[Modmod]Dawn of Knoedel - Comprehensive Rebalance Project

[Imperator Knoedel]

is there other download site ?

Just download the files I uploaded in this post (I hope? I'm not really sure I understand how to upload files with this new forum layout) and replace the content of the PrivateMaps folder with them.

For whatever reason Github messes up the scenario files when zipped. My solution to this would be to explain this in the OP and upload the scenario files there separately so people can manually replace them, but this forum won't let me upload files when editing already existing posts it seems.

Sorry I took so long to get back to you.

Egypt tends to build a second city before or on Greece' birth. If it happens to be Alexandria, that would be fantastic, since Greece can simply occupy them at the beginning.

Yes, that would be fantastic.
Alas, I have yet to discover the secrets of how to manipulate settler values to my liking.

Why did I spam cities? Because I can. More importantly, I keep the happiness and health surplus maximized! So do not worry the slow growth of too crowded cities. After several turns, health surplus gives each city a free citizen! Each city in theory only needs 2-3 tiles (low food, high production or commerce) to work on, and the growth is granted by surplus health!

Hm, doesn't city maintenance ruin your research?

Anyway, good news and bad news:

Bad news is that I never could get to the bottom of this mysterious crash that has been bothering me in my development version, so I decided to just nuke it and start over from the version I have on Github. All those changes to unique units I described in my last posts a month ago? Gone with the wind as if they never happened, I'll have to start from zero there.

Good news is that I at least merged all changes Leoreth made in the last month and committed it, so that's something I guess.

 

[windman007]

Hm, doesn't city maintenance ruin your research?

Research bar can be as low as 0% for some time. Research continues with
a) Fantastic enhanced buildings - spamming library and market every city,
b) Specialists, slow population growth (which is a good thing for global health),
c) Villages and Towns by sacrificing workers.

Not sure if it is still doable for other difficulties. Just tried them in the first two difficulty levels.

 

[asewland]

I keep running into this event handler error. Any idea what it is?

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

I keep running into this event handler error. Any idea what it is?

Hm, you don't seem to have Logging and Python Exceptions enabled, do you? Have you been encountering this error since the start of the game or only later on? If only later on a savegame from a bit before they started could be helpful.

 

[asewland]

Hm, you don't seem to have Logging and Python Exceptions enabled, do you? Have you been encountering this error since the start of the game or only later on? If only later on a savegame from a bit before they started could be helpful.

I've been running into this on every game that I've been starting since I updated it through the Tortoise Git. Btw how would I enable Logging and Python Exceptions?

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

I've been running into this on every game that I've been starting since I updated it through the Tortoise Git. Btw how would I enable Logging and Python Exceptions?

Leoreth has instructions on how to do that in the Bug Reports thread I believe.

 

[asewland]

Leoreth has instructions on how to do that in the Bug Reports thread I believe.

Got it. Thanks Imp! I'll get a more detailed screenshot and save uploaded but if it helps, I had problems installing it originally b/c I got the 'filename was too long' error for some of the .hpp files.

 

[asewland]

Okay, I got some more info on my error. It seems to be related to stability; let me know if you need anything else from me and thanks again!

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

View attachment 458881

Okay, I got some more info on my error. It seems to be related to stability; let me know if you need anything else from me and thanks again!

Thank you for the info.

It seems that this is the same problem I encountered myself recently, both in my modmod and in DoC itself. Since it was not caused by me I will just point an accusing finger at Leoreth without even trying to solve it myself, then take all the credit for his work once he gets around to fixing it.

Eh, maybe I'll take a look at it, but I'm just so frustrated at the moment by C++ because I can't even get something as simple as my Enhanced Culture mod right.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Four things I plan on doing in the near future:

1: Remove that Civ5-esque surplus happiness leads to golden age and surplus health to free pop everywhere mechanic again. It's badly balanced and since I plan on adding another way to get Golden Ages I fear the happiness part at least would be redundant. Also it's not like this is Vanilla BtS, surplus happiness is still useful for stability and health against plagues.

2. I discovered a neat mechanic in Planetfall (basically a remake of Alpha Centauri except it doesn't suck like Firaxis' official attempt with Beyond Earth), where culture is accumulated on a player level and whenever it passes certain thresholds you get a free Golden Age. I already isolated it to make a separate mod (of Vanilla BtS) with it, and once I am sure it's bugfree I will merge it with this here modmod. One problem I have with it is that it only counts culture that is actually being produced, that is it ignores culturebombs from Great Artists and presumably other instant boosts to culture from random events, but it's good enough for me until I come around to copying all the good culture stuff I keep hearing about from that HR Tech Tree branch.

