New Mod: "Bigger, Better Worlds"

[Gojira54]

Originally posted by DB_in_Omaha
He's suggesting that I split the download into multiple files for those stuck with dialup connections.

I'm not really sure I see the need, though. It doesn't seem like most of the large mods around here are split in such a manner (unless they've been broken up to accomodate the *upload* file size limit), and it's easy enough for someone to get software that will allow a stopped download to be resumed, anyway, making download of the entire mod at one sitting unnecessary.

*Shrug*

We'll see.

-- Darryl

(By the way, this is my 100th post. I'm into triple digits!)

Well, I understand what he wants, but he claims a size of over 30 GB, when it is under 28 MB - a pretty big difference. 28 MB is nothing.

File size is what eventually killed the Optimator mod - I was about 1/3 through developing it when I realized I was at 1.6 GB.

Congrats on the 100th!
<downs one for DB>

 

[Goncyn]

I am pretty sure he means megabytes but is either mistaken or abbreviating the appropriate word in his own native language.

 

[Leptomeninges]

An update. (Don't mind me, I just like to ramble.)

I'm five or six techs into the midevil age. I like the "stealth" units like the emissary and assassin. Maybe this is common to many mods, but it's the first time I've seen it. It's a fun dynamic. The only strange thing is when you're attacking a stack of units and suddenly you're attacking an "invisible" unit. I thought it was a bug before I figured out what was happening. It would be nice if the unit appeared if you forced a battle with it, but maybe that's not possible.

I'm still concerned by the way the AI's cities self destruct. Spain went from being the third or fourth largest civ I'd met to completely evaporating for no reason I could discern. I watched their stacks of archers abandon city after city until they finally settled in their capital (their only city on grassland, the others were all on plains) where I wiped them out. Strange to plunk down settlers in the middle of fully irrigated and improved tiles.

Also, maybe it's just my map, but happiness resources are VERY scarce. There are only two types on the continent where I started (which easily covers half of the huge map I started). I guess the others must all be on the other continent.

Anyway, thanks again for all your work. I'm having lots of fun with this.

 

[DB_in_Omaha]

Originally posted by Leptomeninges
The only strange thing is when you're attacking a stack of units and suddenly you're attacking an "invisible" unit. I thought it was a bug before I figured out what was happening. It would be nice if the unit appeared if you forced a battle with it, but maybe that's not possible.

Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do about that. I can designate whether or not units are "invisible," but I can't change how the game *handles* invisible units.

I'm still concerned by the way the AI's cities self destruct....

I haven't noticed it happening as often as you seem to have, but I'll keep an eye on things and also see what others have to say about their own experiences with the mod. What difficulty level are you playing on, by the way?

Also, maybe it's just my map, but happiness resources are VERY scarce.

Apparently, a side effect of having more resources in the game is that the map generator has a greater tendency to "clump" luxury resources. But as it increases the odds of a civ having a monopoly on a resource, and thus increases the importance of resource trading, I'm happy with it.

-- Darryl

 

[Goncyn]

Some more feedback.

I have played a couple more starts, and I have come to the conclusion that your changes to food requirements and food production speed up growth more than they hinder it. The changed food requirements might make me a little more cautious about where I place my cities, but once I've got some irrigation or a harbor, they grow very quickly. Once I'm in Monarchy, it's really off to the races. The problem is that requiring 3 food makes those first few pop points hard (sometimes impossible to move up to 3 without irrigation), but after that it doesn't really make a difference. So I end up with ten 12-size cities easily before the end of the Ancient Age.

Which leads me to my second point. Since you have all these large prosperous cities and plenty of ways to make them happy (3 MPs with Monarchy, Ampitheatre + Plays of Aeschylus or whoever it was, Temple, Cathedral, Coliseum), plus Worker Housing and Smithy, you end up with several production powerhouses very early in the game. Even if you're only keeping even in tech, you can easily out-wonder the AI (at least at the middling difficultly levels I'm playing) simply because your cities are larger since the AI doesn't properly exploit the changed rules. Also, the abundance of production makes the Settler unit seem completely undesireable compared to the Primitive Settler, at least to me. If I can build a Primitive Settler in 9 turns and regain the pop point 1-3 turns later, why in the name of all the nine hells would I want to build a Settler and lose 3 pop points? I haven't done the math, but it seems at first blush that losing 3 pop points would slow you down more in the long run than the few extra turns to build the Primitive Settler.

