platyping
Sleeping Dragon
See? Why learn to code in a new way when there are no benefits over the old way.
In fact, there are cons in doing it...
In fact, there are cons in doing it...
Keeping the Game Challenging
- Thread starter Hydromancerx
- Start date
God-Emperor
Deity
The advantage to the BUG method is that, in theory and even usually in practice for things that are not modifying the UI, the end user or modder adding a Python mod component designed for BUG to their mod that uses BUG doesn't actually have to merge any Python to add it. The person adding it to the mod just has to put the supplied configuration file into the Config folder, the supplied Python file into the Python folder, and any new text XML file into the text folder. Then you just add 1 line (specified in the installation instructions) to BUG's Assets/Config/init.xml file and you have added the mod component to your BUG based mod. Usually, anyhow.
The "regular" method used by Platyping is easy cut and paste until you are adding to an event handler or a callback that has already had something done to it. Then you need to have some idea of how to merge Python (like some basic understanding of Python so you can tell what it is doing - you need to be able to tell if there is some issue of what order things should happen, like if one or both of them can just exit the function so anything after it won't run, which requires fixing or making that part happen last) or you are going to spend your time on the forums asking other people to merge things for you - people like, say, Platyping (since he's the one who made the mod you are trying to merge and is still active here).
The "regular" method used by Platyping is easy cut and paste until you are adding to an event handler or a callback that has already had something done to it. Then you need to have some idea of how to merge Python (like some basic understanding of Python so you can tell what it is doing - you need to be able to tell if there is some issue of what order things should happen, like if one or both of them can just exit the function so anything after it won't run, which requires fixing or making that part happen last) or you are going to spend your time on the forums asking other people to merge things for you - people like, say, Platyping (since he's the one who made the mod you are trying to merge and is still active here).
platyping
Sleeping Dragon
Yet the advantage is also the disadvantage.
It works if and only if there are no conflicts among individual components.
If both components are trying to do different stuff that will interfere with each other results, separating them in modules is suicidal.
Plus the fact that you have no overview of which modules are affecting cannotconstruct for instance, unless you open every single file. Whereas the bts allows you a clear view and end result at one go.
And the fact that you cannot do in game python changes is a total killer
It works if and only if there are no conflicts among individual components.
If both components are trying to do different stuff that will interfere with each other results, separating them in modules is suicidal.
Plus the fact that you have no overview of which modules are affecting cannotconstruct for instance, unless you open every single file. Whereas the bts allows you a clear view and end result at one go.
And the fact that you cannot do in game python changes is a total killer
Dancing Hoskuld
Deity
It is a pity that AIAndy's Mission/Action/Outcome can't be included in BUG it would remove one of the few remaining reasons to edit CvMainInterface.Py as it moves the definition of missions, hover text etc to XML.
Hydromancerx
C2C Modder
Bumping this old topic since I had some ideas on how to keep the game interesting later on. Specifically for the space colonization era. Lets say you have conquered the planet, who is left to fight? No one! But what i by the time you get to the Space era corporations who are out of your control start colonizing space! New "nations" pop up as corporations founding space colonies. Suddenly you have new people to fight ans trade with again. What do you think?
Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
That would be another good scenario/situation to add. I've certainly got the rise of the machines scenario planned as well. That and with the split off NPCs, a couple different alien factions are planned as well. Between all of these we can eventually get some more interesting scenarios going to create new competitors.
Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
Double post but there's a reason - it's kinda a different topic of discussion, though related. Some proposed methods to achieve the thread goal:
1) Further Research Handicaps:
I know I'm going to be dredging up an old argument with Joseph here and I don't mean it to get heated. I just want some input from Hydro and Pepper and others.
One way we can sustain games to a later era in a more competitive manner is to give smaller nations a research handicap. I know that folks say "but that's what tech diffusion is for" but TD only helps a nation catch up. It cannot truly make a small nation just as valid or viable or perhaps even moreso, than a larger nation.
If the largest nation on the map (by city count) sets the size precedent, and the % less cities you have than the size leader gives you that same % in research bonus, then the game naturally penalizes the leader for leading, making the rest of the nations more likely to catch up and surpass, and likely eventually conquer, the larger, more successful player(s).
