K-Mod: Far Beyond the Sword

Ai seems alot more resistant to making peace or giving favorable terms then before.
I think that's just a coincidence. I haven't changed that stuff; at least not directly.

Regarding pacifism. I agree that it's a relatively weak civic, don't think it's quite as bad as you say. I don't think it is fundamentally flawed. I think the main problem is that the gold per military cost becomes very big very quickly, and so the civic is basically only viable if you either a very small civ, or are living in isolation. The gold per unit thing is just too big. Even at it's lowest non-zero settings (1 gold per unit), it is prohibitively costly. But it is still a viable civic sometimes. I disagree that the tech is on a bad path. The fact that it is on the way to liberalism means that it's a high-value tech; and the fact that it can be bulbed by a scientist means that it is often discovered relatively early.. often before most of the techs that you mentioned. It's really a matter of play style. Most of the techs you mentioned are good for military reasons... and the civic we are talking about is pacifism. I suspect that you might be a bit of a warmonger in your play style. :p

If I was to change it, I'd probably change the 1 gold / unit into something like +50% military maintenance cost - which would be a significantly lower cost. Unfortunately, in terms of programming, anything that adds new xml entries is a non-trivial change; because there would need to be new game mechanics written, and new AI to understand how they work. That includes my + maintenance idea, and your + cost per city idea.


--


On the topic of the pre-chop feature, I just looked at the code from BULL; it's actually a pretty minor change if I just copy what they've done... but to me it looks like it has a major problem. I haven't tested it myself, but at a glance it looks like this option would cause OOS errors in multiplayer games if not all players were using the same settings. In my view, that's an unacceptable flaw. So implementing this feature isn't just a copy-paste job; it would need to be redesigned. :sad:

Karadoc i have a question. Maybe it is a bit off but i just want to hear you opinion tbh.
[culture stuff]
So, just to clarify, you seem to be suggesting that cities would achieve legendary culture when they reached 50,000 / x culture, where 'x' is the proportion of native culture in the city. Is that what you mean? So, for example, if the city was only 70% mine, then that would be 50,000/0.7 == 71,430.

In response, let me first point out that the number culture points reported in the city screen only include culture that was created by your civ. It does not include any culture from foreign civs. So, for example if the city screen says you have 20,000 culture points, and the city is 80% yours, that essentially means the native culture is 20,000, and the foreign culture is 20,000/0.8 * 0.2 == 5000. (ie. the 80% is 20,000 / 25,000; not 16,000 / 20,000).

Secondly, what I just said is not exactly true either... because the percentage of city ownership is actually calculated based on plot culture, as opposed to city culture. City culture is the culture earnt directly from sources inside the city; ie. artists, cultural buildings, and so on. Whenever city culture is created, it also creates plot culture in all nearby areas - and so if you create culture is a city which is near foreign borders, some of your plot culture will spill in to their land. In most cases, the foreign culture in the city itself is actually zero. So when I said that 80% might means you have 20,000 of 25,000; that wasn't really true, because the 80% is only talking about plot culture. ...

Ok. The main point of my previous two paragraphs was just to make it clear that the culture counter in the city is only counting culture that was earnt by the city itself. Every single point of culture on the culture bar was earnt locally. -- So for that reason, I would think changing to to legendary target to depend on the ownership % would be a bit unnatural, and perhaps a bit confusing.

Maybe it would have some interesting effects on gameplay, but I don't think the effects would be necessarily positive. The main effect would be that it would become adventitious not have your cultural cities on the border of a foreign civ. It would be an advantage to be on your own island away from everyone else. Also, Mercantilism might be slightly more useful, because it blocks foreign trade routes, and thus blocks that source of foreign culture. But in most cases, I think it usually wouldn't make much difference anyway - because unless you happen to have your 3 main cities close to some other civ who is also aiming for a cultural victory, then the city will be close to 100% yours anyway.

