K-Mod: Far Beyond the Sword

[DavidCooke]

I recently saw the computer do 2 things it shouldn't.

1. It moved all the units out of a city to reinforce/attack my troops. Apparently it thought I couldn't get to its city, because my fleet was on the other size of a penninsula.

However, the AI had a city on the penninsula. I quickly conquered the city, sailed my fleet through it, and dropped off a few units in the empty city, all in the same turn.


2. The AI had a huge stack of destroyers in a city. It had moved them from an earlier recon I did (I thought they were farther away) so I divided my fleet to conquer two cities in the same turn.

Rather than exploit this to trash one of my stacks and kill a bunch of carriers, the AI split up its destroyers, and I mopped them all up piecemeal. The AI had enough destroyers to kill one of the stacks, with my battleships split up. With my stack together I had a 3:2 advantage, but split the AI had a 3:2. They would have lost heavily, but done a LOT of damage. But the AI divided up into groups of 4 or so, in some cases shuffling empty transports around. I pounded them with planes, and mopped em up, with minimal losses.

Particularly in wartime, and with big fleets around, the AI should HIGHLY value keeping ships in big stacks, and OUT of cities. I have often killed fleets by conquering the city, and never having to fight the ships.

 

[Leoreth]

Even abstractions still model what they are abstracted from.

Not necessarily. First, a model becomes progressively less complete the more abstract it gets. Second, a gaming abstraction does not need to model anything at all.

There is no basis for an inflation system that doesn't also inflate revenues.

It's great that you bring up inflation as an example, because it perfectly illustrates what I mean. Because inflation is somewhat of a misnomer for this mechanic. It basically acts as a counterbalancing factor that accounts for the fact that your income increases over the course of the game while upkeep costs remain constant (in the sense that they do not scale with your increased income). Inflation is only a name attached to this mechanic to make it less jarring.

Having inflation work like real inflation would run counter to the purpose of the mechanic. In the same way as making the in game economy work like an actual economy would destroy the game.

 

[Zacar]

I think inflation should be broken down into its submechanics and decide what to do with them separately. Namely:

Unit upkeep, supply cost and pacificm cost should be based on the sum of unit costs. A single unit cost would be weighted by its strength (for example, just to get the idea that advanced tech militares are more expensive to maintain, at least in terms relative to total civilization wealth - if this doesn't work, or doesn't work in case of certain unit types, you have to have dedicated property for it instead of strength - or perhaps hammer cost). This would also affect free upkeep/support mechanism, as units wouldn't be of equal cost .. and the free upkeep should then deal with post-"inflation" costs instead of pre-inflation, which might need adjustments. This would also make it expensive to instantly shift into newer tech military (of the same size at least), which I think is a neat result.

The remaining parts of inflation deal with things that we already have formulas for (city upkeep, civic upkeep).

As far as city upkeep goes, inflation actually replaces the old civ mechanic of city buildings costing maintenance per turn (which was a good mechanic as they could be sold). So IMO the best solution for this part would be doing exactly that - building maintenance costs and the ability to sell buildings. In case this would increase micromanagement/complexity or affect the health/happiness systems, just keep in mind that this would be the precise instrument for this purpose.

Increased population and city count (& overseas colony, corporation cost) already have their weight on formulas, I would just adjust them (as in, add a new component) in case this inflation component is relevant. (you actually did already as you removed the city max cost cap).

Worker-improvements also increase production/wealth, but I'm not sure if this should be taken into account... why would everything need to have a hidden counter-cost to begin with? This component would be in its purest form worker-improvement maintenance.. or in approximate forms tech/turn based inflation. Curiously, religion shrine income also has no direct inflation tax.

Overall I agree that inflation should work so that costs would not increase forever.

 

[Leoreth]

It's not that everything needs to have a counterbalancing cost attached to it, that would indeed not make much sense.

It's about things that cost upkeep already and how this upkeep scales with your economy over the course of the game. A warrior costs 1gpt, so does an aircraft carrier. Instead of complicating this simple concept with weighted upkeep costs and fractional values and other aspects the player needs to pay attention to, the game separates all of this into an additional position in your budget you have to pay and labels it "inflation".

This is very elegant in my opinion. Why fix something that is not broken in any way?

Furthermore, associating upkeep with buildings would go against a core design principle of Civ4, namely that cities cost upkeep, while its buildings don't. This is one of its most important changes from its predecessors and rewards improving your existing cities and limits your ability to REX. I don't think you could salvage the game if you abandoned this principle.

 

[Windsor]

I like to play huge maps, on marathon speed. In my opinion, if the game is working correctly, you should be able (through skill) to conquer the world, and play indefinitely. Any game mechanic which makes this "one more turn" effect unworkable is a problem.

I disagree with this premise. Civ4 is a game and should have an ending. Indefinitely play should not be a goal. It wasn't for Civ4 and it shouldn't be for K-Mod.

However, game mechanics make large empires problematical, from a monetary civ upkeep perspective. Number of cities and distance calculations make it very costly. Add in the modifier that is designed to make the game eventually unplayable (called "inflation" in the game) and it is extremely difficult.

