[MOD] Ultimate Strategy

[naf4ever]

Thats a pretty heavy nerf of Caste System, although I have to admit it had it coming...

Perhaps give it a happiness boost?

How so?... Before it didnt do anything real beneficial unless you had extremely large cities and had the surplus food to allocate 4 or 5+ specialists of the needed type. People with empires that consisted of small or medium sized cities found this civic to be useless. Now it can benefit an empire of any size. It gives +1 FREE specialist to every city which is pretty huge. Only the statue of liberty does something simliar. And if you want to have unlimited artists, scientists or merchants you just need the appropriate "Free-type" civic, free market, free religeon and free speech.

 

[SwordOfJustice]

Hi Naf, the specialists buttons worked fine in my last test game. So clearing the cache and reinstalling the mod fixed up whatever problem I was having before.

I'll try the new patch when I can.

- Sword

 

[Bheleu21]

Hmmm.. I actually did additional testing with multiplayer for these new changes just to test for out of sync problems and didnt see any.

Describe your problem more, it will help:

1) What new features were in effect the turn it happened? For example did you have a science rep up or the tech exchange bonus going on? Or did you just switch from slavery to another labor civic after having lots of slave specialists?

2) At what point in the turn did it go OOS? Beginning? end? During a certain action like moving a science rep into a town that gave the bonus or right after gaining a slave? If you can post a savegame so i can check it out.

3) how many human players were in the game?

4) What do you mean by "till the first round we are both out of Sync." Do you mean that from turn 1 right when the game started this happened? Thats rather odd... Or was it was fine the first turn with your settler but as soon as you settled and hit the next turn it went OOS?

Okay the problem is somewhere in the patch. Without it, it works perfectly.
If we install the small patch, we are both out of sync from Round 1 on.

Best regards
Bheleu

 

[Zuul]

Looks nice. Is there a limit to workshops? Can you use 10 and gain 50%?

 

[dh_epic]

I agree that Nationalism has always been a little on the weak side.

 

[onedreamer]

just wanted to say that the new version fixed the multiplayer OOC problems, however the slaves are highly unbalancing... I'd just remove them, or make them obsolete with some tech. They can get the research boni from Representation et similia and with a couple of wars you will make really many of them. Also the new mod for specialists doesn't work well and messed up buttons
One last thing about creative bonus... I think creative shouldn't get the free artist, first it spoils plans for GP (you maybe don't want artist GP in a city but you will get them anyways), second it seems unbalancing too.

Great mod for multiplayer btw !!

 

[naf4ever]

Looks nice. Is there a limit to workshops? Can you use 10 and gain 50%?

+15% is the max, and that requires 5 or more workshops/watermills..

 

[naf4ever]

just wanted to say that the new version fixed the multiplayer OOC problems, however the slaves are highly unbalancing... I'd just remove them, or make them obsolete with some tech. They can get the research boni from Representation et similia and with a couple of wars you will make really many of them. Also the new mod for specialists doesn't work well and messed up buttons
One last thing about creative bonus... I think creative shouldn't get the free artist, first it spoils plans for GP (you maybe don't want artist GP in a city but you will get them anyways), second it seems unbalancing too.

Great mod for multiplayer btw !!

Doh,, i totally forgot about the representation thing. I might modify how the slaves work to correct for this. Also i havent really tweaked the government civics any but was planning to. So representation might work a little differently later on anyway. Either way ill do something about this since ya it doesnt make sense that slaves also get that bonus.

Representation bug aside i dont think they are too unbalancing. First they are hard capped at half your pop.. Which means if you go to war early on with most of your cities about size 6 to 12 most cant get anymore than 3 to 6 slaves at max, and at +1 hammer/slave, thats not overly unbalancing. Also you only have a +25% rate to caputure slaves. Which means it will take approximlately 40 combat kills to get about 10 which will be spread around your empire evenly probably resulting in no more than 2 or 3 slave per city if you have a lot.