The bottom line is that I don't think that would be a good rule change. It adds complexity to the game without adding obvious benefits. It may enable some new and interesting strategies, but the strategies are a bit counter-intuitive. (The best way to win a cultural victory would be to isolate yourself from the rest of the world. That seems counter-intuitive to me.) So that's my opinion on that.
 
Aha. Tnx for clarifying. I actually thought that city ethnicity % represented, aside from current population, the "conflict" of culture as well. This idea of mine is pretty much useless with current game mechanics. Im sorry if i made any confusion among others that read it.
 
I've uploaded v1.24.

There isn't really anything new, but it has a few important bug-fixes that I'd rather upload sooner than later. I was thinking of calling it v1.23b... but I usually only do that if the bugfixes are for problems in that particular version - in this case, the bugs have been around for ages.
 
It's really a matter of play style. Most of the techs you mentioned are good for military reasons... and the civic we are talking about is pacifism. I suspect that you might be a bit of a warmonger in your play style. :p

I play on emperor, aggresive ai, epic speed and if you dont have an awesome army... you get invaded from every angle, and especially get targeted if you start even getting close to taking the lead for a cultural victory. Often the only way to win is try to cripple the "alpha ai"- the one ai that almost always like 500 points above everyone else and destroying tech left and right. Catch them while their army is away. But you also HAVE to expand if you share a continent just to have the massive gold and production values to hold your land and keep up in tech, for late game. And then theres hunting other people's caps who are farther ahead of you in culture...I think the higher the difficulty, the more you HAVE to play like a warmonger (although Im almost always the person getting declared war on).

How about my tech trading question from my previous post?
 
Ya i just played a game with "no tech brokering" selected instead of "no tech trading" and the game is MASSIVELY easier. Let us know about the what werid extra cheats the ai gets for "no tech trading allowed".
 
There are no weird cheats like that. I searched the code for every mention of GAMEOPTION_NO_TECH_TRADING, and found nothing that would affect the AI's tech rate.

My guess is that no tech brokering is easier only because you know how to draw more benefit from the trades than the AI does.
 
The bottom line is that I don't think that would be a good rule change. It adds complexity to the game without adding obvious benefits. It may enable some new and interesting strategies, but the strategies are a bit counter-intuitive. (The best way to win a cultural victory would be to isolate yourself from the rest of the world. That seems counter-intuitive to me.) So that's my opinion on that.

This could be an interesting mechanic gameplay-wise on cultural expansion though - even if I agree that it doesn't have any real impact on cultural victory
I always found it unrealistic that a newly conquered big city get's the first 2 cultural expansions way too soon, the first one usually in the very next turn.
 
Tech trading off= I never get 1st in gnp, I lose almost all wonders. I lose 5 games in a row. One game Im alone on a huge island, (trading with no one) and get massively destroyed in tech, despite a huge number of cottages and needing very little military.

No trade brokering=Im first in gnp for the first 250 turns, points leader and getting all the wonders I really try for. Im alone on an island with nobody to trade with.

Could it not be in the dll? I do know, I know nothing about code but I bet you 5 dollars and chicken sandwhich Im right.
 
On high difficulties, the AI trades like crazy, so no tech brokering hurts them a lot. I really can't confirm your experience with trading/brokering on or off both from BtS and the K-Mod games I've had.
 
O I had another idea for pacifist civic. HOW ABOUT: increases military unit cost by 2 gold, when they are OUTSIDE of cities. That seems right in line with pacifism idealogy, and seems more balanced, for what you get, than +50% military upkeep.

no tech brokering= Im first to liberalism for the first time in like 15 full games
 
@Karadoc: Since Double Clicking for Wake All Units may be locked away from us within the executable, is it possible that you could make some other keypress or combination have the same effect instead? Perhaps include it as a "BUG Option" for Alt LeftClick, or implement it directly for some other keypress? If that's possible. (I don't know enough about that aspect of Civ4 modding.)