Now, for most of the game I have had to devote 100% of my commerce to expenses. Nothing to culture or research. ZERO. I can only manage this because roughly 100 of my cities are building wealth. If I took them off wealth, well, I don't know what would happen, but it wouldn't be good.

I manage to tech by using Representation, and I have Sid's Sushi in all my cities (and since I own the map, I have a LOT of fish (snaky continents archipelago setting). It's providing about 50 food to each city.

I really don't think the game mechanics should work the way they do. Inflation is still growing (it's about 1970), and I keep having to devote more and more cities to building wealth, just to pay turn expenses.

What happens with your economy if you switch to State Property? Since you're on a archipelago Colonial Maintenance is probably really high. State Property makes both distance to palace cost and colonial expenses zero.

Since you're using a corporation that's obviously quite a lot of money. The HQ will make some, but when you get 50 food in each city that obviously has to come at a cost.

Their is no need for the game to make things more expensive. More expensive items are ALREADY more expensive: they cost more shields to build, or more gold to rush, more beakers to research. These costs are already included in the game mechanics.

Oh it's needed. If things like civic upkeep didn't scale then the difference between high and low cost civics would be irrelevant lategame. Inflation might be a bad name, but the mechanic is needed. I haven't played K-Mod with huge marathon maps. There might be a scaling issue here, but with normal speed and standard mapsize there's no problem at all playing in 1970s.

The concept of "food resources" bothers me. So, you find cattle, or corn, or rice, or something (where's the hops and barley to make beer?), build a farm, and get the benefit. Cool, as far as it goes.

(..)
Unlike mineral resources (you can only successfully build a gold mine where there is actually gold) food resources are transportable and transplantable.

While food resources might be transportable, some areas are better at producing certain types of food.

And of course, changing this mechanic would require some fundamental rework of basic mechanics.

 

[DavidCooke]

Not necessarily. First, a model becomes progressively less complete the more abstract it gets. Second, a gaming abstraction does not need to model anything at all.


It's great that you bring up inflation as an example, because it perfectly illustrates what I mean. Because inflation is somewhat of a misnomer for this mechanic. It basically acts as a counterbalancing factor that accounts for the fact that your income increases over the course of the game while upkeep costs remain constant (in the sense that they do not scale with your increased income). Inflation is only a name attached to this mechanic to make it less jarring.

Having inflation work like real inflation would run counter to the purpose of the mechanic. In the same way as making the in game economy work like an actual economy would destroy the game.

I'm sorry, but there is no cap to the game's "inflation" costs, but there is a practical cap to how much income your cities can produce. This leads to the situation I've been facing for 400 turns...0% research, 0% culture, 0% espionage, just to pay city upkeep, with over 100 cities building wealth.

That is ridiculous.

Sure, up to a point, cities produce more. But stuff costs more, as I already pointed out. Techs take more points to research, more advanced buildings cost more to build/rush, and the same with advanced units. Oh, sure, you can build a warrior really cheap. Yeah, useful.

No, the effect of "inflation" in the game is to force you to win early, before the situation devolves and becomes unplayable. What that really does is enforce a singular view of the game, conquer early, conquer fast, and makes other strategies unplayable. That breaks the game.

Here, try to win this game setting:

Domination victory only.
Huge map.
Marathon setting.
No vassals.
No tech trading.

ALWAYS PEACE.

There's a challenge for you pop rushers.

BTW, it CAN be done. Takes a while, but it is possible.

 

[Windsor]

Seriously? Domination only with always peace and no vassals?

I have no idea what difficulty you play that at, but its a seriously cooked setting. If inflation really bothers you that much I recommend that you personally remove or lower it.

 

[DavidCooke]

I disagree with this premise. Civ4 is a game and should have an ending. Indefinitely play should not be a goal. It wasn't for Civ4 and it shouldn't be for K-Mod.

Then why does the game allow you to continue play after "victory"? Obviously, the game makers realize that people like to keep going. So, why build mods that make this untenable? That makes no sense.

What happens with your economy if you switch to State Property? Since you're on a archipelago Colonial Maintenance is probably really high. State Property makes both distance to palace cost and colonial expenses zero.

Disaster.

Turn 1105 April 1977

Current civics: Representation, Free Speech, Emancipation, Free Market, Pacifism.

Researching: Future tech 46. Last time I declared war, I had 42 war unhappiness on turn 1 in my capital, so I'm waiting a while, then I'll try again. There is still one opponent (Zara Yaqob) with 2 cities, gives me a few foreign trade routes.

The DEAD list
--------------
Brennus
Boudica
Stalin
Churchill
Cyrus
Genghis Khan
Gilgamesh
Hammurabi
Kublai Khan
Joao II
Julius Caesar
Mehmed II
Napoleon
Shaka
Suryavarman II
Hatshepsut



Due to sushi, I have a lot of specialists in a lot of cities, so they play leapfrog on generating GPs. On average I generate a great person somewhere about every 12 turns with pacifism.

Current slider settings: 10% science, 0% culture, 0% espionage. I'm plus like 700 gold this turn. Setting science slider to 0% adds another 5500 gold or so.