Anyway, my suggested solutions to the problems I've raised.

1. Swap the positions of Primitive and normal Settlers in the tech tree, increase Primitive's pop cost to 2, and reduce its shield cost slightly while increasing the normal Settler's shield cost slightly. This would slow growth a little more at the beginning and provide an actual incentive to researching Expansionism, which I find useless right now and usually trade or GL for.
2. As an earlier poster suggested, you might try reducing the food output of secondary tiles like forests and hills. One reason it's easy to get large and shield-powerful cities is that you can easily afford to work a few 2-shield (3 with mines) tiles once you have some irrigated grassland because of all the extra food you're getting from the grassland. If you had to trade off a little more food for the extra production, it might work out better. I'm not sure, it's a place for testing. Then you might also add hill irrigation to raise from 1 to 2 food, which would let very hilly areas get some growth from their hills at the expense of production.
3. As an experiment, you might try playing the same random map twice, once with the food requirements and tile values of your mod, once with the values from the base game and record how large your cities were by a certain turn. That would give you an idea of what your changes are actually doing.
   [/list=1]
   Please don't think I'm ungrateful, I'm just curious how to further improve this high-quality mod. Anyway, that's my duo aerei folles.

 

[Gojira54]

Originally posted by DB_in_Omaha
I haven't noticed it happening as often as you seem to have, but I'll keep an eye on things and also see what others have to say about their own experiences with the mod. What difficulty level are you playing on, by the way?

I have noticed this happens once in a while. I thought it interesting, since I have no idea why they are doing that. I have been playing this mod on Regent until I get a better feel for it.

Originally posted by DB_in_Omaha
Apparently, a side effect of having more resources in the game is that the map generator has a greater tendency to "clump" luxury resources. But as it increases the odds of a civ having a monopoly on a resource, and thus increases the importance of resource trading, I'm happy with it.

I agree completely. It also gives the warmongerers a reason to go to war.

 

[Leptomeninges]

A little more feedback. At the outset let me make it completely clear that I really like the mod. I mostly just want to ramble here a bit and can't resist giving some feedback along the way. (I'm playing a huge game on monarch with the max number of civs - 24 I think.)

First off, I do like the scarcity of happiness resources. I've had to squeeze in a few "plantation" colonies on the other continent to pick some of them up. It's definitely more interesting when they're more rare. It requires more strategic planning for trading or colonization.

I also like the rate of tech progression. It's about 1100 AD and I'm probably 2/3 of the way through the midevil age (I'm the most advanced civ). This is with me gunning research as fast as I can.

Going along with this, tax revenue has been a real issue for me. I guess this is the marketplace issue someone else mentioned. I hope that normal marketplaces don't allow me to speed up my tech too much.

Like one of the other posters, I have completely outwondered the AI. I haven't missed one yet except for the oracle and slave trade (didn't want them) and the lighthouse (captured it.)

Just remembered. I also didn't build the great wall. It seems to have a feature common to improvements/wonders requiring walls in that it could only be built by a city small enough to build walls. (At least I think this was the problem. I'm at work and can't check my saved games.) Since my production centers couldn't build it, and my small cities needed development, I just skipped it.

I also avoided the Settler in favor of the Primitive Settler. The 3 pop loss seemed like a big hit. Maybe give the Primitive Settler a 2 pop loss in addition to the increased production? I like what you've done with the colonist.

I mentioned this before and someone recently seconded it, but I still think I'd reduce food output from hills, mountains, and forests. My cities are all size 12 or close to it. You may need to add another production point to hills and mountains to balance them out (ie. give them a combined number of food/prod/trade equal to that of other tiles.) I like what you've done with deserts. I also personally like impassable forests. I don't know if it's realistic, but there are several large forest and desert tracts on my map. It definitely changes the strategic dynamic.

Anyway, it's a ton of fun. Enjoying it very much.

EDIT:
One more thought. The huge map is really HUGE! Load times seem very reasonable though. (I never really notice them.)

 

[DB_in_Omaha]

OK, first and foremost, thanks to everyone for the feedback. Keep it coming! Constructive criticism -- which is the only sort of criticism I've seen here so far -- is always welcome!

A good many of the suggestions posted here over the past few days will make it into the next release, which should be available soon.

