[MODCOMP] Ellestar's REF mod

[Ellestar]

Ops, rebel sentiment wasn't limited by population in 1.01 so i changed it a little. v1.02 quick fix is available now.

 

[doompigeon]

but it was only like 1530 and my tax rate had already been raised to 20% (or would have had I not hosted a cotton party)

I was playing on marathon, but the tax rates felt too quick, given the marathon setting. Maybe this was a fluke, or maybe this is a problem of the game as a whole, or maybe this is a result of something you tweaked. Otherwise I'm very happy with the game, but this seemed... strange. Hope you can help!

 

[Ellestar]

but it was only like 1530 and my tax rate had already been raised to 20% (or would have had I not hosted a cotton party)

I was playing on marathon, but the tax rates felt too quick, given the marathon setting. Maybe this was a fluke, or maybe this is a problem of the game as a whole, or maybe this is a result of something you tweaked. Otherwise I'm very happy with the game, but this seemed... strange. Hope you can help!

I didn't change anything. However, each turn there is a 20% chance that a tax will increase by 1-5%, unaffected by game speed. So, 20% at turn 30 seems about right for what i see in the code. I guess Firaxis gave us wrong C++ source files :/ Thank you for your report, i'll fix it this evening.

 

[fmiracle]

I didn't change anything. However, each turn there is a 20% chance that a tax will increase by 1-5%, unaffected by game speed.

Where is it?
As far as I see sources, the chance to raise tax (TAX_INCREASE_CHANCE) is only checked after certain total amount of goods (at whatever price) were sold. The amount of goods you can sell depends on game speed.

How much raise is depends on pure chance limited by TAX_RATE_MAX_INCREASE.

 

[Ellestar]

v1.03 is released. Tax rate increase should be consistent with a Firaxis release (for Normal sppeed). Doesn't affect previous increases, doesn't fix Epic and Marathon speed, retroactive fix v1.04 will be released later today.

 

[Ellestar]

Where is it?
As far as I see sources, the chance to raise tax (TAX_INCREASE_CHANCE) is only checked after certain total amount of goods (at whatever price) were sold. The amount of goods you can sell depends on game speed.

How much raise is depends on pure chance limited by TAX_RATE_MAX_INCREASE.

Well, ok, let's say it's a marathon speed and it triggers on turn 60 instead of turn 20 on normal. However, on marathon speed there are 840 turns left until the end of the game instead of 280 on normal, but from now on tax grows at the same speed...

Also, 20% to increase tax by 1-5% is too much, it's 0.6% tax increase per turn on average. 100% tax in the middle of the game, about 3 times as fast as it is in original Civ 2. I guess it's corrected in the C++ code Firaxis uses, but they released the older source code files.

 

[fmiracle]

Also, 20% to increase tax by 1-5% is too much, it's 0.6% tax increase per turn on average.

Nope, it's only if you sell too many yields.
If you sell not yields and you relations with King is positive tax is not rise at all.

If you sell low amount of yields tax will rise slowly.

EDIT: But yes, it's seems for me tax rise faster than it was in Col-1.
And I didn't search yet is it affected by game difficulty or not.

 

[Ellestar]

Nope, it's only if you sell too many yields.
If you sell not yields and you relations with King is positive tax is not rise at all.

If you sell low amount of yields tax will rise slowly.

Well, it's 200 goods per 10% tax on normal speed, right? Don't you think that tax is effectively unlimited? Right now i'm trading ~100 goods per turn in my game and taxes aren't that high - only 30% or so on turn 140. Attitude adds 200 extra goods to the limit. So, i should have had a much higher tax if it worked how it works in SDK.

 

[fmiracle]

Well, it's 200 goods per 10% tax on normal speed, right? Don't you think that tax is effectively unlimited? Right now i'm trading ~100 goods per turn in my game and taxes aren't that high - only 30% or so on turn 140. Attitude adds 200 extra goods to the limit. So, i should have had a much higher tax if it worked how it works in SDK.

Yep. I was ensured that traded amount resets after each raise, so with time you will be alowed to sell more and more without tax raise.
But really, it does not reset... So yes, tax will raise rocket fast in later game, espetially with long-game settings... Sigh.

-----
By the way I found one more non-intuitive and not described thing here.

What will be if you boycott any yield? Can you guess?

hehe.
1. It have no effect on next tax rate raise directly
2. But it set to zero amount of this yield sold to Europe.

This means that boycott is only effective to goods that you selling for long time in big quantities.
If you refuse new tax rate and boycott a yield that you never or almost never sold to Europe you can recieve next tax raise right next turn.

But if you refuse tax rate raise on the good that was your main exporting good you can be free from tax raises for very long time.

It also means there is almost no any reason to boycott any goods early on the game. You will recieve your tax raise just 2-3 turns later.

 

[Ellestar]

By the way, i found where traded amount is being reset - in CvPlayer::changeTaxRate(). So i guess there is no bug and it should work fine as it is.

Anyway, optional 1.04 is ready. Tax will not grow too fast even if you trade a lot. It doesn't make a big difference if you don't trade much, but i guess it's better to have it if you want to play as a big trade empire. Since the game should be fine without a changes in taxes, i guess it's better to have two versions - 1.02 without tax changes and 1.04 REF+Tax with tax changes, everyone will be able to choose what he wants.