Science: 40,242
Culture: 172,361
Espionage: 7438

261 total cities (8 or so are new, just built in thawed out lands, and a few islands to pick up a few stray fish.
126 building wealth.
11 building missionaries/executives
1 building marines as garrison units (1/turn, 6 GGs + red cross)
8 building cathedral types to create priest slots for specialists.

The rest are still building infrastructure.

I didn't tech computers (nothing useful to be gained), so I still have University of Sankore (2 beakers for state religion buildings), Spiral minaret (2 gold state religious buildings) , and Angkor Wat (1 hammer/priest specialist).

Home city: Madrid (46)
science 358/turn
culture 3811/turn (726,305 total, I won a cultural victory, sort of by accident)
gold: 6200.4/turn
maint: -263.12/turn

1 great spy
2 great engineers
1 great prophet
5 great merchants

3 religious shrines + 3 corporate HQs + Wall Street

My capital city provides about 6% of my turn income, nothing else comes close. Several other cities have religious shrines (I founded all 7 religions), and are in the 1000 gold neighborhood. I'm still working on propagating all 7 religions to all cities to maximize my income.

Started with fishing/mysticism, built two boats early, got all 3 early religions before I built a second city. I also had gold, I could maybe have gone for christianity too, after I got Judaism I could have gone for mining and then beelined for theology, but I needed to expand and fight the russians to my west.

Current income: 105,065
taxes: 29,008
buildings 622 (I don't think this is right, my harbors give 5 commerce, X 200 is 1000 right there)
headquarters(of what?) 2698
corporations 5049
shrines 1485
specialists 3924

markets (205 x 43.48) 8913
grocer (199 x 44.7) 8895
banks (195 x 87.85) 17,131
wall street 1360
wealth building: 23,707!!!!

Expenses: 104,332
Unit cost: 34
Unit supply: 2
Civic upkeep: 4164
City Maint: 55,413
distance: 3197
# cities: 15,140
colony expenses(?) 2323
corp payments: 34,753

"Inflation" (75%): 44,709

Free market gives -25% corporate maintenance. So, 34,753 = 75% of the base (46,337). Switching will cost me 11,600, roughly, to save 3197 distance maintenance. But the difference, 8200, will be adjusted by 75% "inflation", so it is really about 14,000. I don't have another 80 cities I can dedicate to building wealth to cover this 14,000, since the "inflation" rate doesn't boost revenues. In another 50 turns or so I'll have another 40-50 done building buildings.

Additionally, under state property corporations have no effect. Every city has Sushi and Mining, and about 65% have Civ Jewels:

Sid's Sushi: +49 food, -34 gold, +147 culture
Mining: +57 hammers, -24 gold
Civ Jewels: +33 gold, +99 culture, -28 gold

Without corps, most of my cities starve. I could do that, hose my population, and it would help with the nonsense Global Warming mechanics, but that isn't good governance.

GW data:

Population: 68,880
buildings: 680
Resources: 14,020 (coal only, I got rid of oil access. When I get done building railroads I'll build a windmill on my last coal resource and this will go away)
electricity: 1760 (3 gorges dam, a few hydro plants, I deleted all coal plants (about 20 at the time) in worldbuilder, and refused to build any more, since the game doesn't let you tear down your own buildings).

Offsets: -14,295 (I use WB to add trees everywhere I could)
total impact: 71,045
sustainability: 28,270

Under current game mechanics, even if you eliminate ALL fossil fuels, and workers could plant forests, you still can't build a sustainable civ unless you starve yourself down to about 10 pop per city. Again, ridiculous.

Since you're using a corporation that's obviously quite a lot of money. The HQ will make some, but when you get 50 food in each city that obviously has to come at a cost.

Sure it comes at a cost. But it's a corporation. Since when did McDonalds not turn a profit? No real company can operate at a loss for very long. Stack artificial costs on top of that, and it is bank-breaking time.

Oh it's needed. If things like civic upkeep didn't scale then the difference between high and low cost civics would be irrelevant lategame. Inflation might be a bad name, but the mechanic is needed. I haven't played K-Mod with huge marathon maps. There might be a scaling issue here, but with normal speed and standard mapsize there's no problem at all playing in 1970s.

If you haven't played games such as this, then you aren't qualified to render an opinion, because you haven't seen the full effects of the mechanics I'm talking about. When testing software, it is how it performs at boundary conditions that tells you if you got it right or not.

You could certainly scale the cost of civics based on the number of cities, but, well, we already have scalable maint costs for cities, don't we? No, these mods are just designed to make certain type games seem harder, but their effects on other type games have been pretty much ignored.

Mature cities produce gold to subsidize newer cities that aren't developed, and to allow you to devote more of your commerce to science. Now, some people complain that teching in the late game goes too fast. The real problem is there aren't enough late-game techs to get. Technology is like a wedge, the more you know, the broader the list of new things to research.

How about a geology tech? It lets workers prospect hills, giving an additional small chance to discover a resource? It would be after physics and chemistry somewhere. I'm sure we could think of a bunch of useful, cool, and fun things to add, to broaden the possibilities. That would slow down advancement.

The name of the game is CIVILIZATION. Not BattleTech. The goal is to build a cool civ. While combat is part of the game, too many people make it their primary focus.

How about the genetics tech not giving an automatic health bonus? How about a world project, the Human Genome Project, giving a health bonus? There are sooo many things that could be added to the late game, that make it more than a race to the "finish" line.