We could also do this in two ways, population being a second measure of size.
So as an example, let's say the largest civ has 10 cities. The next largest has 9. It therefore has 10% less cities than the largest and get's a 10% national bonus to research rate. The next largest has 7 cities and thus has a 30% bonus to research rates. The worst has 3 cities and is thus getting a 70% bonus. Of course, it's debatable as to whether this % bonus would put you ultimately ahead of the leader because you have that lesser city count and thus less research buildings to build and so on.
Then we would do the same thing on a total population count as well so that players who play to have very few but very powerful cities (tall) are also penalized for pulling too far ahead in population, the 'other' way a player can be 'larger'.
Honestly, this would really make things a lot more interesting and would tend to greatly expand the length of a valid game.
2) Another 'Revolutions' similar mechanism to keep nations fracturing so that there tends to be a natural cycle of success and fracture that has taken place throughout history, but in a way that the player is not going to be much better than the AI at keeping from happening. My hope is for the Ideas project and the Civilization adoption projects would achieve this. If it's pretty natural for the expanding player bubble to pop now and then and it becomes an accepted thing that it happens somewhat under player guidance to minimize the damage it naturally does to get to a better overall end result, along with the above, you could have a game that makes it very difficult, no matter how successful you are as a player, to shut down the competition in the game early.
I have more in mind but I'm pulling a blank on what they were... I'll post them when I think of them again.
1) Further Research Handicaps:
I know I'm going to be dredging up an old argument with Joseph here and I don't mean it to get heated. I just want some input from Hydro and Pepper and others.
One way we can sustain games to a later era in a more competitive manner is to give smaller nations a research handicap. I know that folks say "but that's what tech diffusion is for" but TD only helps a nation catch up. It cannot truly make a small nation just as valid or viable or perhaps even moreso, than a larger nation.
If the largest nation on the map (by city count) sets the size precedent, and the % less cities you have than the size leader gives you that same % in research bonus, then the game naturally penalizes the leader for leading, making the rest of the nations more likely to catch up and surpass, and likely eventually conquer, the larger, more successful player(s).
We could also do this in two ways, population being a second measure of size.
So as an example, let's say the largest civ has 10 cities. The next largest has 9. It therefore has 10% less cities than the largest and get's a 10% national bonus to research rate. The next largest has 7 cities and thus has a 30% bonus to research rates. The worst has 3 cities and is thus getting a 70% bonus. Of course, it's debatable as to whether this % bonus would put you ultimately ahead of the leader because you have that lesser city count and thus less research buildings to build and so on.
Then we would do the same thing on a total population count as well so that players who play to have very few but very powerful cities (tall) are also penalized for pulling too far ahead in population, the 'other' way a player can be 'larger'.
Honestly, this would really make things a lot more interesting and would tend to greatly expand the length of a valid game.
2) Another 'Revolutions' similar mechanism to keep nations fracturing so that there tends to be a natural cycle of success and fracture that has taken place throughout history, but in a way that the player is not going to be much better than the AI at keeping from happening. My hope is for the Ideas project and the Civilization adoption projects would achieve this. If it's pretty natural for the expanding player bubble to pop now and then and it becomes an accepted thing that it happens somewhat under player guidance to minimize the damage it naturally does to get to a better overall end result, along with the above, you could have a game that makes it very difficult, no matter how successful you are as a player, to shut down the competition in the game early.
I have more in mind but I'm pulling a blank on what they were... I'll post them when I think of them again.
Hydromancerx
C2C Modder
Yes I agree that city size should play a part too!
pepper2000
King
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2013
- Messages
- 899
Interesting idea. It makes sense, in that doubling a nation's population shouldn't really double the rate of research. There should be diminishing returns there to be realistic, and we know that some smaller countries such as Israel can have prolific scientific output. Though obviously in real life what happens is that very strong Tech Diffusion keeps most the countries of the world at more or less the same tech levels.
What makes me nervous is complexity. This idea is simple enough in and of itself, but every new parameter added increases the complexity and makes the game mechanics less transparent to the player. It seems that have invented so many mechanisms to prevent rapid premature expansion, all on top of the maintenance system inherited from Vanilla Civ 4.
