Maritime Battles+ for VP 38

[Tekamthi]

strange.. should be a zip. Can you d/l other resources from civfanatics okay? Seems to be working when I tried just now.

 

[Tekamthi]

quick update on this, in case anyone's clicking through this thread... loaded up a game recently but some of the VP tables have changed since i last updated MB+... v19 will not work as intended w/ current version of VP. I have an updated version in modbuddy, but it needs some more hours yet before its fixed and new features settled. will upload a v20 in coming weeks/months, but my immediate time is short for this kind of project. looks like lots of other mod mods on the boards here to try in meantime!

 

[CCruise]

I'm starting my next game with hex conquer and release hope it still works with the newest VP beta. Will try your mod when V20 is out!

 

[Tekamthi]

I'm starting my next game with hex conquer and release hope it still works with the newest VP beta. Will try your mod when V20 is out!

hex conquer is definitely one of the best parts of this collection... I'll probably look back at fixing this up in its entirety in December -- won't have time until then, but it's not abandoned.

 

[havox79]

Very cool mod, I want to try it ! Can I know wich last version of VP is compatible ? or what is not working as intended is the last version ? (I know a little about lua and civ modding so maybe I can Help)

 

[Tekamthi]

CBP changed the tables re: promos so that some of the sql tags cause the file to not update completely (ie when civ 5 loads the mod, it fails at a certain line where support for the corresponding tags no longer exist in .dll).. anyway this just leaves some things working and some not. As I recall the deprecated promo fields were something like 'addedfromnearbypromo' and 1 or 2 other corresponding ones. There is no real replacement for these in CBP last I checked, so these parts have to be removed at a minimum to make the sql work.. they were not very important part of the mod 'cept they cause the mod updates to abort before completing.

I was in the midst of tweaking units/upgrade lines for some naval & zeppelins.. but CBP evolved further w/ new naval promos etc. and I havent adapted the mod to these yet. I'm not sure exactly when these things were all changed in CBP.. its been about 6 months since I've actually played a game hoping to get back to this by xmas at this point, but maybe sooner

I am guessing that trying to fix this as-is would take a little time to sort out, but there were several months after this update that it still worked iirc. unfortunately the change that broke this was only captured in G's changenotes as 'performance optimizations', so it'll be hard to track down exactly what version will still work... pick one shortly after u/l date of last version of MB+.. sorry i can't be more specific

EDIT: for reference, this was discussed on github in July 2018 @ https://github.com/LoneGazebo/Community-Patch-DLL/issues/4524 It'll be some pre-July 2018 version for compatibility

 

[Amadhe]

So... are you still planning on working on this? If so, perhaps it would be best to wait until VP gets a final edition. I really enjoyed this mod.

 

[Tekamthi]

yeah i am, and i've decided to do just that... The VP team has been changing small things under the hood, and arguably with good reason, but ultimately it broke my last release, and fixing it and adding in the final round of features i'd like to include will take hours more to align with the new sql tables and dll changes... my offline life just does not favor spending such time now, only to maybe have to fix it again later. I'll be back though on this.

 

[Valvts]

Anybody got a video to show how it works?
Thanks!

 

[Tekamthi]

I will be uploading an update to this mod shortly, and will be updating the top post to reflect only its new state, rather than a more comprehensive background and change-log style. From v20 onwards, the old top post content (last changed August 2018) is only historically relevant, and will instead live here for posterity's sake:

Spoiler :

Some feel that naval and coastal combat in VP is somewhat bland in comparison to the rest of this great mod. MB+ seeks to bring more variety to VP's naval strategy, coastal warfare, and beyond, while respecting the AI's capabilities, and the existing unit balance developed by Gazebo et al. See this thread, or this one for a little background.

MB+ started as DB edits to an in-progress hotseat save between a couple housemates (civ 1-4 vets mostly, with a slight bias towards historically relevant gameplay over perfect "balance"). Over months these accumulated considerably, and a few additional requests have been worked in here as we anticipate starting our next non-test game in the new year. Most of the work here isn't truly mine; I've just compiled a few components together and tweaked.

The result here is substantially different in the way VP plays out-of-the-box, so to speak, and will not be to everyone's taste. But it feels good, at least to a couple of humans that have played so far.

The download is still beta and in need of feedback on a few features, but it all works and has been tested somewhat extensively by now. There are bound to be a few balance issues that will never be worked out -- balance will always be better in main VP if thats what you're after: w/ more tactical choices, even though all are accessible to AI here, a clever human should find at least small advantages. Add more humans/43-AI civs/higher difficulty if balance is a concern with this mod.