The creative bonus was my first attempt at both python and to fix what i felt was a very weak trait. Weak because its one of the few traits whose bonus really becomes pointless in the mid to late game. I hear what you're saying about it messing up GP points though,, then again i figured they should generate more artists but i know what you're talking about. I don't want to remove it without thinking of a good alternative so let me hear any other ideas people might have for buffing up creative a bit.

Oh and Please post a screenshot or savegame of your messed up screen with the new specialist stacker. Im having a hard time reproducing it. BTW it is probably fine because you can customize the layout of specialist stacker a lot and i simply might have done it in a odd manner. But post something so i can see and it will help track down the problem.

 

[Nightravn]

Why not allow one free specialist instead that way you can choose which one you want and it won't mess with peoples GP points.

 

[onedreamer]

I still think slaves favour too much the warmonger player.
Can you make creative bonus increase from +2 to +5 when you reach a certain population ?

 

[Paulk]

For creative why not make it +2 culture and +10% culture. The +2 gives cultrure for early boarder expansion and the +10% gives culture for later, when your cities have more buildings. This will speed up cultural victory a few turns. Or you could make it +2 culture and +1 culture per specialist. Just some ideas for brainstorming.

Paulk

 

[naf4ever]

I still think slaves favour too much the warmonger player.

That was kind of the point. First off remember the bonus isnt huge unless you have gigantic cities and have won lots of battles. Slavery depends on slaves so it doesnt seem to far fetched this should be the warmongering choice. Also with emancipation now the only civic that allows gold rushing you give up quite a bit compared to that civic, the new caste system or serfdom when you choose slavery. I'll keep an eye on it though.

 

[naf4ever]

For creative why not make it +2 culture and +10% culture. The +2 gives cultrure for early boarder expansion and the +10% gives culture for later, when your cities have more buildings. This will speed up cultural victory a few turns. Or you could make it +2 culture and +1 culture per specialist. Just some ideas for brainstorming.

Paulk

Ya i might end up turning it into something like this. Or maybe the free specialist of any type like Nightravn mentioned so that way people can choose what they want. My goal with the great person originally was to make it so that the creative trait had more end game use (rather than +10% to culture or something) other than just for those going for end game cultural victories...

 

[Paulk]

can you make it so the +10% effects happiness values for colussum and theatres? That way not only cultural victory players would use it.
Paulk

 

[onedreamer]

That was kind of the point. First off remember the bonus isnt huge unless you have gigantic cities and have won lots of battles. Slavery depends on slaves so it doesnt seem to far fetched this should be the warmongering choice. Also with emancipation now the only civic that allows gold rushing you give up quite a bit compared to that civic, the new caste system or serfdom when you choose slavery. I'll keep an eye on it though.

emancipation will come once you already have 4-5 slaves in each one of your city, which is quite a bonus. All you need to have that many is a war started with AI which will butcher all its poor units against your defenses and you'll get this way a lot of slaves. I say this not because I'm dreaming about it but because I saw it in my multiplayer game with my wife. I was not having a war, she did, and she got a huge advantage out of this slavery feature. It is too big a bonus for those civs that are at war compared to those who are not. Compared to Civ3, Civ4 added much to the tactics of non-warmonger, but if you add features like this you will kill this improvement. The "original" Slavery is already a great civic, allowing to rush and costing no maintenance, both 2 great things.

 

[naf4ever]

emancipation will come once you already have 4-5 slaves in each one of your city, which is quite a bonus. All you need to have that many is a war started with AI which will butcher all its poor units against your defenses and you'll get this way a lot of slaves. I say this not because I'm dreaming about it but because I saw it in my multiplayer game with my wife. I was not having a war, she did, and she got a huge advantage out of this slavery feature. It is too big a bonus for those civs that are at war compared to those who are not. Compared to Civ3, Civ4 added much to the tactics of non-warmonger, but if you add features like this you will kill this improvement. The "original" Slavery is already a great civic, allowing to rush and costing no maintenance, both 2 great things.

I will look at slavery. For one im going to have to change around the slave feature anyway some because at the moment the slave specialists receive the free research from representation and this wasnt my goal.