On the matter of food production, though, I want a bit more analysis. It seems there's a general agreement that food production right now is too high, which frankly doesn't surprise me, as I'd come to the same conclusion myself. But before I make any adjustments, I want to run my thoughts past all of you, lest I end up over-adjusting.

What I'm playing with at the moment is as follows:

Flood Plains 3/4
Fresh Water Lake 3/3
Grasslands 2/4
Plains 2/3
Coast 2/2
Jungle 2/2
Hills 1/2
Sea 1/1
Volcano 1/1
Mountain 0/0

(Forest, Wetlands, Tundra and Desert production would remain as they are in the current version.)

Absent any food-boosting resources, improvements or wonders, the only tiles that will produce more food than a single citizen needs are thus irrigated flood plains or grasslands, and they won't do it until you get out from under the Despotism tile penalty.

My gut feeling is that this is going a bit overboard, and making growth *too* difficult, but I wanted to see what others think.

-- Darryl

 

[T_McC]

On the food subject:

The problem I can see developing with your latest proposal is that unless a city has floodplains or grass to irrigate, all cities under despotism will max out at size 4. Because of the tile penalty, a square needs to produce 4 food pre-penalty to produce 3 afterwards. Strong incentive to swap gov'ts, but you should be sure this is the effect you want.

There may be another solution. Is it possible to select at what point the Despotism penalty occurs? In the base game, the 3 of anything threshold falls is fairly natural. With your mod, it would make more sense to have the threshold be 4 of something. This makes Despot cities much more sustainable, as you can irrigate plains for break-even food. Ideally you could have different limits for food/shields/trade, but I doubt that is possible.

I guess the best way is just to try the new system and see what happens.

 

[Leptomeninges]

I would give another food point to flood plains. An irrigated flood plain should produce more food than irrigated grassland. If for no other reason than because the tiles surrounding floodplains are usually desert which are totally useless.

I had another couple of thoughts today. (I'm about to leave work.) First off, I didn't notice any particular benefit to building the Gutenberg Bible. It's supposed to be a corruption reducing/propaganda resisting wonder in the city that builds it, right? First off, that doesn't seem like much of a wonder. Secondly, my city still had corruption in it after it was built.

A second thought:

Missionaries -- while they seem like a really cool idea -- are completely useless (IMHO). This is because the AI usually builds a ton of emissaries so they can usually see your invisible units and they kill missionaries on sight. And since emissaries can capture workers anyway (as can assassins) why should I build a missionary? (The lack of nationality is a small benefit, but assassins have that too.) Then you remember that missionaries don't just cost production but actually pop points, and you'd be insane to build one. My suggestion would be to give them a movement of two and a 'treats all terrain as roads' benefit (do they already have the roads part? Can't remember). Since they're only good for capturing workers and settlers anyway (and maybe exploring?), it's hard to see how this would make them overpowered.

(And to tie these ideas together...)

What about having the benefit of the Gutenberg Bible be missionary production? Up to you. Just a thought.

Edit
One other thought. I don't know that I like roads only giving you a 2x movement bones rather than 3x. I usually find myself thinking that railroads are the things that imbalance by making you too fast, not roads.

 

[Gojira54]

Originally posted by DB_in_Omaha

What I'm playing with at the moment is as follows:

Flood Plains 3/4
Fresh Water Lake 3/3
Grasslands 2/4
Plains 2/3
Coast 2/2
Jungle 2/2
Hills 1/2
Sea 1/1
Volcano 1/1
Mountain 0/0

Very similar to what I do, only:

Grasslands 2/5
Plains 1/3
Sea 2/2
Volcano 0/0

Keep in mind I have quite a few food bonus resources, some heavy, to offset the terrain.

This does make Despotism growth very difficult, but that was kinda the point for me. This makes not only base terrain but resources and fresh water access very important, especially in the early game. Not to mention researching the proper technology to get irrigation.

Most resources should require an early tech to be used. That way food production starts off very poor, but slowly ramps up as new food resources, irrigation, and governments become available.

 

[Leptomeninges]

One more thought. Siege towers are too strong. A unit with a defensive value of three available in the ancient age as the second tech of the game? The next unit with that defense value is the musketeer at the end of the midevil age. And even then, not only does the siege tower have the added benefit of a bombard of five, but it's cheaper than the musketeer! Give me a reason to build another unit for defense. Make me think about building catapults.

