New Beta Version - December 6th (12/6)

[Gazebo]

Hey all,

New beta version inbound. Short, but with some useful fixes. Here's the changelog:

• Fixed peace deal issue, and merged a few more of ilteroi's pathfinder issues (does not fix ranged unit movement issue quite yet).
• Added UI info in trade screen for peace deals with AI, but only if the AI is the one surrendering (info is above trade boxes in center of screen)
  
  Gives the max and current value of the peace deal, thus letting you more easily set your own terms
  Does not appear when you surrender or if you are doing a white peace
  -1 in leftmost deal value element means the AI will not trade the item.
  (These UI elements are in flux, so if you see something you'd like changed and/or to make it 'cleaner' looking, let me know.)
  ​
• Fixed a few deal related issues and fixed early peace-out bug of AI
• Balance: God of the Open Sky now +1 Faith per 2 Plains, +1 Culture from Pastures (was 1/3c, 2f, respectively)

New version online as of 6:30pm EST. The CP itself (and the EUI compatibility file) may be savegame compatible, but no guarantees (as memory bits were added to the DLL). The CBP itself is not savegame compatible. As always, this is a beta version. Remember to delete LUA folders as needed in the CP/CBP, and clear your cache!

Download Link

Cheers,
G

 

[Llednar Twem]

Aww, polder and terrace farm changes aren't ready yet? Well, I guess considering it's a completely experimental new function that's not terribly surprising. I imagine it's a lot of work to get the AI to understand it.

 

[Gazebo]

Aww, polder and terrace farm changes aren't ready yet? Well, I guess considering it's a completely experimental new function that's not terribly surprising. I imagine it's a lot of work to get the AI to understand it.

I just wanted to get the peacedeal fix out the door today. God of the Open Sky snuck in as a result of being a much easier change.

Polders and Terrace Farms aren't hurting right now. Besides, I'd like to run some tests with the AI to see how it handles them, and also how the yields balance out. Also, I never saw final numbers of the community for either UI, so that'd be nice.

G

 

[Funak]

I'm still not a fan of the Open skies change, it is going to provide way too much faith way too easily with plain-starts.

 

[Llednar Twem]

Also, I never saw final numbers of the community for either UI, so that'd be nice.

True, that would probably help. I'm not really sure what should be done to the on-tile yields, but for the adjacency yields I'd say...
Basic Polder: +1 to adjacent towns and villages.
Colorful Polder: +1 to adjacent towns and villages. (In addition to above)
Terrace Farm: +1 to adjacent farms.

 

[Coilean]

I'm still not a fan of the Open skies change, it is going to provide way too much faith way too easily with plain-starts.

I think 1 faith per 2 plains is high as well; imagine that on the Great Plains map! To address the problem of tuning this vs "super plains" starts without making it suck on more normal starts, I have a few suggestions: 1) a hard cap (say 5?), 2) pyramidal returns (i.e. need 1 more plains for each increasing point of faith: 1f at 1p, 2f at 3p, 3f at 6p, etc..), or 3) restrict to plains within the cultural borders. The approach of #2 might be a good way to go more generally for all pantheons which benefit from a fairly common type of tile (sacred path, cult of nature, etc).

 

[Funak]

True, that would probably help. I'm not really sure what should be done to the on-tile yields, but for the adjacency yields I'd say...
Basic Polder: +1 to adjacent towns and villages.
Colorful Polder: +1 to adjacent towns and villages. (In addition to above)
Terrace Farm: +1 to adjacent farms.

Why do they need to buff nearby tiles? Isn't unique tiles that are strong by themselves a lot more fun than unique tiles that makes nearby tiles stronger?
This is just going to lead to weird situations where you have to break up your polders to build villages/towns in the middle.

 

[Gazebo]

I think 1 faith per 2 plains is high as well; imagine that on the Great Plains map! To address the problem of tuning this vs "super plains" starts without making it suck on more normal starts, I have a few suggestions: 1) a hard cap (say 5?), 2) pyramidal returns (i.e. need 1 more plains for each increasing point of faith: 1f at 1p, 2f at 3p, 3f at 6p, etc..), or 3) restrict to plains within the cultural borders. The approach of #2 might be a good way to go more generally for all pantheons which benefit from a fairly common type of tile (sacred path, cult of nature, etc).

