New Game Speeds

[JosEPh_II]

Thanks again for the detailed input. Love it.

 

[Noriad2]

Ok, I got another domination victory, SVN 9716 from beginning to end, Roosevelt/USA, snail speed, large map, deity+nightmare difficulty.

I have zipped all my save games with 7-zip, and uploaded it here for modders who want to study game balance and AI behaviour:

https://wetransfer.com/downloads/3de85215a0493e4a63ccfc71c0541e1320171220171301/931482

Link will stay valid for a week.

Regarding Happiness, since I kept crime down in my own continent (including forbidding city growth after size 25 for quite a while), happiness never was a problem for me until I got a large number of overseas cities, and the +2 unhappiness/city started to stack up, and combined with poorly contained crime overseas (despite habitually deleting any and all crime-producing buildings in my conquered cities), led to regularly recurring revolutions in my overseas territories which I suppressed militarily. This ended eventually after Representative Democracy (just before Industrial lifestyle) which has a civic that removes the added unhappiness/extra city and makes a domination victory easier.

Money was again tight in the mid classical era due to inflation rising faster than my income but Roosevelt's Organized trait helped a lot and money became better during late medieval. Later the various merchant ships gave me much extra income. The new Australian capital was on an island, three turns sailing distance from my capital and as merchant ships teleport to my capital after a trade mission, each ship gave me massive amounts of cash each 3 turns. The basic ones like Carrack Merchant you can only build 3 of, but there are some culture merchant ships like sugar clipper and Banyan Xebec which also give lots of cash every three turns, and I can build 15 of those each. So basically in the later part of the game I could choose my income, I just had to build enough merchant ships and keep some navy around to protect against enemy ships.

The AI has trouble keeping crime down in overseas territories. For example, the Germans were more advanced than me and had their own big island with 12 cities, and crime was kept in the negatives in all those cities for as long as I could see their territory. But they also had one overseas city, in which they built all crime-producing buildings. Eventually crime rose, and hidden barbarian crime units started to slowly accumulate, making crime rise even further, and eventually the overseas city revolted away.

After I kicked the Australians off my continent they continued with 2 island cities. Its capital stayed fine but its 2nd island city also succumbed to crime eventually and revolted away. I think that the AI can build more +crime buildings than -crime buildings, and that will lose them cities to crime in the late Renaissance unless they station extra anticrime units in their cities, which they have trouble to do in overseas cities.

The most advanced civ, Holy Rome, had no trouble with crime either. But they stayed on their own continent.

In non-overseas territory however, the AI tended to build Highwayman units which gives +crime, and stationed them in their cities. The AI solved that crime by building lots of guards and guard dogs, so the crime stayed negative, but I don't think that that is optimal game play.

 

[Noriad2]

The biggest threat to the AI (apart from me of course) seemed to be its own Partisan units. In a later stage of the game, whenever any city gets conquered, a large number of Partisan units are spawned in the surroundings. The AI doesn't seem to know what to do with them, so they stack them up in one of their own cities which increases crime suddenly and tremendously. This causes barbarian criminals to spawn in the cities, and it will eventually lead to very high levels of crime. Crime leads to Revolutions which leads to cities changing hands and more partisans spawning. Which the AI also stacks in its own cities in large numbers. It will lead to whole areas going down in crime and revolutions.

Of course it would be best to teach the AI what to do with partisans (like don't!!! stack them up in your own cities) but if v38 is planned for Christmas which is in a few days, I strongly recommend to remove the +crime ability of partisans at least temporarily. The AI does not expect them, it doesn't know what to do with them, and they are killing themselves with them. Since Partisans are patriots, it does not automatically make sense that they increase crime in their own cities.

 

[raxo2222]

Remember, that revolutions make game easy for you as long as you keep up with police force and don't build +crime buildings
Essentially only thing that revolutions do is make crime more dangerous.
Probably that would delay your victory by half of era or so.

 

[Thunderbrd]

In non-overseas territory however, the AI tended to build Highwayman units which gives +crime, and stationed them in their cities. The AI solved that crime by building lots of guards and guard dogs, so the crime stayed negative, but I don't think that that is optimal game play.

This should have been recently repaired. I'll have to check the revision numbers to see if the fix was before or after your version. There may be other reasons for it that weren't addressed.

Well, you've given us a years worth of bug reports to work on. *sigh*

A release is actually nowhere near soon at this point. Was hoping but it's just become impossible.

