History Rewritten (Original Thread)

[Howard Mahler]

A definite improvement from the first draft, but I still have some concerns.
Here are my comments and opinions.

Aggressive: You can now get rid of the +1 happiness from Stadium.

Creative: Might make more sense for +1 happiness for
Theater + News Press + Broadcast Tower.

Diplomatic: I would put the espionage bonus back as +2 per specialist.
Even with the espionage bonus as +2 per specialist, this trait was average or a little below average.
This trait otherwise needs a boost, for example, spy specialist get 2 science (they usually get one science).

Enterprising: Too strong.
For example, get rid of either 1 Merchant allowed or +1 movement naval and put back build advantages.
For example Double Custom House + Tavern + workboat.

Financial: The new idea of interest is clever; however, I think it is not a good game mechanic for a trait. Players usually know that a Golden Age will be coming soon and can increase their money on hand in anticipation. For example sell a bunch of Technologies. Also golden ages are longer for Humane and with the Mausoleum. (A golden age usually lasts 16 turns on marathon.) The 3% rate may be OK, but it is probably high enough to encourage the players to exploit it for all it is worth.
Interest might work better as a building (Bank is already taken) or Wonder, that applied for all turns, and had some maximum amount of interest you could earn per turn. This would kind of counteract inflation. It would make a significant change in game play, although there are already some advantages to holding money.
Interest should be shelved for now and considered for future versions.
I would instead put the free Merchant slot here in Financial rather than the idea of interest.
Can also have double Wall Street.

Judicial: I still think all Government Civics is a very bad idea for a trait.
It gives too much benefit very early; early benefits are very good.
Then later in the game it is useless.
I would strongly recommend getting rid of all Government Civics.
You can put in instead a bunch of double productions.
(Not new, but it works well.) For example,
Double Cemetery + Library + Jail + Courthouse + Security Bureau.

Organized: I think it would better without any double productions
of buildings. If you like, perhaps could alter to double Civic Square or +1 happiness for Civic Square.

Philosophical: Would be better without the +1 culture per specialist.

Progressive: Better than it was, however, much too strong.
Each of the ideas is good.
However, that is an awful lot of Great Persons.
It is much stronger than +100% great person growth.
Perhaps they could instead get a Great Person when they enter one era such as for example the Renaissance, or perhaps two eras such as Renaissance and Modern.
I think it would be fine and probably better if the Great Person were always a scientist.

Protective: I do not like either of the two new ideas.
Healing back to a fixed amount, even only inside cultural boundaries and after a combat victory is a poor game mechanic. It just does not make much sense. Having to heal back from severe damage the old fashioned way is better than introducing magic.
In contrast, free Medic promotions for certain type of units fits right in with the already existing game mechanic. Injured units will heal back faster than they would have, but not outside the current game mechanic. I suggest Free Medic I on Archery + Gunpowder.
Could instead give Medic II. This does not fit with the idea of defending the homeland as much as yours does, but again I think your idea is just not good.
Making it impossible to pillage improvements makes no sense. What is the explanation of how the Protective leader prevents this?
Somehow making it harder to pillage is at least plausible.
I doubt it is worth the bother, but requiring two or three actions to pillage (or giving each try a 1/2 or 1/3 chance of success) at least makes sense.
The +25% defense on cities was much better.
Please consider again the following possibilities:
Sentry on Mounted, Naval, Helicopter + Recon,
Interceptor I on Air Units,
double Well + Lighthouse + Smokehouse + Public Transportation,
+1 happiness for Harbor.
While I admire your imagination, I think on Protective you need to go back to the drawing board.

Spiritual: Much better.
Rather than double Cemetery, I would give double Temple.

Tactical: Interesting new idea. Will depend on how much gold per great general point.
I think it would be better that mounted get Flank I rather than Combat I promotion. I would also restore the Flank I for Naval.

Traditional: Too strong.
I do not like the plus buildings in capital. It gives too much advantage to large empires, quite often Civs who are already ahead and do not need the help.
(I also do not see that it fits well with the idea of the trait.)
I would definitely get rid of this.
+5 happiness in the capital is a very large early bonus, in many cases game breaking. It also persists and is a very good thing to have for the whole game.
Reducing this to +2 happiness in the capital would still be quite strong.
Consider again putting +2 culture per specialist.
Consider some double builds, for example
double Monument + Stadium + Civic Square.
Consider getting a Great Person when they build their special National Wonder (that starts a Golden Age).

Clearly these are just my opinions (without having looked at the comments of others.) I appreciate all the hard work you have put into this.

Okay here is second draft of the traits. Changes since the last draft are in red.

AGGRESSIVE
• +100% wealth from pillaging and capturing cities
• Commando promotion for Melee, Mounted, Gunpowder
• +1 happiness from Barracks, Stadium

CHARISMATIC
• -25% war weariness
• +1 combat experience per battle
• +2 happiness per city

CREATIVE
• Allows 1 Artist in every city
• +50% Wonder production
• +1 happiness from Theatre, Tavern

DIPLOMATIC
• +1 espionage per specialist
• +2 relations with other civilizations
• +50% commerce from trade routes

ENTERPRISING
• Allows 1 Merchant in every city
• +1 trade route in every city
• +1 movement for Naval units

EXPANSIVE
• +1 food per city
• 50% faster production of Settler
• Double production speed of Harbour, Sewer

FINANCIAL
• +1 commerce per city
• 3% interest earned on wealth reserve during Golden Ages
• Double production speed of Market, Bank

HUMANE
• 100% longer Golden Ages
• +2 health per city
• +1 happiness from Aqueduct, Bath

IMPERIALIST
• No resistance in captured cities
• -33% hurry production cost
• +100% Great General emergence

INDUSTRIOUS
• +1 production per city
• +50% faster production of Worker, Workboat
• Double production speed of Forge

JUDICIAL
• All Government civics available
• +50% defense against espionage and spies
• +1 happiness from Jail, Courthouse

ORGANIZED
• Workers build improvements 50% faster
• -50% civic upkeep
• Double production speed of Library, Courthouse

PHILOSOPHICAL
• +1 culture per specialist
• +100% Great Person birth rate
• Double production speed of School

PROGRESSIVE
• Allows 1 Scientist in every city
• Free Great Person when advancing eras
• -50% unit upgrade cost

PROTECTIVE
• Units heal to 80% after combat victory in cultural borders
• Improvements cannot be pillaged
• +1 happiness for Walls, Castle

SPIRITUAL
• No anarchy
• Allows 1 Priest in every city
• Double production speed of Cemetery, Great Temple

TACTICAL
• All Military civics available
• Units earn wealth from combat victory in enemy territory
• Combat I promotion for Melee, Mounted, Gunpowder units

TRADITIONAL
• +5 happiness in capital
• -25% production for buildings already constructed in capital
• +1 free specialist per Wonder



Notes:

Financial: That 3% is compound interest per turn. Over the normal 8 turn Golden Age this would add a little over 1/4 of your starting amount to your treasury. So for example, someone with 1000 wealth at the start of the golden age would earn 266 wealth over the 8 turns in addition to their normal golden age boosted income. It's all compounded so the actual amount earned would be a bit higher. A player could earn even more by cranking the wealth slider up to 100% during the golden age but in doing so would not benefit from the golden-age boosted research/culture/espionage. The interest rate may need to be adjusted but I think this makes for a really interesting mechanic.

Judicial and Organized: I restored the civic upkeep bonus to Organized and got rid of the city maintenance reduction - it was able to stack with a variety of similar bonuses from buildings/civics/etc and proving a pain to balance as a result. 50% espionage and spy defense is the same as a Security Bureau and should mean that a Judicial leader is almost immune to espionage in many cases.

Progressive: Assuming I can make it work, the Great Person you get would be determined by the normal % ratios your civ is generating Great People at.

Protective: Some more experimental ideas for this trait. I don't want this trait to give offensive benefits (like March promotions) as it's not in theme and there are other traits for that. I chose these bonuses to be defensive but also to directly alleviate some of the flaws of playing defensively. Feedback needed for the right % to heal units to. Let me know what you think.

Spiritual: This trait was proving a struggle to find effective new bonuses for so I restored the "no anarchy" bonus. This also allowed me to shift the Government civics bonus to Judicial which suits it more than Progressive.

Tactical: The wealth earned from combat will be based on experience earned, i.e tougher units yield more wealth. I think this suits Tactical better than increased wealth for capturing cities. I gave that to Aggressive as it needed a boost and it fits in perfectly with the theme of that trait.


Anyway, let me know what you think, especially if any still strike you as much too strong or too weak. Some of these bonuses will take some time to code and test but hopefully it won't delay 0.9.4 too long.

