Mod for reducing unit spam

[Civinator]

Do you auto-produce the settlers at the Palace or use another building? At what rate do the settlers auto-produce?

The settlers are autoproduced by the palace and several ancient and era 2 GWs. With this setting even the AI tendency to build early GWs, becomes an even more positive element for the AI. The intervals for autoproduction are different for the different buildings. Simply have a look into the CCM 2.5 biq with your editor to see the single intervals for each of those buildings. The intervals are influenced by the cost of the GWs and when they become obsolete.

Civspecific GWs and most religious GWs cannot produce settlers. The same with other GWs starting in the late era 2 and later. If remembering well, the last GW in CCM 2.5 that can autoproduce settlers, is the East India Company.

 

[timerover51]

Just an opinion. The Statute of Liberty Great Wonder should produce settlers as well.

 

[Civinator]

Just an opinion. The Statute of Liberty Great Wonder should produce settlers as well.

In CCM this GW is the civspecific wonder for the US, meaning only the US can build it, and it can trigger the Golden Age for the US (if this was not triggered otherwise before). All civspecific GWs in CCM are not producing settlers, as they are only available for that individual civ.

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

Something I have been experimenting on is a simple system that has every military unit cost at least 1 citizen which makes combat much more decisive and culls attack-to-production ratio metas.

I've tried this in my WW1 scenario but for a different reason than yours. I was hoping that by making military units cost population I could simulate the manpower drain on a nation. The problem I ran into was that food tiles and government traits caused food production to be so high that population growth was too great to overcome by using pop points for every unit produced.

More thought has to be put into this.

 

[RebelSchutze]

I've tried this in my WW1 scenario but for a different reason than yours. I was hoping that by making military units cost population I could simulate the manpower drain on a nation. The problem I ran into was that food tiles and government traits caused food production to be so high that population growth was too great to overcome by using pop points for every unit produced.

More thought has to be put into this.

If I understand what you say correctly, I haven't really had this issue except for some Agricultural civs in exceptionally sweet starting spots. Then again I have also modified resource values and ratios and done some tweaks to government.
One of my justifications for the pop requirement is for curving the low-tech unit spam to the point that it is no longer viable. I remember "back in the day" when I was a kid in elementary school I would ICS and take over the map with spearmen because I didn't understand the game well enough to tech up fast and I thought spearmen looked cool.
On these boards I've seen advocacy for a similar but more reasonable tactic of spamming horsemen over knights because the attack to production ratio was higher. Ofc, with a simple pop requirement than you will end up just having much lower combat efficiency for a similar size military.

 

[RebelSchutze]

In CCM this GW is the civspecific wonder for the US, meaning only the US can build it, and it can trigger the Golden Age for the US (if this was not triggered otherwise before). All civspecific GWs in CCM are not producing settlers, as they are only available for that individual civ.

I apologize if it's been asked before, but what's your main justification/incentive for autoproduction of settlers? To slow down AI city sprawl?

 

[Civinator]

I apologize if it's been asked before, but what's your main justification/incentive for autoproduction of settlers? To slow down AI city sprawl?

The main reason for the autoproduction of settlers is to stop the ICS tactics by human players. The simple calculation, that it is more profitable in the expansion phase of the game, to build always a new settler as quick as possible for a better profit than to construct buildings inside a city, is not working any longer. It also strengthens the AI, which likes to build early GWs and in my eyes is a much better way to implant settlers in the civ series than to connect them to the "normal" production of cities.

In my eyes connecting the "production" of settlers to the direct production in cities, as it is done by Firaxis, is one of the biggest general errors in the complete civ series, triggering a lot of following problems for a civ game. In history in nearly all cases settlers were never directly produced by cities, stopping all other production activities in that city. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settler : The reasons for the emigration of settlers vary, but often they include the following factors and incentives: the desire to start a new and better life in a foreign land, personal financial hardship, social, cultural, ethnic, or religious persecution (e.g., the Pilgrims and Mormons), penal deportation (e.g. of convicted criminals from England to Australia), political oppression, and government incentive policies aimed at encouraging foreign settlement.

As a result, not only the ICS tactics by the human player are stopped, but also the tedious concepts of waste and corruption to block the city sprawl can be greatly reduced and in my eyes the game makes much more fun, when it can be concentrated on units and buildings and not to build always again these boring settler after settler as quick as possible. I think there is a reason, why the Civ 3 succession games at CFC since many years are mostly played with a mod that autoproduces settlers (and workers).

 

[timerover51]

That is what I have done with J.S. Bach's Cathedral in Theov's mod, with it auto-producing a Tribe unit. I view J.S. Bach's Cathedral as indicating the start of the Protestant Reformation, which did lead to a lot of emigration from countries in Europe.