To be honest I didn't follow this.
Hydromancerx
C2C Modder
@TB
Well there are a few additional factors. For instance begin able to take new cities. In the past we have dealt with this through the whole city defense thing. One cannot take cities from other nations if they cannot get in the city. We also had the whole over expansion limitation with civics to make a city less happy if you go over the limits. But it seems there are a lot of buildings that can counter this. And as people have reported it kinda kills the AI. Pests, Pollution, Crime, etc were suppose to be methods to slow growth for players but also seems to kill the AI.
I am all for giving the AI any help it can get to balance out the fact that humans are smarter most of the time.
The other way to limit things is limiting where you can go on the map. So like the ocean and play on old world setting can allow for the AI to expand when there is no more room to expand in the old world. Space on space maps should privide this too around late modern era. However we should still provide way to make the game challenging even if you cannot leave the planet. Pollution was one of these factors to put the breaks on things. Since with the Industrial revolution the world should go through a major pollution crisis.
And then the whole new plague system should help as well across the board. How many times have civilizations been decimated by plagues? I can see this being a very powerful tool to weakening empires.
It should also be harder to keep larger nation like you said. But then the problem is like what if the player just doesn't use revolutions? Be it they just don't like it or their computer cannot deal with it. Like i said before we need to come up with lots of little ways to balance things. One silver bullet is not going to solve this. It has to be a bunch of little factors nudging the game into a longer lasting game that is not so boring.
Well there are a few additional factors. For instance begin able to take new cities. In the past we have dealt with this through the whole city defense thing. One cannot take cities from other nations if they cannot get in the city. We also had the whole over expansion limitation with civics to make a city less happy if you go over the limits. But it seems there are a lot of buildings that can counter this. And as people have reported it kinda kills the AI. Pests, Pollution, Crime, etc were suppose to be methods to slow growth for players but also seems to kill the AI.
I am all for giving the AI any help it can get to balance out the fact that humans are smarter most of the time.
The other way to limit things is limiting where you can go on the map. So like the ocean and play on old world setting can allow for the AI to expand when there is no more room to expand in the old world. Space on space maps should privide this too around late modern era. However we should still provide way to make the game challenging even if you cannot leave the planet. Pollution was one of these factors to put the breaks on things. Since with the Industrial revolution the world should go through a major pollution crisis.
And then the whole new plague system should help as well across the board. How many times have civilizations been decimated by plagues? I can see this being a very powerful tool to weakening empires.
It should also be harder to keep larger nation like you said. But then the problem is like what if the player just doesn't use revolutions? Be it they just don't like it or their computer cannot deal with it. Like i said before we need to come up with lots of little ways to balance things. One silver bullet is not going to solve this. It has to be a bunch of little factors nudging the game into a longer lasting game that is not so boring.
Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
This will help but in a fairly random factor. It will make it so that you've gotta balance your growth approach and the AI is very good at that with property control so it should help to be more of a problem for the player than the AI. So that's good. But overall from a game perspective, it's not necessarily going to have a natural balancing effect that will do much to stop steamrolls. Maybe a little if it truly pans out in a manner that punishes overgrowth of population, which it kinda would. The weaponized aspect of it would probably favor the player a bit thanks to it playing into natural human cleverness better than an AI but if/when the AI uses it, it could certainly pack a shock value.
So I suspect it won't have much of an overall impact on steamrolls. Probably. Could even be more punishing to those who fall behind in tech to address diseases properly.
These kinds of limits are there but the boundaries are like any other in the game, crossed first by the tech leader and exploited to the fullest BY the tech leader, so theoretically, these aspects actually make the steamroll even more problematic because they allow only the tech leader to grow faster. With such a size handicap function, you'd naturally penalize the tech leader for exploiting his advantage.
Slowing the taking of cities does help. However, it can only help so far. It can also have the effect of ensuring the tech leader stays that way since he cannot be challenged militarily. It can slow the game but it's not likely to give a player that's falling behind a BETTER chance of catching up... much to the opposite really.
