Minor suggestions

[AnotherPacifist]

Well, in RFC, when a civ collapses, it disintegrates into barbarian and independent civs (the cities keep their units), and there are 2 separate independent civ each with their own tech rate. Maybe give the newly indy city the same techs as its parent?

(The expectation is that you should be able to conquer that city back but with some trauma to your empire, just like the Jin Dynasty)

 

[Shiggs713]

just some small things that bothered me with how some of the units vs their counters are discovered. Maybe it was just me, but it seemed like some units come too early and others too late. For an example, in normal BTS stuff like spears and pikemen are generally available quite a bit of time before horse archers and knights, respectively. This seemed to not be the case with some units vs counters in HotTK. The elite pikemen was the very last unit I unlocked.... I had knights perhaps 50 turns before that....

Same with Dao Dun Swordsmen, and Guardians.... really after I unlocked those, I hardly built anything else, except some trebuchets and knights occaisionally. The AI's really love to build Guardians... almost to the point that they ruin themselves, by not having any other unit types around except maybe an archer or two.

The AI's also really really love to build walls, outer walls, inner walls, stone sentinel maze ect... They usually build these on top flight priority. If I were them, I'd be building forges and metal works ect. first and foremost, then units if necessary secondly, then anything else.

so AI would be improved if they built things in this order:

1) anything that increases production
2) units necessary to deter an attack or defend. If at war they should basically built units non-stop
3) culture and commerce increasing buildings
4) anything else

The Chen Xiao or whatever the trireme looking boat is comes entirely too early, to be the deadliest warship.

just some small gripes that could be easily adjusted

 

[AnotherPacifist]

But sometimes the best building is not production. For example, I usually go first for granary first (if I don't have a religion), or advisor mansion (if I have one). Even if I'm at war, if I have enough units I don't build them.

When I look at my espionage, I find that what the AI needs to do is to stop building stupid things like workers and long building projects when the enemy has enough force to capture the city imminently.

 

[Shiggs713]

yea, unfortunately the AI will never "pause" production like us humans will. For an example, sometimes I will start constructing a building, even with no intentions of finishing it right away. I just do it so my city will grow. Then once it grows I'll switch back to producing a unit if I need one.

The AI's will never do this, its just one of their limitations inherited from BTS. To kind of "fix" this I would propose that the AI should and in fact could fairly easily take into account how powerful their imminent rivals are. If they are more than 150% or so weaker then their imminent rivals, they should be mass producing units. I know they have full capability of massing troops, heck I can build a gigantic army with 5 cities in 20 turns. The espionage thing that shows how powerful rivals civs are could be used. For example, Lu Bu starts the game out at war with Cao Cao, I would imagine when they begin the game, the Lu Bu/Cao Cao power ratio is probably around 2.0 (Cao Cao being 200% stronger than Lu Bu). They hate each other and are at war, Lu Bu's AI should produce nothing but units to begin the game until they are either dead or the war is over.

Somehow it should be possible to take these ratio's combined with relative attitudes and proximities to determine whether or not the AI should be on a strict unit producing frenzy. I know the HotTK team knows how to find if the civs are close to each other, thats how they limited vassals so you have to have a border with them before they'll become one.

I in fact use these same ratio's to determine who, when, and even how I will attack, shouldn't the AI's? Perhaps they do to some degree, but honestly when I see civs getting overrun time and time again, trying to produce buildings and wonders it just amazes me.

I would also agree they have what I would call "too many workers", but honestly the AI uses them so inefficiently, they need about a dozen more then I would to do the same task. They build roads and other worthless crap first instead of improving currently worked tiles. Of course this was also inherited from BTS, but still it could be tweaked to lessen the effect.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

In fact, it's not that the AI has no efficient workers, it's that they use them to build roads in your empire. They do it partly for exploration sometimes but it's still a bad idea to improve other civs' infrastructure and pay maintenance while they are migrant workers in your country without a visa.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Don't know if this is because of BTS's AI, but it would be nice to have a hostile but much weaker civ vassalize to you spontaneously, especially if they see an overwhelming stack right outside their borders. (E.g. me as Cao Cao vs. Kong Rong). They are willing to capitulate but a spontaneous vassalization is preferable.