While food resources might be transportable, some areas are better at producing certain types of food.

And of course, changing this mechanic would require some fundamental rework of basic mechanics.

But the in-game "farm" doesn't care what is farmed. As for rework, what are mods for?

 

[DavidCooke]

Seriously? Domination only with always peace and no vassals?

I have no idea what difficulty you play that at, but its a seriously cooked setting. If inflation really bothers you that much I recommend that you personally remove or lower it.

Hint: Since it is always peace, they can't attack you, so difficulty doesn't matter much. If you're truly good at Civ, you'll figure out how to do it.

Hint 2: think of missionaries, great artists, and spies as your culture warriors. Oh, and corporate executives. Especially them.

 

[DavidCooke]

It's not that everything needs to have a counterbalancing cost attached to it, that would indeed not make much sense.

It's about things that cost upkeep already and how this upkeep scales with your economy over the course of the game. A warrior costs 1gpt, so does an aircraft carrier. Instead of complicating this simple concept with weighted upkeep costs and fractional values and other aspects the player needs to pay attention to, the game separates all of this into an additional position in your budget you have to pay and labels it "inflation".

Umm, last time I looked, it took a lot more shields to build an aircraft carrier than a warrior, and a lot more gold to rush one. Upkeep could definitely be scaled by unit type, though, that would make sense, within reason.

Naval units that require fuel could be grouped for operational costs, or you could do it on a per unit basis. The problem is the relationship between cost and what a city produces, though.

This is very elegant in my opinion. Why fix something that is not broken in any way?

If you played games on huge maps, no vassals, marathon speed, you would recognize how broken it is.

Furthermore, associating upkeep with buildings would go against a core design principle of Civ4, namely that cities cost upkeep, while its buildings don't. This is one of its most important changes from its predecessors and rewards improving your existing cities and limits your ability to REX. I don't think you could salvage the game if you abandoned this principle.

Play some games on huge maps, marathon speed, with a wider range of settings, particularly settings that differ as widely as possible from what you are used to. In particular, try my Always Peaceful Domination Challenge.

 

[Leoreth]

I'm sorry, but there is no cap to the game's "inflation" costs, but there is a practical cap to how much income your cities can produce. This leads to the situation I've been facing for 400 turns...0% research, 0% culture, 0% espionage, just to pay city upkeep, with over 100 cities building wealth.

That is ridiculous.

I've never landed myself in this situation and I've played the game (BtS and K-Mod) with the settings you mention.

I don't want to suggest you can't play the game at this stage, but apparently you have a particular play style that just doesn't work with it. That's really not the fault of the game. And it's not the job of the designer to accommodate every possible play style.

No, the effect of "inflation" in the game is to force you to win early, before the situation devolves and becomes unplayable. What that really does is enforce a singular view of the game, conquer early, conquer fast, and makes other strategies unplayable. That breaks the game.

That's just a ridiculous assertion. I like to build, I don't like early wars or rushes, and most of my games (won and lost) last into the late game. I've read uncountable AARs that last into the late game, with numerous different approaches to the game. None of them faced the problem you describe.

Umm, last time I looked, it took a lot more shields to build an aircraft carrier than a warrior, and a lot more gold to rush one. Upkeep could definitely be scaled by unit type, though, that would make sense, within reason.

Naval units that require fuel could be grouped for operational costs, or you could do it on a per unit basis. The problem is the relationship between cost and what a city produces, though.

Of course it could, my point is that it would make for a cluttered and inelegant game experience. Some things are better kept simple.

If you played games on huge maps, no vassals, marathon speed, you would recognize how broken it is.

Play some games on huge maps, marathon speed, with a wider range of settings, particularly settings that differ as widely as possible from what you are used to. In particular, try my Always Peaceful Domination Challenge.

Sorry, but this is more than slightly condescending. I've played with a variety of settings including the one you just mentioned. And I have yet to encounter the problem you describe.

If you struggle with the game, that's okay, but it's evidently not a game design problem.

 

[f1rpo]

Civ lends itself to a "completionist" approach (build cities everywhere, develop them fully). I don't play that way, but I'm sure David isn't the only one who does. It's ungratifying when the result is an unsustainable economy; at least, a dystopian outcome shouldn't be inevitable.

I'm not familiar enough with K-Mod's global warming system to suggest a simple change. I do like the apocalyptic feel that GW can give the end game (realistic or not), so I wouldn't want to just dial it down. Perhaps there should be an option to disable GW in the custom game screen. Then again, GW can already be disabled through a configuration file: Set GLOBAL_WARMING_PROB to 0 in GlobalDefines.xml. (I think this should work; haven't tested it.)

As for maintenance, inflation is a can of worms that I wouldn't touch. Maintenance based on the number of cities is bounded in BtS; K-Mod removes that bound, letting expenses grow quadratically. Perhaps put a cap on the bottom-line deficit per city as a safeguard? This would help with corporations as well, and avoid situations where a newly acquired city runs a big deficit and you can't get rid of that city anymore (something that comes up in standard games).

Regarding corporations:

Domestic corporation spread is a tool for converting gold into something more useful; food, production, culture, science or some combination of these.