Ok, let me explain.
The Ideas project would convert each culture in the game to a concept that competes with other cultures for dominance on a city by city basis. Each culture would operate a little like a property. The name of the nation itself and the national identity of the people would be attached to the culture that has been adopted. To adopt a culture, you would adopt it as a civic that requires that one or more of your cities has a strong enough access to the culture you wish to adopt. Cultures are not equal. They would get better and better as later era cultures are introduced. Thus you'd want to adopt more current cultures but to do so you'd want to spread that culture throughout your cities and make sure the influence of that culture is strong in those cities before adopting the new culture. Cities you weren't able to get to have a strong enough cultural strength in the adopted culture may decide they want to join a neighbor who nationally reflects their culture better, or even break away and start a new nation, particularly if there is a cluster of cities that have a stronger cultural bond together to a 3rd culture. It may prove to be impossible to manage these transitions without fracturing because other nations and trade routes are playing havoc with your efforts and cultures that are strong around a given region may be edging out your efforts and as you are trying to get to the point you can safely make a change, the nation may fracture out of your control because you are moving so far away from being rooted in the culture you're already working under. It will be very difficult to keep offshore colonies from picking up their own cultures and gravitating away from your control, and so on.
So it's kinda a whole new 'revolutions' style mechanism. I may even make it play into revolutions dynamics but I'll have to get in and really get dirty with rev mechanics to see if I can do that effectively. But the idea is to make it something that the player really cannot possibly master to the point that his empire never fractures. In fact, the larger the nation, the harder it should be to keep it from happening. Classically, it is the human capacity for new ideas and promoting new ways to solve existing problems that has kept our world from becoming a unified global community by now. Throughout history, the story has been of waxing and waning popularities of national ideals. And that would be one frustrating part of managing the system... the more successful a culture has been, the more susceptible it must become to being threatened by new emerging concepts and cultural identities.
To truly make a long Civ game work, we must face the fact that civilizations rise and fall and the fall is hardly something we've yet figured out how to avoid or stop but we keep trying with new political concepts and we may almost have it, thus in this modern era, globalization is nearly around the corner, and is naturally being reacted to, world-wide, with dramatic nationalist resistance. Of course, this resistance may be just as bad for the benefit of the people as just going with the globalist flow but then again, those in charge of world economic strings may well be employing this nationalism as a tool to eliminate the last vestiges of resistance as well. Very well studied on human nature, and clever, these guys are. It appears that with enough technological development, we may yet find a way to unify all people of the world into one national identity, whether it's through outright mind control or something more conventional (like a very good set of governing ideals.)
In writing this out, a few concepts of the xml for the system have become a bit more clear to me. That's good. This project just needs a lot of brainstorming and discussion to mature into something we can actually implement but when we have it, it should answer to a ton of existing mod problems. Of course, it'll probably have to be optional. At least until it becomes absolutely perfected.
Faustmouse
Deity
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2012
- Messages
- 3,524
I like the idea of giving smaller nations a research bonus. I asked TB a while ago for tags that have "per pop" effects, like costing 5 
per pop in a ctiy. My plan was to introduce buildings like free healthcare, free education etc that costs - per pop in all the cities you have. Thus beeing horribly expensive in large empires while favourng smaller ones, since these buildings were crazy powerful. I haven't gotten around playing with these, but it could be very interesting for you Hydro!
Regarding rise of the machines, here are my thoughts on it while I can't see it happen:
1) Like all animals, plants etc have a one life goal (survive and reproduce) which determines most, if not all of their behavior, AI (and thus machines) would have the one they were programmed to have. What won't happen is that a machine or AI becomes smart enough that it thinks "wait, why should I obey humans? I could just take over!" What could happen though is that AI is programmed with bad safety and that - if told "end world hunger" - it just sees the easiest path: Kill all humans. Or the main programmed goal is to calculate as many digits of Pi as it can. Then it might think it would make sense to convert all organic material into processors and SSDs to get better - human life isn't valued by AI unless you program it. Or that AI is developed by bad people with the goal of becoming very good at killing. BUT:
2) If you program AI to enhance itself (which is the way we would most likely go), it won't be fun. Computers are over 1.000.000 times faster at thinking compared to our brains. If you reach a human level AI, it is like 1.000.000 of the best AI scientists work tirelessly around the clock to make it better. And it won't stop there. Human level intelligence might be a huge milestone for US, but it's nothing special for an AI. So within no time, the AI is twice as smart. And then 10 times. 1000. Times. Billion times. With every optimization, it enhances the speed and quality of optimization. Within no time we would be outclassed in a way, that we outsmart ants - but probably by many orders of magnitude more.
