Idea: Super Capitals/iYield:25

[tuxu]

Like most, I love to win a good fight on civ in general and on bom\ffh specifically.

I have tried to modify my own game just to see how the gameplay changes and I was blowen away by the effect it had on the gameplay!

all I did was to change all the "BUILDINGCLASS_PALACE" for all civs(i don't care that hyborem dont eat, that bastard is strong enough).

            <YieldChanges>
                <iYield>0</iYield>
                <iYield>1</iYield>
                <iYield>8</iYield>
            </YieldChanges>

to

            <YieldChanges>
                <iYield>25</iYield>
                <iYield>25</iYield>
                <iYield>25</iYield>
            </YieldChanges>

I feel that this modification brings the game to the "money-time" faster then in the original, I actually do this palace iYield:25 with every civ mod I play.

Thoughts and recommendations:
recommended with "barb world"+"raging barb"+"Req complete kills".
And people, make sure that you ALWAYS have a settler+archer on a ship ready to set sail away while your palace's burning ruins is back at the fading horizon, the "Req complete kills" rule AND the iYield:25 will make sure you will not suffer the fate of Mulcarn, but it will also make sure that you road back to glory will be a punishing one.

Remember that when you're doing a come-back with your new super Capital - Each AI will have a mega empire at their disposal.

with these capitals the game really feels like an extremely centralized kingdom.
I guess you're all thinking, Kuriotates! well, you havent seen a mega city untill you've played with those iYield:25 defenitions, the city of thousand slums get a whole new meaning...

@DEV - I wonder how you people feel about this, any chance of adding a checkbox called [v]Super Capitals or[v]Mega Cities or whatever so I won't have to manually every time a patch comes out

 

[Emptiness]

The increases seem arbitrary. They are massively out-of-scope in comparison to other tile potentials, and so seem to me unrealistic, unbalanced, and ill-advised. Playing on quick game speed with Blessing of Amathaon would probably satisfy most people's desire for a short game with rapid development, while also keeping the feel of the mod. I can accept that there could be a niche of players for whom this could be a fun mode of play, but I suspect that they are small enough that adding it as an official game option is not worthwhile. For those who are interested, the necessary changes are not too difficult to make (since you have explained here exactly what is necessary).

 

[PPQ_Purple]

I for one like the idea.
However, 25 food in the early game seems just... well honestly Overkill.

What would be cool is if it could be made to scale with the turn counter.

So say the palace would give the standard 0/1/8 in turn 1 but if it is rebuilt later in the game the numbers could be greater (maybe even 25/25/25). That way it would not make the early start of the game too imbalanced while at the same time ensuring a good comeback to anyone wise enough to have a settler hidden away.

 

[Senethro]

Having a Settler hidden away means there was a Settler you weren't using. Thats bad play. Civ isn't a game that allows comebacks anyway.

Surely there must be a better way to achieve the effect you want than this because its inelegant and difficult to balance.

 

[tuxu]

...seem arbitrary. Its very nice that you can speculate so well, i suggest that you try this with an open mind and then come back.
seem to me unrealistic, *chuckles* You do aware that we are talking about a game that involves dwarves and dragons and magick, right? Besides the game itself declares that the playable civs are *not* minor civs but empires and the iYield:25 settings are making each Impirial capital city to be like the City of Babylon ,Rome or even Tenochtitlan. So... what is the unrealistic part again?!?
unbalanced, Ok, that's just over the top. have you not read the part saying that all civs are getting this?

and ill-advised. Ill advised How? you're making such general statments that its hard to relate to anything. They say that walking out in the garden under the full moon is Ill advised as well...

Playing on quick game speed with Blessing of Amathaon would probably satisfy most people's desire for a short game with rapid development, Yet another probability... Einstein would have loved you, he's dead though.
I have never said that my aim was a quick game, quite the contrary, do you define a battle of the last stand agains a mega capital that lasts over 30 turns a quick thing? if you do we have yet another point of disagreement. The Idea is that with their backs to the wall civs would fight harder and this is exactly what the iYield:25 does.

while also keeping the feel of the mod. and what exactly is this feel? I thought that it was an all out war between good and evil, mighty kings of old standing shield to shield battling to the very end while sinister magicks are threatning to level down all that is (bla...bla...bla...).