 

[Xyth]

Aggressive: You can now get rid of the +1 happiness from Stadium.

No it needs it. To me the Stadium fits the trait perfectly; sport (violent or not) has always been an outlet for aggression in society. Keeps the citizens out of trouble while they're not beating up their neighbours.

Creative: Might make more sense for +1 happiness for
Theater + News Press + Broadcast Tower.

I'm capping all traits at +2 happiness (except Traditional, see below) per city. I can see some value at shifting one of Creative's bonus happinesses to a later building though.

Diplomatic: I would put the espionage bonus back as +2 per specialist.
Even with the espionage bonus as +2 per specialist, this trait was average or a little below average.

Yeah I keep changing my mind on this. I'm prepared to put it back to +2.

This trait otherwise needs a boost, for example, spy specialist get 2 science (they usually get one science).

I can't change the yield/commerce of specific specialist types, I can only change them for all specialists at once.

Enterprising: Too strong.
For example, get rid of either 1 Merchant allowed or +1 movement naval and put back build advantages.

Enterprising is working well in my tests. It's not too strong, in fact it's about the level I'd like all the traits to be at.

Financial: The new idea of interest is clever; however, I think it is not a good game mechanic for a trait. Players usually know that a Golden Age will be coming soon and can increase their money on hand in anticipation.

I'm now leaning towards a (capped) 1% interest rate that is unattached to Golden Ages, as suggested by others in previous posts. I've not yet tried to code this so I'll have to see how it goes.

Interest might work better as a building (Bank is already taken) or Wonder, that applied for all turns, and had some maximum amount of interest you could earn per turn. This would kind of counteract inflation. It would make a significant change in game play, although there are already some advantages to holding money.

Actually it would be extremely difficult to implement as anything other than a trait, as making it part of a building or wonder means trying to get the AI to understand the value of it.

Judicial: I still think all Government Civics is a very bad idea for a trait.
It gives too much benefit very early; early benefits are very good.
Then later in the game it is useless.

It's fine in my testing. It helps a Judicial leader grow a bit faster but certainly not as much as Expansive does, nor produce as well as an Industrial leader. It still requires a lot of infrastructure to take advantage of it beyond Monarchy. Judicial's late game advantage will come instead from the espionage defense bonus (which needs more work).

Organized: I think it would better without any double productions
of buildings. If you like, perhaps could alter to double Civic Square or +1 happiness for Civic Square.

I'm tempted to give Azoth's Hamlet idea (a few posts back) to Organized, replacing the worker speed bonus. This would require some other adjustments as well, shall see.

Progressive: Better than it was, however, much too strong.
Each of the ideas is good.
However, that is an awful lot of Great Persons.
It is much stronger than +100% great person growth.
Perhaps they could instead get a Great Person when they enter one era such as for example the Renaissance, or perhaps two eras such as Renaissance and Modern.
I think it would be fine and probably better if the Great Person were always a scientist.

Yeah I've scrapped the Great Person per era thing. I have a couple other ideas I'm tinkering with instead, will let you know how they pan out.

Healing back to a fixed amount, even only inside cultural boundaries and after a combat victory is a poor game mechanic. It just does not make much sense. Having to heal back from severe damage the old fashioned way is better than introducing magic.
In contrast, free Medic promotions for certain type of units fits right in with the already existing game mechanic. Injured units will heal back faster than they would have, but not outside the current game mechanic. I suggest Free Medic I on Archery + Gunpowder.

That was an experimental idea and I agree with all the feedback so far that it doesn't work. I'll stick with Medic I promotions on Archery and Gunpowder units. Should any other unit class get it as well?

Making it impossible to pillage improvements makes no sense. What is the explanation of how the Protective leader prevents this?
Somehow making it harder to pillage is at least plausible.
I doubt it is worth the bother, but requiring two or three actions to pillage (or giving each try a 1/2 or 1/3 chance of success) at least makes sense.
The +25% defense on cities was much better.

See my explanation a few posts back on why this bonus is very important to a Protective leader. However, I do agree that the wording and mechanic don't make enough sense. How about this for a solution:

• City Defenses also protect Improvements from Pillaging"

In other words, the % defense increase from Walls, Castles, garrisoned units, etc will also apply to Improvements in that city's radius. May need some adjusting still (city defense can go over 100% for example) but I think this will work perfectly for the trait.

Spiritual: Much better.
Rather than double Cemetery, I would give double Temple.

Double Cemetery is essential to Spiritual leaders an advantage in founding religions. Temples are already relatively cheap.

Tactical: Interesting new idea. Will depend on how much gold per great general point.

I'd like feedback on this. Options are: (xpvalue + flat amount) or (2*xpvalue + flat amount). The flat amount could of course be 0 if that's deemed best.

I think it would be better that mounted get Flank I rather than Combat I promotion. I would also restore the Flank I for Naval.

I like the Flanking promotions but they're a bit too situational. Combat I's advantage is not so much about the 10% bonus but more that it allows better promotions later.

+5 happiness in the capital is a very large early bonus, in many cases game breaking. It also persists and is a very good thing to have for the whole game.

I was working on a mechanic for Progressive that I think will work well here too. How's this sound:

• +1 happiness in Capital when advancing Eras

It's not overpowered because it increases gradually and it's only in one city.

Reducing this to +2 happiness in the capital would still be quite strong.

That would be very weak, considering that Charismatic gets +2 happiness in EVERY city. I assume you are talking about this in conjunction with the other 2 bonuses?

I do not like the plus buildings in capital. It gives too much advantage to large empires, quite often Civs who are already ahead and do not need the help.
(I also do not see that it fits well with the idea of the trait.)
I would definitely get rid of this.

It fits the trait as it's about keeping a unified sense of identity, culture and architecture. The capital is where tradition is defined and the other cities strive to emulate and embrace what the centre of tradition in their culture is doing.

Remember that Tradition has very little else that helps it get ahead, especially with my proposed change to happiness in the capital. The production bonus doesn't apply to Wonders or National Wonders so they're not getting their free specialist any faster. And that free specialist they can't get at all if other civs beat them to building the wonders. I am considering lowering the production bonus to 20% though.

For example Double Custom House + Tavern + workboat.

You can put in instead a bunch of double productions.
(Not new, but it works well.) For example,
Double Cemetery + Library + Jail + Courthouse + Security Bureau.

double Well + Lighthouse + Smokehouse + Public Transportation,
+1 happiness for Harbor.

Consider some double builds, for example
double Monument + Stadium + Civic Square.

I'm deliberately not keeping/adding many double speed buildings across the traits as I want the traits to feel much more varied and interesting (and more powerful) than they are in standard BTS or current HR. Certain key buildings do make a difference when you're able to construct them faster but the majority would just serve to make the traits feel the same.

 

[Howard Mahler]

I think the reason why enterprising seems too strong for me is that I play on huge archipelego maps, where the +1 naval movement is very powerful, rather than just nice. It helps in combat (indirectly), exploration, and transporting. (Not as powerful as +2 which is just gross.)

Judicial: All governmental civics. You get Monarchy right off the bat, (few turns of anarchy) which is a very very nice initial bump when everyone only has their capital. You get 50% to hammers and 50% to commerce. Faster expansion and faster tech rate. Early bonuses are very powerful bonuses. Real quick start compared to (almost) everyone else, no thinking required.
Later in the game you have free (current version of the) Pyramids, one of the stronger wonders, granted not as strong in HR as in BTS.
Then finally you have nothing.
I think on the one hand it makes Judicial too strong in total, and on the other hand is not particularly interesting.
Could some of our different views on strength have something to do with game speed? I guess we will agree to disagree.

1% interest with a cap should work.

Pillaging probability based on the cities defense within the whole great cross is better, but still does quite have the right feel. Remember that each tile is perhaps 200 miles across.
I see no harm in this general idea, so since you like it you should work on the mechanics some more.
Perhaps, just a 1/2 or 1/3 flat chance for success.
(maybe the 1/3 chance kicks in with Riding.)
Perhaps, instead, in the first ring, (city defense)/2 is chance of failure.
I don't play multiplayer, so I do not see a lot of pillaging. However, in many cases wouldn't the attacker have other units to try to pillage if the first does not succeed. So this would slow down but not prevent pillaging.

In continuing to work on the Protective Trait, I hope you will consider the +25 city defense, and other ideas, so in total we have something balanced.

I like the different double speed buildings and the happiness bonuses.
They add a little flavor which is different with each leader.
Different strokes for different folks.
In any case, they are a nice way to adjust the final balance of the traits.

