I Would Like Your Advice

abandag

Warlord
Joined
Jun 24, 2012
Messages
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I am creating a mod that introduces a new civilization. I want the civ to be themed around roads in some way. My first thought was to give the civ a trait that gives 1 extra happiness per trade route, similar to the social policy that does the same thing, specifically limited to land trade routes if I could. I would probably give it some other minor bonus, as the first part by itself is rather weak. It didn't matter, though, because I didn't see any way to do that using XML, and I don't know Lua at all, so I decided to skip that idea.

So now I'm thinking about having the civ not have any maintenance cost on roads. There's no direct way to do that, but I found a work-around I think could work. I made a Unique Unit based on a Worker for the civ. I gave the UU a special Build-type and Route-type, making sure not to give it a regular road build, just my special one. That allows it to build only my special road route, which is exactly like a regular road route, except that it has no maintenance cost (i.e. roads are free).

I created a Unique Building that didn't really have anything to do with the Unique Ability (or at least that's what I thought at first). There's nothing complex about the UB. It's just a Colisseum replacement that gives one more happiness than usual and a Merchant slot. I'll explain why I was wrong about the UB and UA not being related a little later.

I hadn't come up with good Unique Unit, but as I had to create one in order to make the UA work, I might just leave that one as the only UU.

Here are thoughts about my first run playing with this civ (on a Large Islands map on Chieftain difficulty to give me time to check things out without being bothered by other civs):

I made beeline for The Wheel so I could check to see if my new roads were going to work and not cost anything. Everything worked how I wanted it to, so hurray! Then I made a beeline for Construction so I could check out my UB. Everything worked there too, so hurray again!
(The drawback to this was that some jerk AI civ beat me to the Great Library because I didn't get Writing quickly enough. Oh well, that wasn't really the goal.)

So now I'm building maintenance-free roads to all the spots I want to build new cities. There's room enough on my island for 4 more decent cities, so when I get those built, I had 5 cities with a total of 15 roads connecting them all to the capital.

My biggest concern was whether the UA would give me too much gold, thus making the civ Overpowered. At first I didn't notice much difference from a normal game. But 15 roads means I was making 15 gold per turn more than I would normally (maybe 20, I'm not sure if the roads that automatically get built under a city counted). Plus there was the extra gold from trade routes that I'm quite sure I wouldn't have had in a normal game, because I wouldn't have prioritized building trade routes quite as much as I did. When I got my pantheon, I took Messenger of the Gods (+2 science from cities with trade routes), again something I benefited from early because I had trade routes up where I normally wouldn't have. I kind of felt like I was running away with the game, but it's hard to tell because I was playing on Chieftain, and it's always easy to be a runaway civ on Chieftain.

Then I realized how the UB related to the UA and how they defined the civ's overall strategy. This civ is well-suited to a wide empire, with lots of cities to connect with those free roads. You should be raking in the gold. But you'll need to fight unhappiness with all those cities. Enter the UB, 1 more happiness per Colisseum than usual. Buy 'em with all that extra gold you're getting. And of course, the Merchant slot just means even more gold.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to finish the game. It crashed. I wasn't sure if my mod caused it or not. I had long since stopped building roads, even though I could have built many more at no cost, and I already had several of my UBs built. AFAIK, I didn't have anything else in the mod that would have occurred at that point in the game and caused the game to crash.

So here are my questions, in bold for your convienence:

1. Is this civilization overpowered? If the answer is a resounding "YES!," then there's no need to answer the next questions.

2. What should I do about my UA and UU? As it stands I have a UU that just builds free roads, otherwise it's a regular worker, and "technically" I have no UA, as the trait is tied to the UU. Should I add in a minor UA? Leave it with "no" UA, and just give the existing UU another ability of some kind? Leave both the UA and UU as is and create an additional UU that's more like a traditional UU (i.e. combat oriented)? Something else?

3. How is my UB? Do you like how it meshes with the UA, or should I change it in an attempt to keep the civ from being a runaway? If I should change it, what changes do you suggest?

4. Do you think my mod caused the game to crash, or was it coincidence? I didn't notice anything in the database log. Should I be checking some other log?

I know this is a long post, so I thank you for reading it. I also thank you in advance for any advice or suggestions you give me.
 
I think it's possible that the new route type caused the game to crash. There is a simple way to eliminate route maintenance (in Traits):
Code:
<ImprovementMaintenanceModifier>-100</ImprovementMaintenanceModifier>
But it will also remove it for railroads.
 
I think it's possible that the new route type caused the game to crash. There is a simple way to eliminate route maintenance (in Traits):
Code:
<ImprovementMaintenanceModifier>-100</ImprovementMaintenanceModifier>
But it will also remove it for railroads.


So, the only improvements that have a maintenance are roads and railroads? If so, I think I'll go that route, if you'll excuse the pun. I was thinking other improvements had maintenance costs as well, but maybe I just wasn't paying close enough attention to that. Thank you.
 