Edit Note: Now, if I could add Luther's 95 Thesis to a module, that would represent the actual start of the Reformation.

 

[Civinator]

That is what I have done with J.S. Bach's Cathedral in Theov's mod, with it auto-producing a Tribe unit. I view J.S. Bach's Cathedral as indicating the start of the Protestant Reformation, which did lead to a lot of emigration from countries in Europe.

Edit Note: Now, if I could add Luther's 95 Thesis to a module, that would represent the actual start of the Reformation.

Unfortunately this addition is not stopping the ICS tactics, but is adding to that problem some additional settlers. The ICS tactics are stopped by not allowing the normal production of settlers. For adding buildings and wonders you can find several good tutorials at CFC, among them those:

[TUTORIAL] - How to Add an Improvement/Wonder to Sid Meier's Civilization III Conquests v01

Note: When I first made this tutorial, I didn't have GIMP, so the Buildings.pcx images may look blurry. Normally, the green dividing lines are crisp. /***Step 01 - Setting Up the .biq & Scenario Folder***/ Step 01-01: Make sure you save the .biq (editor file) to the Scenarios Folder, and...

forums.civfanatics.com

A New (At Least To Me) "Ican Digital Arts" Mod Tutorial

https://www.icandigitalarts.com/civilization-3-mod

forums.civfanatics.com

How To Add Improvements And Wonders In C3C

This is an update for instructions I wrote for vanilla Civ3 and Play The World. There are some changes, especially for those who are jumping from vanilla to Conquest. Have Fun, Ukas Edit: Forgot to change directory paths in two places. There shouldn't be other dramatic changes, so new...

forums.civfanatics.com

It is really not too difficult, but you need a graphics program, that can handle pcx graphics (at least for modding the buildings_large and _small graphics).

 

[timerover51]

Perhaps you could enlighten me on what you mean by "ICS Tactics".

It appears that we are approaching the problem of the computer civilizations spamming settlers from two different directions. You are trying to control the rate of settler production by auto-producing settlers. I am trying to compensate for the computer spamming settlers by increasing my settler production. The way I play the game is to have a smaller number of highly productive cities, which is why I have increased the terrain yields and the resource yields. This does benefit the computer as well, and by using the Espionage function, is some cases it means that the computer gets a start position that is extremely favorable for spamming settlers. In some cases, the computer does end up with a starting position with very limited food production, with the response of the computer being to get a new settlers to the coast, where food is much more readily available. I figure that it averages out. With my smaller number of cities, having a Wonder that auto-produces units is quite helpful.

 

[Civinator]

ICS (infinite city sprawl) is a special tactics by the human player in a civ game for a narrow and very quick settling. In the second paragraph of this article tjs282 is explaining it: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/help-please.615096/page-2#post-14762851

 

[Fergei]

Is one comsequence of slowing down AI settler production that there is a longer ancient era? This is always something I am looking for; ways to extend the ancient era to increase the significance of ancient military units and UUs.

Generally I am happy with the default prioritisation of settlers and territory so I haven't looked at this, or even thought of looking at this. If it slowed down the ancient era and maybe created a bit more variety in the early game (e.g. more war to discourage a rush to Republic) then it would be something I should be taking a look at.

 

[timerover51]

Is one comsequence of slowing down AI settler production that there is a longer ancient era? This is always something I am looking for; ways to extend the ancient era to increase the significance of ancient military units and UUs.

Generally I am happy with the default prioritisation of settlers and territory so I haven't looked at this, or even thought of looking at this. If it slowed down the ancient era and maybe created a bit more variety in the early game (e.g. more war to discourage a rush to Republic) then it would be something I should be taking a look at.

The fastest way to slow down the Ancient Era is to change the research rate, and make researching a new tech take longer. Of course, that will continue to apply for the entire game. Settler production may have a limited impact, depending on what you do as a player.

To further slow the advances down, set them all to Cannot Be Traded.

 

[Fergei]

The fastest way to slow down the Ancient Era is to change the research rate, and make researching a new tech take longer. Of course, that will continue to apply for the entire game. Settler production may have a limited impact, depending on what you do as a player.

To further slow the advances down, set them all to Cannot Be Traded.

Thanks, yes, I have done all that and more. I wondered if this would be an additional option. It must be it would slow down populatiin gain which would slow down science.

 

[Fergei]

I am sure there are more elegant solutions (as described above) but the simple act of making a settler cost 3 food completely transforms the early game. Instead of 9 times out of 10 the AI obsessing about inhabiting every last rock and glacier on the planet before focussing on wars or city improvements I see some variety to their tactics.

