Mortuus est autem rex, vivat rex!

[ExpiredReign]

I had what you might consider an 'epiphany' over the weekend. Nothing weird or anything, I'm not seeing angels.

It just occurred to me there are two ways of dealing with the situation that now exists:

1. Burn a candle for what is lost and wish it could be different
2. Embrace the situation and move forward with the legacy that is entrusted

I was for some time in position number 1). Almost in denial of the fact that the brilliant modder, Thalassicus, has moved on. Now it occurs to me that WE, and I do mean ALL of us, have an opportunity to take a great mod and really do something with it. Previously I said I didn't think I should provide input into what we actually do next, that is a mistake! Even if my suggestions are inherently bad, at least there will be some movement and discussion as to where WE go from here.

So using the input I have already received from you, thanks to those that gave it, I will in the near future set out some guidelines and steps I think we should go.

For the time being I will state from the outset a couple of principles I would like to see this mod embrace.

1. As we lack skilled lua programmers at the moment, the UI is definitely NOT something we will be tackling. I strongly urge us all to use EUI and work inside that framework. Where needed I will endeavour to modify any files, with help of course, that conflict.
2. In my opinion CSD is vital to a good setup and I will move to have ALL our changes mesh together perfectly with that mod.
3. Modularity is the key! By this I mean we should endeavour to make our changes as user-friendly as possible. Take 'Stories' as an example. Some love them, some hate them. That aspect of the mod should be enabled with either a simple 'option' or by removing the folder. In future ALL our changes should work this way.

Additionally, there are a huge number of Steam users that will be left out. I will try and see what can be done to provide them with an avenue of support. It may mean setting up an offshoot mod under my username and maintaining it that way. Likewise with GitHub. I see no problems at the moment with keeping the existing repository going as I have full access, but there may come a time when a new one is necessary. Let me know what you think about this, if it is an issue or not.

Lastly, it would be good, IMHO, if we could differentiate the mod from what was by renaming it to something more appropriate, perhaps by simply appending 'Redux' to it?
What do think? Yes/No.

 

[mystikx21]

If Thal (and stack) isn't going to be around as much, then it makes sense to set up an offshoot. I like it.

There's also a set of the community around which there have been strong opinions opposing some of the changes that have been made. There may be an easier consensus with an offset "mod-mod" style approach (that doesn't depend upon, but builds upon).

 

[Spheniscine]

I have been basically maintaining my own copy of the mod; it's based on EricB's modmod, but I've added my own tech-tree changes (mostly to avoid too much beelining), and also fixed some gameplay values I perceive to be bugs (Greek Odeon lacks base culture-per-turn and costs more maintenance seemingly for no good reason, Panzer is strictly better than Modern Armor). I'm a rather shoddy modder though and have basically been editing the files both from CEP and EricB's modmod directly rather than making my own modmod (modmodmod?) where others can experiment with my changes easily... I did keep a log of my changes though if anyone is interested. (I really need to learn how to make proper mods sometime.)

I also need to give EUI a try; need to finish my current game though.

Game balance issues are tricky as consensus on those can be hard to find... what one thinks is overpowered or underpowered, others may think it's just fine. Ideally this should be up to discussion to the users of this mod (this is "Communitas" after all), but I'm not sure we have the volume of vocal-enough users to know, say, that 90% of users think that something is overpowered, so perhaps it deserves a nerf, etc.

 

[mystikx21]

Panzer unit stats are supposed to be based on the modern armor unit, that may have been a bug fixed in a more recent version. I have tanks set at 75, panzers at 85, and armor at 110 in my own version.

Depending on the particular change, it can be easy for individual modders to make adjustments for salting to taste concerns. The main issue is that the mod itself needs to have a good relative and overall balanced feel when it makes its own changes on which to base those adjustments. there are areas that are much closer in the mod than in vanilla (for the most part units, navies in particular, most terrain, map generation), and a few where the mod has departed from a balance point and worsened the gameplay issue because of other changes (beliefs/religion, ideologies, tourism).

It is sounding like what we need to do is figure out what UI adjustments are lacking in EUI that we may want, and what dll/lua effects we would need available for remaining desired changes that can be made in this mod moving forward with simpler executed code/data edits.

 

[Spheniscine]

Depending on the particular change, it can be easy for individual modders to make adjustments for salting to taste concerns. The main issue is that the mod itself needs to have a good relative and overall balanced feel when it makes its own changes on which to base those adjustments. there are areas that are much closer in the mod than in vanilla (for the most part units, navies in particular, most terrain, map generation), and a few where the mod has departed from a balance point and worsened the gameplay issue because of other changes (beliefs/religion, ideologies, tourism).

