[Modmod]Dawn of Knoedel - Comprehensive Rebalance Project

[Imperator Knoedel]

I have good news and... even better news. Huh, today was a good day.

I fixed a bug that would not count culture towards Golden Ages if a city produced less than 3 culture per turn. I also played around with settler maps a little to keep Babylon from settling on that Dye over and over and over and over and over and over again every single game. Persia now starts with Serfdom instead of Slavery, and I made some other minor changes too.

I have now accomplished two of the four things I wanted to do this year, I feel I am making good progress. Let's see how long it lasts.

Next up: Yet another civics overhaul, taking another look at buildings, units etc., then adjusting unique units and buildings.

I consider moving the Pyramids' effect on whipping anger to the Temple of Kukulkan as Egypt should be running Caste System instead of Slavery. Anyone got any idea for an alternative effect for the Pyramids?

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Merry solar cycle concluding festivities, everybody!

I did yet another general civics overhaul, let's see how long it sticks this time. I didn't actually change any names though, I am reasonably content with them for now, but I did get a bit more creative with bonuses and penalties. Some of the default civics now have actual effects, and not all of them positive. In fact I added various penalties to several civics. Tyranny gives a minor bonus to commerce, culture and gold in the capital, but penalties to commerce, culture and research in all other cities. Vassalage gives a penalty to all commerce types (that means research, gold, culture and espionage, whether it's from commerce or specialists), but is about the cheapest civic with regards to upkeep. City States gives a -10% modifier to culture, but also gives +1 Culture to Specialists, and double production speed of Theaters. For Representation I utilized some XML tag Leoreth apparently coded some time but never got around to using, which gives a free specialist to all cities within three rings of your capital. Tribalism, Slavery and Serfdom have received major changes, to the point that I'm unsure if Slavery might even be underpowered at the moment.

Autocracy, Totalitarianism, Theocracy and Standing Army each allow the drafting of one unit.

Totalitarianism gives -10% to all three yields (food, production and commerce), but reduces city upkeep by half, so in conjunction with Mercantilism and Central Planning you can completely remove either distance or numbers maintenance respectively. I did remove the penalty to Great People birth and threw some other various bonuses at it, mostly related to espionage and military, no idea if it's actually any good in practice though.

There's probably some other minor changes, but only related to civics today.

I played a UHV game with Babylon, and it seemed pretty easy. I'm unsure if I maybe should cut the cultural Golden Age threshold in half. In a UHV Babylon game you get your first cultural Golden Age in the middle of the one you get from your second UHV goal, which translates into 2 Golden Age turns before the third goal triggers. Then again, if Babylon goes for the UHV it tries to maximize culture anyway, so no point in trying to make it easier for them to get a cultural Golden Age. The whole point of that mechanic is to incentivize civs to produce culture even if they have no UHV related to it.

 

[Force44]

I consider moving the Pyramids' effect on whipping anger to the Temple of Kukulkan as Egypt should be running Caste System instead of Slavery. Anyone got any idea for an alternative effect for the Pyramids?

Whipping anger is an additional container for tur turning food into hammers.

So without the original pyramids the civilizations who were supposed to benefit from its effect lack a few hammers (after they recuperated from the investment on the pyramids)

To remedy this the new pyramids could give a bonus to hammerproduction or a reduction in hammercost through (eg.) culture.

Just my two cents, given the attention you put in your modmod to making culture more usefull it would not surprise me if something similiar might already be in your modmod though.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Hm, sounds interesting, but I am not really sure how I would go about implementing something like that.

 

[soul-breathing]

Failed when enter Russia, 1700. Monarch and Epic.

The latest Git version.

Then I tried China in 1700, "You have been defeated" when enter.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Failed when enter Russia, 1700. Monarch and Epic.

The latest Git version.

Then I tried China in 1700, "You have been defeated" when enter.

This is very strange. I can confirm that as far as I can ascertain the 1700AD scenario is currently literally unplayable, and that for once it's something I am to blame for as the current version .of DoC doesn't have this problem. The other two scenarios work fine though. I'll sort that mess out tomorrow.

