Mega Mod

[Slowpoke]

Hmm.. it may be a bug, then, I'm pretty sure I took it out (note, insta heal is gone, but fortify heal should be available in every territory). Do you have earlier versions downloaded? Mods seem to bug out if you have both multiple versions downloaded even if you only enable one.

Edit: yeah I just checked by downloading my mod via modbrowser and you can heal. Chances are you haven't deleted earlier versions of my mod, or some other mod is removing the healing. Also I'll provide a link to tech overflow in one sec, it's not on mod browser for some reason. You'll have to download the zip, extract it, and put it in the MODS folder of your usergames>>civ5 folder. Okay it's here

 

[Rcon]

Thanks for the fast reply!

Yes I had an earlier version still downloaded so Ill remove it and hopefully it'll work when I play tomorrow. Ill try the research mod then too.

 

[Valkrionn]

Going to take a look at some of your changes.

I feel obliged to point something out though... You spelled my name wrong in the first post.

 

[Slowpoke]

Hah, yeah I'll get that fixed, hold on

Also everyone, I will be away from any computer with civ 5 from tuesday till about sunday. So if there's any drastic problems with v9 it'll ahve to wait. I can still make comments, though

 

[Panda_Power]

Hello!

I read what you wrote in the other thread about ICS and how your mod already fixes a lot of the problems with the game so I'm trying it out!

To avoid any incompatibility I'm just using your mod and nothing else.

Just one little problem so far in that you can't right-click to dismiss a city state message anymore and that's a bit of a pain because having to click on it takes you all over the map. I hope it's an easy fix!

Keep up the great work!

 

[Slowpoke]

Luckily, I will be able to take out the no right clicking for v10 because the devs stole my idea In the next update you won't be able to save policies even in vanilla.

 

[Valkrionn]

Saving policies is not in and of itself a bad thing. It is a perfectly valid strategy.

If there are any policies that are seen as "too good" and necessary to save for, then the balance between early and late policies should be addressed, rather than removing a valid strategy and virtually banning many players from ever finishing late game policy trees, while simultaneously forcing them to make suboptimal choices.

Can you tell I dislike that change?

 

[Slowpoke]

Admittedly it was temporary, but what has to be done to make policy skipping not an exploit at the moment is a lot of work. Unless you know of a way to link policy branches to open on something other than beelined techs? Ideally, the requirements would be a specific amount of used/built up culture. Without that knowledge, I'd have to redesign the entire tech tree.

Or, as I am going to do sometime soon, rebalancing policies out so that there are no prereqs other than opening the branch and each policy in the branch is worth about as much as any other in the branch. But that's a lot of work, too. And there is still the problem of rediculous gimmicks that force those going to cultural victory to use their policies in a completely constrained way like a diablo build or something.

 

[Valkrionn]

See, I'm just not convinced that skipping is an exploit at all. You're trading immediate, long term benefit, for potential benefit later on.

In any case, one alternative both Dale and I have suggested is a cultural decay, coming into effect when you have stored policies. Couple that with a limit on the number of policies you can take in one turn (So you can't use all stored policies at once) and it should play out a bit better.

 

[Slowpoke]

That's pretty interesting! I'd probably use that in addition to my design choices. I still think redesigning the prereqs or tech tree is ultimately the only way to make policies interesting, though. Dumping is a neat strategy, but there's only one or two ways to dump at the moment. The main aim of my mod is to go for varied strategies.

 

[Valkrionn]

Well, there are plenty of ways to use stored policies. A few specific OPTIMUM ways, but that just tells you which policies need to be rebalanced IMO.

And I rather think that rebalancing the policies (and redesigning some wholesale) would work, but yes, the techtree causes problems of it's own. I would just rather address the specific problems than see the results of those problems be tackled, at least in the base game.

 

[Slowpoke]

Heh, well I doubt the devs will get around to SP balance, REAL SP balance at least, for a few months in the base game

Anyways, thanks for the input

 

[alpaca]

See, I'm just not convinced that skipping is an exploit at all. You're trading immediate, long term benefit, for potential benefit later on.

In any case, one alternative both Dale and I have suggested is a cultural decay, coming into effect when you have stored policies. Couple that with a limit on the number of policies you can take in one turn (So you can't use all stored policies at once) and it should play out a bit better.

Yeah I had some similar ideas. I like the decay idea, maybe a -k(culture - policyCost)^k' contribution (could be easily coded in Lua I think) so that if you have more culture than you need, you don't get your full culture output anymore and, at some point, it won't increase anymore at all.