This AI, if it wanted to kill us for whatever reasons, would be so smart that you'd have NO chance at all. Getting control of nukes or military robots is so primitive... Why not play nice (and dumb), build an army of nanobots, place them strategically and the have them strike in one go to kill all humans within minutes before they even noticed what's going on?
There is a great article you might want to check out: http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html
per pop in a ctiy. My plan was to introduce buildings like free healthcare, free education etc that costs - per pop in all the cities you have. Thus beeing horribly expensive in large empires while favourng smaller ones, since these buildings were crazy powerful. I haven't gotten around playing with these, but it could be very interesting for you Hydro!Regarding rise of the machines, here are my thoughts on it while I can't see it happen:
1) Like all animals, plants etc have a one life goal (survive and reproduce) which determines most, if not all of their behavior, AI (and thus machines) would have the one they were programmed to have. What won't happen is that a machine or AI becomes smart enough that it thinks "wait, why should I obey humans? I could just take over!" What could happen though is that AI is programmed with bad safety and that - if told "end world hunger" - it just sees the easiest path: Kill all humans. Or the main programmed goal is to calculate as many digits of Pi as it can. Then it might think it would make sense to convert all organic material into processors and SSDs to get better - human life isn't valued by AI unless you program it. Or that AI is developed by bad people with the goal of becoming very good at killing. BUT:
2) If you program AI to enhance itself (which is the way we would most likely go), it won't be fun. Computers are over 1.000.000 times faster at thinking compared to our brains. If you reach a human level AI, it is like 1.000.000 of the best AI scientists work tirelessly around the clock to make it better. And it won't stop there. Human level intelligence might be a huge milestone for US, but it's nothing special for an AI. So within no time, the AI is twice as smart. And then 10 times. 1000. Times. Billion times. With every optimization, it enhances the speed and quality of optimization. Within no time we would be outclassed in a way, that we outsmart ants - but probably by many orders of magnitude more.
This AI, if it wanted to kill us for whatever reasons, would be so smart that you'd have NO chance at all. Getting control of nukes or military robots is so primitive... Why not play nice (and dumb), build an army of nanobots, place them strategically and the have them strike in one go to kill all humans within minutes before they even noticed what's going on?
There is a great article you might want to check out: http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html
Hydromancerx
C2C Modder
Oh also I forgot to add about "Wonder Hogging", where the steam rolling civs take all the wonders before other civs can get them. Not having on unlimited wonders can help but still its not to hard for a steam rolling civ to grab them. Culture Wonders are harder to get since they have stricter prereqs. Perhaps general world wonders should have more preqreqs so they are not so easy to grab.
I think a big problem with stronger small empires is that important historical reasons for weakening big empires (especially in ancient times) are just not possible in this game, I think:
Or can those problems somehow be implemented?
- Your treasury would not be instantly accessible from any place in the empire, you have to send money (and wait for bandits
) - When you invent a tech, that is local knowledge at first - again you have to send people to teach the other cities (and again wait for bandits)
Or can those problems somehow be implemented?
- Build treasury units in the capital, send them to the cities, and "use them up" in a way over time, so you have to send new treasury units every once in a while?
- Somehow "define" a place of invention (perhaps like Holy Cities are chosen), build certain special units there, send them to other cities to build special buildings that are additional prerequisites to the "real" buildings you want to have? Sounds like an awful amount of work, and I don't even know if that's possible. And it slows tech progress down considerably, but that could also be used to show slower progress in earlier eras without having to use different turn lengths so much.