I see nothing wrong with +3 total happiness from buildings, provided some of the buildings are much later. I think you are being too rigid.

For Tradition, I see copying what has been built in the capital as more following the fashion set in the capital, rather than some long standing custom. They get the bonus even if the building has just been completed in the capital. Many customs are local, and would be retained in a traditional society. Seems like this is more in line with a centralized society, in which local customs are replaced by those of the capital. Something that happened to some extent in the Roman Empire, but maybe not as much in the Persian Empire.
Again seems like we will agree to disagree.
In any case 20% would be better than 25%.

I like the flanking promotion instead for cavalry, since it seems a better fit for Tactical.
The flanking for naval has the same feel, and does not limit everything to land warfare.
I think together flank for naval and cavalry is about of the same total value as combat I for cavalry alone, while providing more variety.

I do not have a good feel for how much money to get for combat victories.
I would guess that on marathon speed I might average something like one ep per turn.
(Depends on ones playing style and how much war you are involved in, which varies from game to game.) So I would guess that even 5 per ep, would not have a very strong impact.
(Of course 5 extra gold per turn always helps.)
I suspect no flat addition would work better, but do not feel strongly about that.

I will be very interested in seeing the third draft.

Enterprising is working well in my tests. It's not too strong, in fact it's about the level I'd like all the traits to be at.



I'm now leaning towards a (capped) 1% interest rate that is unattached to Golden Ages, as suggested by others in previous posts. I've not yet tried to code this so I'll have to see how it goes.



Actually it would be extremely difficult to implement as anything other than a trait, as making it part of a building or wonder means trying to get the AI to understand the value of it.



It's fine in my testing. It helps a Judicial leader grow a bit faster but certainly not as much as Expansive does, nor produce as well as an Industrial leader. It still requires a lot of infrastructure to take advantage of it beyond Monarchy. Judicial's late game advantage will come instead from the espionage defense bonus (which needs more work).



I'm tempted to give Azoth's Hamlet idea (a few posts back) to Organized, replacing the worker speed bonus. This would require some other adjustments as well, shall see.



Yeah I've scrapped the Great Person per era thing. I have a couple other ideas I'm tinkering with instead, will let you know how they pan out.



That was an experimental idea and I agree with all the feedback so far that it doesn't work. I'll stick with Medic I promotions on Archery and Gunpowder units. Should any other unit class get it as well?



See my explanation a few posts back on why this bonus is very important to a Protective leader. However, I do agree that the wording and mechanic don't make enough sense. How about this for a solution:

• City Defenses also protect Improvements from Pillaging"

In other words, the % defense increase from Walls, Castles, garrisoned units, etc will also apply to Improvements in that city's radius. May need some adjusting still (city defense can go over 100% for example) but I think this will work perfectly for the trait.



Double Cemetery is essential to Spiritual leaders an advantage in founding religions. Temples are already relatively cheap.



I'd like feedback on this. Options are: (xpvalue + flat amount) or (2*xpvalue + flat amount). The flat amount could of course be 0 if that's deemed best.



I like the Flanking promotions but they're a bit too situational. Combat I's advantage is not so much about the 10% bonus but more that it allows better promotions later.



I was working on a mechanic for Progressive that I think will work well here too. How's this sound:

• +1 happiness in Capital when advancing Eras

It's not overpowered because it increases gradually and it's only in one city.



That would be very weak, considering that Charismatic gets +2 happiness in EVERY city. I assume you are talking about this in conjunction with the other 2 bonuses?



It fits the trait as it's about keeping a unified sense of identity, culture and architecture. The capital is where tradition is defined and the other cities strive to emulate and embrace what the centre of tradition in their culture is doing.

Remember that Tradition has very little else that helps it get ahead, especially with my proposed change to happiness in the capital. The production bonus doesn't apply to Wonders or National Wonders so they're not getting their free specialist any faster. And that free specialist they can't get at all if other civs beat them to building the wonders. I am considering lowering the production bonus to 20% though.






I'm deliberately not keeping/adding many double speed buildings across the traits as I want the traits to feel much more varied and interesting (and more powerful) than they are in standard BTS or current HR. Certain key buildings do make a difference when you're able to construct them faster but the majority would just serve to make the traits feel the same.

 

[Azoth]

1% permanent interest would probably be alright with a cap but much too risky without. It's not hard to code a cap that changes by era either, the real challenge is choosing effective caps. Not to mention trying to explain all this in a single tooltip line.

I haven't started coding this yet so I'll see how it goes and see if the technical aspects steer me in any particular direction. I was thinking I probably need to alter the financial advisor screen to include this interest. I'm not sure how hard that will be, I've not touched that screen before.

While a cap that changes by era seems reasonable, I don't think it's strictly necessary. Research and city maintenance costs already act as a soft cap for the amount of gold that can be accumulated in the treasury. All the same, a cap of 10 gold/turn in the Ancient Era, rising by 10 gold/turn for each later era, is a decent idea. It would hit 40 gold/turn in the Renaissance, and a maximum 70 gold/turn in the Future Era, after the tech tree was more or less complete.

"1% interest on gold reserves" is probably sufficient detail for the tooltip; though I suggest you fully explain the cap mechanics in a new page under the Concepts section of the Civilopedia. I also agree that the turn-by-turn income from interest should be included on the Financial Advisor screen. If you can't create a new entry for interest, I would relabel "Taxes" as "Taxes and Interest" in the centre Income panel. Players could then calculate their interest earnings as follows: Interest Earned = Taxes and Interest (Income Panel) - Gold (Commerce Panel).

I looked briefly into altering inflation but it's quite a complex mechanic and difficult to change. I don't really understand it very well so I decided to leave it alone lest I break something.

I think I understand the inflation mechanic fairly well; I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. If the rate of inflation is difficult to change, then I agree it's best left alone. Though, now that I think about it, a certain event in BtS would result in reduced inflation if you were running the Free Market civic...

I'm tempted to give Azoth's Hamlet idea (a few posts back) to Organized, replacing the worker speed bonus. This would require some other adjustments as well, shall see.

I'm not sure that instant hamlets would be a good fit for Organized leaders. To keep the leader traits in balance, I find it best to pair an economic bonus (faster city growth or greater income) with a production bonus (cheaper infrastructure or a more efficient military), and then add something for flavour (a weaker bonus that fits the theme). So, for Philosophical, we have: +100% GPP (economy), double School (production), and +1 culture/specialist (flavour). For Charismatic: +2 happy/city (economy: cities can grow larger, sooner), +1XP/battle (production: fewer, better promoted units can do the work of many untrained units), and -25% War Wariness (flavour). Organized already has a strong production bonus (double Library+Courthouse) and two strong economy bonuses (+50% worker speed, -50% civic upkeep). It needs a weakish flavour bonus, such as +50% defense against espionage; not another economy bonus in instant Hamlets, which is surely better suited to Progressive.

It's a good bonus, it's just that I changed the Pyramids to also give it. These bonuses stack, I'm not sure how problematic this is.

It is problematic; but the solution is to rethink the Pyramids bonus, especially since the Hagia Sophia also grants +50% worker speed. (Having a trait bonus stack with the Hagia Sophia is not problematic, just as having the Humane trait overlap with the Mausoleum of Mausolus is not problematic; these wonders arrive late enough that every leader should have an opportunity to build them. The Pyramids are a problem mostly because they are such an early build.)

I have some ideas for better wonder balance, which I have been saving for 0.9.5. One of these involves replacing the mythical "Pool of Balance" with Stonehenge as the Druidic shrine; and shifting the free Monument/city Stonehenge bonus to the Pyramids, along with an appropriately reduced cost. Bottom line: I wouldn't worry about potential conflicts between leader traits and wonders. Wonders are slated for revision anyway.

I'd like feedback on this. Options are: (xpvalue + flat amount) or (2*xpvalue + flat amount). The flat amount could of course be 0 if that's deemed best.

The amount of XP earned depends on the odds of victory. 95%+ battles give 1XP. Winning at lower odds brings greater rewards. The most I've ever earned in a single battle was 4XP on defense; but then, I'm a very conservative player. Note that total XP is capped at 10 against barbarians. So it looks like either XP + 2 or 2*XP could work. I would stick to 2*XP because of that barbarian cap. A flat gold bonus would bring absurd profits against, say, Raging Barbarians.

I'd kinda forgotten about the Drill promotion. Would Drill + Medic be too strong alongside the other bonuses?

That was an experimental idea and I agree with all the feedback so far that it doesn't work. I'll stick with Medic I promotions on Archery and Gunpowder units. Should any other unit class get it as well?