Source

A realistic redesign would be a big task. From the manual of the Realism Invictus mod:

Corporations are yet another BtS-introduced feature. We saw no easy and realistic way to integrate them into our mod, and in our first BtS release they are simply disabled. Later on, we will likely do something fun and completely different with corporate mechanics. For now, just disregard them.

Speaking of which, the RI modders might be more open towards making fundamental changes for the sake of realism.

 

[Zacar]

It's not that everything needs to have a counterbalancing cost attached to it, that would indeed not make much sense.

It's about things that cost upkeep already and how this upkeep scales with your economy over the course of the game. A warrior costs 1gpt, so does an aircraft carrier. Instead of complicating this simple concept with weighted upkeep costs and fractional values and other aspects the player needs to pay attention to, the game separates all of this into an additional position in your budget you have to pay and labels it "inflation".

This is very elegant in my opinion. Why fix something that is not broken in any way?

Furthermore, associating upkeep with buildings would go against a core design principle of Civ4, namely that cities cost upkeep, while its buildings don't. This is one of its most important changes from its predecessors and rewards improving your existing cities and limits your ability to REX. I don't think you could salvage the game if you abandoned this principle.

I wouldn't call it elegant at all. More like one tool used for very different tasks. It's also unintuitive and hidden, and cannot really be affected by player decisions. Its only benefit is simplicity. Whether it is broken or not can be discussed, but I comment on it because it was touched in the last version.

I agree that this touches city upkeep. City upkeep combines the old corruption (anti-REX) and building maintenance (for basic buildings) mechanics. Tech level indirectly affects these costs that the game is trying to model with inflation. However, inflation assumes that you build newest buildings and units at a certain rate. The player cannot avoid this assumption, hence loss of control.

There is a middle ground between my earlier specific mechanics and the very generic inflation mechanic. It is to make the inflation formula more complex .. I'm not sure if it would be an issue, as it is already unintuitive. The simplest change from current is to have civ-specific inflation that depends on that civs tech level. A more complex one would take into account the tech levels of units and buildings while keeping the base upkeep as-is (1 gold per unit / maintenance part of city upkeep (which is not something that is defined)). And also to give some feedback to the player about which inflation component has which cost. And to change the name to something other than "inflation" .

What has and doesn't have a counterbalancing cost is a game design decision. I'm not considering K-mod specifically when analysing these things, it's just to allow karadoc to have a - possibly - different perspective on them. Still, analysing is easier than having an opinion IMO (). It's easy to adapt to different rules, and it's hard to declare some rules better than others.

 

[DavidCooke]

I've never landed myself in this situation and I've played the game (BtS and K-Mod) with the settings you mention.

I don't want to suggest you can't play the game at this stage, but apparently you have a particular play style that just doesn't work with it. That's really not the fault of the game. And it's not the job of the designer to accommodate every possible play style.

My particular play style is to conquer the map--huge maps only, please. I don't see anything very bizarre in that. The name of the game is Civilization. I don't think it is valid for the game mechanics to be prejudiced against a very large civilization, or a fully-built map. It should be just as playable as a smaller one with a bunch of vassals, if you are willing to do the city management. I don't think having all your forests turned into jungles and your grasslands turned into desert is a valid result, when you don't even use any fossil fuels. Nor do I think having all your troops disbanded because of an arbitrary, uncapped runaway "inflation" mechanic destroys your economic viability.

Sorry, but this is more than slightly condescending. I've played with a variety of settings including the one you just mentioned. And I have yet to encounter the problem you describe.

If you struggle with the game, that's okay, but it's evidently not a game design problem.

The game mechanics make my experience inevitable. If you have never encountered my situation, then you have never conquered the entire map into one large world-spanning civ. Yes, it is a game design problem.

Here's a simple question for you. Why are most of the GW events negative? It turns forest into jungle. It turns grassland into plains (reducing food to cities). I suspect it turns plains into desert too, but I haven't allowed it to go that far. I say most, because it does turn ice into tundra, and tundra into grassland. BUT: it doesn't turn jungle into forest. It doesn't turn plains into grassland. Why not? It is mostly set up to be random calamity, that gradually destroys the map, making your game unsustainable. That's just anti-player bias.

EDIT: Some global warming questions.

1. If the northern polar ice were to completely melt, how much would that cause sea levels to rise?

2. How much would average temperature levels have to rise to melt a significant portion of the Greenland ice cap?

3. How old is the Greenland ice cap?

4. How much would average temperatures have to rise to melt a significant portion of the Antarctic ice cap?

 

[DavidCooke]

I wouldn't call it elegant at all. More like one tool used for very different tasks. It's also unintuitive and hidden, and cannot really be affected by player decisions. Its only benefit is simplicity. Whether it is broken or not can be discussed, but I comment on it because it was touched in the last version.

Very good point. If a player had to pay bigger upkeep costs on carriers, for example, they might not build so many. If the view is that "inflation" is a catch all that makes the player pay more upkeep costs, in an abstract way, then the player has no control, they pay the cost whether they build the carrier or not. That's just dumb.