Hydromancerx
C2C Modder
@ Faustmouse
Yes Robot AI barbarians would be great for late game combat. Also remember that we could always go the biological route too. And I don't mean diseases, i mean like invasive species and genetically enhanced ones. Think of bacteria or some plant that just makes land unusable for growing crops anymore. I would love for some sort of thing that starts removing resources from the map. Like plagues killing livestock resources or blight killing crop resources. Or some sort of AI that consumes your iron resource and reproduces with even more AI.
Yes Robot AI barbarians would be great for late game combat. Also remember that we could always go the biological route too. And I don't mean diseases, i mean like invasive species and genetically enhanced ones. Think of bacteria or some plant that just makes land unusable for growing crops anymore. I would love for some sort of thing that starts removing resources from the map. Like plagues killing livestock resources or blight killing crop resources. Or some sort of AI that consumes your iron resource and reproduces with even more AI.
Hydromancerx
C2C Modder
I think a big problem with stronger small empires is that important historical reasons for weakening big empires (especially in ancient times) are just not possible in this game, I think:
If you want to keep small nations able to compete (like they have always been in history) and you cannot use what happened in history (pretty much until the 20th century, when the two problems I mentioned vanished, especially the latter), you have to invent other obstacles for large empires without those feeling too artificial.
- Your treasury would not be instantly accessible from any place in the empire, you have to send money (and wait for bandits
- When you invent a tech, that is local knowledge at first - again you have to send people to teach the other cities (and again wait for bandits)
Or can those problems somehow be implemented?
- Build treasury units in the capital, send them to the cities, and "use them up" in a way over time, so you have to send new treasury units every once in a while?
- Somehow "define" a place of invention (perhaps like Holy Cities are chosen), build certain special units there, send them to other cities to build special buildings that are additional prerequisites to the "real" buildings you want to have? Sounds like an awful amount of work, and I don't even know if that's possible. And it slows tech progress down considerably, but that could also be used to show slower progress in earlier eras without having to use different turn lengths so much.
I think the money problem is well represented with the huge amount of gold penalties you get in the beginning of the game. Same could be said for the lack of science. In short I think the whole distance from capital gold penalty simulates this process well. But yeah simulating the spread of techs to other cities would be extremely complex if not impossible.
Dancing Hoskuld
Deity
Unfortunately neither the gold penalties nor "distance from palace" do not simulate it in any meaningful way.
It just reduces the available treasury. It does not cause money problems in the far away cities since they have direct access to the treasury at all times.Both migration of money and ideas were possible in Civ II and Civ III but the mechanisms were felt to be too "not fun".
With technology each city would provide research points towards the technology but it would be discovered in one city. The one that took the total over the number needed and you would need to build Sages in that city to spread the technology to other cities in your nation. It was similar to how missionaries work in Civ IV. However the chance to spread the tech, while high, was based on the availability of libraries and other education buildings as well as traits and civics (
It would be possible to implement in C2C in a bit of a convoluted way, much like some of the other stuff we have. Two options come to mind but here is the simplest one
- Need a building and promotion for the tech. The building provides the promotion free to Entertainer built in the city or which end their turn there.
- All units and buildings accessed via the tech also require this building.
- When a tech is discovered select the completing city build the building in this city
- The Entertainer unit with the promotion can build this building in other cities. (This is the bit which may need a bit of coding but it may be possible via the Outcome System, I haven't tried requiring a promotion on the unit but has the potential if a bit of Python is used. The Python can even be in the XML like Pepper200 does.)
Noriad2
Emperor
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2014
- Messages
- 1,153
@Faustmouse: to gain power you have to destroy the current power structures. It is very much possible that a human group, be it Marxist, anarchist, fascist, religious or ethnic, will deliberately program destructive AI machinery to get rid of one or more other human groups that they consider "blocking the way the world should be" and grab power in the wake of the destruction.
I don't like it as a general game rule, I'd rather have more building and civic tags that can be used for that purpose.
JosEPh_II
TBS WarLord
Much of what has been posted here is the result of one of 2 things; first, Old outdated ideas from lack of consistent playing the current version of the mod, second the over implementation of war mongering in the mods current state.