Drill I + Medic I would not be too strong; but Drill promotions are considerably weaker than Combat promotions, and I was hoping we could revamp that entire line of promotions along with Archery and Skirmisher units in 0.9.5. So I would stick to Medic I for now. That said, I would not give Medic I to Archery units. The AI is programmed to keep Archery units in cities (they have a city defense AI script) and human players certainly prefer to counterattack with other types of units. I would give free Medic I promotions to Melee, Siege, and Gunpowder units instead. (You could swap Melee for Naval if you prefer.) Siege units are particularly good candidates because they stay inside cities when under attack, but can also help recapture nearby cities if they fall.

Yeah I keep changing my mind on this. I'm prepared to put it back to +2.

To be honest, I prefer +1EP/specialist. The bonus is strongest in the early game, when most leaders make 4EP from the palace while Diplomatic leaders can easily add another +1EP/city with the free Cemetery specialist. This creates potentially serious distortions: the AI is programmed to raise its espionage slider in response to high espionage spending from its neighbours; so a couple Diplomatic leaders can dampen the research rate of an entire continent! +1EP/specialist is probably tolerable; +2EP/specialist would be that much worse.

See my explanation a few posts back on why this bonus is very important to a Protective leader. However, I do agree that the wording and mechanic don't make enough sense. How about this for a solution:

• City Defenses also protect Improvements from Pillaging"

In other words, the % defense increase from Walls, Castles, garrisoned units, etc will also apply to Improvements in that city's radius. May need some adjusting still (city defense can go over 100% for example) but I think this will work perfectly for the trait.

I disagree. It's best to keep things simple: Immunity to Pillaging is powerful, different, and fun. With a little imagination, it's also not hard to see how it translates to the real world.

Consider Churchill, probably the most famous 'Protective' leader of modern times. Churchill's greatest triumph was arguably not the eventual Allied victory in World War II but his nation's determined resistance to Nazi aggression during the Battle of Britain. In those dark days, British cities were bombed every week and the entire coast was under blockade by U-boats. But Churchill and his government were prepared to fight back. Women and children were evacuated from the cities and sent to live in the countryside. All the damage from nighttime raids was cleaned up by morning, to make it appear as if nothing had happened. The government assumed responsibility for wounded veterans and civilians alike. A naval convoy system ensured that supplies would still reach the island. The bombs kept falling but the business of war marched on. That is what it means to be immune to pillaging.

I say we keep the bonus as is.

I was working on a mechanic for Progressive that I think will work well here too. How's this sound:

• +1 happiness in Capital when advancing Eras

It's not overpowered because it increases gradually and it's only in one city. [...]

I am considering lowering the production bonus to 20% though.

Once again, I feel the trait is fine as it is. +5 happy in Capital is not too strong, especially when compared with +2 happy/city from Charismatic. As soon as your empire grows to three cities, Charismatic allows for more happy citizens. (Granted, extra happiness in the capital is more important because of the Monarchy civic. But even assuming an 'adjusted' +7.5 happy, Charismatic is better after four cities.) In fact, more happiness in the capital offers Traditional leaders an interesting choice between horizontal and vertical growth. After all, they can't build Settlers if they want the capital to grow to size 10 as early as possible; and they just might miss out on the best spots for their second and third cities that way. +1 happy in the Capital per Era is not nearly as useful (or exciting) because, starting in the Medieval Era, the bottleneck for growth is not happiness but food and health.

On a separate note, I think you should keep the production bonus to 25%. Practically every other production bonus in HR and BtS is a multiple of 25%, since it keeps wasted fractional hammers to a minimum. A 20% production bonus, along with either Organized Religion or Forges, would combine to a frustrating 45%, and lead to a lot of problems with rounding.

 

[Howard Mahler]

1. The bonus for the Well allowing irrigation does not seem to work once you have captured a city from another Civ and the well remains. (I believe this bonus will be moved to another building, in which case the issue still stands.)

2. Please do not require Compass before Caravels can ply the oceans.
On Huge Archipelago maps this is the only means isolated or semi-isolated civs have a chance to communicate with others. They still do not get to trade across Oceans until Compass. Navigation takes a while to come in, so there is a lengthy period of isolation already.

In future versions of HR, one could slow this down somewhat by requiring the building of a National Project/Wonder, before your Caravels can cross the ocean (without Compass).

Doing something about the Polynesia special unit is a good idea. I thought you had said you were going to limit it to three at a time, but this does not seem to be the case. Doing something else to limit it would be good, but I do not have any ideas.

3. Interest amount caps by era would work well. However, you might want to consider instead having the cap go up as relevant techs are researched, such as Currency, Economics, Corporation, etc. In any case, caps are needed.

4. +1 happiness in the capital to start and increasing by era is fine for Traditional.
This is more balanced and seems to fit the idea of Traditional, with the palace grounds becoming more of tradition over time, and thus of more importance to the people of the capital. Generally, abilities whose effect increases over time are preferable.

The idea is to get a group of abilities that each make sense and add up to a balanced Traditional trait. Additional comments will have to wait until a new proposed set of abilities for Traditional.

5. Churchill not withstanding, if the Nazis had gotten troops in Britain or Egypt, and wanted to do whatever is the equivalent of pillaging, it would not have been impossible.
Intense guerilla warfare and resistance could make pillaging more difficult than against an average Civ. Better advance preventative measures might also help, but would not prevent pillaging all together. No pillaging allowed would just be magic.

I do not see any of this directly linked to the defense of the city.
Tiles are about 200 miles across. Having a strong defense of New York City would not prevent pillaging in Virginia, or of fishing boats on the Georgia's Bank.

All Civs prevent some pillaging by keeping enemy units out of their territory, having potential counterattack forces that prevent the enemy units from dividing up too greatly, and by killing enemy forces that enter their territory.
So whatever you are assuming for Protective has to be in addition to all of this.

 

[Xyth]

I think the reason why enterprising seems too strong for me is that I play on huge archipelego maps, where the +1 naval movement is very powerful, rather than just nice. It helps in combat (indirectly), exploration, and transporting. (Not as powerful as +2 which is just gross.)

It's impossible to design traits/civics/UUs/etc that are equally balanced across all map types. That bonus would utterly useless on a Great Plains map for example. It's definitely more powerful on an Archipelago but I don't think it's too powerful. Weakening Enterprise because of Archipelagos wouldn't help balance on all the other map types.

I like the flanking promotion instead for cavalry, since it seems a better fit for Tactical.
The flanking for naval has the same feel, and does not limit everything to land warfare.
I think together flank for naval and cavalry is about of the same total value as combat I for cavalry alone, while providing more variety.

I like these promotions too but in the end I stuck with Combat I as it's universal and allows better promotions later on. The way I view it is the free Combat I promotion allows you to pick more interesting promotions like Flanking sooner.

While a cap that changes by era seems reasonable, I don't think it's strictly necessary. Research and city maintenance costs already act as a soft cap for the amount of gold that can be accumulated in the treasury. All the same, a cap of 10 gold/turn in the Ancient Era, rising by 10 gold/turn for each later era, is a decent idea. It would hit 40 gold/turn in the Renaissance, and a maximum 70 gold/turn in the Future Era, after the tech tree was more or less complete.

3. Interest amount caps by era would work well. However, you might want to consider instead having the cap go up as relevant techs are researched, such as Currency, Economics, Corporation, etc. In any case, caps are needed.

10 wealth cap per era seems reasonable. Doing it by techs is a cool idea but adds a lot of complexity to the coding and description.

"1% interest on gold reserves" is probably sufficient detail for the tooltip; though I suggest you fully explain the cap mechanics in a new page under the Concepts section of the Civilopedia.

At the moment the traits don't have their own strategy/pedia text, they just link to the leader concepts page. So I can add all such information there, though I won't do that for 0.9.4 or it will never be finished.

I also agree that the turn-by-turn income from interest should be included on the Financial Advisor screen. If you can't create a new entry for interest, I would relabel "Taxes" as "Taxes and Interest" in the centre Income panel. Players could then calculate their interest earnings as follows: Interest Earned = Taxes and Interest (Income Panel) - Gold (Commerce Panel).

I had a brief look through all this code last night and it's very complex. I'm not going to attempt it in 0.9.4 but I'll add it to my todo list for a later version. In the meantime you'll just get a message each turn saying how much interest you earned.

I think I understand the inflation mechanic fairly well; I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. If the rate of inflation is difficult to change, then I agree it's best left alone. Though, now that I think about it, a certain event in BtS would result in reduced inflation if you were running the Free Market civic...

