[MOD][WARLORDS] ViSa Modpack

[Pilotis]

Is it possible to have a worker action created so they can construct the Zuez Canal and the Panama Canal ? I've noticed that with some AI Civ's placing their cities improperly and the conseqent inability to construct a city at a canal point, we find ourselves "going around the horn" so to speak when a canal would be a very useful thing to be able to build for our war fleet and transports to use.

GRRRReat suggestion !! Could I also add: tunnels or passes through mountainous regions as 'great engineering feats' where absolutely vital....

 

[jgbaxter]

#2 - what are you referring to specifically?

Well, I didn't post much detail in that regard as I haven't quite made up my mind on what areas could be changed for the better. I will say that overall compared to the core game as well as other mods I've played, the level of food is insanely high (latest game it's 1200ad and I have one (of several) cities hovering at 30 pop and I constantly am whipping them down).

I realize with the extra resource types that there are more chances for high food growth, there are some various instances that I could point too...

A) Barley

-As many that have checked out this resource probably realize, many other mods ignore different grains as a resource as they have been traditionally lumped together as grain/wheat, which is completely fine. I personally like the option for more resources (I'm an 'optionaholic' hehe), so given that, I thought to myself why does barley give so much food, it shouldn't, it's not really a staple like wheat would be.

Globally, it is the most important human food grain and ranks second in total production as a cereal crop behind maize; the third being rice.[2] Wheat grain is a staple food used to make flour for leavened, flat and steamed breads; cookies, cakes, pasta, noodles and couscous;[3] and for fermentation to make beer,[4] alcohol, vodka[5] or biofuel[6].

SOURCE

Wheat- 626 million metric ton 2005 production
Barley- 138 million metric ton 2005 production

We know that barley is an important food crop, however current production (22% over that of wheat) show's that it's a distant second over wheat, historically the further back you go the more pronounced that difference is seen, for that matter, wheat has been cultivated for thousands of years prior to barley. Barley is much more of a difficult crop to grow and harvest, it's become less of a food resource as time as gone on as well.

Currently we have;

Wheat +1 Food / +2 Food & +1 Health w/farm
Barley +2 Food / +2 Food & +1 Health w/farm

So first thing we see is that barley gives more food then wheat by +1, otherwise it is the same as wheat.

Barely is much less a food staple then wheat.

As a side, barley also is not as beneficial to peoples health as wheat (yet gives the same benefit).

One handy thing is that there's the Improved Farming Tech, this can come in handy.

Suggestions to fix barley;

Option 1
- Barley +1 Food / +1 Food & +½ Health w/farm

Option 2 (Barley revealed with agriculture can't be used until Improved Farming Tech)
- Barley +1 Food / +1 Food & +½ Health w/farm

I'd really recommend reducing wheat bonus health to +½ health as well, or remove any health bonus from barley (my preference).


Aii) Brewery/Distilery

+1 food extra? For booze? I think not. These are money generaters not food producers. the +25% food bonus for them with natural gas is even more out of whack. I'd remove the food bonus completely, change it to +5%/+10% cash bonus with an additional +5%+10% bonus to each with natural gas (or no bonus with natural gas).

B) Ranch

It's nice, +1 Health and +5% with cow/deer/pig/sheep. However it's totally superflous, the actual resources themselves that are improved are ranches in effect, it really should be removed.


A) Potatoes

The fourth largest food crop (and mostly since the middle ages); 322 million metric tons 2005 production.

Wheat +1 Food / +2 Food & +1 Health w/farm
Barley +2 Food / +2 Food & +1 Health w/farm
Potatoes +1 Food / +3 Food & +1 Health w/farm

So basically we're looking at something that is currently as effective as barely (almost, the fact you have to get the farm to be able to equalize the resources is relatively minor, except for the fact that this can't happen until Improved Farming).

As explained above in reference to barley, wheat beats barley which beat potatoes.

At best it would be more accurate to look at potatoes to be on a level a tad worse then barley.

Perhaps on the order of;

Potatoes +0 Food / +2 Food & +0 Health w/farm
Potatoes +0 Food / +2 Food & +½ Health w/farm
Potatoes +1 Food / +1 Food & +0 Health w/farm
Potatoes +1 Food / +1 Food & +½ Health w/farm

Now while the Irish may be able to live on taters (and I do love my taters), their nutritional value isn't nearly as high as wheat or corn for example.