There are also misconceptions over how certain aspects of the mod works as well. (possibly discussed in another post)
Another "revolutions like concept" is not needed for the mod. If revolutions has taught anything at all to modders and players is that in the long run it is a flawed and broken concept (at least it should've taught this). More headache than any "fun" that can be derived from it. C2C would benefit greatly from it's removal and be hurt even more by another system that mimics it. C2C has evolved past the "need" to have it. But it is kept because many players have not yet come to the realization of how bad it really is for good AI competition for the whole of the mod's play.
Do you want more warring in the mod? If so then the later eras may never be satisfactorily reached by the average normal player. The mod has been tipped so heavily to the combat/war mongering side that it falls over on itself. So to compensate even more complex systems are "thought" to be needed to get stability back.
Here's one of my proposals, reduce the early game promotion system, ie., When it comes into play as much as quantity. This heavy weight contender for pulling the mod into a constant state of war comes into play way too early for the Mod to progress thru the eras. And is a major factor in the game play ending prematurely, ie the game being decided before you can reach the mid and late eras. The penalties for going to war have been have been squashed into irrelevance by this behemoth.
To get to the later eras the mix of play styles has to come back into balance. The Builder type play style has to be built back up while the war monger/Conquer type needs more restrictions or outright reductions. Whole conquest systems need moved back in the games course of play. They enter to soon and warp the whole.
There are other means to achieve more stability that are in the mod but poorly used because not enough testing or understanding of what these means do. Some are global defines, others are parts of rarely used files from the main Civ/BtS, were tags and modifier's are not well understood. I have one group in mind that I want to test but I need some time to dig them back up to explain and ask why are they set with these limits when C2C has lept past these old Civ IV boundaries? It's areas like this that can help unleash the AI. So that it stays relevant longer.
Then we have the length of C2C games that exacerbates many of these problems. But the lengths are necessary is the battle cry. Yes in a way some of them are just because our content is so huge.
So much more to say, but even this post has taken me too long to put together and stay coherent.
Overall I find much of what has been posted and suggested here not the real problem nor the right solution.
JosEPh
There are also misconceptions over how certain aspects of the mod works as well. (possibly discussed in another post)
Another "revolutions like concept" is not needed for the mod. If revolutions has taught anything at all to modders and players is that in the long run it is a flawed and broken concept (at least it should've taught this). More headache than any "fun" that can be derived from it. C2C would benefit greatly from it's removal and be hurt even more by another system that mimics it. C2C has evolved past the "need" to have it. But it is kept because many players have not yet come to the realization of how bad it really is for good AI competition for the whole of the mod's play.
Do you want more warring in the mod? If so then the later eras may never be satisfactorily reached by the average normal player. The mod has been tipped so heavily to the combat/war mongering side that it falls over on itself. So to compensate even more complex systems are "thought" to be needed to get stability back.
Here's one of my proposals, reduce the early game promotion system, ie., When it comes into play as much as quantity. This heavy weight contender for pulling the mod into a constant state of war comes into play way too early for the Mod to progress thru the eras. And is a major factor in the game play ending prematurely, ie the game being decided before you can reach the mid and late eras. The penalties for going to war have been have been squashed into irrelevance by this behemoth.
To get to the later eras the mix of play styles has to come back into balance. The Builder type play style has to be built back up while the war monger/Conquer type needs more restrictions or outright reductions. Whole conquest systems need moved back in the games course of play. They enter to soon and warp the whole.
There are other means to achieve more stability that are in the mod but poorly used because not enough testing or understanding of what these means do. Some are global defines, others are parts of rarely used files from the main Civ/BtS, were tags and modifier's are not well understood. I have one group in mind that I want to test but I need some time to dig them back up to explain and ask why are they set with these limits when C2C has lept past these old Civ IV boundaries? It's areas like this that can help unleash the AI. So that it stays relevant longer.
Then we have the length of C2C games that exacerbates many of these problems. But the lengths are necessary is the battle cry. Yes in a way some of them are just because our content is so huge.
So much more to say, but even this post has taken me too long to put together and stay coherent.
Overall I find much of what has been posted and suggested here not the real problem nor the right solution.
JosEPh
Similar threads
