliefs merge through contact and shared identity. Cities are a major catalysts for this and are generally where religions first gain wider acceptance and cohesion. Judaism is somewhat of an exception.
I do agree that it's not really a city's culture that influences whether it will become a holy city in reality. However the mechanic of culture was one of the few in game that wasn't tied intrinsically into the tech tree that made sense and is easy enough to attach code to. The way I imagine it at the moment is that having higher culture increases how quickly and how often you get the chance to found a religion (each time your cultural borders expand, perhaps incorporating said tribal areas?) but how successful that chance will be determined largely by other factors (certain buildings, techs, civics, etc).
Because religions are less likely to be founded in cities that already have them this should mean that as the game progresses any new religions are more likely to appear in isolated places. Having more than 7 religions available in a game will help with this too.
If I can get the numbers right this system should work so that the civs who want to push ahead and get a religion or two early should be able to, but they don't get a monopoly on all the later ones as well like they so often do with the tech tree system.
-'No city could be a holy city for more than 1 religion' if added, please give it an option to be able to be turned off. I know you want that for balance, but super religious cities like Jerusalem started hundreds of wars over the last 2 millennia. And i like reenacting the crusades
Actually what probably makes the most sense is just giving holy cities a reduced chance of founding a new religion rather than preventing it outright.
I've adjusted the original list. Thanks for the feedback!
Jarlaxe Baenre
Emperor
Perhaps, after researching priesthood, founding a religion gives you a missionary. After Meditation, it gives the holy city a temple of the state religion. After Philosophy, it gives the Holy City a monastery of the state religion. After Divine Right, it gives the Shrine.
davidtylr
Chieftain
I reckon founding religions shoud be founded by great prophets.
The game also needs more resources like coco, cotton, apples, saltpeter and rubber from civ 3
The game also needs more resources like coco, cotton, apples, saltpeter and rubber from civ 3
Something like that is certainly possible, I'll need to get basic foundation sorted first though.
That was my first idea and there are modcomps out there that work that way too. Unfortunately for the AI to properly understand how to use them it requires DLL changes which is impossible on the Mac.
Definitely. On my todo list, possibly for 0.8 but more likely 0.9.