Also, when the AI refuses to vassalize even with good relations and it says "your land is too far away," does it mean your home location is too far away? What if I moved my capital closer to them and had land adjacent to theirs? (Me vs. Gongsun Du, after I conquer Kong Rong I have land right next to theirs).

 

[Kenjister]

The "too far away" notice is dependent on your closest land. For instance, in my Sun Ce game, Ma Teng kept giving me that message until I captured Li Jue's Capital (took lots of luck, crazy unbombardable defence!). After my borders popped, Ma Teng vassilized willingly.

For a minor suggestion of my own, how about increasing the amount of land and pop that a vassal counts for in a domination victory? In most of my games so far, I vassalize almost all of the other AI's but that alone keeps me from a domination and forces me to go for a conquest. It would be a nice change to get a domination every so ofter. It really isn't that important though.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Yes, I found that out after I destroyed Gongsun Zan and Gongsun Du was willing to vassalize.

I think the large and huge maps make domination much harder than conquest because you cannot build in lots of empty land which will never allow you to get to 50% land unless you conquer all of them.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

I vaguely remember reading about this guy in the novel:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuo_Ci
A quote:

Zuo Ci wielded amazing Taoist power and was described as psychic. He studied on the Mount Emei in Sichuan, where he found The Book of Concealing Method (遁甲天&#26360, from which he learned to "ascend to the clouds astride the wind, to sail up into the great void itself;" and how "...to pass through mountains and penetrate rocks; ...to float light as vapor, over the seas, to become invisible at will or change [his] shape, to fling swords and project daggers so as to decapitate a man from a distance."

It would be nice to include a special wonder (world? national?) that requires the presence of Religion in the city that would allow you to teleport units from where the wonder is located to another city (i.e. airport). Maybe it needs something like 12 Spagirism Workshops to work all that magic.

 

[Shiggs713]

Also, when the AI refuses to vassalize even with good relations and it says "your land is too far away," does it mean your home location is too far away? What if I moved my capital closer to them and had land adjacent to theirs? (Me vs. Gongsun Du, after I conquer Kong Rong I have land right next to theirs).

I think that just means that you don't have connected borders. I haven't had anyone deny me for that reason when I did share borders, but its not like I play this 24/7 so it may have slipped through the cracks, or possibly the AI's had multiple reasons, this not being the biggest.

About the civs spontaneously vassalizing... some of them basically already do. When I suddenly landed a 60 stack on Gongsun Du's land (only 2 tiles from his current capitol) he capitulated instantly with no battles nearby.

I had taken his 1 city that isn't connect to the rest though, but that was quite awhile before that, while he was still Yuan Shao's vassal.

Yuan Shao was just the opposite, he wouldn't capitulate until he only had 2 (maybe 3) cities left, and was probably only 10% of his former glory. It was like the Chinese Alamo with him, except no survivors this time.

 

[Kenjister]

I think that just means that you don't have connected borders. I haven't had anyone deny me for that reason when I did share borders, but its not like I play this 24/7 so it may have slipped through the cracks, or possibly the AI's had multiple reasons, this not being the biggest.

About the civs spontaneously vassalizing... some of them basically already do. When I suddenly landed a 60 stack on Gongsun Du's land (only 2 tiles from his current capitol) he capitulated instantly with no battles nearby.

I had taken his 1 city that isn't connect to the rest though, but that was quite awhile before that, while he was still Yuan Shao's vassal.

Yuan Shao was just the opposite, he wouldn't capitulate until he only had 2 (maybe 3) cities left, and was probably only 10% of his former glory. It was like the Chinese Alamo with him, except no survivors this time.

Wow! I saw quite the opposite in my Sun Ce game. I took Ye after knocking out his main stack and poof! capitulation! He still had a good 15 cities left. Of course my power was about 3 times his and I had almost the rest of the civs as vassals. Only Cao Cao and his vassals remained, and they were surrounded.
I found it pretty nice that the AI did that actually, since resistance would of meant total annihilation, and now Yuan Shao's troops could aid me in the final battle with Cao Cao.
Perhaps it could me modified so that after your power rating is 4x greater than the AI's power, they would vassalize automatically? It would greatly reduce the endgame grind and would lead to some epic showdowns between alliances.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

For the major civs, it's a little illogical to see the civ called by the name of the leader. E.g. Sun Quan asked me to protect Sun Ce (the civilization) by being their master. It would make much more sense for the larger civs to be called their traditional names, e.g. the state of Wei, Shu and Wu. For smaller states who are still loyal to Revival maybe calling them by their traditional names is more appropriate, e.g. Xuzhou (Liu Bei), Jingzhou (Liu Biao), Liangzhou (Ma Teng), Four [Korean]Commanderies of Han (Gongsun Du), Shu Han (Liu Bei if he ever gets to Chengdu).