Also please post a save game or something of the problem your having with the specialists button. I think i inadvertently corrected it on my end a while back so am not seeing the same problem. Specialist stacker is a pretty tried and tested mod but it also has lots of settings you can adjust and customize for how your specialists gets viewed. These simply might be off a bit. You can view and change these values in the "specialist stacker config.ini ." But post a savegame if possible. Thanks.

 

[naf4ever]

Ok ive done some analyzing and testing and here is what i see with slavery. The production bonus isnt the issue. The problem is that the slave specialists give a permanent production bonus that once recieved lasts forever until you switch civics. This does go against the sacrafice method of production rushing from slavery so this is what im thinking of doing.

For anyone thats played Fall from Heaven i will probably make it like slavery is done there. Basically this how it will work:

1) You will still caputure slaves in combat just like you do now but they will not be specialists. Instead they will be actual units called "slaves."

2) These slave units are basically pseudo-workers. They can improve land at 50% the normal rate or you can sacrafice them for production toward a building or wonder. At the moment it will probably be 15 hammers you get when you sacrafice them.

I think this will solve the imblance of slavery being a little too good. It will also fix my slavery/representation blunder. You will still get a nice production bonus with slaves now but to keep getting it you will have to keep engaging in combat and slave caputuring. On the plus side though because the slaves are mobile you can now move them all to one city and do a mass sacrafice to help more beneficially with things like wonders which you couldnt do before.

EDIT: A new patch is out that tests this beta version of the altered slavery implementation and should also fix some problems with specialist buttons.

 

[onedreamer]

good idea Naf. Will slaves cost support ?
Note that the slaves were also getting +1 research bonus from Leonardo's Workshop, culture from Sistine Chapel and so on.

edit: btw, I don't know if I reported this already or not. There is also a bug with the new feature about workshops and mills. The bug is simply that the (best) bonus applies to all your cities, instead of only that city.

 

[Houman]

Ok ive done some analyzing and testing and here is what i see with slavery. The production bonus isnt the issue. The problem is that the slave specialists give a permanent production bonus that once recieved lasts forever until you switch civics. This does go against the sacrafice method of production rushing from slavery so this is what im thinking of doing.

For anyone thats played Fall from Heaven i will probably make it like slavery is done there. Basically this how it will work:

1) You will still caputure slaves in combat just like you do now but they will not be specialists. Instead they will be actual units called "slaves."

2) These slave units are basically pseudo-workers. They can improve land at 50% the normal rate or you can sacrafice them for production toward a building or wonder. At the moment it will probably be 15 hammers you get when you sacrafice them.

I think this will solve the imblance of slavery being a little too good. It will also fix my slavery/representation blunder. You will still get a nice production bonus with slaves now but to keep getting it you will have to keep engaging in combat and slave caputuring. On the plus side though because the slaves are mobile you can now move them all to one city and do a mass sacrafice to help more beneficially with things like wonders which you couldnt do before.

EDIT: A new patch is out that tests this beta version of the altered slavery implementation and should also fix some problems with specialist buttons.

Naf your idea is great. I am looking forward to implement this Slave mod into the Realism Mod. Only one thing, I still think the Bonus is very huge. We need a con for slavery otherwise the slavery pushers win slways the game.

Slaves had to be fed, so maybe they should cost food, also a rising revolution through Slavery might be very accurate. 1/10 change in a turn a working slave unit can turn into Barbarian Hyapist or uptodate Melee/infantry unit and cause problems, what do you think?

Cheers
Houman

 

[naf4ever]

edit: btw, I don't know if I reported this already or not. There is also a bug with the new feature about workshops and mills. The bug is simply that the (best) bonus applies to all your cities, instead of only that city.

Ah i didnt see this,, this is easy to correct i think. I'll work on it.

EDIT: Ok i bumped the patch version up to .42 to include a fix for this. Thanks again for pointing this out. I dont have quite the time i use to for testing and it helps when you guys can isolate things like this.