 

[Noriad2]

This should have been recently repaired. I'll have to check the revision numbers to see if the fix was before or after your version. There may be other reasons for it that weren't addressed.

I downloaded revision 9716 on october 12th so if anything has been repaired recently I would have missed it.

Well, you've given us a years worth of bug reports to work on. *sigh*

Sorry :-/

 

[Raven Destroyer]

99 bugs in the code, patch one, slap it around, 128 bugs in the code

 

[JosEPh_II]

This should have been recently repaired. I'll have to check the revision numbers to see if the fix was before or after your version. There may be other reasons for it that weren't addressed.

Well, you've given us a years worth of bug reports to work on. *sigh*

A release is actually nowhere near soon at this point. Was hoping but it's just become impossible.

If we stop adding content we can do a v38 release soon imhpo. Then a review of the + and - crime giving buildings will be in order. I've got some partial notes on which one I think need changed. Crime will probably get easier before a better balance can be achieved though. Then it can be tightened up.

And I don't know why players are so worried over Happiness and Health, as in some think it's too easy. Those portions of this Mod are not as important as they were in Vanilla BtS or even AND or RoM. They need to realize that. But even so, they can become a problem if you are neglectful over the aspects that produce angry citizen and .

 

[Thunderbrd]

If we stop adding content we can do a v38 release soon imhpo.

When's the last time I got to add content? I've been stuck on debugging for as long as I can remember and there's SO many more building up faster than I can fix them.

I downloaded revision 9716 on october 12th so if anything has been repaired recently I would have missed it.

Ok. Yes much of the fixes are newer. I don't know if the partisan matter is addressed or not because I don't know what AI they were using. They might be easily fixed by calling for their spawning with a proper definition of an AI type to be assigned them. Like Pillage or something - I'd have to check the list to see what I think would be the most appropriate but they probably are using Attack AI at the moment and that would lead to them often being recruited for city defense of all things, or by default being instructed to hang out in cities when not needed to attack.

I'm very aware of the problem with offshore property management because I'm aware I need to build in a better generic transportation system for all units that are called to a distant and disconnected location. NOT a small matter. There's an alternative way to resolve the problem but it would be to enforce units be built by the city that needs them when the city is not on the same landmass as the city that would normally be best to train them. That can really bog down the overseas cities as well as make them build highly insufficient units. It can also get them building anti-crime buildings when they're stuffing up the production growth to do so.

 

[Thunderbrd]

However, I don't remember what the "penalty" is - something like 2X the number of beakers for each era backwards?

Just 50% extra cost for each era behind the tech is to the player.

 

[Faustmouse]

Then a review of the + and - crime giving buildings will be in order. I've got some partial notes on which one I think need changed. Crime will probably get easier before a better balance can be achieved though. Then it can be tightened up.

I think Crime is amongst the best balanced properties right now. What excactly do you think is wrong with it? Pollution and Disease are much worse offbalance to a point where disease never causes much (if any) troubles.

 

[raxo2222]

I think Crime is amongst the best balanced properties right now. What excactly do you think is wrong with it? Pollution and Disease are much worse offbalance to a point where disease never causes much (if any) troubles.

Water pollution also never caused any problems too in my space playtrough.

 

[Faustmouse]

Yes, there was a guy around here who mentioned that water pollution was worst during medieval times and that he liked to adress that. I wonder what happened with that...
A tag we rarly used is the one that allows buildings to get "+1 Pollution with Tech XY" (or -1 or any other number). It works with other properties too!

 

[JosEPh_II]

Water pollution also never caused any problems too in my space playtrough.

It does for the AI, same as Air. If I had not adjusted the settings when StrategyOnly submitted his Modern Era game, where the AI was collapsing down to 1 pop cities and total stagnation from these 2 properties Plus Crime, no game on any speed would've been playable after Modern Era. Blackened Skies, Global warming , Polluted Rivers penalties were overwhelming the AI. And then the rampant Criminals in each AI city was stopping any production to counter those problems. The AI was at a stand still locked in a endless cycle of trying to get any LE units to stop crime so that these other issues could be addressed.

So this cry over not enough water or air pollution is unfounded. There are next to nothing in the way of Air and water pollution clean up buildings till well into the Information Era and beyond. Street cleaner is woefully short in what it does to counter these 2 before getting to that mentioned Era.

Disease which uses the same principles and property expressions as crime can be upped. But I held off for a long time because DH was still wanting to do more work there.