Today I made lots of minor changes to units, buildings and projects etc. in general. I also implemented a new mechanic courtesy of ViterboKnight which makes crossing of rivers consume all movement.

 

[soul-breathing]

This is very strange. I can confirm that as far as I can ascertain the 1700AD scenario is currently literally unplayable, and that for once it's something I am to blame for as the current version .of DoC doesn't have this problem. The other two scenarios work fine though. I'll sort that mess out tomorrow.

Today I made lots of minor changes to units, buildings and projects etc. in general. I also implemented a new mechanic courtesy of ViterboKnight which makes crossing of rivers consume all movement.

Thanks and by the way, do you plan to use the HRtech tree in this modmod? Or continue to use the normal tech tree?

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Thanks and by the way, do you plan to use the HRtech tree in this modmod? Or continue to use the normal tech tree?

Both, I shall have my cake and eat it too.

I'm waiting for Leoreth to make the HRtech tree official (currently it's still in open beta, no?) before I adopt it. Before I do that, I will release a proper polished version of my modmod independent from Git, maybe even with an installer, that will have the old tech tree.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Good news, I identified and fixed the bug that made the 1700AD scenario unplayable.

The culprit waaaaaas...

Leoreth aaaaaaaaaaaall aloooooong!

It's true, he coded a broken XML tag that just laid there in GameInfoSchema, calling out for me to use it, seducing me. You can't seriously expect me to not randomly use experimental new XML tags without verifying if they even work!

In all seriousness, while browsing CIV4GameInfoSchema.xml I found the unused XML tag iCoreFreeSpecialist and thought that sounded like something fitting for Representation, so I threw it in. Everything looked alright on paper, Civilopedia and Civics screen ingame even had a proper description for the effect, "+1 Free Specialist for cities within 3 rings of your capital", so I just assumed it worked fine without actually testing it, and apparently this breaks the 1700AD scenario, so I have to think of something new for Representation or leave it at Low Upkeep.

 

[Leoreth]

Concerning, it worked at some point.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Last commit this year.

Unfortunately I didn't get to do a complete UU and UB overhaul yet, the only Civ I reviewed was America. Minutemen now have 13 strength instead of 14, but make up for it with an extra movement point, lower cost, and two free Promotions, March and Guerilla 1. That's the new Guerilla promotion with gives withdrawal and first strikes, the old hill fighting line has been renamed to Mountaineer. Navy SEALs have been renamed to Marines and replace Paratroopers, seeing as the old Marine unit no longer exists.

Pyramids now vastly increase worker build speed but no longer eliminate extra whipping unhappiness from population, that effect has been moved to the Temple of Kukulkan.

Mayan UHV dates have been moved to 830 and 1225 because they correspond to 10.0.0.0.0 and 11.0.0.0.0* respectively in the Mayan calendar and I thought that would be a nice touch. They are probably a bit too easy now, but the real challenge has always been the third goal anyway.

*Technically that's in 1224 but I always round to the nearest multiple of 5 with UHV dates and their real life equivalent.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Bah, this stupid eternal plague bug is going to be the end of me. It's so strange, according to this post this seems to happen in the main mod as well, but there it seems to be rare and exceptional. Matter of fact, I ran several 1700AD autoplays as Argentina both in DoC and my modmod, and while 90% of the time sometime during the autoplay plague started spreading and then never went away in my modmod I have yet to encounter a single such occurrence in the main mod. I spent the last hour painstakingly checking every single file related to the plague, and everything relevant is identical to the main mod, but that makes no sense. If this eternal plague bug is due to code my modmod and the main mod share, why does it happen so much more consistently in mine?

The only other thing that might possibly be related would be the 2ndUUUB mod comp due to the way it treats the second pairs of UBs, but I'm really grasping at straws here. I guess I could try removing them and see how that affects things. Worst case scenario I'm just gonna disable the Plague entirely.

Edit:

>Comparing the entirety of the DoC folder with the entirety of the DoK folder in Winmerge
>Winmerge says Text files are different for MoreCiv4lerts.py
>Open it
>"The selected files are identical."

This is why I have trust issues.