I agree that this touches city upkeep. City upkeep combines the old corruption (anti-REX) and building maintenance (for basic buildings) mechanics. Tech level indirectly affects these costs that the game is trying to model with inflation. However, inflation assumes that you build newest buildings and units at a certain rate. The player cannot avoid this assumption, hence loss of control.

Inflation should follow the mechanics of inflation...too much cash, and not enough to buy. You can see this effect in microcosm at an auction. If people have lots of money, and few goods for sale, and items will get bid up, as people trade the plentiful resource for the scare one. That's inflation. Any game mechanic using "inflation" for something else is abusing the English language, and the player's intelligence.

There is a middle ground between my earlier specific mechanics and the very generic inflation mechanic. It is to make the inflation formula more complex .. I'm not sure if it would be an issue, as it is already unintuitive. The simplest change from current is to have civ-specific inflation that depends on that civs tech level. A more complex one would take into account the tech levels of units and buildings while keeping the base upkeep as-is (1 gold per unit / maintenance part of city upkeep (which is not something that is defined)). And also to give some feedback to the player about which inflation component has which cost. And to change the name to something other than "inflation" .

I disagree. As I discussed earlier, the mechanic should be related to the excess cash in circulation...that is, the amount of money saved up. It should go up and down accordingly.

Oh, I recently noticed that calamities are not affected by inflation at all. I just had a mine disaster, cost me 33 gold. Pffft. If we had a real inflation mechanic, the cost would be adjusted by inflation.

With inflation, the more money you save up, the less valuable it becomes. If a player saves a lot of cash, then systemic inflation should set in, and other player's lands will produce more cash (less valuable cash overall, but it should have some interesting effects on game balance).

 

[karadoc]

Inflation is fine. It's function is to be a balance mechanism. The cost of maintenance, civics, units, etc all need to increase with time to counter-balance the fact that income increases with the civs tech, infrastructure, and maturing cottages. The way inflation works in the game is pretty basic, but it does have similarities with the real world in that the price of most things increases by a few percent each year, and individuals have very little control over it. That's about as deep as it goes in this game; and in that regard it is working as intended.

To say that it's "an abuse of the English language and the player's intelligence" is absurd. The costs are inflating - it's as simple as that. Besides, we're talking about game mechanics, so we can define the key terms of the game mechanics to mean whatever we like. Let me tell you now that the link between "happiness" in the game and happiness in real life is tentative at best.

I think Leoreth made the key relevant point to all this.

It's generally a good idea to think of games as systems of abstraction instead of precise models

There is nothing in this game that is precisely realistic. This isn't a physics simulator. The game mechanics are at best an analogy for the real world; not even an approximation - just a vague artistic representation. The biomass of ants is irrelevant, because there are no ants in the game. The concept of excess cash causing inflation is irrelevant, because the citizens of civ4 don't interact with cash anyway. Melting ice causing sea-level rise is irrelevant, because the sea-level doesn't rise in civ4. (I tried that, but decided it was anti-fun.)

...

DavidCooke, I have to say, your manner of expressing yourself conveys sense of entitlement rather than a desire to help. Maybe that's just me; but I'd suggest that you try to change your tone if you want to make an influential argument.

 

[DavidCooke]

Inflation is fine. It's function is to be a balance mechanism. The cost of maintenance, civics, units, etc all need to increase with time to counter-balance the fact that income increases with the civs tech, infrastructure, and maturing cottages. The way inflation works in the game is pretty basic, but it does have similarities with the real world in that the price of most things increases by a few percent each year, and individuals have very little control over it. That's about as deep as it goes in this game; and in that regard it is working as intended.

No, it isn't similar to the real world. In the real world, when inflation goes up, wages go up, because what inflation really means is each unit of currency has been devalued. In the game, towns max out at a certain amount of coinage, they don't go up with inflation. If the game had an actual inflation system, then with 75% inflation a town would produce 16 gold, not 9 (on river, with financial). But with this broken game mechanic expenses do, but incomes do not. It is one-sided and unbalanced, which is why it leads to such a bad result in the long run.

In the game, the cost of civics does increase with time. More cities increases costs through distance and number of cities mechanics. Corporate expenses eat up a LOT of coinage. The original game designers already included mechanisms to balance maturing cottages. Do you really think a person should have to use 150 cities building wealth just to balance the game's money penalty? Is that working well???

To call the game's "inflation" a "balance mechanism" says that the game is out of balance without it, and needs a fix of some sort. Instead of a screwed up "balance mechanism", fix whatever balance problems you perceive in the actual game.

To say that it's "an abuse of the English language and the player's intelligence" is absurd. The costs are inflating - it's as simple as that. Besides, we're talking about game mechanics, so we can define the key terms of the game mechanics to mean whatever we like. Let me tell you now that the link between "happiness" in the game and happiness in real life is tentative at best.

REAL INFLATION INFLATES INCOME. Or do you think people earn the same today as they did 100 years ago? While inflation has raised the cost of things, it has raised income MORE. People's purchasing power is higher today than ever before. The game's mechanic is the opposite, and is broken. Forty years ago, families had 1 car, and only rich people had air conditioning and color TV (little 17-19" ones). People live in homes with more square footage and better amenities.