It's easy to change for everyone but I can't see any easy way of adjusting on a per civ basis. All the actual calculations seem to be locked away inside the DLL meaning I can't easily create an alternate version of the code either.

The event system is frustrating. It has access to a lot of very useful functions that can't easily be accessed elsewhere but it comes with one very annoying caveat: events have to have a popup message, even if there are no 'options' to choose from. This pretty much rules it out for traits though it might be useful for wonders when we eventually get to them.

I'm not sure that instant hamlets would be a good fit for Organized leaders. To keep the leader traits in balance, I find it best to pair an economic bonus (faster city growth or greater income) with a production bonus (cheaper infrastructure or a more efficient military), and then add something for flavour (a weaker bonus that fits the theme).

Yeah I was talking thematically. I'd only give it to Organized if there was shuffling of other bonuses.

It is problematic; but the solution is to rethink the Pyramids bonus, especially since the Hagia Sophia also grants +50% worker speed. (Having a trait bonus stack with the Hagia Sophia is not problematic, just as having the Humane trait overlap with the Mausoleum of Mausolus is not problematic; these wonders arrive late enough that every leader should have an opportunity to build them. The Pyramids are a problem mostly because they are such an early build.)

My plan was to give the Hagia Sophia a different bonus as the worker speed bonus makes much more sense for the Pyramids and the Pyramids old bonus made no sense at all.

I have some ideas for better wonder balance, which I have been saving for 0.9.5. One of these involves replacing the mythical "Pool of Balance" with Stonehenge as the Druidic shrine; and shifting the free Monument/city Stonehenge bonus to the Pyramids, along with an appropriately reduced cost

A lot of the new religion stuff was taken direct from another mod, JARM. Some of it I've changed over time but I've not touched the Druidic stuff. We can talk about this more after 0.9.5.

The amount of XP earned depends on the odds of victory. 95%+ battles give 1XP. Winning at lower odds brings greater rewards. The most I've ever earned in a single battle was 4XP on defense; but then, I'm a very conservative player. Note that total XP is capped at 10 against barbarians. So it looks like either XP + 2 or 2*XP could work. I would stick to 2*XP because of that barbarian cap. A flat gold bonus would bring absurd profits against, say, Raging Barbarians

The wealth bonus would only be granted in enemy territory (not within your own borders or on unclaimed tiles). This would prevent the issue with barbarians.

However, I've hit a snag with this bonus. It turns out the function I was trying to use to determine the xpvalue of a unit is instead used to determine how much xp the unit has, i.e how promoted it is. I'm looking to see if I can find another way to access the xpvalue but if not I'll have to base it off something else instead.

Drill I + Medic I would not be too strong; but Drill promotions are considerably weaker than Combat promotions, and I was hoping we could revamp that entire line of promotions along with Archery and Skirmisher units in 0.9.5. So I would stick to Medic I for now.

Yes I hope to revamp Archery/Skirmisher/Siege units in 0.9.5. It's pretty much top priority even.

That said, I would not give Medic I to Archery units. The AI is programmed to keep Archery units in cities (they have a city defense AI script) and human players certainly prefer to counterattack with other types of units.

It's very easy to give units different AI scripts btw.

I would give free Medic I promotions to Melee, Siege, and Gunpowder units instead. (You could swap Melee for Naval if you prefer.) Siege units are particularly good candidates because they stay inside cities when under attack, but can also help recapture nearby cities if they fall.

Siege units with Medic just seems weird to me and it makes them even stronger when conquering. I think I will stick with Melee, Archery and Gunpowder for the moment and review it all in 0.9.5.

To be honest, I prefer +1EP/specialist. The bonus is strongest in the early game, when most leaders make 4EP from the palace while Diplomatic leaders can easily add another +1EP/city with the free Cemetery specialist. This creates potentially serious distortions: the AI is programmed to raise its espionage slider in response to high espionage spending from its neighbours; so a couple Diplomatic leaders can dampen the research rate of an entire continent! +1EP/specialist is probably tolerable; +2EP/specialist would be that much worse.

Good point, I'll leave it at +1 then. This potentially messes up what I was planning for Judicial too, will have to re-examine that.

I disagree. It's best to keep things simple: Immunity to Pillaging is powerful, different, and fun. With a little imagination, it's also not hard to see how it translates to the real world.

Intense guerilla warfare and resistance could make pillaging more difficult than against an average Civ. Better advance preventative measures might also help, but would not prevent pillaging all together. No pillaging allowed would just be magic.

All bonuses require a certain amount of imagination. After all, I've never heard of a leader so spiritual that their citizens don't get mad if their state religion and/or government type is changed every few years

I haven't coded this bonus yet so I'll see what works and let the technicalities help decide the final form of it. The goal is still pillage immunity or close to it though.

+1 happy in the Capital per Era is not nearly as useful (or exciting) because, starting in the Medieval Era, the bottleneck for growth is not happiness but food and health.

4. +1 happiness in the capital to start and increasing by era is fine for Traditional. This is more balanced and seems to fit the idea of Traditional, with the palace grounds becoming more of tradition over time, and thus of more importance to the people of the capital.

Another alternative could be tying it to culture level instead of era.

On a separate note, I think you should keep the production bonus to 25%. Practically every other production bonus in HR and BtS is a multiple of 25%, since it keeps wasted fractional hammers to a minimum. A 20% production bonus, along with either Organized Religion or Forges, would combine to a frustrating 45%, and lead to a lot of problems with rounding.

Yeah I discovered this testing last night.

1. The bonus for the Well allowing irrigation does not seem to work once you have captured a city from another Civ and the well remains. (I believe this bonus will be moved to another building, in which case the issue still stands.)

I haven't made any changes to the Well yet but I'm thinking of removing the irrigation aspect from buildings altogether and bring it back later as a wonder or possibly even an improvement. The Well is going to stay at Mining and bring a benefit to the city tile only though I've not decided what yet.

2. Please do not require Compass before Caravels can ply the oceans.
On Huge Archipelago maps this is the only means isolated or semi-isolated civs have a chance to communicate with others. They still do not get to trade across Oceans until Compass. Navigation takes a while to come in, so there is a lengthy period of isolation already.

This is tricky and I'm not quite sure how to address it. Some civilizations (Polynesians, various Southeast Asian peoples, arguably the Scandinavians) were crossing oceans centuries before most other civilizations were. UUs like the Waka provide a good way of emulating this, giving them a moderate headstart (see below) while everyone else has to wait until the Age of Sail. Of course, this all gets distorted on an Archipelago map.

In many ways Civ3's implementation of boats sinking in ocean was superior as you could give certain units a lower chance of sinking or increased movement allowing them to 'island hop' more successfully. Civ4's single tile coast is very restrictive, especially on the bigger mapsizes. This is part of the reason I was considering a third ocean terrain type.

Ultimately though it's grossly unhistorical to have ships crossing oceans in the classical era. Trade in this era was neighbours trading with neighbours. Rome didn't trade direct with China, they traded with Persia who traded with India or the Kushan who traded with China (any many extra steps and changes along the way). I think it's important to preserve that, even on Archipelago maps.

I agree that the situation is not perfect though and I'll try to find a solution in the future.

In future versions of HR, one could slow this down somewhat by requiring the building of a National Project/Wonder, before your Caravels can cross the ocean (without Compass).

Unfortunately this won't work as getting the AI to understand it needs to build such a project/building is pretty much impossible.

Doing something about the Polynesia special unit is a good idea. I thought you had said you were going to limit it to three at a time, but this does not seem to be the case. Doing something else to limit it would be good, but I do not have any ideas.

In 0.9.4 it is unable to enter ocean until Navigation (Navigation takes longer to reach too, as Shipbuilding will also require Construction).

 

[Howard Mahler]

The conclusion from your comments seems to be that +1 naval movement is not a good attribute for a trait, since it is very strong on some maps and utterly useless on other maps. (A real pain if you get it when it is useless or if an opponent gets it when it is very strong.)
I would remove it and replace it with something else; there have been suggestions that do not depend very strongly on map type.
For example, seems like a free hamlet would work for Enterprising, or better just some increase in the growth rate of hamlets, villages, etc.

I still think that total immunity to pillaging has no basis in history, is just still plain silly, and is not needed to fix any problem with the current game. (Anybody want archers shooting across the English Channel?)
This is the last time I will comment on the matter.
As always you will do what you think is best.

Can the wealth bonus work off of Great General Points?
Would not distinguish between where you won the battle, and would interact with ways of getting Great General Points at a quicker rate.
However, in spite of these problems, it may be a way to do it.
Perhaps just looking to see where the increase in Great General Points is coded will help some.