 

[Leoreth]

The Winmerge thing is likely the file encoding.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

It might not have looked that way, but I was actually exceptionally productive the past few weeks. I just forgot to commit and push my changes after playtesting every single day. So instead of small daily commits I give you one big one. Most of the changes are still pretty minor though, no grand new game mechanics or anything like that, just general polish of everything I noticed. I moved some techs around and increased post-Renaissance tech costs across the board because I was getting tired of tanks in the 19th century. I'm torn about the plague, the eternal plague bug sure seems to appear more often than in the main mod but not consistently enough to justify removing it entirely. Whenever someone encounters an eternal plague I'd appreciate hearing about it just so I can get a picture about how big a problem it really is.

As much as I feel the urge to volunteer for a trip to Siberia, I have to agree with Leoreth. There are too many golden ages. However I don't want to get rid of the cultural accumulation mechanic for it, or of Great People's ability for it, or the 2/3 UHVs one. For now I removed the free GA from the Olympic Park and replaced it with a free trade route in all cities and extra foreign trade route yield in its own city. I'll see about removing free golden ages from a few world wonders too.

The AI sure seems to love Oligarchy, especially compared to Dynasty. I'm not really sure what to do about it. I'm attached to the free specialist effect and can't think of any fitting penalty to compensate for it, and I can't really justify throwing any more bonuses at Dynasty without it becoming too good vis a vis Autocracy and Republic. The idea is to have both Dynasty and Oligarchy as sort of low upkeep low effect default options versus the other more specialized civics, but the AI just favors the latter so much more than the former. Perhaps a -10% Great People Birth Rate penalty to Oligarchy?

I finally started my super in-depth revision of all civs by alphabetical order, that means UHVs, UUs and UBs, but also favorite civics of their leaders as well as starting civics and world wonders they are supposed to build. Today I more or less finished the letter A, that is America, Arabia, Argentina and Aztecs. Arabia's Smokehouse UB no longer gives a free priest, only a priest slot. However it stores more food and provides +2 Food from Sheep, Deer and Cow instead of the regular +1, but it gives nothing extra from pigs. I don't like Argentina's Patricios UU but couldn't come up with anything better so for now it stays. I did change it from Infantry to Paratrooper though. Aztecs now start with Sailing and Alphabet, but lose Currency. Why Alphabet? Because they start with City States instead of Dynasty.

One thing I'm still unsure about is favorite civics. Let's take for example Roosevelt and America. It's safe to say that FDR's favorite civic as a person would have been Public Welfare, but his civ in the time he represents (20th century and beyond) it is definitely not supposed to favor it. I'm sure this is a problem with other leaders as well, but he is the one I noticed it most with. Should leaders have favorite civics based on what they personally favored even if their civ decidedly wasn't running it in the period they represent, or should their favorite civics be based on the civ even if the leader personally didn't like it? In the mainmod FDR's favorite civic is Capitalism, and I changed it to Republic as a sort of compromise for now.

Somewhat related question: Should Peron's favorite civic be Mercantilism or Public Welfare? I read (Wikipedia) about him extensively the past few days, and I'm torn on this issue.

Edit: Oh and Knossos now gets renamed to Rabd al-Handaq when Arabia flips it like it's supposed to. Thanks to Leoreth for his support. :*

 

[merijn_v1]

I finally started my super in-depth revision of all civs by alphabetical order, that means UHVs, UUs and UBs, but also favorite civics of their leaders as well as starting civics and world wonders they are supposed to build. Today I more or less finished the letter A, that is America, Arabia, Argentina and Aztecs. Arabia's Smokehouse UB no longer gives a free priest, only a priest slot. However it stores more food and provides +2 Food from Sheep, Deer and Cow instead of the regular +1, but it gives nothing extra from pigs. I don't like Argentina's Patricios UU but couldn't come up with anything better so for now it stays. I did change it from Infantry to Paratrooper though. Aztecs now start with Sailing and Alphabet, but lose Currency. Why Alphabet? Because they start with City States instead of Dynasty.

I recognize this problem. There are multiple civs which have UU/UB I don't like either, but I can't come up with something better.