Admittedly I have only played one game with this change but it is exactly what I am looking for in the ancient era. I had 4x first time experiences:

- I reached AD with unhabited easily accessible islands that the AI and myself had not colonised despite them being in easy reach of the AI.
- one AI Civ built multiple Curraghs (I rarely see them make one)
- I reached AD and still had not learnt masonry (I do make first two columns of techs untradeable but this was a new level of slow development even accounting for me being alone on an island)
- I repeatedly had to use 'wealth' because I wasn't expanding quickly enough to get all that free unit support. So I am actually having to think about unit production rather than mindlessly spamming warriors, workers and settlers (which I would do every time usually as this is the optimum combination almost every time). It really nerfs the value of warriors and makes you think about quality of unit as well as quantity because managing unit support is a much bigger deal.

I honestly have never considered this option and assumed the AI would struggle with getting a size 4 capital (lack of workers) and therefore stagnate (memories of Civ1 China and Egypt not even being able to make a second city on the basic world map).

Or perhaps it would make Agriculture even more overpowered, or the AI would struggle with using wealth and managing unit support and bankrupt itself. But not a bit of it. The AI was pretty much about 90% as competitive as it is with vanilla settlers and somehow seemed to have more gold. If the AIs get too easy I can always boost their cost factor (which I am always keen to do to make the second half of games far more challenging).

A very promising start, so my thanks to those who brought up the subject.

 

[Civinator]

the simple act of making a settler cost 3 food completely transforms the early game. Instead of 9 times out of 10 the AI obsessing about inhabiting every last rock and glacier on the planet before focussing on wars or city improvements I see some variety to their tactics.

Admittedly I have only played one game with this change but it is exactly what I am looking for in the ancient era.

This is one of the oldest settings in modding Civ 3. The Dyp-RAR-RARR mods use this setting since a very long time. The problem with this setting is, that it is a much higher benefit to have a resource of food in your city radius when starting a game, meaning the start with such a setting is a much bigger gamble than it is in standard Civ 3. The ancient creators of DyP and RAR tried to balance this problem by adding many new food resources to the game to rise the chance that you have one of those resources in the city radius when starting a game, but in my eyes starting a game with this setting stays still a bigger gamble as it is in standard C3C.

This is one of the reasons why I prefer the solution of autoproducing settlers.

 

[timerover51]

I am sure there are more elegant solutions (as described above) but the simple act of making a settler cost 3 food completely transforms the early game. Instead of 9 times out of 10 the AI obsessing about inhabiting every last rock and glacier on the planet before focussing on wars or city improvements I see some variety to their tactics.

Admittedly I have only played one game with this change but it is exactly what I am looking for in the ancient era. I had 4x first time experiences:

Do you mean 3 food or 3 population?

 

[Fergei]

Do you mean 3 food or 3 population?

Apologies. I have gone with 3 population, which the AI is a bit inefficient with. I aim to offset it by raising the shield cost of settlers (which should boost AIs on difficulty levels where they have a lower cost factor than the human). A 2nd test indicates the AI does need some assistance to ensure they don't fall behind human expansion. Early days of tweaking but I have always wanted a game where the challenge increases gradually in the later game, so this may help with that.

 

[timerover51]

Apologies. I have gone with 3 population, which the AI is a bit inefficient with. I aim to offset it by raising the shield cost of settlers (which should boost AIs on difficulty levels where they have a lower cost factor than the human). A 2nd test indicates the AI does need some assistance to ensure they don't fall behind human expansion. Early days of tweaking but I have always wanted a game where the challenge increases gradually in the later game, so this may help with that.

I have pushed settler cost up to 6 and 8, while also increasing Town size to 9 to 12, and City size to between 24 and 28. That slows down the AI slightly, but they do keep cranking them out if they can find room. As I play large archipelago maps, like 300 X 240, starting points on an island slow them down a lot, but on a larger land mass, they crank them out.

 

[Fergei]

I have pushed settler cost up to 6 and 8, while also increasing Town size to 9 to 12, and City size to between 24 and 28. That slows down the AI slightly, but they do keep cranking them out if they can find room. As I play large archipelago maps, like 300 X 240, starting points on an island slow them down a lot, but on a larger land mass, they crank them out.

Yes, I have noticed my changes work a lot less well outside of archipelago, to an extent I find quite bizarre. I can make a settler cost more than a wonder and the AI is still obsessed about making them, even in settlements that aren't large enough to produce one. Can I ask why/if you think increasing Town & City size might impact on the AI speed or frequency in producing settlers?