@others and the topic in general: Regarding Pacifism, doesn't its downside only increase the cost of your units when they're in neutral or enemy lands anyway? Or was I misinformed about that? (I thought "support cost" was an aspect of unit cost that only applies when units are outside of your borders?)

I don't remember Pacifism ever eating me alive on money when I was running it while having a decent-sized home-defense military. Then again, I had a really strong economy anyway and probably wasn't paying that close of attention.


[Edit: I was wrong about Pacifism, see Karadoc's next post for correct information about this civic.]
 
Karadok, would you agree that the unit upgrade cost is too high? I always end up trying to have smaller army if I am not going to war because units deprecate quickly and become just a waste of hummers. This leads to the risk of being attacked at some point. I think upgrading units should be at least twice cheaper besides AI gets serious bonuses in this department.
 
@stingo I would agree that the upgrade cost for early game units is too high (I would think about 30% too high) but around rifling I think the upgrade costs are more appropriate to your average economy.

Just my 2 cents. Glad you pointed that out.

@lenowill I will be very embarassed if pacifism worked that way. Right now I think its one of the worst civics and I cant force myself to switch to it, I guess to be honest, Im not sure.
 
First of all stingo I do agree Upgrade costs are WAY too high. Early unit upgrades need to be reduced in cost.

As for Pacifism: I suggest the following: +1 unhappiness per military unit in a city, +1 :) (so you can keep one unit in the city as a garrison) +100% war weariness, +1 :gold: per unit support costs, +50% :gp: points.

My own ideas: Basically regarding blockades and sieges: does anyone else dislike the fact that while you are laying siege to an enemy city, the enemy population is still out working the tiles around it without a care in the world? That while you can destroy improvements and roads you can't destroy the tile's productivity itself? That while the city itself may be starved, the units are unaffected?

So a few ideas:
  1. Have it where a blockading naval unit prevents a city from working tiles adjacent to it. (In addition to trade route blockage).
  2. Give land units an ability similar to blockade (call it interdiction.) Like idea #1, land units prevent adjacent tiles from being worked.
  3. Give land units the ability to pillage tiles themselves (basically destroying their yields).
  4. Impose :yuck: penalties on cities with a large number of military units garrisoned in it. Also maybe have some sort of damage mechanism where units under siege suffer damage?

Another train of thought: Support costs. As I noted in this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=456381), unit support costs do not scale in any way. All units cost the same in support costs. I suggest using the <iExtraCost> tag in the Civ4UnitInfos to add additional support costs to certain units (for example all mounted, armor,air and naval units: also all units built in the Renaissance or later eras for example.) This would cut down on excessive numbers of units in the late game.
 
As for Pacifism: I suggest the following: +1 unhappiness per military unit in a city, +1 :) (so you can keep one unit in the city as a garrison) +100% war weariness, +1 :gold: per unit support costs, +50% :gp: points.
What? Pacifism is barely useful and very situational already, these changes would make it completely useless.

Although I like the idea to replace +1 :gold: per unit with the percentual unit upkeep increase karadoc mentioned and balance it with additional war weariness.
 
First of all stingo I do agree Upgrade costs are WAY too high. Early unit upgrades need to be reduced in cost.

As for Pacifism: I suggest the following: +1 unhappiness per military unit in a city, +1 :) (so you can keep one unit in the city as a garrison) +100% war weariness, +1 :gold: per unit support costs, +50% :gp: points.
I dont like the idea of "look at me i have nothing defending my cities". You dont need to have no army to be a pacifist. I can serve pacifism more if i have a lot of units and thus preventing anyone from thinking of attacking me and keeping the peace.

