Mod the plague

[jgbaxter]

Is it possible to either;

A) Disable plague completely

or

B) Change the plague settings

 

[Rhye]

They're both possible, but I'm not supporting disabling plague, just like I didn't with Congresses.
The only posts that are useful are constructive criticism, which will make plagues better balanced and bug-free. I've already written a list of improvements thanks to the comments (including yours) in the other thread

 

[jgbaxter]

Well, I do like both plague and congress concepts, though both will be improved on as time goes on.

However, I don't like the idea of not revealing how a person who likes your mod can make it playable for 'them'. Plague is not playable in my last game and I want to play.

Now I like your mod, it's easily the best I've seen, however if I have to drive a fully operational chevy P.o.S. instead or a BMW with a flat tire, then I have to.

I spend 2 hrs M-F playing civ4 with my coffee. After that it's off to things like work and such. I post feedback, most of it constructive when I can. I'm a little bit of a grouch so I'd hope you not take that personally.

If you want help beta testing, then I don't mind, heck, I'd be playing the same thing either way, so if my frustrations make other people happy, so be it.

*goes off to look at python and xml files*

 

[Rhye]

I occasionally asked Blasphemous, Silverknight and Riker to test a few things (I asked to them just because I've got their IM contact), but I usually don't need that.

However, it's clear and I was expecting it, the first release containing a whole new addition is always far from being perfect (remembering stability, UHVs, UPs, Congresses, etc.). All I need to improve it is your game reports; but if you disable or tweak it I won't get anything...

 

[jgbaxter]

All very true.

Hmm. Now my skill with moding civ4 is very limited, however I did find the section that kills units.

Anyway. Here's my thought on beta testing, to see improvements you usually make large changes to easily notice the effects, then ratchet down smaller and smaller to your eventual goal. With that in mind, perhaps instead of killing units outright, give them small damage hit instead (at least for testing if not also for being part of the design)?

The point being, is that there's no point in testing how a plague will workout if the civ is brought to it's knees as soon as it happens. The unhealthyness and plague length issues can be dealth with as long as the civ lasts long enough to do testing.

BTW, I'm usually on quakenet irc, anychance you irc?

 

[Rhye]

I've changed some odds of killing units, and I'm taking away hitpoints from the last one, as elhoim suggested. The things that concernes me now is possible human exploits.

I don't use irc anymore

 

[Elhoim]

I've changed some odds of killing units, and I'm taking away hitpoints from the last one, as elhoim suggested. The things that concernes me now is possible human exploits.

That´s good to know!

And for exploits, yeah, is kinda cheap when you can save your 15 unit stack just by moving it outside the city

 

[jgbaxter]

Wait, wait wait wait.

Umm, China lost dozens of axeman that were outside cities, dozens and dozens.


EDIT- On a related note, I like elhoim's idea too. I'd go further mind you and leave at least 2 units alive but damaged. My actual preference is that the plague doesn't kill units outright at all, instead it damages units affect each turn the plague is ongoing. This is espcially helpful then to have a trooper with the healing promotion in a city. As an idea, I'd say the units takes 25% damage per turn in a city, and 5% outside the city, maybe double that during the first turns onset of plague.

 

[Rhye]

who said that units outside cities don't die?

 

[Elhoim]

But killing some units is necesary for the performance increase

But two wounded isn´t a bad idea.

 

[jgbaxter]

And for exploits, yeah, is kinda cheap when you can save your 15 unit stack just by moving it outside the city

He's drunk then?

 

[Elhoim]

who said that units outside cities don't die?

Me, but then I´m wrong

I don´t know, it worked for me, but I don´t have hard proof to back it up. Maybe it´s just because I didn´t have huge stacks of units.

 

[Elhoim]

He's drunk then?

Don´t know... Maybe!

 

[Spearthrower]

I'm not supporting disabling plague

Ahh well. All good things come to an end! Thanks a lot for all your hard work and for the most interesting concept and design of a mod! I had many fantastic hours playing this.

Cheers!

Spear

 

[Rhye]

Ahh well. All good things come to an end! Thanks a lot for all your hard work and for the most interesting concept and design of a mod! I had many fantastic hours playing this.

Cheers!

Spear

ooh, don't take it so tragic...
Consider this is my only choice. For example, I'm adjusting the tech rate to the now periodically slower growth, so disabling it would mess up the rate again. And the loading times. And Civ3 RoC had it too. As you see, there's no coming back.
I'll work to improve it, but I won't develop 2 parallel versions (w/, w/o); please consider trying it a couple of times before confirming your decision, you've been a good poster so far.

 

[Spearthrower]

I'll still post, but I am sure from here on to fall behind the curve of understanding as I genuinely cannot gain enjoyment from random effects.

I appreciate the idea of your health modifying the event - and it is what I and many others have come to expect of your nicely logical work..... however, I just can't stand arbritrarily losing troops and population over a piece of coding.

I remember well that it was in Civ 3: ROC..... I removed it! I have always actively removed Plagues and Volcanoes from scenarios.... but in Civ 4 it just isn't so easy (for me).... and as you say, you are basically retweaking the game around the concept, so even removing it will create an imbalance!

I honestly don't expect you to maintain a series of optional elements to your mods - the maintenance of each would become a nightmare.

At the end of the day, you can't please all of the people all of the time. So don't mind losing a few along the way! I'll still be playing, but I will be sticking with RFC123 - it's got a nice rhyme to it anyway!

Cheers again Rhye

Spear

 

[CyberChrist]

It would be easy enough to include a few options for turning on/off certain features of the mod (perhaps just using an INI file). It would only require a few extra checks against those option option flags in the code, to bypass/execute the parts involving the various optional features.

Sure, the mod may be balanced to work with all features active, but what would the harm be if somone wanted to play with an unbalanced version?

Of course, personally I don't need any options ... I am quite capable of deactivating/tweaking any content I don't see eye to eye with myself.

 

[Shadowlord]

Here's a bit of a spoiler for mitigating the effects of plague:

Spoiler :

First, keep your health to unhealthiness ratio as high as you can (You can see what it is by looking at your civ's life expectancy in the demographics screen). If you can reach 70+, that's great. If not, just try to stay near the lead in life expectancy - you'll get over the plague faster than the other civs, and will probably be less susceptable to it. Stop your cities' growth to keep them from going into unhealthiness.

Second, and this is the real spoiler - If a city becomes infected with the plague, move all units within 2 spaces of it away - units at least 3 spaces away from all infected cities will not die.

This is what I did in my game as the Incans, and it worked well, but I've got one warning: This might possibly lead to your game crashing. (At least, mine is crashing every time I end my turn in 1902, even if I delete the cities which were enplagued - the odd thing is the plague was over, but the plague 'building' was still in the cities).

But considering it kept crashing when the cities were deleted, the crashing might have nothing to do with the plague.

 

[SadoMacho]

During the Black Death in Europe in the Middle Ages economical strong lands were often not infected by the Plague (ie Countship Flanders had no plague and this was the richest provence for the French Kingdom for more than 300 years.) Maybe nice to add, if you have a rich city in a plague infested land, it doesn't become infected.

 

[Rhye]

I don't think there was any correlation with wealth. It killed both the rich and the poor.