I'd prefer something like; Potatoes +0 Food / +2 Food & +0 Health w/farm

Hopefully no one takes offence to my resource comments.

I'll post more on other resources later.

 

[Axil]

Funnily enough I never have cities anywhere near 30 pop my max in usually about 20. I was actually think about asking to increase the food level but evidently it seems if you play a particular way you can get high population whereas if you play the way I do you don't. I think having large populations - late-mid to end game is fairly accurate when you consider the human population growth explosion over the last 200 years. I agree with flipping the bonuses of wheat and barley based on acrage but the really reason why barley is grown more than than wheat is the simple fact of growing conditions.

Brewery - actually if you look back in time you'll find beer was a staple part of the diet beause beer in those day was brewed differently and retained far more of the nuteriments than todays vat brewed and watered down rubbish ( especially american )

Ranch - Meat is farmed as it's energy/kg way above cereals - however the production costs tend to be greater - maybe ranch could be change to give a + food bonus to pastures in the city radius and have a maintenence cost to reflect the cost.

and Finally potatoes - again it's more the growing conditions that creates the amounts than are grown

Other than minor changes i'm pretty happy with the food system in visa as it reflects what happened in history and imho what happens in agricultural production. ( a field I working in , agrochemicals).

I do have one other suggestion though with regards the ranch as it is at the moment which is to move it to tech chemistry and rename it as Fertiliser Plant as the big food increase and hence population increase can about due to the increased development of artifical fertilizers and pesticides following the invention of the Haber process for nitrogen production.

 

[V. Soma]

About the slowing down of Civ in between turns

As it could be seen in the chart some posts before,
in the plain Warlords game the waiting time went up
from the aerly 1-2 secs to ca. 5
THEN up to 7-8 and THEN back to 5

What is this strange "heap" of about 2 secs?
It is end of Industrial age and early Modern age...

My bet is: workers

 

[civ4ludo]

I'd love to see a later version of the roman roads that shotguns railways!

It could be called "The Transiberian Railway" or "The Orient Express".

But what should it do exactly?
a.- Build rails over your existing roads throughout the empire? (which would be different from what RRoads does)
Or:
b.- build rails connecting every corner of the empire? (more in line with RR, but probably too much and unreal, in a way, building rails where there are not even roads).

I'd prefer a.-

 

[Axil]

V. Soma - looks like you've come to same conclusion i have I'm also pretty sure it's the worker AI

Seady's idea's for the railroad - option a - sounds pretty good to me current roads get replaced , to weaken the impact the city link option is also an option. and transsiberian's a great name for it or the west-east coast linkage of USA as both were major engineering feats (prefer the Siberian as already 2 many American wonders imho)

Also for a modern age notra dame equivalent how about the sidney opera house

 

[bergrar]

hi
i am playing your mod, and is really well done, i will like to have some advices
the best size for a map is standard? the best speed is normal?
How many civs will appear in a standard map? i played a good game till 1500 in a large map but after becomes slow, so i started back with a normal map.
what is the best difficult level for mod prince?
sorry to bother with all these questions, but i like to play well a good mod like this
i will save some more questions when i will become more skilled with this mod
ciao

 

[seady]

Fun fact of the day: Ateas, leader of the Scythians, died fighting Phillip of Macedon at the age of 90!

 

[seady]

It could be called "The Transiberian Railway" or "The Orient Express".

But what should it do exactly?
a.- Build rails over your existing roads throughout the empire? (which would be different from what RRoads does)
Or:
b.- build rails connecting every corner of the empire? (more in line with RR, but probably too much and unreal, in a way, building rails where there are not even roads).

I'd prefer a.-

a) sounds fair: would not be too overwhelming (presumably script for this might take a while, on the plus side a wonder movie of trains must be relatively easy to make

My mum went on a train from china to england. What a bizarre concept.

"Gamma World" used to use vacuum tubes to have trains traveling incredibly fast underground, but barring force fields, i don't know how you could maintain the airlock. The air wants in!

I miss my Death Machines.

 

[TAfirehawk]

Well, I didn't post much detail in that regard as I haven't quite made up my mind on what areas could be changed for the better. I will say that overall compared to the core game as well as other mods I've played, the level of food is insanely high (latest game it's 1200ad and I have one (of several) cities hovering at 30 pop and I constantly am whipping them down).

I realize with the extra resource types that there are more chances for high food growth, there are some various instances that I could point too...