Might I suggest half maintenance reduction otherwise it's really overpowered
 
@Putmalk: then it would be a worse UA than the Incan one, they have no route maintenance in hills, half cost elsewhere, and faster movement in hills (although I think it's a very powerful UA compared to most other ones).

There are no improvements that need maintenance, other than routes.
 
I'm going to try a few different numbers and see how things go. First -100, then probably -75 and -67. If I decide -50 is best, I'll tack on another ability into their trait. I've already got an idea.
 
I only say it's overpowered because you could spam roads everywhere at no cost and basically grant them Iroquois's ability for free.
 
Personally I've always felt the Iroquois needed a little something more than what they have as far as UA goes. Just being able to move through forests in your own territory is a little boring and little underpowered to me. I'd like to see something more. Nothing big or game-changing, just a little something extra.

And spamming roads everywhere with my UA wouldn't be completely "free." You still have to build them (Iroquois don't, or at least not as many), which costs time. I doubt I would spend all that time just building roads when there are other things to build that will help my empire more, like food or production. I usually only have about 4 workers per game for my entire empire. As I tend to go wide, there's usually not a lot of time for my workers to build extra roads.

And this mod will mainly be just for me anyway. I can't do art stuff, and I don't think I'd like to publish a mod that just uses all the pre-existing icons. But if I did publish it, I think I wouldn't keep them completely free. I'm still working on exactly how I want it to be.

On a side note, the mod is still crashing my game. I removed all of the route stuff and the worker UU and replaced it with a rifleman based UU. Not sure what is causing it to crash now.
 
UPDATE:

I played a full game (without any crashes this time) with the ImprovementMaintenanceModifier set at -100, giving me free roads and railroads. It was, as Putmalk predicted, ridiculously overpowered. I should have kept track of how much gold per turn I was making at different points, but I didn't think of it at the time. I know I spent much of the game around 200 gpt and it just kept climbing, especially after getting Railroads. I held off on building markets and other gold buildings, because I just didn't need to, so I had more time and money to build/buy science, production, and happiness buildings, as well as my first ever "million man army" (number of soldiers in demographics was over 1 million, total population was about 350 million).

So, yeah, I'm definitely going to have to lower that. I think I'm going to try -67 next, so I'm only paying 1/3 of the normal cost of roads and railroads. I'm also thinking I might add a free Great Engineer upon researching Machinery. 3 reasons for that:
1. More incentive to get to Machinery quickly for faster movement on roads.
2. To represent the feat of engineering it would take to make such low-maintenance roads.
3. To give the trait a little something extra since cheaper roads seems so lackluster (at least on paper it does, in actuality it is obviously quite powerful). I don't think giving a free Great Person at that late stage is going to be game-breaking, but it will help the trait seem less boring.

Any thoughts?
 
Not Machinery. Like Industrialization or something. Machinery GE is almost gamebreaking. You could make a strategy that opens up a wonder you need (Architecture for example) then get Machinery for an easy pop of Leaning Tower or Porcelain Tower.
 
Not Machinery. Like Industrialization or something. Machinery GE is almost gamebreaking. You could make a strategy that opens up a wonder you need (Architecture for example) then get Machinery for an easy pop of Leaning Tower or Porcelain Tower.

I see your point. Since Printing Press is next in line after Machinery, you could just sit on your GE for a few turns and get a quick Leaning Tower. I see getting the Porcelain Tower this way as less of a viable strategy option. I wouldn't want to wait until after I had researched Acoustics, Banking, and Architecture to get my free GE, and I wouldn't want to sit on it that long while I researched those techs. Of course you could use Leaning Tower to get PT faster, either via a Great Scientist to get Architecture faster, or a GE to build PT. Going another route would be to pop Machu Picchu to take further advantage of your cheaper roads trait. Probably even more things you could do with it. (Sorry, the above was written mostly for my own benefit. When it comes to strategy, I find it helps me to actually write things out.)

I see coming up with these kinds of strategies as part of the fun of playing different civs. Even now that I see some of the different strategies I could use, I don't think a GE at Machinery is game-breaking. Certainly more powerful than I originally thought, but not game-breaking. In essence it still just boils down to one (two if you count the possibility of Leaning Tower) extra wonder, no matter what era you give the free GE.

If I moved the free GE, I don't think I'd move it to Industrialization. It just doesn't fit as well thematically. I'd rather keep with the theme and have the civ be slightly overpowered. Actually, having it be slightly overpowered might be desirable in order to make it more attractive to people to play, because I'm not sure how appealing this "civ" would be to the majority of people (not based on it's trait or gameplay issues, but based on what the actual "empire" is. I know I'm being a little cryptic, but I'm not ready to reveal what the name of the civ is.)

I would rather move it to Railroad, if I were going to move it at all, because RR fits more with the theme of the civ. I guess you could run into similar things that you did with having it at Machinery. A free Statue of Liberty, for example, could be pretty useful.

Anyway, I guess all I can do is play around with it and see where I want the free GE to go, or if I want to keep it at all. Thanks for the feedback, Putmalk.
 
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