In brief, MB+ implements and customizes friendly waters, hex conquer 'n release & growing fog of war. These mods can all be found w/ descriptions elsewhere on the forums or steam workshop. It further adds to VP's existing naval promotions, so that withdrawals are a regular feature of naval combat, and naval melee can have some effect on coastal tiles. The major features worth noting here are:

Features

Spoiler :

Conquering Territory
Tiles can change hands dynamically during war. Basically, a land unit will "contest" any enemy tile its in or adjacent to. If the opponent does not similarly contest that tile by standing in or adjacent to it, it will flip sides. Fort and citadel can only be contested by the unit in that tile, not adjacent. Cities and citadels always contest immediately adjacent tiles. See hex conquer 'n release mod elsewhere on forums. This affects all combat; in particular emphasizes the value of capturing beaches and coastal territory first, rather than cities directly by naval invaders. Also makes non-city capture wars more useful.

Coastal Invasion
Existing naval ranged units gain % chance to force target retreat with both promo lines. The result here, combined w/ above, is important: instead of bombarding coastal land units to death as player (human especially) cycles through attack-and-move ranged naval, these warships now soften and push enemies back from the coast, allowing invading units to land and attempt to capture territory, possibly allowing ships to resupply on some future turn if successful. In our view, defender on coast often can't even see the naval units that kill him in one turn in standard VP; defender now often survives for at least one more turn, giving defender an additional tactical choice. Naval ranged bombard line also adds up to 10 splash damage. Naval melee gain ability to affect coastal tiles through coastal raider promo line; at level 3: 10 damage to adjacent enemy unit, +5% to adjacent friendly city defense (+existing VP bonuses). Overall coastal invasions now seem to last an extra couple turns, w/ more tactical considerations, and emphasize combining ships w/ invading land units, w/o actually diminishing the ability to attack cities directly if desired.

Coastal Countermeasures
VP's minefield naval movement penalty effect is now applied through coastal fortress available in rennaissance. 'Minefield' building itself now has land effect instead, like a more expensive, less effective russian ostrog.

Fort & citadel improvements provide minor bonus to units in tile, allowing even land melees to play a minor role in repelling naval invaders: +1 vis & +5 heal in citadel, +5 heal and 10 adjacent pilum dmg in fort.

Naval Combat & Retreats/withdrawals
Naval melee boarding promo line adds 'heavy charge' force retreat effect. Along with retreat/withdrawal increase on ranged ships, withdrawals become standard in naval warfare. Enemy ships can now be "trapped" against coastal features very actively, and angle of attack, and defensive positioning, become significant considerations. It becomes more difficult to queue up same-turn attack-and-move spam on a single unit, as targets retreat/route away from combat. AI has been observed working with this just fine, especially w/ Deity spam at its disposal. Withdraw before & small adjacent bonus added to some naval promos as well.

Units
Added ancient era melee and ranged naval units, as well as an experimental ancient/classical naval recon unit. Aiming for mix of combat/trade/exploration roles, for a little historical flavor (we know of few, if any, dedicated warships back then, trade/war was intermingled at sea). Ancient melee ship gets "prize ships" promo (still testing this.. important that early-era supply cap prevents captured navies from growing uncontrollably)

Ancient/classical combat naval units can enter rival territory (more early naval action this way).

Ancient/classical recon naval unit can enter ocean, but can only "drift" 1-tile-per-turn until it returns to coast; aiming to give small options to island-locked player w/o turning ocean movement progression on its head completely.

Zeppelin & helicopter can now play a better hybrid naval role (don't embark in ocean, but cannot heal outside friendly w/o support, and face other minor penalties)

Recon, Visibility & Exploration
Fog of war grows back, scaling rate w/ tech. see growing fog of war mod. Visibility of ancient naval units reduced to 1. Early naval era, and the early world overall, feel a lot smaller and more uncertain, and maps and exploration activity are very important, rather than an afterthought. Recon units can play a more local role w/o sacrificing xp, though they can lvl up very (maybe too) easily now. Using early recon units in combat is less of a risk to potential late-game elite paratroopers this way.

Naval Movement & Wonders

Movement in water has been changed broadly. half-cost for movement in coastal tiles near friendly lighthouses, plus maritime academy national wonder available upon discovering 75% of the world ocean (difficult to do w/ growing fog) gives half move cost in ocean, too.

In combat, naval ranged are penalized -1 move upon engaging (either attack/def), and must spend one full turn combat-free to restore full movement. Naval melee do not suffer this penalty, giving them a slight advantage.