Truth be told, I kind of like the siege tower's stats. My recommendation would be to make it way more expensive. Make me really choose to build one.

 

[Gojira54]

Originally posted by Leptomeninges
One more thought. Siege towers are too strong. A unit with a defensive value of three available in the ancient age as the second tech of the game? The next unit with that defense value is the musketeer at the end of the midevil age. And even then, not only does the siege tower have the added benefit of a bombard of five, but it's cheaper than the musketeer! Give me a reason to build another unit for defense. Make me think about building catapults.

Truth be told, I kind of like the siege tower's stats. My recommendation would be to make it way more expensive. Make me really choose to build one.

I agree they do need to be much more expensive. I haven't tried it yet, but I plan using them for settler transports...

 

[DB_in_Omaha]

*Sigh*

It hadn't even occurred to me that siege towers might be used as city defenders.

In other news....

Amesjustin's comments about food resources attached to techs got me thinking, and I decided to attach to starting techs some of the resources that don't currently have tech requirements. It won't make any substantial difference, but what the hell, right?

What I have in mind is:

MINING: Gold, Silver. The reason should be self-evident.

POTTERY: Barley, Maize, Rice, Wheat. All of the +3 food resources.

SAILING: Whales. They can only be found in sea squares, after all. (No beached whales in the Civ III universe!)

WARRIOR CODE: Game, Furs. OK, yes, you can hunt without having a warrior code. But it still makes a least a bit of sense.

CEREMONIAL BURIAL: Opium, Tobacco, Wine. Again, the reason should be self-evident.

-- Darryl

 

[Leptomeninges]

I like the idea for resource appearance.

A couple quick things:
Disregard my previous comment about the great wall. I checked my saved games last night and it seems to work fine. It just requires a wall in the city -- the city itself can be any size.

I've rethought things a bit on the missionary. I experimented with them last night and decided that they aren't completely useless. But I still think you should increase their movement and maybe reduce the pop cost (they're just not THAT useful). If you send them wandering into an adjacent civ's territory looking for workers to "convert," relying on "invisibility" to protect them, they'll be killed -- without a declaration of war. However, if you perch one on your side of a border next to a good but unimproved tile (like an unconnected resource) the AI will repeatedly send workers there. You pop the worker with your missionary and then drop a defending unit on top to prevent the AI from killing your missionary without declaring war. The only reason this works is because the AI is so dumb. It never learns that the tile (or collection of tiles) is a death trap. Assassins are still more useful overall, but if you missed Machiavelli's principle and want to plunder workers without declaring war (have you ever seen an AI settler without an escort?), missionaries have a role. Note that with this strategy, the missionary may as well be visible. This is why I suggest increasing its mobility. Allow it to move fast enough to only be visible sometimes to the opposing emissaries.

Just hit the industrial age. It's the late 1300s. Early compared to history I guess, but still a slowdown compared to most games (which is a good thing). I might even slow it down a bit more if you can.

Got to get back to work. Maybe I'll write more if something occurs to me later. Apologies for hogging so much space in your thread.

 

[Gdek]

Couple of quick questions/comments...

I've played a little further along now, and am quite liking the changes made to hit points on the units. By having AA units with 1 pt less the MA units, you create more realistic combat, where a smaller but technologically superior force can effectively fight against a larger but less advanced force.

It may just be my game, but bronze seems to be a little rare, taking into account it's importance, especially in the ancient age.

Like another poster, I dislike the adjusted movement on roads. I'd prefer to have them back to a 3 movement base, and have railroads changed to something around a 10-15 base... I think it's ridiculous that you can move across an entire continent instantaneously with rails. Making that sort of change would not only make the world seem larger, but would increase the importance of airports, and increase the importance of regional forces in a sprawling empire.

As to poster who commented on increased worker efficiency in Libertarianism, I'd welcome the increase to clean up that pesky pollution. It also might be helpful if there were an advance in the early to mid IA that increase worker's movement.

Also, I'm noticing that the AI doesn't seem to share tech as much as in non-modded C3C... In my game there appears to be 2 large continents (not sure as I'm only 1/2 through MA and can't trade maps yet). I'm the tech leader (as Ottomans) by 2-3 techs on my continent, but am about 8-10 techs behind the Byzantines on the other continent. However, Theodora hasn't traded tech's with anyone on her continent at all... some of them are still in the ancient age. I know it's not that she doesn't have contact with them... I got my contacts from her. Just curious as to why this may be... Normally the AI is thrilled to trade techs amongst themselves.