Rhye's dynamic naming of civs should be applied to provide more variety. E.g. when Wei goes from despotism (state of Wei) to oligarchy (Kingdom of Wei) to emperor (Wei Dynasty, even though the diplo hasn't been won yet); or Yizhou (under Liu Zhang with Revival) turning to Kingdom of Shu (when he goes to Division), or when Sun Quan vassalizes, the State of Eastern Wu is called the Province of Wu. (Sun Quan did nominally vassalize to Cao Pei in 220)

 

[generalstaff]

Just started playing and like this mod, and have been enjoying it, however, just a few issues with graphics.

The CPU had an empty throne (event?) happen. I do not know the technical details of this, but I believe it caused his Leaderhead to become a vandalized version of the Sid Leaderhead.
Could this problem either be fixed or a different leaderhead be used? I am uploading images from Portal: Three Kingdoms (a Magic: The Gathering set) which would not be good quality due to the size (W: 256 pixels, H: 208/207 pixels), but are something to go off of.

I don't "get" why donuts are used as the button for Strong Belief. I am uploading a possible substitution, which is sized to be made into a button.

Also, not so much a suggestion, but a contribution. I am uploading a few Icons which can be used by those who are interested (The three Icons are in "HoTK Icons.rar"). Previews included.

Once again, great mod.

 

[stmartin]

@generalstaff

Thanks, and thanks again, we will make good use of these graphics! The Sid leaderhead is due to the death of previous leader, we will do something about that.

 

[generalstaff]

Thanks, and thanks again, we will make good use of these graphics! The Sid leaderhead is due to the death of previous leader, we will do something about that.

Thanks for the explanation about the Sid leaderhead. I don't think it would have bothered me so much if that Civ was not bugging me for Open Borders literally every other turn.

 

[Opera]

Hi there

I'm really amazed by your job... Really good mod, full of interesting ideas

It's not really a suggestion but I didn't know where else to ask for this... Do you have some .psd template or similar for the specialists buttons? Especially just the ring so I can change the pictures inside; I really love the design of those icons!

Another question: it's meant to be played in scenarios, right? But I still can start a normal game and play it all fine or will there be some issues?

Anyway, keep up the good work!

 

[stmartin]

@Opera

Thanks.

The specialist icons are made by koap, may be he has a template for it. I've told him about your question.

As to random maps, they are playable, everything the scenario has the random maps have. Also you can build City Wonders in the particular city you choose, while in scenarios all the city wonders are already placed in specific cities. Another thing is the emperor will be randomly placed on the map, guarded by a barbarian unit, waiting for you to rescue him.

The downside of random maps RIGHT NOW is it's not very balanced. Some factions start with hero, some not.

 

[Opera]

The specialist icons are made by koap, may be he has a template for it. I've told him about your question.

Thanks!

As to random maps, they are playable, everything the scenario has the random maps have. Also you can build City Wonders in the particular city you choose, while in scenarios all the city wonders are already placed in specific cities. Another thing is the emperor will be randomly placed on the map, guarded by a barbarian unit, waiting for you to rescue him.

The downside of random maps RIGHT NOW is it's not very balanced. Some factions start with hero, some not.

Okay, I guessed so. I may try one some day.

Also, the prisoners mechanics seems really great. For now, I haven't seen any hero taken as prisoner though, all being executed. But I've only played for an hour or so... I'll try to give more feedback later

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Any chance of including the Mercenary mod? Would be great for getting unique units like war elephants in the game more often. Maybe make their tech 1 era ahead so that it's not pointless to hire them.

 

[stmartin]

We'll put some mercenary stuff in when we develop Zang Ba's Mount Tai bandits faction furture.