While quick game provides a linear escalation in all game variables (which I hate) It does not allow comebacks, the iYield:25 change makes sure that the graph would be curved and that the effect would lessen as the game progresses and civilization grows and more sources of income are being created. On top of that - it would now be feasible to make a comeback.

I can accept that there could be a niche of players ... this whole mod is a niche to begin with, and the changes are small enough so they won't be much of a headache to add as a check box.
By your reasoning, the entire mod should not have existed for it's "nicheness" and nor would Star-Trek, lol.

I Aim to give the player a broader gameplay experiance with the tools I have and not judge the "nicheness" of things which are easy enough to make.
If it's good it will endure the Test Of Time, if you'll excuse the pun.

Having a Settler hidden away means there was a Settler you weren't using. Thats bad play. Civ isn't a game that allows comebacks anyway.

Surely there must be a better way to achieve the effect you want than this because its inelegant and difficult to balance.

lol, you're so right But thats not how I meant it.
When I've said "ALWAYS have..ready to set sail away" what i meant is that you constantly colonize and always keep one settler ready in your sleeve with first priority to catch more land when cities are being razed and if need be to send it to remake a new capital, just make sure that you have that ship - how and why? not my business.

IDK If you read what i typed earlier in this comment about the curved graph thing, I agree that in general Civ isn't a game that allows comebacks but i liked the revolutions mod which did allow it to AI and thats what brought me to try these new settings in the first place. If you have a better Idea about how to do it specifically, a general direction or even plain balancing to this idea, I would love to hear it.
I truly dislike the "quick game+Amathaon" option, I play only deity and I like the stories that are being created while I play, quick game ruin this with its "linear graph policy" and B.o.Amathaon is just more resources to everyone so its yet another "linear graph policy" that I dont like. I want the game to stay on deity so I don't use the increasing difficulty as well.
The smaller they are, the harder it is to take them out.

What would be cool is if it could be made to scale with the turn counter.

So say the palace would give the standard 0/1/8 in turn 1 but if it is rebuilt later in the game the numbers could be greater (maybe even 25/25/25). That way it would not make the early start of the game too imbalanced while at the same time ensuring a good comeback to anyone wise enough to have a settler hidden away.

I second this, how ever, unlike the wise dwellers of this forums, i am but a simple XML poker and far from being a l337 scripter.
I have no clue about how to do it but I might try to check the .py files.
Thanks man.

Happy holydays.

 

[Sephi]

I second this, how ever, unlike the wise dwellers of this forums, i am but a simple XML poker and far from being a l337 scripter.
I have no clue about how to do it but I might try to check the .py files.

in Python you can use
iChange = 25
iPClass = gc.getInfoTypeForString('BUILDINGCLASS_PALACE')pCity.setBuildingYieldChange(iPClass,YieldTypes.YIELD_PRODUCTION,iChange)

 

[Valkrionn]

Honestly, I'm with the others here; The Age of Ice just ended, the capital shouldn't be that massive. But beyond that, having yields that high destroys the early game; You can blaze through techs, never worry about barbs, and land in the midgame techs far sooner than normal; Which, honestly, is not my preferred playstyle.

I also highly doubt an option like this would ever be added to FfH; It's in lockdown, new things are just not added very often. And I don't believe Kael would add it even were it not frozen; He's said before that he'd have liked an actual wild lands option. Which would slow expansion, and preserve wilderness... Rather the exact opposite of what this accomplishes.

 

[Brokenbone]

Well, the instructions were laid out clearly enough... go into CIV4BuildingInfos.xml, start searching for any of those yield things, and change them all to a number like 25. I tried it with one game, which I ended up abandoning. I did try it under the Wild Mana mod, which happens to have Denev's Multiple Production thing going on in it, which also happens to mean "overflow" hammers can get spent on the next thing in your queue.