I thin the health bonus for Well still makes sense.
It would still be useful, even at +1 health, and relatively cheap.
As mentioned before, if Well and Aqueduct both provide health, then their costs and benefits need to make sense compared with each other.
I suggested you move the irrigation bonus to the Aqueduct.
It is an excellent idea, and should be available, but not quite as early as in the current version.
Irrigation using water from a goodly distance for irrigation goes back a long ways (in I believe current day Iran.)

It's impossible to design traits/civics/UUs/etc that are equally balanced across all map types. That bonus would utterly useless on a Great Plains map for example. It's definitely more powerful on an Archipelago but I don't think it's too powerful. Weakening Enterprise because of Archipelagos wouldn't help balance on all the other map types.



I like these promotions too but in the end I stuck with Combat I as it's universal and allows better promotions later on. The way I view it is the free Combat I promotion allows you to pick more interesting promotions like Flanking sooner.





10 wealth cap per era seems reasonable. Doing it by techs is a cool idea but adds a lot of complexity to the coding and description.



At the moment the traits don't have their own strategy/pedia text, they just link to the leader concepts page. So I can add all such information there, though I won't do that for 0.9.4 or it will never be finished.



I had a brief look through all this code last night and it's very complex. I'm not going to attempt it in 0.9.4 but I'll add it to my todo list for a later version. In the meantime you'll just get a message each turn saying how much interest you earned.



It's easy to change for everyone but I can't see any easy way of adjusting on a per civ basis. All the actual calculations seem to be locked away inside the DLL meaning I can't easily create an alternate version of the code either.

The event system is frustrating. It has access to a lot of very useful functions that can't easily be accessed elsewhere but it comes with one very annoying caveat: events have to have a popup message, even if there are no 'options' to choose from. This pretty much rules it out for traits though it might be useful for wonders when we eventually get to them.



Yeah I was talking thematically. I'd only give it to Organized if there was shuffling of other bonuses.



My plan was to give the Hagia Sophia a different bonus as the worker speed bonus makes much more sense for the Pyramids and the Pyramids old bonus made no sense at all.



A lot of the new religion stuff was taken direct from another mod, JARM. Some of it I've changed over time but I've not touched the Druidic stuff. We can talk about this more after 0.9.5.



The wealth bonus would only be granted in enemy territory (not within your own borders or on unclaimed tiles). This would prevent the issue with barbarians.

However, I've hit a snag with this bonus. It turns out the function I was trying to use to determine the xpvalue of a unit is instead used to determine how much xp the unit has, i.e how promoted it is. I'm looking to see if I can find another way to access the xpvalue but if not I'll have to base it off something else instead.



Yes I hope to revamp Archery/Skirmisher/Siege units in 0.9.5. It's pretty much top priority even.



It's very easy to give units different AI scripts btw.



Siege units with Medic just seems weird to me and it makes them even stronger when conquering. I think I will stick with Melee, Archery and Gunpowder for the moment and review it all in 0.9.5.



Good point, I'll leave it at +1 then. This potentially messes up what I was planning for Judicial too, will have to re-examine that.





All bonuses require a certain amount of imagination. After all, I've never heard of a leader so spiritual that their citizens don't get mad if their state religion and/or government type is changed every few years

I haven't coded this bonus yet so I'll see what works and let the technicalities help decide the final form of it. The goal is still pillage immunity or close to it though.





Another alternative could be tying it to culture level instead of era.



Yeah I discovered this testing last night.



I haven't made any changes to the Well yet but I'm thinking of removing the irrigation aspect from buildings altogether and bring it back later as a wonder or possibly even an improvement. The Well is going to stay at Mining and bring a benefit to the city tile only though I've not decided what yet.



This is tricky and I'm not quite sure how to address it. Some civilizations (Polynesians, various Southeast Asian peoples, arguably the Scandinavians) were crossing oceans centuries before most other civilizations were. UUs like the Waka provide a good way of emulating this, giving them a moderate headstart (see below) while everyone else has to wait until the Age of Sail. Of course, this all gets distorted on an Archipelago map.

In many ways Civ3's implementation of boats sinking in ocean was superior as you could give certain units a lower chance of sinking or increased movement allowing them to 'island hop' more successfully. Civ4's single tile coast is very restrictive, especially on the bigger mapsizes. This is part of the reason I was considering a third ocean terrain type.

Ultimately though it's grossly unhistorical to have ships crossing oceans in the classical era. Trade in this era was neighbours trading with neighbours. Rome didn't trade direct with China, they traded with Persia who traded with India or the Kushan who traded with China (any many extra steps and changes along the way). I think it's important to preserve that, even on Archipelago maps.

I agree that the situation is not perfect though and I'll try to find a solution in the future.



Unfortunately this won't work as getting the AI to understand it needs to build such a project/building is pretty much impossible.



In 0.9.4 it is unable to enter ocean until Navigation (Navigation takes longer to reach too, as Shipbuilding will also require Construction).

 

[Xyth]

The conclusion from your comments seems to be that +1 naval movement is not a good attribute for a trait, since it is very strong on some maps and utterly useless on other maps. (A real pain if you get it when it is useless or if an opponent gets it when it is very strong.)
I would remove it and replace it with something else; there have been suggestions that do not depend very strongly on map type.

I have considered that but then at the same time I feel there needs to be a trait with a (partial) naval focus despite the design contradictions it creates. The +1 movement was mostly intended to be a flavour bonus - the merchant and the trade route are meant to be the major benefits. It doesn't seem overly strong to me, even on Archipelagos, but I'm willing to reconsider in a future version.

I still think that total immunity to pillaging has no basis in history, is just still plain silly, and is not needed to fix any problem with the current game.

It does fixes a significant problem with the Protective trait and AI that play protectively. Sitting in cities while invaders tear up your farms and mines is bad gameplay and the AI is not smart enough to send units out to destroy pillagers, it instead adopts a siege mentality and wonders why it's economy dies. This is why Protective is generally viewed as very weak in standard BTS. Incidentally some leaders love to pillage while others hardly ever do it, it's determined by leader AI.

I agree that immunity to pillaging is ahistorical but some level of protection is realistic (arming workers, guards, fortifications, etc). If nothing else an invading army may be deterred from pillaging because such protections mean pillaging isn't cost free to their troops. I'm still experimenting with mechanics but the effect will need to amount to near or total immunity to solve the issue. In this instance I think it's worth sacrificing some historicity.

Can the wealth bonus work off of Great General Points?
Would not distinguish between where you won the battle, and would interact with ways of getting Great General Points at a quicker rate.
However, in spite of these problems, it may be a way to do it.
Perhaps just looking to see where the increase in Great General Points is coded will help some.

Possibly, I'll see how accessible it is.

I thin the health bonus for Well still makes sense.
It would still be useful, even at +1 health, and relatively cheap.

Yeah I think the health bonus makes sense, though I've been pondering the implications of +1 food instead. I suspect that will be far too strong though.

As mentioned before, if Well and Aqueduct both provide health, then their costs and benefits need to make sense compared with each other.

Yep, I'll evaluate both together.

I suggested you move the irrigation bonus to the Aqueduct.
It is an excellent idea, and should be available, but not quite as early as in the current version.
Irrigation using water from a goodly distance for irrigation goes back a long ways (in I believe current day Iran.)

Yep, there were several ancient/classical civilizations with extensive irrigation from groundwater. Garama in Libya was a phenomenal example. The Sinhalese (Sri Lanka) also achieved astonishing feats of hydraulics.

I decided not to go with Aqueducts as they are about bringing water to a city rather than taking it out to the fields. Also, I'm wondering if it's too strong (and ahistorical) to have it available for every city, and needs to have some appropriate restrictions. I will definitely bring it back in some form though.

 

[Keinpferd]

Making it impossible to pillage improvements makes no sense. What is the explanation of how the Protective leader prevents this?

See my explanation a few posts back on why this bonus is very important to a Protective leader. However, I do agree that the wording and mechanic don't make enough sense. How about this for a solution:

• City Defenses also protect Improvements from Pillaging"

All bonuses require a certain amount of imagination. After all, I've never heard of a leader so spiritual that their citizens don't get mad if their state religion and/or government type is changed every few years.

In other words, the % defense increase from Walls, Castles, garrisoned units, etc will also apply to Improvements in that city's radius. May need some adjusting still (city defense can go over 100% for example) but I think this will work perfectly for the trait.

I still think that total immunity to pillaging has no basis in history, is just still plain silly, and is not needed to fix any problem with the current game. (Anybody want archers shooting across the English Channel?)
This is the last time I will comment on the matter.
As always you will do what you think is best.