I think EricB's modmod fixes ideologies pretty well. Religion may deserve another look though... Interfaith Dialogue seems broken in early game; I blaze through techs like nobody's business. So does Heathen Conversion; makes it very easy to raise an army out of nowhere, and you get the special barbarian movement promotions too; main problem I had with it was running out of gold due to maintenance and upgrades, but that probably only proves how dangerous it can be if I learned to control myself. We also need more religious buildings; right now only the Monastery seems to be implemented, and if I don't manage to grab it, I find myself often not knowing what I should do with my collected Faith. (perhaps I'm just not playing the game right though and should be using Faith to spread my religion after picking a good Founder bonus for it)

 

[mystikx21]

I'm looking over Eric's ideology changes, but they look more like window dressing than a fix. The problem isn't with him and his work.

It's that there just hasn't been much attention paid to ideology as a game feature within the mod. It's always been put off behind other changes. As a result now there are so many policy changes prior to the ideologies that stepped all over the ideology trees that (especially order) becomes very weak without major buffs or major changes. Which we haven't discussed or brainstormed and which themselves can be imbalancing. Removing some of the early policy shifts (especially in commerce or exploration, or some of Eric's knowledge changes) or moving them later to the ideology tenets should help a bit to restore the balance.

Things to keep in mind for ideology shifts if those become a topic
1) One should have a bit of "counter-intel" effect that ties into the espionage buildings too, to remind us they are in the game. It's a fairly minor point but it's a way to use up one of the tenets that may need help or improve an existing espionage related pick
2) There may be some use in retaining a tie-in to faith/religion sub-games in these trees that they can make use of. I'm not sure how yet, but someone will help me pull that idea out of my head.
3) Moar stuff is not the ideal approach unless it's a policy specifically set to grant stuff and needs a buff.
4) If there's a major crossover with a change to an earlier tree, which should consider strongly whether the earlier tree really needs the effect.

A few of his fixes are sensible within that framework and worth putting into play immediately while the rest is hashed out.

 

[Spheniscine]

I actually like the Renaissance Era policy changes; they *should* feel more powerful than the early policy picks, though it may be hard to do that *and* avoid "stepping on toes" too much with ideologies.

I'm not sure that's such a bad thing though. Really all it means is that you can pick the bonuses from them that best suits your needs, then when ideologies begin, you can choose to strengthen them even further, or cover your weaknesses.

 

[ExpiredReign]

...
It's that there just hasn't been much attention paid to ideology as a game feature within the mod. It's always been put off behind other changes. As a result now there are so many policy changes prior to the ideologies that stepped all over the ideology trees that (especially order) becomes very weak without major buffs or major changes...

That's an excellent point. It should be impossible to make balanced adjustments to policies without taking the ideologies into consideration. This is helping me frame the opening questions about policies that we can discuss later.

@mystikx21 I'm surprised you like my idea about renaming, that's great.
Maybe that can be thrown around a bit also. I would really like to just take what we have and work from there rather than making a mod-mod. That way there will be no need to keep returning here. Not sure though, still mulling it over in my head.

Regarding EUI and how it fits in. It's pretty simple really, everywhere we use a custom yield, which is in a lot of places, we need to have custom UI functions that know where to look. EUI is designed to find those values in the vanilla places so it won't show the correct values. This is both an asset and a curse. The good of it is it allows greater modification of existing code to be used in more places, the bad of it is the aforementioned need to have custom UI code to show. Which is more preferable? Fancy UI with inaccurate values or less fancy UI with accurate values?
bc1 seems to be a fairly reasonable chap, I figure he could help us out with some of it.

 

[mystikx21]

I actually like the Renaissance Era policy changes; they *should* feel more powerful than the early policy picks, though it may be hard to do that *and* avoid "stepping on toes" too much with ideologies.

I think we have erred a little too far on the direction of feeling too powerful in the middle trees. That's okay in as far as it makes for interesting testing, but it makes for a poor balancing act. They should be things we want to get to instead of picking up effects in the other early trees, but they should not be blocking out interest in the tenets. I barely pick those at all. In some cases because there's precisely the same effect in another tree, and it's usually better, or I already have it.

Commerce was already toned down a bit. Exploration was not, and it needs to be. Aesthetics/Patronage seems okay except for a few duds. Knowledge/Rationalism is the curious one that needs some more work as it's too easy to cherry pick it right now. Eric has some moves in a good direction, but some of them are borrowed tenet concepts as well. It's all one big pile that is moving around. I think we're going to have to basically break it into early game balance (the 4 early trees) and middle-late (the rest) because we've spent a lot of time on the four early ones and haven't gotten very far but the rest have gotten left behind on design.

 

[mystikx21]

UI, I'd rather have accurate information. I'll look over what's in the lua that we "need" this week. Some of it will likely be available in an interface and code dll mod instead that we would just need some additional compatibility changes. Some, it sounds like the custom yield library issue, will not.

 

[Spheniscine]

They should be things we want to get to instead of picking up effects in the other early trees, but they should not be blocking out interest in the tenets. I barely pick those at all. In some cases because there's precisely the same effect in another tree, and it's usually better, or I already have it.