All ships damaged to below 35 health receive -1 movement penalty until they heal over 50 health.

From a civ-franchise "legacy" perspective, the Great Lighthouse effect simply lasts too long. Great lighthouse promo will not be added to new units after discovering dynamite (maybe a .5-1 era bonus on civ 1-4 obsolete techs), but gives small TR range and tourism boost prior to obsolescence, and gives friendly lighthouse movement bonus in all friendly territory (local lighthouse or not) throughout game.

Great Lighthouse, Treasure Fleet, and new Maritime Academy all grant +movement to naval units in the way most of us are used to (GL and TF are same as pre-Jan 2018 VP) but w/o the extra vision; each of these movement promos now remove upon engaging in combat, replaced by the +vision component temporarily (ie move fast at peace w/ no vision, move slow but see far during naval combat turns). movement promo is restored after a turn combat-free, and vision fades off again unless combat continues. The result means a fast moving fleet will still be able to use speed to launch a surprise attack, but the ensuing combat will all be done at near-base movement, and encourages full engagements rather than hit-and-run. I haven't touched any movement bonus that is easily accessible to all ie through promo or policy (england still keeps UA here, too). Combat movement will hopefully be more reasonable across the board, especially for attack-and-move abuse, while still having fast ships to travel across wide, empty oceans.

Galleass can enter ocean after astronomy.

Naval Range

all naval units max 1 range until cruisers. at cruiser base range becomes 2. +range promotion is not available to naval ranged until battleship. ie 3 range battleship is still possible

I've added compatibility support for VP EE, ENW, and 3UC/4UC. At worst there may be small oversights w/ these. Most other mods that do not affect the same specific gameplay areas should be fine.

If anyone is interested, I'd love to hear your feedback, especially concerning bugs/exploits/issues you notice. Many things in MB+ won't be optimized for AI, necessarily, but I've taken care to only implement features that the AI can make use of, ie no niche, human-only aspects are included. Expect a slightly easier experience at war on any given difficulty, due primarily to more tactical options. AI may surprise, however... the tile capture mechanism suits some of its otherwise questionable 1-unit adventures into enemy territory, for example. I have tested mainly in a 43-civ/deity/marathon/huge/hotseat game, as well as a few AI-only runs. Works well to liven up the 43-civ deity spam in particular.

Updates

Spoiler :

Dec 27: initial testing had as many humans as AI... this masked important flaws and bugs. Removed unnecessary "features" (most are available in other mods anyway). Please re-download if interested.

Jan 2: Reverted changes to galley, great galleass, and turtle ship, to improve compatibility with other mods that refer to these. These were somewhat secondary to the point of this mod. Will look at adding units in a later rev to fill any missing roles. Added ancient era melee & ranged naval units (oops, production bug, they work in the end, but cannot change while building them; will track this down over next few days). Prelim compatibility support for enhanced naval warfare and enlightenment era (VP versions).

Jan 7: beta v15: Fixed production bug w/ ancient era ships. A few other minor adjustments to these. added sql updates to set battleship and cruiser back to 2 base range (but no units from other mods). Changed "friendly waters" effect to "lighthouse waters": friendly cities with lighthouse will provide movement bonus, but not friendly territory w/o lighthouse. Great lighthouse provides lighthouse bonus in all friendly territory, but loses the general +movement from its promo (FW changes untested; do they work? if so, I can't tell from code alone if it applies as-implemented to only owner of GL, or anyone friendly w/ owner.. the latter would be cool). Added "flank speed" promo to all naval ranged. This promo does nothing on its own, except to convert immediately after combat to "naval engagement" promo for -1 movement for "1" turn (effectively lasts 2, however.. direct your questions to the dll). Simple lua adds back "flank speed" to any unit that has "naval engagement" promo at start of each turn. I've observed this for 15 mins of actual gameplay and it seems to work w/o stacking movement penalty, but instead adding to the turn timer, so if a unit is in combat every turn, it will have many turns of -1 movement, vs just 2 turns of -1 movement if it fights in 1 battle then escapes. W/o having played much so far, I like how this works at first glance to mitigate attack-and-move cheese, and bring some AI-accessible variety to combat. Still a BETA, in need of testing, w/ rough edges for text/art etc -- but should feel a little more refined and playable now that the early production bug is gone, at least.

Jan 10: beta v16: developed the naval movement penalties described above a little further. Added text in-game to hopefully help anyone make sense of these, and made their timing more consistent. Objective is to make most naval combat take place at near-base movement values. Very experimental at this stage, but its working and very playable too. See the feature spoiler, for longer description.