3. I'm unhappy with the Vassalage civic's effects. The increased city upkeep is supposed to represent all the wealth that is being intercepted by local lords before it climbs up to you, the supreme ruler. The idea is that this encourages accepting other civs as vassals whenever possible rather than ruling over their territory directly, but I think it punishes expansion too much. This would work if this was RFCE, but this is a world map, and entire countries are barely represented by a single city on the map. If we take the Holy Roman Empire as an example technically all cities, be they in the core or outside, should belong to mini vassal civs, but that is not possible on the scale of this mod. I think it might make more sense to remove the penalty to city upkeep but add a negative modifier to culture instead. Your subjects don't really feel that much allegiance to you as they are ruled by various middlemen instead of you directly, and it is harder to enforce the ruler's will in every little hinterland. Unless you have a strong military presence your subjects are easily compelled to switch to another ruler instead (other civs have an easier time of cultureflipping you). As your borders expand slower it also makes more sense to construct forts to annex territory.

4. Unique units and buildings overhaul. I wanted to do this months ago, but I had a major setback in the form of a mysterious bug destroy all my progress and then I was very busy in real life until now.

Hopefully I'll be able to get all of this done within this year.

 

[Vekkimaster]

I'm new to this modmod and decided to give it a try (git-download). As usual started it with the Romans, but something went wrong . Never had the chance to be born heh. A question: were in the cachefiles are the spawning maps (something called warmaps etc.)? I could only find some .txt files, but they made no sense.

Basically I want to know will Ottomans still claim Athens and Constantinopol to themselves after spawning.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

View attachment 461037 View attachment 461038

I'm new to this modmod and decided to give it a try (git-download). As usual started it with the Romans, but something went wrong . Never had the chance to be born heh. A question: were in the cachefiles are the spawning maps (something called warmaps etc.)? I could only find some .txt files, but they made no sense.

Basically I want to know will Ottomans still claim Athens and Constantinopol to themselves after spawning.

That's hilarious! Way to go, China!

I don't know, and consequently I never modified any warmaps or flipmaps which means they are exactly the same as in DoC. I could look into them one of these days though.

 

[merijn_v1]

All the civ specific maps are in python. It speaks for itself what you can find in Warmaps.py and Settlermaps.py. In Areas.py, you can find the birth areas (aka flipzones), capital locations etc.

The worldbuilder has some features that allow you to view (and edit) the settlermaps and warmaps of each civ. They are currently found in the mapeditor section. (I have a PR pending which gives makes editing DoC maps a new mode)
To see if Athens and Constantinople flip to the Turks, you can look in the flipzone viewer.

 

[Vekkimaster]

I guess that you have to use some .py -program to view those files...?

Cause I'm new to this modmod and didn't read 20 pages of this thread, here are some of my observations after my first Rome-game till 1885AD:

1) When a nation spawns, but gets killed right after (a city with no defenders), there won't be resurrection a turn or two later like in DoC. (Spain - infotext)

2) When you refuse a cityflip (spawning) I didn't notice any of my troops changing side even if I kept my troops in Moorish spawnarea (Cartago). The small infotext still kept saying that ~5 turns troops are defecting. Is the mechanic like this now?

3) I like the way ranged weapons operate cause now you just can't win wars with a massive stock of cannons. But what about the promotions for these ballistas, catabults and so on? Are there now any meaning to have city raider 1,2,3 or any other promotions in your cannon...if so atleast I didn't see the % how to benefit this.

4) The new civicsystem seems nice. Now you are actually tempted to choose from different ones

5) AI nations now seems more likely to collapse/struggle and loose cities.

6) If you collapse do you die or survive with your capital?

7) In DoC even if you are solid you can loose cities to a respawning nations (if there are cities in the area owned by other nations who are shaky/unstable) which annoys me. In this picture Portugal collapsed and Moorish spawned with only one city. So my empire stayed intact. Liked that

EDIT 1:

8) When you are a very happy nation, it seems you have golden ages after another. This occured for me in later game when I had my "luxurybuildings" manufactured.

EDIT 2:

9) XXX

EDIT 3:

10) Ships can go through lands in a way that's not suppose to happen (they behave like land units).

EDIT 4:

This error has occured since the very first turn.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Thank you for your feedback.

I guess that you have to use some .py -program to view those files...?

Who knows. I heard rumors that copypasting stuff into Excel would help, but for me that really didn't do it either.

1) When a nation spawns, but gets killed right after (a city with no defenders), there won't be resurrection a turn or two later like in DoC. (Spain - infotext)
View attachment 461102

I assume it might be related to that event handler bug, because I never changed any mechanics related to that.

2) When you refuse a cityflip (spawning) I didn't notice any of my troops changing side even if I kept my troops in Moorish spawnarea (Cartago). The small infotext still kept saying that ~5 turns troops are defecting. Is the mechanic like this now?

