New Game Options: Leaderhead Levelups and No Positive Traits on Game Start

[Thunderbrd]

Major Breakthrough!!!

On my next update, when the selection list pops up, a hoverover text will be available exposing the details of the trait you're hovering over!!! WOOHOO!!!

Also:
We have about 4 options we could go with so far for introducing new negative traits as the game goes on and I need people to chime in with their votes/opinions/alternative suggestions.

The options so far are as follows:

1. Give a cumulatively increasing random chance for a negative trait to be necessary to select each time your leader gains a level.
   
   
2. Base it on events that are specifically targeted to pinpointing the player's errors or play habits that correlate with our negative traits that popup enforcing the trait is either given directly to the player or a set of options is given, one of which being selection of the negative trait to avoid something horrendous.
   
   
3. Make leaders select a negative trait on every 3rd level (doesn't remove the ability to select a positive as well.)
   
   
4. Every time you enter a new era, there's a random chance of requiring a negative trait selection based on your points ranking compared to other civs. Something like 50% if in front, 40% if in second place, 30% if in third place, 20% if in fourth place, 10% if in 5th place and no chance lower than that.

What's your take on this?

 

[Hydromancerx]

I like #3. If you are choosing your positive traits then why not have the ability to pick your negative traits too?

 

[Thunderbrd]

Do you think the negative selection popup should come up and be resolved before the positive one so a leader can use his positive selection that would come up immediately thereafter to remove the negative one he just selected? Or should it come afterwards, forcing the leader to live with a negative for at least one level?

(note: the system design concept comes along with the idea that if you don't accept the negatives, you'll never see the really beneficial traits available at the pinnacles of your trait chains.)

 

[Hydromancerx]

Hmm that's a hard one. I think the Negative one should come AFTER you have selected your positive one.

So like ...

Positive #1 -> Positive #2 -> Positive #3 -> Negative #1 -> Positive #4

... and so on.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I take it to mean the negative should be after... gotcha. k. Sounds good to me. Where do others fall on this matter?

 

[Hydromancerx]

I take it to mean the negative should be after... gotcha. k. Sounds good to me. Where do others fall on this matter?

Oops! Yeah. Sorry its confusing.

 

[Faustmouse]

I completely agree with hydro: #3 and negatives after positives.

 

[strategyonly]

I completely agree with hydro: #3 and negatives after positives.

Third.

 

[WimpyTheWarrior]

I have started a game from SVN 4545 with the options to acquire traits enabled (Developing Leaders and Start without Positive Traits). For unknown reasons I decided to do an Ultimate map on Eternity game speed.

It is 18,860 BC I am almost done researching Warfare (still only 1 city) and I have just acquired my third trait (15,000 national culture points). It seems like the player and the AI will get lots of earned traits at this speed; was that intentional? I suspect I could get my fourth trait sometime in the Classical era or maybe even late Ancient.

Thus far I've picked Scientific, Creative, and now Industrious. I have moved up a lot of culture buildings in my build queues. And oh yes, "Carnivals for everyone!" as soon as I can. Count on it. I agree with Blue Genie; I'm sure I can culture spam this new feature. OTOH it's not that traits are overpowering......

I do like the acquired traits and it looks like we'll have lots to choose from soon. But is it intentional to acquire so many traits at slower game speeds?

(save available upon request)

 

[Thunderbrd]

Well... I put a means to adjust the speed of achievement into the system with the gamespeed modifier that adjusts the cost of the next trait. When I put this out there I figured we would end up adjusting it to suit the rates we were looking for. And I wasn't intending to be too overly presumptive about what those rates should be until feedback started rolling in for more guidance.

However, before I jump the gun and go in and adjust those rates, keep playing! The increments grow much larger quite quickly (faster than a nation can grow its culture I'm thinking) so the rate of gain slows significantly with each one earned. If you're playing with the No Positive Traits on Gamestart option, you could well be on target for what I envisioned still with 3 selections made and the fourth coming at or around the change in classic with some effort being put in to achieve it.

If you find yourself reaching harder for culture, that's pretty much a goal accomplished right there! I wanted to make culture more rewarding and thus take a higher priority and stop being ignorable nationwide. It serves our vast building options in C2C and puts us a step towards making the commerces more 'equal' in value. It also gives us a whole additional layer of 'interesting decisions' as it can even change our strategy so much that we avoid or hold off on invasionary plans since we're trying so hard to grow and expand our culture peacefully.

So yeah, so far your report sounds to be fairly accurate to plan. I'm more concerned about a later game analysis at the moment. Thanks for the playtesting!

 

[Randomness]

Is there a way to edit the trait thresholds in XML. If so, where?

 

[Thunderbrd]

You can edit the gamespeed modifier on the those in the gamespeed files. Otherwise, its simply hardcoded to always add another zero to the previous required National Culture threshold for a level up. On Normal Speed, the base threshold is 10 for the first level up unless you are NOT playing with No Positive Traits on Gamestart, in which case the base threshold is 1000 (just means you skip the first two selections since you already have them to start with.)

Are you suggesting a change to those? I'm interested to hear it... this is a new feature so could possibly use some tweaking, particularly to those thresholds.

 

[ls612]

You can edit the gamespeed modifier on the those in the gamespeed files. Otherwise, its simply hardcoded to always add another zero to the previous required National Culture threshold for a level up. On Normal Speed, the base threshold is 10 for the first level up unless you are NOT playing with No Positive Traits on Gamestart, in which case the base threshold is 1000 (just means you skip the first two selections since you already have them to start with.)

Are you suggesting a change to those? I'm interested to hear it... this is a new feature so could possibly use some tweaking, particularly to those thresholds.

That would mean that the threshold would be 2000 for epic, 3000 for marathon, 5000 for snail, 10,000 ons, add 15000 for eternity.

 

[Thunderbrd]

For the base... its something like that yes. I think its 2500 for epic. Then 250,000 to the next level after that, 2,500,000 for the next etc...

 

[ls612]

For the base... its something like that yes. I think its 2500 for epic. Then 250,000 to the next level after that, 2,500,000 for the next etc...

I'm saying those should be the exact thresholds, that is the way I designed gamespeeds. 2500 will not work well and will lead to imbalances on Epic. If you want I can go and change it myself, it isn't hard.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Gamespeed adjustments are in your ballpark so I don't care if you tweak it accordingly. It's just a percentage issue. I tried to figure out the proper percentages from the various odd percentages that are in those files - they don't seem to maintain any kind of measurable regularity between them but I realize there may be causes for each to vary.

 

[ls612]

Gamespeed adjustments are in your ballpark so I don't care if you tweak it accordingly. It's just a percentage issue. I tried to figure out the proper percentages from the various odd percentages that are in those files - they don't seem to maintain any kind of measurable regularity between them but I realize there may be causes for each to vary.

That is only due to rounding. It is a (1:2:3:5:10:15) scaling model from normal to eternity.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Cool... make it so then Thanks!

 

[ls612]

Cool... make it so then Thanks!

Is the system equipped to handle values greater than the 32 bit integer limit? Because otherwise making it so could cause some problems.

 

[Thunderbrd]

No but that's a step to take soon. We have identified, really, that ALL the National Commerce totals are really needing to be converted to a long int. That should be a project that should be done very soon. I believe it would be fairly easily done but should it be so 'easy' as to be done during the freeze? I suppose it counts more as a bug fix issue... so maybe it should be huh?

Your proposed adjustments won't make it any further problematic for the developing leader option than that limitation already is since either way the limit would be hit and cause that system to get a bit screwy anyhow.