Other than that, really enjoying the mod, and the game in particular. The additional techs in the tree at each age seem to slow down advancement from age to age... I'd engaged in an AA war for the first time in a long time... Now in an MA war, mainly because my core cities have nothing left to produce but units!

 

[jimmygeo]

This may have been covered earlier, but I was (am) too lazy and impatient to read through the whole thread. I started two games (once as Byzantines, once as Romans) and in both the date remained 'Dec.' for each turn (and I played 20-30 turns). Also, my colonies were labeled 'Firaxis is the registered trademark of Firaxis Games Inc.' instead of 'Colony'. What's the matter? I'm using version 2.01.

jimmygeo

 

[DB_in_Omaha]

Originally posted by Gdek
Like another poster, I dislike the adjusted movement on roads. I'd prefer to have them back to a 3 movement base, and have railroads changed to something around a 10-15 base... I think it's ridiculous that you can move across an entire continent instantaneously with rails. Making that sort of change would not only make the world seem larger, but would increase the importance of airports, and increase the importance of regional forces in a sprawling empire.

Unfortunately -- and this is something that modders have been complaining about for a long time -- the manner in which railroads work *CANNOT* be changed. They allow unlimited movement. Period, end of statement.

Believe me, I'd love to be able to change it, as would many other people.

The only way to prevent units from having effectively infinite movement on railroads is simply not to have railroads at all. And that's not practical, as without the production bonuses that railroads provide, cities are pretty much stuck at Medieval Age sizes.

Now, that having been said, a rather radical solution has come to mind, but I'm not sure how well it would work, and I'm certainly not going to just implement it without a lot of consideration. But I'll mention it, to see what sort of initial response it gets....

Roads, per se, could be eliminated from the game. Road graphics would be replaced with railroad graphics, road building would be tied to Steam Power, and railroad building wouldn't be available at all. Roads (which in this mod would actually be railroads) could be given a movement rate of, say, 1/10.

The first problem is that roads provide early commerce bonuses, and that without roads, the bonuses wouldn't exist. But this could be gotten around simply by giving various terrain types commerce production *without* roads.

The second problem is that movement in the early game would be substantially more difficult, especially given the sort of changes I've made in BBW. A lot of readjusting would need to be done in regard to the whole "impassable to wheeled vehicles without a road" concept, since such terrain would remain impassable until the Industrial Age, when roads (railroads) finally become available.

The third (and perhaps most significant) problem is tied to the food and shield production bonuses that true railroads provide. There's no way to simulate this with regular roads. And while the production bonuses of factories and power plants could be boosted to compensate for the loss of railroad-generated shields, there's no way to have an improvement or wonder increase food production except in water tiles.....

On the plus side, there'd be no more "infinite movement" problem, and since railroads wouldn't be providing production bonuses, neither the AI nor human players would have any need to build them in every friggin' tile....

-- Darryl

EDIT: I just checked, and there is *not* a full correspondence between the arrangement of road tiles in the "roads.pcx" file and the arrangement of railroad tiles in the "railroads.pcx" file. So you couldn't just use the existing railroads graphics file for roads; you'd have to go through and manually rearrange the railroad tiles into the sequence used in the road tiles graphic. Not an impossible job, but not one I'd want to tackle unless I was fairly sure it would pay off.

FURTHER EDIT: As someone on another thread noted in response to this idea the other day, not allowing roads to be built until the industrial age would, of course, make it impossible to connect your cities to resources for the first half of the game. I feel rather silly. Talk about missing the obvious!

 

[DB_in_Omaha]

Originally posted by jimmygeo
I started two games (once as Byzantines, once as Romans) and in both the date remained 'Dec.' for each turn (and I played 20-30 turns). Also, my colonies were labeled 'Firaxis is the registered trademark of Firaxis Games Inc.' instead of 'Colony'. What's the matter?

You need either to patch your copy of C3C to version 1.22, or replace the mod's "labels.txt" file (found in the mod's "Text" folder) with the alternate file appropriate to the C3C version you're running.

-- Darryl

 

[Gojira54]

I honestly don't think the RR issue is worth all of the trouble. Every game has limitations, we'll just have to accept this one.