Really? Not even just to be able to get to the level 3 tenets?

edit: As for religion this mod may be worth a look at; I can't vouch for its power level and balance as I've never tried it, but at least some of its ideas might be good (e.g. faith generation for every pantheon. Currently I find that if you don't pick a faith-generating pantheon, you're not going to found a religion.)

Also in my opinion, maximum number of religions should be based on starting number of civs rather than map size [I think floor(0.5 * number of civs) + 1 is a good number, capped by the number of religions that we can have beliefs for, which I think is currently 8; would be 9 with Race for Religion]; I often like to cram more civs into smaller maps for more war-like games. Currently I'm using More Active Religions as a kludge for those games.

 

[mystikx21]

A change in the # of religions might be okay based on map size/# of civs.

I don't think we should focus on pantheons as faith generating. Sometimes you don't want a religion or can find other sources of faith-generation to compete and I'd rather use the religion to generate benefits for the empire in that case (food/production/gold/science, etc). Wide empire you can use temples/shrines, or just go through the piety/liberty tree for a free prophet.

I don't find the tiers for ideologies to be that exciting that I want to get to tier 3s usually over existing policies. Exploration (and to some extent Commerce/Knowledge) in particular is way too powerful for a wide expansion empire that other than selecting an ideology when I reach the age I have often zero engagement with them.

Part of this is that many of the better ideology tenets are GPP or happiness related and there are lot of ways to get those yields already that we need to spread out or adjust.

 

[Spheniscine]

I don't think we should focus on pantheons as faith generating. Sometimes you don't want a religion or can find other sources of faith-generation to compete and I'd rather use the religion to generate benefits for the empire in that case (food/production/gold/science, etc). Wide empire you can use temples/shrines, or just go through the piety/liberty tree for a free prophet.

Maybe; the linked mod does provide a lot of choices though, there are pantheons that only generate faith, and there are pantheons that provide another benefit as well. At the very least though I think the increase in faith cost to found a pantheon when someone else founds a pantheon should be removed. Already Communitas increased the initial cost to 25 from 10 (presumably to offset the fact that you get shrines from the start of the game), and I find building anything but shrine first makes it very hard to found a pantheon in any timely manner.

 

[ExpiredReign]

I would be more than willing to look at using Machiavelli's Race for Religion! as the base from which we work from. Why re-invent the wheel?
In fact the more mods that can be co-opted into 'Communitas Redux', the better.
It will be much easier for us to tweak one or two beliefs in a batch of already good ones than having to redo the whole batch to suit, as we will most likely be doing this time around.

 

[mystikx21]

The general baseline of pantheons for faith-generation, founders for benefits, enhancers for spread benefits, followers for benefits, reformation for spending faith is I think what we would be aiming for. I'm not convinced that every pantheon needs to have faith-generation as its focus, and I'd like to look at some of the beliefs, but I think there's more thought that has gone into the overall mod design than many of the changes we've made here.

My first instinct is to throw out of almost all of CEP's belief changes entirely and start over. So starting from a point not at scratch is appealing.

 

[ExpiredReign]

...
My first instinct is to throw out of almost all of CEP's belief changes entirely and start over...

Ahh, music to my ears.

 

[jacktannery]

Now it occurs to me that WE, and I do mean ALL of us, have an opportunity to take a great mod and really do something with it.

Brilliant - great news.

[*]As we lack skilled lua programmers at the moment, the UI is definitely NOT something we will be tackling. I strongly urge us all to use EUI and work inside that framework. Where needed I will endeavour to modify any files, with help of course, that conflict.

Agree.

[*]In my opinion CSD is vital to a good setup and I will move to have ALL our changes mesh together perfectly with that mod.

Totally agree 100%. I would personally support having CSD as default in Cummunitas Redux but having 100% compatibility would be almost as good and perhaps better if anyone out there doesn't want to use it.

[*]Modularity is the key! By this I mean we should endeavour to make our changes as user-friendly as possible. Take 'Stories' as an example. Some love them, some hate them. That aspect of the mod should be enabled with either a simple 'option' or by removing the folder. In future ALL our changes should work this way.

Not too fussed about this, but okay. Sometimes making too many things optional just makes everything too complicated. The great thing about Thal is that he had one clear vision.

 

[Gokudo01]

viva rex

 

[mitsho]

Is it even possible to do a 100% compatibility with CSD while still balancing the "normal" version besides it?

I personally don't like CSD (just because it gives me more micromanagement and I want less of that), so I would dislike if you made that mod a integral part of this mod. But managing several versions side by side gets tiresome, takes more time and makes balancing a nightmare, no? So with a heavy heart I'd advocate for one and only one version (especially now that we don't have to fear other "expansions").

And if that single version is with CSD due to it being a favourite of the primary modders here, then so be it. Go for it

 

[ExpiredReign]

There's no need to worry about CSD's policy changes being the only option, while it's what I prefer it is easy enough to swap out those changes with some simple sql checks. In fact we do that now.
On another note, I reckon your view of it may be inaccurate but that's not the point is it.
End result is, I want to avoid having to reinvent changes. If CSD offers good options then let's use it.

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