My own ideas: Basically regarding blockades and sieges: does anyone else dislike the fact that while you are laying siege to an enemy city, the enemy population is still out working the tiles around it without a care in the world? That while you can destroy improvements and roads you can't destroy the tile's productivity itself? That while the city itself may be starved, the units are unaffected?
Besieged cities almost always found ways to get supplies. Since there is no mutual help between cities in terms of food (most of the countries in the world have most of their agriculture at one part and supply other parts) how do you expect sieges to work "as intended". I would like to see realism here but its far from visible due to general game mechanics.

So a few ideas:
  1. Have it where a blockading naval unit prevents a city from working tiles adjacent to it. (In addition to trade route blockage).
  2. Give land units an ability similar to blockade (call it interdiction.) Like idea #1, land units prevent adjacent tiles from being worked.
  3. Give land units the ability to pillage tiles themselves (basically destroying their yields).
  4. Impose :yuck: penalties on cities with a large number of military units garrisoned in it. Also maybe have some sort of damage mechanism where units under siege suffer damage?

1. Already in the game as far as i know
2. Could be viable but that unit loses movement imo
3. Im not sure if i get you but isnt that already in the game?
4. I really dont understand the basis for the 1st part and second part is already there and its called collateral damage.

Another train of thought: Support costs. As I noted in this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=456381), unit support costs do not scale in any way. All units cost the same in support costs. I suggest using the <iExtraCost> tag in the Civ4UnitInfos to add additional support costs to certain units (for example all mounted, armor,air and naval units: also all units built in the Renaissance or later eras for example.) This would cut down on excessive numbers of units in the late game.

I would only approve of this for some high end units like nukes but generally its not that much viable since the large tax due to military funding would greatly diminish science and current game mechanics are balanced toward the current income mechanism. This would mean overhaul of entire game economics.

This is only what i think so it might be stupid or not.
 
I dont like the idea of "look at me i have nothing defending my cities". You dont need to have no army to be a pacifist. I can serve pacifism more if i have a lot of units and thus preventing anyone from thinking of attacking me and keeping the peace.
The problem is that the very concept of pacifism is incompatible with a large army. Here's the definition of "pacifism":
  1. The belief that war and violence are unjustifiable under any circumstances, and that all disputes should be settled by peaceful means.
  2. The refusal to participate in war or military service because of such a belief.
Any pacifism civic should IMHO prohibit a large standing army. I never used Pacifism myself; in fact it seems to me this civic needs to be replaced or rethought at least.
Besieged cities almost always found ways to get supplies. Since there is no mutual help between cities in terms of food (most of the countries in the world have most of their agriculture at one part and supply other parts) how do you expect sieges to work "as intended". I would like to see realism here but its far from visible due to general game mechanics.
What I am taking about is the fact that the city is still able to work farms mines etc outside the city tile itself. What I am pointing out is that when an enemy army is approaching your city, the local population's going to flee for the city away from the enemy. I simply want to have these effects shown.
1. Already in the game as far as i know
I don't think so, I've seen coast tiles still being worked adjacent to blockading units.
2. Could be viable but that unit loses movement imo
I agree with that; to get this effect the unit needs to fortify (for naval units I suggest changing "fortify" to "patrol"; same effects, just different name.
3. Im not sure if i get you but isnt that already in the game?
Yes you can destroy improvements on the tile like roads, farms, mine etc. I'm talking about the inherent yield of the tile itself; for example reducing grassland from 2 :food: to 0.
4. I really dont understand the basis for the 1st part and second part is already there and its called collateral damage.
The basis is quite simple: remember that armies are essentially mobile cities made up of lots of people. They eat food, take up living space etc. Putting a large number of military units in a city should have negative effects on the city's health. As for the second, collateral damage if from active attacks; I'm talking about units starving from lack of supplies.
I would only approve of this for some high end units like nukes but generally its not that much viable since the large tax due to military funding would greatly diminish science and current game mechanics are balanced toward the current income mechanism. This would mean overhaul of entire game economics.
Thing is I noticed in late games that unit support rarely diminishes my science or gold. I found that I could support large armies with no real problem. My idea here is that certain units should cost more to support than others. For example:
  • Mounted units should cost more due to needing fodder for horses.
  • Certain naval units should cost more due to repairs, ammunition and upkeep.
  • Air units like naval units (see above).
  • Later Siege units like cannon and artillery (ammunition costs).