Event handler bug.

3) I like the way ranged weapons operate cause now you just can't win wars with a massive stock of cannons. But what about the promotions for these ballistas, catabults and so on? Are there now any meaning to have city raider 1,2,3 or any other promotions in your cannon...if so atleast I didn't see the % how to benefit this.

As far as I can tell promotions do have an effect on range bombard, the problem is getting them.

4) The new civicsystem seems nice. Now you are actually tempted to choose from different ones

Aw shucks.

5) AI nations now seems more likely to collapse/struggle and loose cities.

Compared to current DoC?

6) If you collapse do you die or survive with your capital?

I think you die, not sure.

7) In DoC even if you are solid you can loose cities to a respawning nations (if there are cities in the area owned by other nations who are shaky/unstable) which annoys me. In this picture Portugal collapsed and Moorish spawned with only one city. So my empire stayed intact. Liked that
View attachment 461105

I didn't change anything with regards to flips, so it's not my doing.

8) When you are a very happy nation, it seems you have golden ages after another. This occured for me in later game when I had my "luxurybuildings" manufactured.

Yeah, I am probably going to remove that feature again and replace it with a mechanic of accumulating culture to trigger Golden Ages instead. Even so, I was under the impression the required threshold increased after every Golden Age? Did it just remain constant at 1500 the entire game?

10) Ships can go through lands in a way that's not suppose to happen (they behave like land units).
View attachment 461145

That's a side effect of towns acting like forts.

This error has occured since the very first turn.
View attachment 461146

I blame Leoreth.

 

[ales_]

Who knows. I heard rumors that copypasting stuff into Excel would help, but for me that really didn't do it either.

You can actually simply open them with Excel.

 

[Leoreth]

You can also just open them with a decent text editor like Notepad++, spacing should be decent enough to make it legible.

If you use a spreadsheet editor like Excel or Calc, make sure to use the "import external content" option (whatever your program calls it, this is different from just open file). Usually, import as csv (comma separated values) works well because that's what the maps are essentially.

 

[Vekkimaster]

"Imp. Knoedel said:"
Vekkimaster says:

"Compared to current DoC?"
Yeah. Atleast if feels like that and the world seems now more vivid.


"I think you die, not sure."
Yeah, you die. I intentionally tried it and you die for good. Prefer the one city-surviving.


"Yeah, I am probably going to remove that feature again and replace it with a mechanic of accumulating culture to trigger Golden Ages instead. Even so, I was under the impression the required threshold increased after every Golden Age? Did it just remain constant at 1500 the entire game?"
Yes, it remained at 1500 all the way so maybe that's way I experienced golden eras all the time. If the necessary value indeed increases after every time, would that make more sense and realistic feeling as the way system is working now.


"That's a side effect of towns acting like forts."
OK. Funny, but ok.

EDIT 1:
It seems that the healthcare-bar goes from 1500 to 3000, but after that stays the same. Golden era-bar stays 1500.

EDIT 2:
Update to edit 1: Healthcare-bar goes to 3000, then resets back to 1500, 3000, 1500... My cities are starting to starve

EDIT 3:
Same happened in Rome-game. Autoplay ends and when the game starts, I immediatelly loose and I have this great spawnplace . It starts to work when you restart the whole game (windows).

EDIT 4:
Started with Greeks. In UHV you have to be first to research literature. Did it (atleast there wasn't a fail message), but the "box" didn't got checked. Might be worth checking...

Ok, played on. 936AD came text that I have failed my UHV step1. I was first in drama and philosophy so definitely an error.

 

[Vekkimaster]

Something wrong with the plague attack? Germany and Spain are really feeling it!

EDIT 1:
I got the plague. It stayed and stayed. All my cities came from pop 10 to pop 3/2 and the plague just kept on going. It has now been about 15 turns and still . I was a healthy nation.

Okey...had been sick about 60 years now and all my cities have come to pop 1. Everything is haulted and in catatonic state. In some reason I and a couple other nations just keep having this plague. Like this there is no point in continuing this Greek Empire's test of time

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

The eternal plague bug seems to be a problem in regular DoC too, sorry about that. Some stability calculation bug too, but Leoreth fixed that some days ago which means it will be fixed in the new version I upload sometime today too.

Edit: New version is up. I removed the Happy Golden Age and Healthy Population Boom mechanics, instead there is now a Cultural Golden Age mechanic, which means the more culture you produce the more Golden Ages you will get. Unfortunately this doesn't take into account instant boosts to culture from Great Artists and Events, and it seems to not start counting culture until after you get another source of it than just your Palace. I have no idea what's up with the second part.