Consider Churchill, probably the most famous 'Protective' leader of modern times. Churchill's greatest triumph was arguably not the eventual Allied victory in World War II but his nation's determined resistance to Nazi aggression during the Battle of Britain. In those dark days, British cities were bombed every week and the entire coast was under blockade by U-boats. But Churchill and his government were prepared to fight back. Women and children were evacuated from the cities and sent to live in the countryside. All the damage from nighttime raids was cleaned up by morning, to make it appear as if nothing had happened. The government assumed responsibility for wounded veterans and civilians alike. A naval convoy system ensured that supplies would still reach the island. The bombs kept falling but the business of war marched on. That is what it means to be immune to pillaging.

In Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow one of the characters is able to sense, where a V2 would be hitting the ground, thus the British counter intelligence hires him. Women and children could be evacuated in advance, while the missile was coming. But the Protective trait couldn't really prevent the attack happening, and a lot of torch lighters were neccessary to clean up by morning.

(By the way, I would really like to see a subforum for HR, because it's kind of hard to browse through all the postings, that usually cover all topics at once, many of them you've lost track of long ago.)

My proposal on the pillaging immunity: The pillagers don't get a money reward anymore for their destructions, if the leader is Protective, but still can burn down that village or cut off the ressource. No idea, whether that's possible to code, though.

 

[Howard Mahler]

My point was that Enterprising already has some good traits.
The 1 trade routes also works very well on Archipelagos and Huge maps.
Trust me, I have played a lot on huge Archipelago, and +1 naval movement much, much more than a bit of flavor.

You seem to be saying the AI is not smart enough to defend against pillaging.
(I do not play multiplayer, I rarely pillage, and when I do it is usually just a fishing boat or two.)
What does this have to do in particular with Protective leaders as opposed to other AI leaders?
Why is this a reason to give one subgroup of leaders total immunity and leave all the other AI leaders just as vulnerable as currently to this tactic?

My vastly superior navy sails in and it is impossible for it to stop his very clever fishing boats from continuing to fish right under my nose 100 to 300 miles offshore as if nothing has happened.
My large group of troops enters enemy territory and it is impossible to ever find his main roads, or large villages, or large farms, etc. and do damage. It does not matter how many troops I bring or how long I try, it is just impossible.
If I had tried the same thing next door in a neighboring civilization it would have been a piece of cake, but here it is just impossible.

I have considered that but then at the same time I feel there needs to be a trait with a (partial) naval focus despite the design contradictions it creates. The +1 movement was mostly intended to be a flavour bonus - the merchant and the trade route are meant to be the major benefits. It doesn't seem overly strong to me, even on Archipelagos, but I'm willing to reconsider in a future version.



It does fixes a significant problem with the Protective trait and AI that play protectively. Sitting in cities while invaders tear up your farms and mines is bad gameplay and the AI is not smart enough to send units out to destroy pillagers, it instead adopts a siege mentality and wonders why it's economy dies. This is why Protective is generally viewed as very weak in standard BTS. Incidentally some leaders love to pillage while others hardly ever do it, it's determined by leader AI.

I agree that immunity to pillaging is ahistorical but some level of protection is realistic (arming workers, guards, fortifications, etc). If nothing else an invading army may be deterred from pillaging because such protections mean pillaging isn't cost free to their troops. I'm still experimenting with mechanics but the effect will need to amount to near or total immunity to solve the issue. In this instance I think it's worth sacrificing some historicity.



Possibly, I'll see how accessible it is.



Yeah I think the health bonus makes sense, though I've been pondering the implications of +1 food instead. I suspect that will be far too strong though.



Yep, I'll evaluate both together.



Yep, there were several ancient/classical civilizations with extensive irrigation from groundwater. Garama in Libya was a phenomenal example. The Sinhalese (Sri Lanka) also achieved astonishing feats of hydraulics.

I decided not to go with Aqueducts as they are about bringing water to a city rather than taking it out to the fields. Also, I'm wondering if it's too strong (and ahistorical) to have it available for every city, and needs to have some appropriate restrictions. I will definitely bring it back in some form though.

 

[Xyth]

In Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow one of the characters is able to sense, where a V2 would be hitting the ground, thus the British counter intelligence hires him. Women and children could be evacuated in advance, while the missile was coming. But the Protective trait couldn't really prevent the attack happening, and a lot of torch lighters were neccessary to clean up by morning.

Hehe good thing missiles can't pillage! The Protective trait won't stop Improvements being destroyed by other means than pillaging, I made sure of that.

(By the way, I would really like to see a subforum for HR, because it's kind of hard to browse through all the postings, that usually cover all topics at once, many of them you've lost track of long ago.)

Yeah some of these posts are getting huge. I'll make some enquiries.

My proposal on the pillaging immunity: The pillagers don't get a money reward anymore for their destructions, if the leader is Protective, but still can burn down that village or cut off the ressource. No idea, whether that's possible to code, though.

I can code that, in fact I've already done it as part of the trait bonus. Otherwise a unit could sit on a protected improvement and pillage it endlessly for gold each turn! I had considered this idea but ultimately it doesn't solve the problem of Protective; the Protective player's economy is still getting torn up, the attacker just isn't getting 'paid' for doing so.

 

[Xyth]

My point was that Enterprising already has some good traits.
The 1 trade routes also works very well on Archipelagos and Huge maps.
Trust me, I have played a lot on huge Archipelago, and +1 naval movement much, much more than a bit of flavor.

Yeah I agree. Lets think of some replacement ideas that are still naval-themed.

You seem to be saying the AI is not smart enough to defend against pillaging.
(I do not play multiplayer, I rarely pillage, and when I do it is usually just a fishing boat or two.)
What does this have to do in particular with Protective leaders as opposed to other AI leaders?
Why is this a reason to give one subgroup of leaders total immunity and leave all the other AI leaders just as vulnerable as currently to this tactic?

It does affect all leaders but as Protective leaders are usually given bonuses to defense of their cities it encourages them to stay in their cities even more than normal. Another way to look at it is that giving defensive bonuses via a trait to cities and the units in them is mostly pointless because by the time your economy has been destroyed you've basically lost anyway no matter how long the city itself can hold out. To keep the Protective theme the trait has to cover the city radius in some fashion, not just the city itself.

I haven't yet decided if it will be total immunity yet, at the moment I'm thinking that the best method would be for total immunity to be possible, but need to be built up in some fashion. I'm still experimenting and testing.

My vastly superior navy sails in and it is impossible for it to stop his very clever fishing boats from continuing to fish right under my nose 100 to 300 miles offshore as if nothing has happened.
My large group of troops enters enemy territory and it is impossible to ever find his main roads, or large villages, or large farms, etc. and do damage. It does not matter how many troops I bring or how long I try, it is just impossible.
If I had tried the same thing next door in a neighboring civilization it would have been a piece of cake, but here it is just impossible.

Don't forget that a tile cannot be worked while a hostile unit is on it. So while you can't destroy the improvement there you can still prevent them accessing it. You can still slow their economy and even block resources, it just requires more troops to do so.

 

[Keinpferd]

Has anyone played a huge map through late game yet? Because the game is lagging and crashing more than I'm used to from previous HR versions on larger sized maps.

HR 0.9 was 889 MB, my personalized version (with additions from Realism Invictus) is 938 MB, so I wouldn't think, that's responsible for the MAFs (unless I broke something).

However, it must be connected with the sheer size, because I have successfully played on a small map safe from crashes.

 

[KaneofEgypt]

For what I know by looking at the forums, this problem was solved a long time ago for Mac. Being a Windows user myself, the problem is confounding. When I try to open HR, the game gives me the message "GFC error: Failed to initialize the primary control theme." It is extremely irritating. The folder is exactly where it needs to be, and I have the disk version of BTS. I installed the latest patch, but this is the furthest I get trying to load the game.

 

[Xyth]

Has anyone played a huge map through late game yet? Because the game is lagging and crashing more than I'm used to from previous HR versions on larger sized maps.

HR 0.9 was 889 MB, my personalized version (with additions from Realism Invictus) is 938 MB, so I wouldn't think, that's responsible for the MAFs (unless I broke something).

However, it must be connected with the sheer size, because I have successfully played on a small map safe from crashes.

Don't forget that the disk size of new art is not the same as how it is used in memory. On disk all those textures are compressed. An extra 50MB of unit art could easily cause more MAFs. Are you playing with the HR_Units.fpk intact or unpacked?