I think saving up policies could also be made a little less broken by tieing each specific policy to a specific tech rather than the whole branch to an era. This would require having a root tech for each branch and some tech tree re-design but I think we all agree the tech tree isn't that well thought-out anyways

 

[Dale]

but I think we all agree the tech tree isn't that well thought-out anyways

Here, here. Too many holes to fill. Scrap it and start again.

 

[Seek]

What about using the anarchy mechanic? For example: After five turns of having excess culture for a policy, there's a 10% chance that the empire goes into anarchy for a turn; after 15 turns, a 20% chance etc. Since practically noone switches between exclusive branches it is an underutilized aspect of the game, and it would balance it so that if you want to save culture it would become a very large risk. Most importantly, I think it would be fun.

 

[Valkrionn]

What about using the anarchy mechanic? For example: After five turns of having excess culture for a policy, there's a 10% chance that the empire goes into anarchy for a turn; after 15 turns, a 20% chance etc. Since practically noone switches between exclusive branches it is an underutilized aspect of the game, and it would balance it so that if you want to save culture it would become a very large risk. Most importantly, I think it would be fun.

I actually used anarchy for something else recently.

Dark Ages v1​

Alright, Dark Ages are implemented and should be functioning well. I have absolutely no idea if they are balanced yet, however, as I've done nothing other than test using FireTuner to make sure it behaved as expected.

Changelog:

• Long periods of unhappiness now trigger Dark Ages
  • The Dark Age Meter is incremented if your empire's Unhappiness, minus the current Golden Age Meter, is greater than 0.
  • Once the Meter is equal to or greater than the Dark Age Threshold, a Dark Age begins. The Threshold starts at 500, and is decreased by 50 for each Dark Age you trigger.
• Dark Ages consist of 10 turns of Anarchy
  • As of now, the length of a Dark Age is constant. I'm considering setting it to increase with each new Dark Age, but I'm not sure it's necessary. Opinions are welcome.

Issues:

As far as I am aware, there are no non-graphical issues. From the point of view of the player, the GoldenAgeMeter simply moves into negative values; So long as it is positive, the DA Meter will not increase (unless Unhappiness - GA Meter > 0, in which case it increases by that difference, as should be expected), and the same holds for the opposite.

The top panel will also display Dark Ages accurately, including in the mouseover; The only graphical issue that I know of is the lack of a Dark Age icon. Looks slightly odd to see the Golden Age icon next to the text; If anyone would like to make an icon for it, feel free. Not really my area of expertise.

 

[Seek]

@Valkrionn
I haven't been keeping up with the Economy Mod thread recently, looks cool!

I still think my idea could work well though.

 

[Valkrionn]

@Valkrionn
I haven't been keeping up with the Economy Mod thread recently, looks cool!

I still think my idea could work well though.

It could, I just prefer to minimize chance results; A counter is as simple, or nearly so, and comes across better to the player.

And that mod isn't in Economy Mod as yet, either. For that matter, it's not publicly available yet.

 

[alpaca]

10 turns of anarchy sounds really harsh. This just means you should never, ever go into a dark age and, therefore, doesn't add much to gameplay imho.

 

[Seek]

It could, I just prefer to minimize chance results; A counter is as simple, or nearly so, and comes across better to the player.

And that mod isn't in Economy Mod as yet, either. For that matter, it's not publicly available yet.

I'm looking forward to it!

I'm not sure how a counter would be effective with this however. I feel like Civ5 would be more interesting to a lot of players if there were more dynamic risk/reward aspects to it, in this case a "random" element only caused by the player who made a conscious decision to hold off on the next policy. It wouldn't be like random events in Civ4 that truly randomly awarded or penalized you. Please note that the numbers used are basically random and the concept needs some fleshing out and fine tuning for sure.

If it's of interest to anyone, I also made the suggestion in Thal's Balance - Fewer Poor Policies thread, and I think it may be clearer than what I wrote above:

Spoiler :

So a thought I had would be to have a chance that the civ enters a turn or two of anarchy if you have excess culture for a SP. For example, say that after 5 turns without choosing a policy, there would be a 10% chance that you'll have a turn of anarchy, after 15 turns a 20% chance, etc. (These are just numbers off the top of my head and would have to be tested and balanced obviously.) So it would be a risk that becomes more and more chancy the longer one goes without choosing: you could wait a few turns to get to the next critical era, but to save all your culture throughout the game would be severely detrimental. The anarchy mechanic is underutilized in civ5 also, as AFAIK nobody switches between exclusive policy trees, and it may help with realism/immersion too because your people would literally be demanding social change!

Sorry for highjacking your thread, Slowpoke! I can only hope this idea is appealing and/or useful to you.