 

[raxo2222]

It does for the AI, same as Air. If I had not adjusted the settings when StrategyOnly submitted his Modern Era game, where the AI was collapsing down to 1 pop cities and total stagnation from these 2 properties Plus Crime, no game on any speed would've been playable after Modern Era. Blackened Skies, Global warming , Polluted Rivers penalties were overwhelming the AI. And then the rampant Criminals in each AI city was stopping any production to counter those problems. The AI was at a stand still locked in a endless cycle of trying to get any LE units to stop crime so that these other issues could be addressed.

So this cry over not enough water or air pollution is unfounded. There are next to nothing in the way of Air and water pollution clean up buildings till well into the Information Era and beyond. Street cleaner is woefully short in what it does to counter these 2 before getting to that mentioned Era.

Disease which uses the same principles and property expressions as crime can be upped. But I held off for a long time because DH was still wanting to do more work there.

On my playtrough there wasn't any AI, as I wanted to play with new shiny toys in later eras
Crime and air pollution were nice annoyance for me though
Disease/pests malues are almost nonexistant as its easy to have couple hundreds of happiness and health.
As for education it was challenge to raise it to top available level.

 

[JosEPh_II]

On my playtrough there wasn't any AI, as I wanted to play with new shiny toys in later eras
Crime and air pollution were nice annoyance for me though
Disease/pests malues are almost nonexistant as its easy to have couple hundreds of happiness and health.
As for education it was challenge to raise it to top available level.

A game with no AI does not give a proper representation of either health or happiness. Don't try to compare it to a regular game.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

In my latest game there seems to be something off in the upgrade costs for units. 1600 for a story teller to entertainer but 800 for a tracker to hunter. In a game where I am lucky to have an income over 40 per turn when science is at 55% and espionage at 5% that means 40 turns to get enough money to upgrade a story teller. Lawmen are much more expensive.

This is snail, huge random map, noble, no traits. I was planning on giving some stats for when I reached Tribalism and Sedentary Lifestyle but forgot. As Egypt I did build the Spinx and Pyramids in the same city before 2500 BC.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

If it were me, I'd turn it to 1000 to make it, in essence, unlimited.

-1 is the number usually used to represent unlimited in Civ IV. I think it would be best to stick with that. After all it would require the minimum coding changes.

That is the way you implemented Unlimited EXP isn't it?

But I held off for a long time because DH was still wanting to do more work there.

There is no way to get what I wanted from a disease system to work with the current disease property. Nor will it work with the one proposed by Tbrd. The main problem I have is the idea that you can fix things before you know of the existence of the problem or even the idea that a problem can have a fix or is a problem.

In my current game I am having a little difficulty keeping crime and disease under control but it is mostly due to the fact that I can't afford to upgrade any of the units.

 

[Thunderbrd]

-1 is the number usually used to represent unlimited in Civ IV. I think it would be best to stick with that. After all it would require the minimum coding changes.

That is the way you implemented Unlimited EXP isn't it?

I'd have to check the coding to see if maximum num city upkeep can take a -1 the way it's currently coded. The original civ developers may not have planned for anyone wanting to make it unlimited.

There is no way to get what I wanted from a disease system to work with the current disease property. Nor will it work with the one proposed by Tbrd. The main problem I have is the idea that you can fix things before you know of the existence of the problem or even the idea that a problem can have a fix or is a problem.

While I understand this from a RL modeling pov, this is a strategy game. And as a result, the player should have strategic control over his destiny with nearly all things. Random events that can cripple are not that great for game design. But if the player can take steps to avoid them, even if the people's actions must be explained as circumstantially capable of influencing the outcome if not knowingly capable of it, there should be a way to enable control. The trick then is to make it so that sacrifices must be made to exert that control and those sacrifices may take from other areas of focus.

 

[JosEPh_II]

In my latest game there seems to be something off in the upgrade costs for units. 1600 for a story teller to entertainer but 800 for a tracker to hunter. In a game where I am lucky to have an income over 40 per turn when science is at 55% and espionage at 5% that means 40 turns to get enough money to upgrade a story teller. Lawmen are much more expensive.

This is snail, huge random map, noble, no traits. I was planning on giving some stats for when I reached Tribalism and Sedentary Lifestyle but forgot. As Egypt I did build the Spinx and Pyramids in the same city before 2500 BC.

Current SVN? Or a few versions behind? Last 4 versions have dampened Inflation's impact.