This is only what i think so it might be stupid or not.
Same here. ;)
 
I was just looking at the code for how military support costs are calculated, and I learnt a couple of things that I didn't know...

Firstly, there is no "military unit cost" for anything in the game other than for pacifism. There is only "unit cost" and "unit supply cost".

Secondly, the "military unit cost" from pacifism is said to be 1 gold per unit; but that isn't entirely accurate. The cost is actually (# of military units - # of military units supported for free) * unit cost handicap modifier. The main point is that the handicap modifier thing is a number between 20% and 100% which depend on your difficulty level. Pacifism only actually adds 1 gold per military unit if you are playing on Deity! And this means that Pacifism get decidedly weaker on higher difficulty levels. I didn't know this before today.
(By the way, this military unit cost from pacifism does not depend on whether or not the units are in your territory. That's a separate calculation.)

The first thing I'm going to do is change the mouse-over text for unit cost in the economics advisor.. I'm going to change it to not mention "military unit cost" unless the military unit cost per unit is non-zero. I'm also going to make it clear that the "handicap cost" is not a fixed cost, but rather a percentage modifier of everything else.

In terms of adjusting pacifism, at the moment I'm leaning towards change it from the current 1 gold per unit scaled by handicap modifier, to a flat 0.5 gold per unit - unscaled. This will reduce the cost for anything above Nobel difficulty, but will actually increase the cost below Nobel. It would be a fairly minor change - but the K-Mod design policy is basically to be the same, but better, so minor changes are usually what I prefer to do.

Highwayhoss, I think some of those ideas sound good, but they are probably too big of a jump from the usual rules at the moment - except possibly changing the value of some of the units costs... but even still, I'm not convinced on that either. The thing is, having variable unit costs would make the game a little bit more complicated, and I think there needs to be very clear benefits to justify adding complexity. Having different cost for different units might be slightly more realistic, but it isn't clear to me that it will have a noticeable effect on the strategy of the game. It's the kind of change that might be good to overcome the problem of massive naval forces being the dominant strategy, or something like that - and I don't think that problem exists.

Regarding the realism of farm workers retreating to the city when enemy forces are near - the way I see it is that each plot actually represents a very large area; and so having enemy units standing on an adjacent plot isn't necessarily a big deal. According the the game-year thing, it usually takes more than a year for those enemy forces to take a single step. So the farm workers will have plenty of time to retreat... Regardless of that though, the realism is generally pretty sketchy throughout the whole game. I think it's best to focus on what's good for gameplay - and in terms of gameplay I think choking cities into starvation is already a viable enough strategy as it is.

Regarding game mechanics which involve penalizing the city for having military units in them, such as +1:mad: per military unit - I think that kind of stuff sounds tempting at first, but it probably will not have the desired effect. It will probably just result in players leaving them army 1 step outside their city. That may lead to some interesting new gameplay tactics, but I suspect it's more likely to just lead to a bit of player frustration.
 
Idea for Pacifism: Instead of more unit upkeep, how about more war weariness?
 
OK Karadoc, thanks for the reply. Its nice to get some feedback on my ideas.

BTW I do wonder though since you mentioned it, how much have you learned about unit support costs? I was curious to know more of the mechanics of how these costs are affected by location, distance from your territory etc.

As for Pacifism, maybe this civic needs to be rethought; since it is a religious civic, it should affect the role of religion in your civilization. The thing is if you impose any penalties for warmongering, then civs will simply switch to another civic when they go to war. Maybe it should be a state where while there is an official religion, the state religion is not particularly militant?

BTW were you considering making any changes to traits?
 
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