For what I know by looking at the forums, this problem was solved a long time ago for Mac. Being a Windows user myself, the problem is confounding. When I try to open HR, the game gives me the message "GFC error: Failed to initialize the primary control theme." It is extremely irritating. The folder is exactly where it needs to be, and I have the disk version of BTS. I installed the latest patch, but this is the furthest I get trying to load the game.

It's actually the same issue on both platforms: HR either isn't installed where it needs to be, the folder has been renamed, or there is double nesting of the folder (i.e /History Rewritten/History Rewritten/). Check post 4 of this thread for more details. If none of that helps please tell me the exact path you've installed the mod at.

 

[KaneofEgypt]

I believe that this is the path:
C:\Users\_____\Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword\MODS\History Rewritten

If this is any different, the game acts as if it is starting, but just loads a black screen. After minimizing the screen, the message is directly behind it. This repeats twice.

 

[Xyth]

I believe that this is the path:
C:\Users\_____\Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword\MODS\History Rewritten

If this is any different, the game acts as if it is starting, but just loads a black screen. After minimizing the screen, the message is directly behind it. This repeats twice.

That's the wrong installation place as it's in Documents. There are 2 mods folders, one is in Documents, one is in the BTS folder itself. It needs to be in the latter, the one that contains all the standard BTS mods like Golds of Old and Road to War. Obviously I don't know where you've installed BTS but at a guess the path should look something like this (unless it's the Steam version of BTS):

C:\Program Files\Sid Meier's Civilization IV\Beyond the Sword\Mods\History Rewritten

Basically, find the the BTS .exe and in the same location there should be a Mods folder. That's the one you want.

 

[Azoth]

10 wealth cap per era seems reasonable. […] You'll just get a message each turn saying how much interest you earned.

Siege units with Medic just seems weird to me and it makes them even stronger when conquering. I think I will stick with Melee, Archery and Gunpowder for the moment and review it all in 0.9.5.

Good point, I'll leave it at +1 then. This potentially messes up what I was planning for Judicial too, will have to re-examine that.

Sounds good.

The conclusion from your comments seems to be that +1 naval movement is not a good attribute for a trait, since it is very strong on some maps and utterly useless on other maps.

Yeah I agree. Lets think of some replacement ideas that are still naval-themed.

How about free Sentry promotions on Recon, Mounted, and Naval units? Enterprising leaders are probably better suited to this bonus than all the others I've suggested in the past. +1 Sight on ships is useful but not too strong on Archipelago worlds; and on maps without oceans, +1 Sight on scouts can pick up the slack. Best of all, free Sentry promotions retain the focus on exploration without overshadowing the other more important bonuses of the Enterprising trait.

The wealth bonus would only be granted in enemy territory (not within your own borders or on unclaimed tiles). This would prevent the issue with barbarians.

However, I've hit a snag with this bonus. It turns out the function I was trying to use to determine the xpvalue of a unit is instead used to determine how much xp the unit has, i.e how promoted it is. I'm looking to see if I can find another way to access the xpvalue but if not I'll have to base it off something else instead.

Linking the gold bonus to Great General points, as Howard suggested, would be best. +2 gold/Great General point sounds about right. If that's not possible, you can always go back to a flat bonus, say +3 gold/battle. I don't understand why the bonus should be restricted to enemy territory, though. I thought it was supposed to represent the ability of Tactical leaders to obtain supplies, manpower, and intelligence from defeated armies; that could happen just as easily in neutral territory. Lower the bonus to +2 gold/battle if you must, but don't weigh it down with seemingly artificial constraints.

4. +1 happiness in the capital to start and increasing by era is fine for Traditional. [...] Generally, abilities whose effect increases over time are preferable.

Another alternative could be tying it to culture level instead of era.

Abilities that grow stronger over time may be preferable to those that do not, but only if the bonus they provide is relevant to all time periods. A cap on interest payments that increases by era is a good idea precisely because gold is just as valuable in the Renaissance as in the Stone Age; sometimes even more so, because there are more uses for it late in the game. By contrast, extra happiness in the capital is more or less meaningless after the Medieval Era, because it can be easily acquired by other means: religion, resources, civics, buildings, and wonders. (And if Traditional leaders choose to skip some buildings in the capital, they can't claim the production bonus in the rest of the empire.) I'd stick to +5 happiness in the capital.

I haven't made any changes to the Well yet but I'm thinking of removing the irrigation aspect from buildings altogether and bring it back later as a wonder or possibly even an improvement. The Well is going to stay at Mining and bring a benefit to the city tile only though I've not decided what yet. [...] Yeah I think the health bonus makes sense, though I've been pondering the implications of +1 food instead. I suspect that will be far too strong though. […] Also, I'm wondering if it's too strong (and ahistorical) to have it available for every city, and needs to have some appropriate restrictions. I will definitely bring it back in some form though.

Without the irrigation bonus, Wells lose their purpose as a building. There are already five buildings that give a flat health bonus (Cemeteries, Aqueducts, Baths, Sewers, and Hospitals) and four more that give bonus health from resources (Granaries, Harbours, Grocers, and Supermarkets.) Add any more and we slide ever closer to kitchen-sink territory. I thought we'd agreed to reintroduce wells as either Renaissance Era Artisan Wells or Industrial Era Water Pumps, which would give +2 health to cities without access to fresh water and enable irrigation? Making them available for every city might be too strong; I wonder if you could block access to cities built on desert, tundra, or ice tiles?

This is tricky and I'm not quite sure how to address it. Some civilizations (Polynesians, various Southeast Asian peoples, arguably the Scandinavians) were crossing oceans centuries before most other civilizations were. UUs like the Waka provide a good way of emulating this, giving them a moderate headstart (see below) while everyone else has to wait until the Age of Sail. […] In 0.9.4 [Wakas are] unable to enter ocean until Navigation (Navigation takes longer to reach too, as Shipbuilding will also require Construction).

On the contrary, so long as Wakas are unable to enter ocean tiles until Navigation, I feel they are a little weak. As it stands, Wakas are clearly inferior to Portugese Carracks, which are also enabled at Navigation, but have higher base strength, speed, and cargo capacity. Since every civilization can conduct overseas diplomacy and exploration with Caravels, the only advantage to Wakas and Carracks is the ability to start overseas colonization earlier; yet there is little incentive to do so on most maps. Without overseas trades routes, colonies cannot benefit from resources on the home continent, nor can they claim new resources or collect trade income. On Terra and Archipelago maps, these colonies might be worth founding simply to claim more land, though they won't produce a net profit for centuries to come. Worst of all, the Waka has a cargo capacity of 1, so a Settler must make do without a Worker or military escort. I would restore Wakas to 2 cargo capacity and allow them to enter ocean tiles with Shipbuilding. Sure, Wakas might be all-powerful on Archipelago maps; but, then again, so are Dutch Dikes.

Of course, this all gets distorted on an Archipelago map. In many ways Civ3's implementation of boats sinking in ocean was superior as you could give certain units a lower chance of sinking or increased movement allowing them to 'island hop' more successfully. Civ4's single tile coast is very restrictive, especially on the bigger mapsizes.

I must disagree. Ships that would sink at random on ocean tiles were very frustrating in practice. The natural response to an isolated start was to build a host of such ships and ruthlessly drive them into the ocean at all points along your borders, in the hope that some would survive for another turn. I would never risk a Settler on such ships but I was desperate to make contact with other civilizations so I could begin trading for more contacts, maps, and technology. A single tile coast is more restrictive - and more sane.

Don't forget that a tile cannot be worked while a hostile unit is on it. So while you can't destroy the improvement there you can still prevent them accessing it. You can still slow their economy and even block resources, it just requires more troops to do so.

Not to mention that naval units can blockade the coastline, preventing cities from working anything within three tiles in every direction, and cutting all coastal trade routes: no pillaging required!

I haven't yet decided if it will be total immunity yet, at the moment I'm thinking that the best method would be for total immunity to be possible, but need to be built up in some fashion. I'm still experimenting and testing.

Total immunity all the way! The difference between that and partial immunity is huge. If there's any chance that your improvements might get pillaged, you have to prepare for that outcome, and most of the benefit from the bonus (the ability to set other goals for your military) is lost. As a compromise, might I suggest that roads and railroads be vulnerable to pillage, while other tile improvements are immune?

Yeah some of these posts are getting huge. I'll make some enquiries.

Yeah, like this one? Here's hoping we get our own subforum.

 

[civ_king]

I presume it would be a Mac Modding subforum in the Civ4 - Macintosh forum right?

 

[KaneofEgypt]

This is confusing to me, because by finding the beyond the sword folder, the path automatically routes through my documents. Also, all of my folders are completely empty.