I will keep track of the changes you make for the 2nd UU/UB. I may incorporate some into the original 2ndUU/UB modcomp.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

So I was reading the Wikipedia article on Aztec warfare to come up with better ideas for the Eagle Warrior, when I came across this passage:

Merchants, called pochteca (singular: pochtecatl), were perhaps the most valued source of intelligence to the Aztec empire. As they traveled throughout the empire and beyond to trade with groups outside the Aztec’s control, the king would often request that the pochteca return from their route with both general and specific information. General information, such as the perceived political climate of the areas traded in could allow the king to gauge what actions might be necessary to prevent invasions and keep hostility from culminating in large-scale rebellion. As the Aztec’s empire expanded, the merchant’s role gained increasing importance. Because it became harder to obtain information about distant sites in a timely way, especially for those outside the empire, the feedback and warning received from merchants were invaluable. Often, they were the key to the Aztec army’s successful response to external hostility. If a merchant was killed while trading, this was a cause for war. The Aztecs rapid and violent retaliation following this event is testament to the immense importance that the merchants had to the Aztec empire.[11]

Merchants were very well respected in Aztec society. When merchants traveled south, they transported their merchandise either by canoe or by slaves, who would carry a majority of the goods on their backs. If the caravan was likely to pass through dangerous territory, Aztec warriors accompanied the travelers to provide much-needed protection from wild animals and rival cultures. In return, merchants often provided a military service to the empire by spying on the empire's many enemies while trading in the enemy's cities.[12] They were able to earn their protection while further helping their empire.

Maybe it's just the history geek in me, but I find that really neat/cool/interesting. In a modmod dedicated to the Americas (is there a Rhye's and Fall of the Americas?) this could be represented by merchants also providing espionage, but alas, I'm afraid on the scale of our mod there is no way to properly implement something like that, especially since there's no one to spy on but maybe the Incas and possibly the Maya anyway. Best I can come up with is giving the Sacrificial Altar a Merchant slot.

At any rate, for consistency's sake I'll rename the Eagle Warrior to just Eagle. I'll also give it a first strike and withdrawal chance in addition to the extra strength. It might be the best Spearman UU there is, but I feel that's necessary to make up for its decreased utility versus mounted units. It already pales in comparison to the Jaguar in practice. The idea is to use Eagles to weaken strong defenders so they can be finished off by Jaguars.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

New commit.

I have no idea how Brazil is supposed to get 10 slaves if Congo never bothers to produce any and there doesn't seem to be another way of getting them. I pre-placed two Slave Plantations in the 1700AD scenario and extended the spawn time for Impis and Pombos in Africa to 1900, so in the worst case Brazil can always just go capture them herself.

Astronomy instead of Medicine now grants immunity to plague. In my experience the infernal eternal plague bug only really seems to appear in the 1700AD scenario so that should take care of that until a more permanent solution can be found.

I nerfed Turkish tech and upkeep modifiers across the board, or at least I hope it's the Turkish modifiers, I wasn't able to properly open the file in a spreadsheet program.

The Babylonian Garden now replaces the Aqueduct and is available with Masonry and Writing. It provides extra culture and happiness. The Ziggurat's research and culture modifiers have been increased to 10% each and it gives an additional Priest slot, but is now a bit more expensive. I'm considering replacing the Battering Ram with the Vulture and turning it into a Warrior UU with strength 3 instead of 2.

I changed FDR's favorite civic back to Capitalism, San Martin's to Representation (Why would a guy who voluntarily gave up absolute power for no good reason to go live in exile love Autocracy anyway?), and Vargas' to Public Welfare.

Cottages, Villages, Hamlets and Towns now get +1 Commerce from Roads and +2 from Railroads, Towns get an additional +1 Production from Railroads as well.

Cristo Redentor provides Great Prophet instead of Great Engineer points. Like, honestly, it's a giant statue of Jesus.

I'm playing with the thought of adding an Independent Zürich.

 

[J422]

I'm playing with the thought of adding an Independent Zürich.

Won't it end inevitably french or german ?

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Won't it end inevitably french or german ?

Not if I put enough Pikemen in it.

 

[merijn_v1]

Why not making it a full civ?
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/completely-dumb-ideas.482459/#post-12054199