Sorry but we won't be changing those things...no offense taken

If you have city population issues then it is your city control that is at issue, not ViSa....you have the option to slow city growth to fit your play style and OPTIONS are what ViSa is all about so many people can enjoy the game with many different play styles.

hi
i am playing your mod, and is really well done, i will like to have some advices
the best size for a map is standard? the best speed is normal?
How many civs will appear in a standard map? i played a good game till 1500 in a large map but after becomes slow, so i started back with a normal map.
what is the best difficult level for mod prince?
sorry to bother with all these questions, but i like to play well a good mod like this
i will save some more questions when i will become more skilled with this mod
ciao

We only suggest playing maps Large or smaller to avoid the MAF....as listed in the first post. So other than that, whatever you want

It could be called "The Transiberian Railway" or "The Orient Express".

But what should it do exactly?
a.- Build rails over your existing roads throughout the empire? (which would be different from what RRoads does)
Or:
b.- build rails connecting every corner of the empire? (more in line with RR, but probably too much and unreal, in a way, building rails where there are not even roads).

I'd prefer a.-

It sure can't be like Roman Roads as that would be unbalancing....not sure we can have it balanced by just going over existing roads either. I like the concept of a Wonder to put down railroads but balance is the issue.

I do have one other suggestion though with regards the ranch as it is at the moment which is to move it to tech chemistry and rename it as Fertiliser Plant as the big food increase and hence population increase can about due to the increased development of artifical fertilizers and pesticides following the invention of the Haber process for nitrogen production.

I have never liked where the Ranch is...it needs a change

GRRRReat suggestion !! Could I also add: tunnels or passes through mountainous regions as 'great engineering feats' where absolutely vital....

That is in the Genetic Era and will be in ViSa in two weeks or so.

 

[lex_kravetski]

Is it real to implement this feature in VISA mod? I'd like to play large map game with 30 or 40 civs.

 

[TAfirehawk]

Is it real to implement this feature in VISA mod? I'd like to play large map game with 30 or 40 civs.

My guess is that the MAF would kill your game before you hit 50% complete, but maybe not....

 

[seady]

I miss my Death Machines.

And the killer mutant chickens! Hens with Attitude. Could be a good name for a rock band.

 

[Kaiser Franz]

OK - I know city placement is vital to the civ strategy -- someone needs to tell the AI as well -- it seems a shame to have to raze Cairo in year 1840 just because the AI placed Cairo two plots to the west of where it should have been -- same applies for Panama City and Istanbul. I allways play with a Real Earth Map -- I suppose the only alternative, if you don't want to make a worker action to build a canal, is to design a map with historical civilization starting points rather than random generation.

 

[TAfirehawk]

OK - I know city placement is vital to the civ strategy -- someone needs to tell the AI as well -- it seems a shame to have to raze Cairo in year 1840 just because the AI placed Cairo two plots to the west of where it should have been -- same applies for Panama City and Istanbul. I allways play with a Real Earth Map -- I suppose the only alternative, if you don't want to make a worker action to build a canal, is to design a map with historical civilization starting points rather than random generation.

Blake's BetterAI should improve even more from v2.08 so that should help whenever we get that included

 

[V. Soma]

OK - I know city placement is vital to the civ strategy -- someone needs to tell the AI as well -- it seems a shame to have to raze Cairo in year 1840 just because the AI placed Cairo two plots to the west of where it should have been -- same applies for Panama City and Istanbul. I allways play with a Real Earth Map -- I suppose the only alternative, if you don't want to make a worker action to build a canal, is to design a map with historical civilization starting points rather than random generation.

With Blake's Ai it will be solved
Just then don't complain it will be hard to win!

 

[AlexTheTall]

Would you think it would be possible to make the game finish later then 2050 because whit all the news tech / civics / opitions / upgrades, we might don't have enough times to explore everything...?

 

[Kaiser Franz]

Oh well -- when all else fails - resort to cheating

 

[TAfirehawk]

Would you think it would be possible to make the game finish later then 2050 because whit all the news tech / civics / opitions / upgrades, we might don't have enough times to explore everything...?

Yup...that will be with the Genetic Era in a few weeks

 

[Pilotis]

Just want to say thanks and good work with the city radius problem. You appear to have sorted (at least my) ctd. Haven't followed the whole thread but much Ta.

P.

Great mod !!!!