[MOD] Snoopy/Dale PatchMod

[Öjevind Lång]

Well, only if you spent all your criminals or servants before that.

That's another exploit that should be done away with. You tell criminals and indentured servants to go off and convert Indians?

 

[tour86rocker]

post removed by author

 

[Öjevind Lång]

Dale, would you and Snoopy consider an option to play the game at a more leisurely pace, that is to say having to 1850 to become independent, as in the original game?

 

[player1 fanatic]

That's another exploit that should be done away with. You tell criminals and indentured servants to go off and convert Indians?

Then making military units from servants or criminals is also exploit.

 

[brisos]

Well I had some time to seriously play the game again and I have to say that between this patch and Reveilled's Origins mod the game is at least twice as enjoyable as vanilla was.

I did notice something strange about how long it takes for colonists to be educated. I got to turn 150 in the EPIC (Origins) speed and it is taking about 80 turns in a university for one guy to learn a profession.

I did a lot of teaching from the start but I did that in my first vanilla game too. So I wanted to ask for a clarification:

-The change made in this patch made the increase in time to educated slower, right? So the first time you educate someone it takes the same amount of turns (or books) as in a vanilla game. But thereafter instead of the books needed increasing by 20% for each new educated colonist, it only increases by 10%. Is that correct?

If I am correct I have a follow-up question:

-Does the 10% increase apply on the previous number of turns/books required? Or does it apply on the base number of books required?

This would make almost no difference, either way, for the first few educated colonists, but after a while the difference becomes huge:


Scenario 1 Let's say the first time you educate a colonist it takes 100 books:
Colonist #1 : 100 books
#2: 110 books (#1+10% of #1)
#3: 120 [110 + (#2+10% of #1)
...
#21 : 300 books (#20+10% of #1)

Basically adds 10 books per new colonist

Scenario 2:
#1: 100
#2: 110 (#1+10% of #1)
#3: 121 (#2+10% of #2)
#4: 133.1 (#3+10% of #3)
#5: 146.41 (#4+10% of #4)
#6: 161.051 (#5+10% of #5)
..
#20: 611.5909045 ($19+10% of #19)
#21: 672.7499949 (#20+10% of #20)

I am fairly sure that Scenario 2 is the formula used by both the vanilla game and the patch (with a different % increase).

The Vanilla game did it with a 20% increase. In scenario 1, by the 21st educated colon it would take 500 books instead of 300. In scenario 2 it would take 3833 books.

What I am trying to say is that even though the 20% to 10% change makes a big difference it does not fix what is broken (the exponential increase). It delays the problem, meaning that you can have two or three times more educated colonists before reaching the same "this university is not worth using anymore" threshold. And that makes the game (or this aspect of the game) enjoyable for far longer than the original allowed us to. But on a marathon game we still hit that frustrating threshold way before the end. And I would like to be able to still educate my guys when I finally destroyed one of the other nations and it is finally time to take that much-envied spot next to the silver tiles.

I am not sure that scenario 1 is better than 2. It would probably make the education too easy once you have a university in a couple of your colonies. But there are middle grounds (with a different formula altogether, or maybe with a limit to how far the increase will go, so that it never takes more than XXX turns to educate someone).

I just wanted to point out what (I believe) is going on right now and see if anyone felt like me. I might also be wrong on everything and would appreciate it if you could correct me.

Thanks for the hard work and for putting up with our harassment!

 

[Öjevind Lång]

Then making military units from servants or criminals is also exploit.

No, because they are not outstanding soldiers whereas all missionaries (except the Jesuit specialist) are equally efficient. Also, soldiers are just soldiers; you have lots of them. But missionaries do a lot for your civilization because they appease the Indians. At the same time, a missionary is a labour unit or figthing unit permanently removed from your civ, which means that the temptation to use your least valuable colonists as missionaries is very great.

Mind you, I think it would be an interesting change to the game if one couldn't turn criminals or indentured servants into soldiers without having first trained them in a school. Train them to become ordinary colonists, as in the original game. In this game, you can train them to become statesmen at one go, given enough money, which doesn't feel entirely right to me.

 

[brisos]

Just thought of a couple things you guys might be interested in fixing. Since this is a suggestion and not a call for discussion like my previous post, I figured I would keep it in the realm of the "plain bug without room for subjectivity" kind of glitches. Anyway...

1)When you have more than 4 transports in a city and opens the city screen, you get a scroll bar to scroll through all the transports. If you have goods in the 5th transport and drag them to the city's stock, the scroll bar resets and moves back up to the top. Not sure how it sounds to you guys but in my games with about 40 wagons and 10 or so galleons it is mind-blowingly frustrating.

2)Can't transfer goods between transports unless you are in a city/europe.

3)Can't sell limited amount of a cargo with the shift/drag feature when selling to natives.

I figured this is the kind of thing a patch might fix.

 

[Raph]

No, because they are not outstanding soldiers whereas all missionaries (except the Jesuit specialist) are equally efficient. Also, soldiers are just soldiers; you have lots of them. But missionaries do a lot for your civilization because they appease the Indians. At the same time, a missionary is a labour unit or figthing unit permanently removed from your civ, which means that the temptation to use your least valuable colonists as missionaries is very great.

Mind you, I think it would be an interesting change to the game if one couldn't turn criminals or indentured servants into soldiers without having first trained them in a school. Train them to become ordinary colonists, as in the original game. In this game, you can train them to become statesmen at one go, given enough money, which doesn't feel entirely right to me.