 

[fmiracle]

Anyway, optional 1.04 is ready. Tax will not grow too fast even if you trade a lot. It doesn't make a big difference if you don't trade much, but i guess it's better to have it if you want to play as a big trade empire.

Nice. I like the possibility to create really big trading colony. Will check your new mod today.

By the way, you can check my Custom House mod, also intended to simplify management of a big trade colony - http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=293228

 

[Gliese 581]

I'm a little confused, is 1.04 ->1.03 tax+ref patch adjusted for epic and marathon as well?

Any testing on how the REF turned out to be? I guess I might as well volunteer since the vanilla version is no good for me anymore after breaking it.

 

[Becephalus]

It would be good to include installation instructions in the readme. I am assuming you just slap it in the MODs folder, but it is always good housekeepings (as someone who has made tons and tons of mods for tons and tons of games).

Going to try it out tongiht and give you detailed feedback.

 

[Gliese 581]

I tried a game but abandoned it (as described in some other thread). Although I could generate bells without REF increases (in the 40ish turns I played on epic the king added 1 cannon), the AI not defending itself issue still makes the game unplayable for me.
I wonder if this mod is compatible with Dale & Snoopys (which is trying to adress the AI issue but not the REF)?

Great work so far in any case!

 

[Dale]

Gliese 581:
See my reply in the patch thread. We have made some REF changes, but won't change more till the current stuff is tested by you guys.

 

[Ellestar]

I tried a game but abandoned it (as described in some other thread). Although I could generate bells without REF increases (in the 40ish turns I played on epic the king added 1 cannon), the AI not defending itself issue still makes the game unplayable for me.
I wonder if this mod is compatible with Dale & Snoopys (which is trying to adress the AI issue but not the REF)?

Great work so far in any case!

Well, i guess i can try to make it relatively easily "pluggable" to other dll mods.

I thought about the AI but i just don't like a partial solutions. I'll prefer if AI will be more than nothing economically. Forcing the AI to make units will make it even worse economically. But for players it's probably still a better alternative than a completely defenceless AI.

However, i think it's a bigger problem than just AI not buildings troops. Same things are working agaisnt players, so that's an overall game balance problem, not just an AI problem.

It just doesn't make sense that a king gives a player a soldier so to defend a colony, and a player leaves a colony undefended and attacks colonies of other european countries. I think there should be some hardcoded limit to it, like you need 10 population and 20% rebel sentiment, for example.

I'm a little confused, is 1.04 ->1.03 tax+ref patch adjusted for epic and marathon as well?

Tax adjusted for marathon (it has a lower chance to increase per turn after you trigger a trade limit). There are no REF changes between 1.02 and 1.04.

Any testing on how the REF turned out to be? I guess I might as well volunteer since the vanilla version is no good for me anymore after breaking it.

Well, if you have a pre-revolution saves then you can load them with that mod and test the battle, that will be much faster than the whole games.

It would be good to include installation instructions in the readme. I am assuming you just slap it in the MODs folder, but it is always good housekeepings (as someone who has made tons and tons of mods for tons and tons of games).

Going to try it out tongiht and give you detailed feedback.

Yes, i wanted to include it but English isn't my first language so i don't know how to word it properly. Common chat is relatively easy to write, but any instructions are a nightmare.

 

[.Spartan]

I wanted to say thanks for making this mod. The tax rate and REF were killing the game for me. The other major problem I have with it at the moment is the random requests from the king for 50% to 90% of my wealth if I amass several thousand gold and keep it for a length of time. Then there is the AI defense issues but that is another matter.

On a side note, I have added the Sweden faction mod and it works well with this. You should consider adding it your mod (replacing the leader graphics if possible). For what it is worth I would love to see more Indian tribes as well as colonial powers.

BTW: I have also changed several elements in the Global Defines more suited to my 100x144 maps and marathon time. In short overall your mod so far has kept me playing the game beyond the initial "something new & a classic remade" sauce.

 

[joelwest]

Royal Expeditionary Force grows according to a number of rebel colonists.

Cannons also increase REF if you'll have more cannons than 15% of a total number of colonists.

REF starts from about 20 units and grows from that. So, you may generate as many bells as you want, it will not increase REF.

Right now REF growth is set to +1 REF unit per 1 rebel colonist on Explorer difficulty

what do you mean by "rebel colonist" if RS from LB rate is not considered?

do you mean all professional colonists (from F5 screen) plus cannons if added to this they would be over 15% of this total of prof colonists and cannons (or 15/85 = 17.6% of the amount of prof colonists)?

if so, this is the REF mod I have been looking for. if not explain what you did code, and if it could be easily changed to what I suggest

 

[Gliese 581]

Are you still developing this mod Ellestar? I really think this game would be very enjoyable if the REF is fixed and the colony AIs can't be exploited by early attacks.
There's some advanced tweaking going on with the REF but I don't see why there's no attempt to just put in a linear increase based on difficulty unhooked from all resources. Because I guarantee you guys, unless it's very sophisticated, any system in which rebels, bells, units or whatever counts for REF, it can be exploited.

I would try something myself but I have no knowledge at all in this kind of thing.