To take a word ('inflation' in this case) and bend it to mean something other than what it really means is absurd, and it is an abuse of the English language. The game mechanic called "inflation" isn't inflation. All it is is a time penalty, which grows worse and worse as time goes on, until the game becomes unplayable. The same is true of the "global warming" code, which is mostly just expanding random damage, and is prejudiced against people who like large civs and long long games.

The in game mechanism isn't inflation. It isn't even presented as inflation, because it isn't applied to costs. It's just an extra expense, which isn't how real inflation works. It's not a line item on a balance sheet, it is integral to every number on a balance sheet, revenue, expenses, and income.

Neither the "inflation" nor the "GW" mechanism are accurate, enjoyable, or make the game better. Neither one is needed, in their current form. Well designed mechanisms would add something to the game, which is why I suggested alternatives.

I think Leoreth made the key relevant point to all this.

There is nothing in this game that is precisely realistic. This isn't a physics simulator. The game mechanics are at best an analogy for the real world; not even an approximation - just a vague artistic representation. The biomass of ants is irrelevant, because there are no ants in the game. The concept of excess cash causing inflation is irrelevant, because the citizens of civ4 don't interact with cash anyway. Melting ice causing sea-level rise is irrelevant, because the sea-level doesn't rise in civ4. (I tried that, but decided it was anti-fun.)

Melting ice doesn't cause sea level to rise in the real world, either. See, the north polar cap floats. It is already displacing an amount of water equal to it's weight, which is equal to it's volume when it melts. So, if the north polar cap melts completely, it will result in a perfect 0 rise in sea level. You can prove it to yourself with a simple experiment. Fill a glass half full of water, dump some ice into it (but not so much as touches the bottom). Carefully mark the water level. Wait for the ice to melt, you will see no change in water level.

Now, if Greenland icecap melted, it would cause about a 10' increase in sea level around the world. But, average yearly temps in Greenland run around 10 degrees F. You'd have to raise the average temp above freezing to melt it comsistently. That's a 22 degree increase, on average. Of course, that would have to correspond to a 22 degree rise around the world, too. Most people would be dead from the heat, long before the oceans rose.

Antarctica would require an average global temp rise of 50 degrees or more.

DavidCooke, I have to say, your manner of expressing yourself conveys sense of entitlement rather than a desire to help. Maybe that's just me; but I'd suggest that you try to change your tone if you want to make an influential argument.

Well, I guess that's just how I react when people can't accept a logical argument that they are wrong. I made that first, if you recall, with a great deal of support. In response, people say I'm full of it, or I don't know how to play the game well enough, or fall back on "it's a game". Well, why not just put in random asteroid strikes on cities if a player has more than 20? It would be no less arbitrary than what you have done.

You started out fixing bugs, and making the AI smarter. I applaud all that, you did a great job. The game is beautiful, the extra info screens are superb. But these two major flaws in your mod make the game unplayable beyond a certain point. Rather than accept valid criticism and fix the problem, you defend it. How do you expect that kind of treatment to be received, by someone who spent 100's of hours examining your mod in detail, and taking many hours to give you solid, reasoned and well-supported feedback?

I challenge you to play a game on a huge map, marathon game speed, prince level or higher, 16+ opponents, no vassals, with conquest only game setting, and if you win, then play on until the year 2100. That should give you some direct insight on the problems I have described in detail.

 

[Leoreth]

There is a middle ground between my earlier specific mechanics and the very generic inflation mechanic. It is to make the inflation formula more complex .. I'm not sure if it would be an issue, as it is already unintuitive. The simplest change from current is to have civ-specific inflation that depends on that civs tech level. A more complex one would take into account the tech levels of units and buildings while keeping the base upkeep as-is (1 gold per unit / maintenance part of city upkeep (which is not something that is defined)). And also to give some feedback to the player about which inflation component has which cost. And to change the name to something other than "inflation" .

I'm mostly defending inflation as a general concept. It's hard to tell if the internal function for calculating inflated costs works in every situation but in my experience and the experience of most other people with this it seems that it does adequately under the common circumstances.

What has and doesn't have a counterbalancing cost is a game design decision. I'm not considering K-mod specifically when analysing these things, it's just to allow karadoc to have a - possibly - different perspective on them. Still, analysing is easier than having an opinion IMO (). It's easy to adapt to different rules, and it's hard to declare some rules better than others.

Okay. I completely agree that the concept of inflation in Civ4 is a game design decision, and in principle there is nothing wrong with abandoning it. I was only stressing that it is a very central and important game element, and what the consequences would be if it was abandoned.

In particular, I was arguing against the idea that a game mechanic should be abandoned or changed because it shares a name with a real life phenomenon that behaves differently.

(Not to mention that the K-Mod design philosophy is to keep the game design principles of the main mod intact.)

My particular play style is to conquer the map--huge maps only, please. I don't see anything very bizarre in that. The name of the game is Civilization.

My particular Star Craft play style is to expand slowly, be risk averse and amass death balls before I strike. Needless to say, I'm not very successful with that. It has never crossed my mind before that this is in any way a fault of the game or its design.