Using criminals/servants as missionaries was a strategy I used a lot in the original colonization and I don't think it should be removed, though that might just be me being conservative.

I think it's rather realistic though that you can use the criminals without penalty for missionary work (imagine, say, a drug addict who finds religion and goes door to door-knocking, only hundreds of years ago), or soldier duty (doesn't it somehow make sense that criminals fight well?). One thing I really miss from the original though is the possibility to "educate" criminals/servants through warfare, as well as turning colonists into veterans through warfare.

 

[FrontLine72]

First off thanks for taking the time to create this mod. I was just getting ready to write this game off.

I've noticed a bug with respect to ships and trade routes. My galleons are losing their trade routes each time they return from Europe (and yes I'm aware of the things that normally cause this such as transporting units, etc.) I've tested it and each of my 3 galleons lose their trade routes each time they return. My guess is it's related to either the tile space increase to the europe zone or the change to the treasure hauling. One other thing: the increase in tiles to the "sail to europe" zones have caused some strange behavior when there's an island for example. Large chunks of the map can be without europe zone now.

[EDIT: corrected mistakes about tile spaces]

 

[TechnoMule]

Then making military units from servants or criminals is also exploit.

No way! The best thing to do in Col1 was to give your criminals guns and send them off into the bush to kill injuns! Even more so after you got George Washington.


I also wanted to say thanks to Snoopy and Dale for their work on this patch.

There's one thing I'd like to request if it hasn't already been done: change the Iron resource you can find in hills to Ore, like in the original. Iron isn't mentioned anywhere else as a resource.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

I think it's rather realistic though that you can use the criminals without penalty for missionary work (imagine, say, a drug addict who finds religion and goes door to door-knocking, only hundreds of years ago), or soldier duty (doesn't it somehow make sense that criminals fight well?). One thing I really miss from the original though is the possibility to "educate" criminals/servants through warfare, as well as turning colonists into veterans through warfare.

I agree that the ability to create veteran soldiers through military experience in the New World should have been retained. God knows why they removed that one. And criminals being promoted to indentured servants, and then to normal colonists, and then to veterans through successful fighting was pretty good. It wasn't an instant thing, that is to say, an exploit.

 

[TechnoMule]

Yeah I really liked that mechanic as well. I'm not sure what the chances were for a promotion, but they seemed fairly reasonable.
And again, Washington (who guaranteed a promotion) was a great one to get.

 

[Dale]

Here's something interesting:

* Pilgrim king doesn't let you respawn.

This is NOT a bug, it is operating as intended. The code is written such that:
- IF you have enough gold to buy a ship, then don't let the King give you one and tax you.

On pilgrim you begin with 1100 gold. A caravel costs 1000. However there is NO indication that a player must go to Europe to buy a new ship. To prove this, start a game as Dutch on pilgrim, go immediately to Europe and purchase something so your gold is < 1000. Return to New World, drop off units and disband ship. End turn and King will give you a ship.

But, I see no problem in just allowing this to go through to the keeper and give the pilgrim player another ship.

I doubt anyone will disagree.

 

[Polobo]

As the self-declared representative of the Union for Artificial and Extraterrestrial Intelligence I do protest - the human species already have enough advantages with their opposable thumbs and iPhones that they do not need further assistance when the fully have the means to help themselves and buy the ship using existing funds. My members are also quite distraught regarding your seeming obliviousness to the fact that your leaders are not all powerful and while they claim to be able to fix every ill of your world they are inept in the execution - plus they too wish to bail out people who have much more wealth than my average member. We are attempting to push through a write-in vote for the Monty Civ4 AI for U.S. President. A return to slavery will solve many overcrowding issues and he is fervently for pointy-stick diplomacy to get this country back on track.

 

[Yanez]

Theres a bug that happened to me last night.

I sent my merchantman to a coastal native village while spending the turn there, the French's cultural borders expanded around the village,even water tiles. So I couldn't leave the village without declaring war or opening borders (which they didnt want)

 

[10th Legion]

Dale,

Thanks for your response earlier. I made sure that the mod is properly listed in the top right corner before starting a new game. I started another cutom map and the changes still have not taken place. I must have jacked something up on the insall.

 

[tour86rocker]

I agree that the ability to create veteran soldiers through military experience in the New World should have been retained. God knows why they removed that one. And criminals being promoted to indentured servants, and then to normal colonists, and then to veterans through successful fighting was pretty good. It wasn't an instant thing, that is to say, an exploit.

I still don't understand this complaint. A Veteran Soldier just starts with Veteran I and Leadership upgrades. You CAN get these with any armed colonist and it happens through military experience (although the latter does require a Great General).

So if the Leadership upgrade is the only difference, shouldn't we be agitating for a different way for units to receive the Leadership upgrade?

 

[tour86rocker]

Theres a bug that happened to me last night.

I sent my merchantman to a coastal native village while spending the turn there, the French's cultural borders expanded around the village,even water tiles. So I couldn't leave the village without declaring war or opening borders (which they didnt want)

I've had this same thing happen to me in a Privateer. It that REALLY shouldn't happen to a Privateer (but I feel your pain, too)

 

[FrontLine72]

Is nobody else having the issue where your ships lose their assigned trade routes after returning from Europe? I only noticed this after I installed this mod. At first I thought it was just galleons but after further testing it's affecting merchantmen too.

 

[Dale]

Is nobody else having the issue where your ships lose their assigned trade routes after returning from Europe? I only noticed this after I installed this mod. At first I thought it was just galleons but after further testing it's affecting merchantmen too.

That's been noted in vanilla game too, not just this mod.