Jan 11 edit: checking text in-game made me realize how many pedia reference tags were messed up. Cleaned these up an re-uploaded. No other changes, same v16 functionality otherwise.

Jan 12: beta v17: fixed/added back animations to the few units that had lost these . developed combat turn temp penalties to ensure consistent application. fixed small issues with maritime academy NW. small compatibility support changes to lua and sql (haven't done a full compatibility attempt yet, but nothing should be broken w/ most mods).

Jan 13: beta v18: last iteration for a while (other than for any new bug fixes). movement penalties and naval promos are all working and in-place, as I would expect they'll stay. revised/rebuilt various functions for much better compatibility and adaptability to other mods. v18 is the place to get in on this mod for longer games.. much more a "final draft" than any earlier rev.

Mar 28: beta v19: reworked "friendly/lighthouse waters" to apply to coast only, and have tested w/ lakes.. no issue. FW move bonus behaves like other movement bonuses now (ie disabled temporarily during combat turns). Turned down fog growth rate, though it is still noticeable, especially early. added 5 policy options to reduce this further (text updated in-game). Added a new early exploration/trade naval unit, that can try to "drift" through ocean -- limit 1 per city (this is somewhat experimental.. trying to give stranded human in MP a lifeline w/o breaking ocean-travel progression). Removed trade ability from other ancient naval units. Gave all (most) units their own art. Cleaned up minor bugs and oversights.

DOWNLOAD: V19 IS HERE

NOTE: V19 not working as intended with recent versions of VP... standby for v20, unless using an old VP

 

[Castfinder]

I found a bug where Maritime Battles++ is causing the incognito cloud on the map to reappear in places where I previously explored. This is for VP 2.0

 

[Tekamthi]

sry i've neglected to post my update.. that old version is not gonna work right with current VP -- will track down which machine i last saved this project on and upload something shortly

 

[Tekamthi]

Tekamthi updated Maritime Battles+ (VP) with a new update entry:

MB+ rebuilt

The long-promised MB+ update is now available. See OP for feature description. Please provide feedback about bugs and/or balance issues.

 

[balparmak]

Nice! I haven't tried this yet so I don't know how well the AI handles it, but combat changes would make battles a lot more dynamic. I hope they use something like this in Civ7.

 

[Tekamthi]

Nice! I haven't tried this yet so I don't know how well the AI handles it, but combat changes would make battles a lot more dynamic. I hope they use something like this in Civ7.

certainly some small advantages to knowledgeable, calculating human... imo only small ones though... Can always up the difficulty.

This mod began as an add-on to spice up some hotseat games, so AI was not the chief concern, though nonetheless a close second priority.

Where possible, I'd like to adjust features to be better-suited to general play against AI in the current VP paradigm; to anyone playing this mod, keep in mind that MB+ was created during the era of shoot-n-scoot naval ranged, and originally intended to mitigate the effect of numerous same-turn attacks on a single target etc. I realize that was quite a while ago now, but thats when most/all of the work here was done. My recent update was a result of tracking down these old files, and cleaning it up for VP 2.0 compatibility -- it likely needs further balancing, and i need feedback and ideas from community to accomplish this.

 

[Tekamthi]

Tekamthi updated Maritime Battles+ (VP) with a new update entry:

wonder promo bug fix

v20 had bug in naval movement promos from wonders (GL, magellan, treasure fleet). Fixed.

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[Tekamthi]

This mod seems to have a couple hundred downloads, I wonder if anyone plays with it regularly? I put it in my deity games to help deal with carpets of AI units (and end up losing anyway), but only sometimes at lower difficulties. I haven't tried it yet with any of the recent congress updates, curious if anything's broken now.

I've identified some aspects of this mod's existing features that could be done more efficiently, and sketched out some plans to overhaul these, but this won't change how the mechanisms work, just the hit to system resources. I may look at adding ways to enable/disable individual features of this mod as well, but otherwise am generally treating this one as (close to) complete.

I've had one feature in mind that I've never quite worked out how to accomplish, mainly due to lack of model. I wonder if any other modders here might have ideas of how to go about this: naval combat needs some representation of weather, affecting naval movement and/or visibility. Most of the framework for this exists already, its really just the model for 'storm clouds' or some such that is lacking. It would be best implemented as an improvement AND terrain feature -- the improvement would be necessary for the art model attached to these to appear and disappear across the map from turn to turn, and the feature (invisible) would be required to limit visibility in particular. There can only be one improvement per tile, but my plan is for this weather to be water-tiles-only, so there'd be few conflicts, just wouldn't spawn where fishing boats etc. already exist.