Here's a simple question for you. Why are most of the GW events negative? It turns forest into jungle. It turns grassland into plains (reducing food to cities). I suspect it turns plains into desert too, but I haven't allowed it to go that far. I say most, because it does turn ice into tundra, and tundra into grassland. BUT: it doesn't turn jungle into forest. It doesn't turn plains into grassland. Why not? It is mostly set up to be random calamity, that gradually destroys the map, making your game unsustainable. That's just anti-player bias.

Nope, it's a game mechanic. This way, a universal trade off is established: either you manage your pollution, or the environment will be harmed. Even though in real life there are positive local consequences to global warming, it is generally agreed that it is an overall negative. This way, players are not incentivized to neglect the game aspect of pollution management because they might hope to get some extra grassland out of it. What we see here is a simplification of the real world to encapsulate the essence of a real world phenomenon to create a more viable game experience.

Inflation should follow the mechanics of inflation...too much cash, and not enough to buy. You can see this effect in microcosm at an auction. If people have lots of money, and few goods for sale, and items will get bid up, as people trade the plentiful resource for the scare one. That's inflation. Any game mechanic using "inflation" for something else is abusing the English language, and the player's intelligence.

Personally I think of myself as intelligent enough to accept that the meaning of a term depends on context. But to each their own I guess.

You kind of sound like someone who's just had their first couple of econ 101 classes and now needs to tell everyone how the economy works. Yeah, that's the definition of inflation in economics. We know.

Anyway, this does not seem like a very fruitful discussion to continue, especially now that karadoc has made his position clear, so I won't make any more posts on this.

 

[DavidCooke]

Civ lends itself to a "completionist" approach (build cities everywhere, develop them fully). I don't play that way, but I'm sure David isn't the only one who does. It's ungratifying when the result is an unsustainable economy; at least, a dystopian outcome shouldn't be inevitable.

I'm not familiar enough with K-Mod's global warming system to suggest a simple change. I do like the apocalyptic feel that GW can give the end game (realistic or not), so I wouldn't want to just dial it down. Perhaps there should be an option to disable GW in the custom game screen. Then again, GW can already be disabled through a configuration file: Set GLOBAL_WARMING_PROB to 0 in GlobalDefines.xml. (I think this should work; haven't tested it.)

I could do that, but it seems like throwing in the towel. I'd rather have a GW system that enhanced the game. karadoc has done a great job on other things, so I keep hoping he'll take what I say seriously, and actually give it some serious thought, instead of just dismissing it.

Under real GW, things like this would happen:

Deserts get more rainfall. Same for plains. Rivers in areas with increased rainfall will develop new flood plains (not just in deserts) In fact, most flood plains aren't in deserts.

Levees might add to the chance of a flood plain disappearing. Levees along the southern Mississippi have certainly caused a lot of harm to the flood plain there. A lot of southern LA has disappeared, without the Mississippi overflowing its banks every spring.

New resources might spring up, and old ones die out, due to shifts in rainfall. However, with overall warmer temperatures, there will in general be greater evaporation, and more rainfall over the entire planet, on average.

While ice melts, any floating ice will have no effect on sea levels. Only melting ice on land will add water to ocean basins. However, civ doesn't have swamps.

Managed land won't suddenly turn to jungle, as if nobody is watching it. It takes decades for a jungle to grow, not 4 months. However, warming temps might cause hardwoods to die out, to be replaced by faster growing trees, over time. This might affect chop values, or who knows what. Or maybe the other way around, hardwoods like mahogany and teak grow in the tropics.

Part of the problem is the game doesn't have a physics package for weather (or ocean currents). This tends to make maps more random than they should be. Sure would be neat if it did, though.

Of course, weather can influence ocean currents. Changing ocean currents would move around fish feeding grounds, so resources might change places.

 

[DavidCooke]

Played a game with that pre-release version. Here my tentative opinion: I didn't get past the industrial era, but up till then the changed inflation mechanic worked fine, with no indication that it will be broken further down the line. However, the lack of transparency does not make this feel like an improvement yet. Unfortunately, I feel my initial worries about the Scientific Method change were justified. It makes Representation specialists too powerful. Even made the city governor do some strange things like running a scientist at size two instead of an improved crab tile.

Oh yeah, speaking of the city governor...

My size 2 cities with Sushi keep running 2 artists (broadcast tower) instead of working the fish tiles to grow faster. Some kind of priority problem there. In fact, every time a city grows, it always makes the new people artists, even though I own the entire map, and won a cultural victory long ago. Sushi already provides around 100 culture a turn, artists aren't doing squat. So every turn I have to scroll through 275 cities, making those singers shut up and get to work.

There is no city governor setting to do what I need. What I need is a system where I can develop my own set of rules, like:

1) work all tiles except open ocean with no resources.
2) work all scientists.
3) work all priests, then engineers (my priests are 2 hammers, 1 gold) while I'm building stuff.
4) work all merchants.
5) if all that is full, then work open ocean tiles.
6) work spies

I dunno if I'd work artists or citizens after that. Citizens give 1 hammer, from which I can build wealth. My artists give 1 beaker (4 with representation) so that is of some use.

Anyway, artists are way down the food chain, but the game always makes new people into artists as my cities grow. It's weird, and and time-wasting (takes me about 15 minutes each turn to fix all the new ones. If I don't fix them then the problem gets worse and worse each turn.), and annoying.