Evaluating bonuses on specific maps (like great plains) is not a good idea.

G

 

[Llednar Twem]

Why do they need to buff nearby tiles? Isn't unique tiles that are strong by themselves a lot more fun than unique tiles that makes nearby tiles stronger?

What? Buffing nearby tiles allows far more interaction and interesting design than flat yields. To take a more blatant example, legendaries in vanilla D3 were rightly criticized for being nothing more than "stat sticks". Now many of them have been redesigned to have fun effects you can build around, and the game is much better for it.

 

[Gazebo]

True, that would probably help. I'm not really sure what should be done to the on-tile yields, but for the adjacency yields I'd say...
Basic Polder: +1 to adjacent towns and villages.
Colorful Polder: +1 to adjacent towns and villages. (In addition to above)
Terrace Farm: +1 to adjacent farms.

Just FYI, we can't do the 'adjacent bonuses on techs' without a significantly larger amount of work and way heavier code. Needs to be a flat, singular boost to adjacent tiles.

G

 

[Llednar Twem]

Ah, ok then. Probably keep the food in that case. It's more fitting, and for trade posts at least will make a bigger difference than adding one more gold on top of what it already does.

 

[Funak]

What? Buffing nearby tiles allows far more interaction and interesting design than flat yields. To take a more blatant example, legendaries in vanilla D3 were rightly criticized for being nothing more than "stat sticks". Now many of them have been redesigned to have fun effects you can build around, and the game is much better for it.

That's a terrible example, D3 legendaries still affect your character directly.

A unique improvement is supposed to feel unique and powerful. You should feel happy about being able to build it. Having a unique improvement with mediocre yields that makes all nearby tiles stronger than itself is just terrible game-design.
All this does other than make the unique improvements feel a lot less awesome it that it forces you into building specific improvements around them, limiting choice for no good reason at all.

 

[Llednar Twem]

I guess this is a fundamental disagreement of philosophy then. I think an AoE buff is significantly more awesome than how they work now, not less. I also consider the need to optimize the yields to be an interesting puzzle, not an annoying limitation.

 

[Coilean]

Evaluating bonuses on specific maps (like great plains) is not a good idea.

G

I agree Great Plains is obviously extreme, but I think you would agree it is pretty common for maps to have large areas with lots of plains. The other part of this is, most pantheons need to actually improve their tiles to get most of their faith generation going (Nature/Skies/Path being the major exceptions), which gives Open Skies a huge advantage for founding an early religion compared to most pantheons.

 

[Gazebo]

I agree Great Plains is obviously extreme, but I think you would agree it is pretty common for maps to have large areas with lots of plains. The other part of this is, most pantheons need to actually improve their tiles to get most of their faith generation going (Nature/Skies/Path being the major exceptions), which gives Open Skies a huge advantage for founding an early religion compared to most pantheons.

Keep in mind that 'featureless plains includes no hills. I fixed the check in the last version, so the amount of faith you can get right off the bat isn't quite as potent as one might think.


Also, I need feedback on the new UI element. Good? Too gamey?

 

[Llednar Twem]

I don't see what could be considered gamey about it, really. Gamey is being unable to use healing abilities out of battle in Darkest Dungeon, for example. Something that has absolutely no justification beyond mechanical necessity. Terrain enhancements influencing the surrounding land doesn't seem strange to me. That said, this post was kind of pointless since my view on the issue is probably pretty obvious at this point.

 

[Gazebo]

I don't see what could be considered gamey about it, really. Gamey is being unable to use healing abilities out of battle in Darkest Dungeon, for example. Something that has absolutely no justification beyond mechanical necessity. Terrain enhancements influencing the surrounding land doesn't seem strange to me. That said, this post was kind of pointless since my view on the issue is probably pretty obvious at this point.

Ha, sorry, miscommunication - UI = user interface in my post, not Unique Improvement. Oops.

G

 

[Llednar Twem]

Ah. Yeah, it's rather unfortunate that those share the same initials.

 

[PurpleMentat]

Does the adjacency bonus stack? Is stacking something that can be controlled? For example, if there were three polders next to a village and they give villages +1 food, would the village get +1 or +3?

 

[Iamblichos]

An adjacency bonus can be handled in LUA no problem. Written several like this, as have others, but not sure if Gazebo is open to that route.