As of recently, there is an art model available for clouds as a unit -- I am not familiar enough with civ 5's art assets to say whether this can be converted somehow to an improvement... I don't think I can make the naval weather work as I'd like using a unit, i'd need to convert it to improvement somehow. Any ideas?

 

[Rcon]

I haven't tried it - but only because I didn't know about it. Most of this seems really nice. You said you use it on Diety but not on lower difficulty, do you think the mod makes the game easier? I would've thought that a free return fire would benefit the AI since they have more boats and a human will try to position themselves to not take as many hits in the first place? Or is it the fact that the AI has so many units that the ability to push them back when damaged and have them clump up on eachother is very strong?

Maybe some components could by themselves be suggested as additions to the main mod? I think the return fire on naval in particular would be interesting

Also this would make early game exploration a lot less frustrating in some cases where you find yourself boxed in. Also makes some sense as nations probably didn't have that close guard over their territorial waters in that time period.

• All units with the 'cannot enter ocean' promotion (eg trireme, dromon, galleass) can enter rival territory

 

[Tekamthi]

I haven't tried it - but only because I didn't know about it. Most of this seems really nice. You said you use it on Diety but not on lower difficulty, do you think the mod makes the game easier? I would've thought that a free return fire would benefit the AI since they have more boats and a human will try to position themselves to not take as many hits in the first place? Or is it the fact that the AI has so many units that the ability to push them back when damaged and have them clump up on eachother is very strong?

Maybe some components could by themselves be suggested as additions to the main mod? I think the return fire on naval in particular would be interesting

Also this would make early game exploration a lot less frustrating in some cases where you find yourself boxed in. Also makes some sense as nations probably didn't have that close guard over their territorial waters in that time period.

• All units with the 'cannot enter ocean' promotion (eg trireme, dromon, galleass) can enter rival territory

all of these features are very accessible to the AI, this was a prime consideration as I selected features and discarded others -- the AI often manages to use these features optimally, despite not knowing about them -- but therein lies the imbalance, human DOES know about them, or at least human that has played around with this more than once, and can out-plan the AI's blind use of them. However there are no asymmetrical features, everything in this mod can be and is used by AI.

One change you'll notice 'on the battlefield' if you play a naval-war focused game, is that the AI will sometimes trap your individual naval units in a way that in base VP cannot be saved -- with MB+, there is a greater chance you can undo their maneuver and save your trapped unit from otherwise certain destruction. The AI sometimes achieves some interesting things like this too, but it also sometimes just overlooks alternative plays that seem obvious to the human player. With the counter-attack in particular, there is often an optimal order to your attacks (ie you don't want low-health ranged units to be the first to hit a full health ranged unit), AI occasionally determines sub-optimal order in these situations.

Some features here tend to suit the AI more than human -- there is a 'maritime academy' in this mod (iirc, i rarely ever achieve it so I may be misremembering the name) that requires that you discover 80% of all ocean tiles to build, and once built, provides significant out-of-combat movement bonus. AI players almost always get this before human.

On deity for me, none of the MB+ advantages matter at all: though I used to be able to pull off deity wins maybe 25% to 30% of the time in early years of VP, its been at least 2 years now since I've won a game at that level: no matter whether MB+ confers a small or large advantage, the result for me is the same -- so why not include something a little more fun than the bland naval combat that is civ 5 vanilla/vp if I'm gonna lose anyway? That's how I've been looking at it. That said I think any imbalances here are rather small and/or negligible.

If I could figure out how to implement the weather function as I've theorized on last post, this would probably become an every-play mod for me once again, as it used to be during shoot-n-scoot naval days of VP.

 

[Amadhe]

Have you considered seeking help on the Civ V Modding Helpline Server, or the Vox Populi Official Discord Server?
They may have some answers for you, I'm in the Civ VI Modding Helpline Server and they're extremely helpful there, so I can only assume the Civ V Modding Helpline Server might be your best bet.

Also, I love your mod, I played with it everytime I play Civ V, which I cannot play without VP, EE, and MB. (then again, I only play Civ V once every few months, but when I do play Civ V I use this mod (which I haven't done in a while because I had to reset my pc so I came here to ask a question).

Anyways, my question is that which version of VP does the latest version of this mod work with?

I've been forced to reset my pc which meant I lost the out of date version of VP I used to play on, so I've come to seek answers from the source. It says MB+ for VP 20.1, but as far as I know hasn't the latest version of VP only just reached 3.0?