For me, this meant things like having a capital quickly get to size 5 or 6, then all of a sudden being able to queue up warriors, produce four of them at a time, and a few turns later you're prepared to hit nearby barbarian cities with three, four, or five to one odds. Warriors were so quick to produce that it also meant simply being able to blanket vulnerable parts of your countryside with them, which is kind of handy in Wild Mana due to very annoying goblin archers wandering in, pillaging everything, then picking forested hills to hang around on until you do something about it. Secondary cities became very boring, just focus on doing anything other than unit building, since your capital can easily send a batch of 4 fresh warriors as a garrison by briefly switching to that kind of production.

Science and the race to decent wonders became kind of odd too. Reach a worthwhile tech first, chances are you have a shot at the wonders associated with it, maybe you can produce a wonder in under 10 turns, before anyone else has even dreamed of that tech. My capital ended up bloated with wonders, you build everything so fast you can soon have every building you're capable of at your tech level, your countryside is swarmed with your own units, you can build a worker per turn if interested, you may end up finding going for wonders at least gives you a break in having to select something new to build every one or two turns.

It was interesting, a neat idea for a novelty game... easy for the end user to do by themselves as well! That said, I wasn't a huge fan.

I think I'm seeing hints of ideas above about maybe having the palace take on additional significance in later parts of the game, that may be a more elegant way to manage the topic of a long established capital being a real center of power. Palace with 1/0/8 becomes Grand Palace with I don't know, 2/0/16 after a hundred turns, and Imperial Palace after another hundred turns at 4/0/32... it'd sure discourage casually moving the thing to recenter your empire. Or alternately these become buildable at certain tech levels, if you have a Palace in the city, for vast amounts of hammers. Basically options to improve your palace. All pure modmod territory, but hey, it can be cool to tinker and see if fun results, that's what mods are all about, right?

 

[Kalina]

I think I'm seeing hints of ideas above about maybe having the palace take on additional significance in later parts of the game, that may be a more elegant way to manage the topic of a long established capital being a real center of power. Palace with 1/0/8 becomes Grand Palace with I don't know, 2/0/16 after a hundred turns, and Imperial Palace after another hundred turns at 4/0/32... it'd sure discourage casually moving the thing to recenter your empire. Or alternately these become buildable at certain tech levels, if you have a Palace in the city, for vast amounts of hammers. Basically options to improve your palace. All pure modmod territory, but hey, it can be cool to tinker and see if fun results, that's what mods are all about, right?

Or maybe number of cities and tech ? Grand Palace at 8 cities, Imperial Palace at 12/16 ? But extra commerce isn't worth enough to stop me from moving my palace to reduce maintenance. How about extra mana ? Primary mana at Grand, secondary at Imperial. For example, Bannor would get Law mana at Grand and Spirit at Imperial.

 

[Emptiness]

tuxu, I'm not going to respond to each of your points individually. Much of what you said could be correct, just as much of what I said could be incorrect. I didn't supply specifics to support my position because I neither expect nor care to change your opinion about your idea. I'm sure lots of FfH2 players have thought of an interesting idea for a new game option. If only 1% of FfH2 players had such notions, that would be hundreds of new game options, and the list of options would quickly swell to massive proportions. Clearly, all ideas for game options can't be included in the main mod. I was just stating my opinion, which is that this idea doesn't merit being given an option slot. I don't actually make that decision, though, so my opinion doesn't carry any authority.

I Aim to give the player a broader gameplay experiance with the tools I have and not judge the "nicheness" of things which are easy enough to make.
If it's good it will endure the Test Of Time, if you'll excuse the pun.

If you're sure this is that good, then make it up as a modmod. It would be pretty simple, just one file. This would make it very easy for people to try your idea (by eliminating the need for editing). If it does become popular then maybe it would be added to the main mod as an option.