Opportunities

I noticed a bug where opportunities will appear more often as the game progresses. After 250 turns, I had an opportunity every 10 turns, which increased to every 5 turns after 300.

 

In cIV we used to have events that would result in amassing barbarians at ur borders (like Huns have arrived with a large force of horsemen). Why not add this in ciV through oppurtunities. So for example Huns will come up with 4-6 sized highly promoted army + a GG to do some REAL pillaging.

Similarly as I mentioned in another thread, opportunities could be used to limit steamrolling effect. Rebellion event for large cities that u have conquered recently or something like that.

One thing I would like to see is that barbs get resource units as well through barb camps because right now exploring is quite easy & u can explore the whole continent very quickly. That might cause problems for AI but u can give them higher bonus Vs barb to compensate.

 

@The Boz, that is intentional.

Edit: Only just saw your recent posts in the Opportunity bug thread, so what I said is irrelevant.

 

@The Boz
What game speed do you play on?

Do you mean units which require strategic resources? You should see barbarian swords/chariots/etc appearing... if not, it's a bug. They don't start showing up until around the Classical/Medieval era.

 

Just thought I'd say that opportunities are now working perfectly and I'm loving every second of it.

 

That was on normal speed. Sorry, can't send you any files from the new version, haven't played in a few days, and I won't be for another few.

 

I'll clear my cache to see if it works as intended.
Also what do u think abt my oppurtunity idea ? Is it possible to mod ?

 

It's possible, but I prefer to keep opportunities positive.

 

I haven't seen a barb sword or horse in a very long time, at least as I can remember. The *vast* majority are poachers (archers) I believe. I'm trying to remember if I've seen anything other than warriors and archers and I honestly can't remember.

 

Come to think of it, neither have I.

 

Yes, for quite a while now barbs have been resourceless: warriors, archers, pikes, crossbows, muskets. However, this works pretty well, and would probably be even better if there were more spears.

 

I have also noticed after the first couple barbs that get spawned, archers stop getting spawned. It is usually only warriors, spears, and then later pikes along with gunpowered units. I see very little ranged units with the exception being naval units.

 

Thanks for bringing this up. I discovered some bugs preventing a few unit types from spawning. For example, when archers stop spawning, chariots should begin spawning. See if it works in v.45 and up.

 

So I recently came back to Civ V after about a year and am catching up on all the great work you guys have been doing with VEP. So this was brought up before in the thread but i dont think it was ever addressed as to whether it was possible or not, but it might be easier to balance the opportunities if they were limited to a certain amount of turns for the bonuses.

This would solve the issue of different bonuses scaling differently throughout the game and would allow more frequency/options for them without worrying about breaking the balance. Plus you as a player are more likely to know what would be the best choice strategically in the next 30 turns and wouldn't have to try to think about which would be best over 200 turns due to getting +% modifiers etc. Also they could be cheaper if they were limited to a number of turns which wouldn't force you to keep as much gold on the off chance an event comes up which i find to be immersion breaking.

Anyway, just my two sense.

 

I do eventually want to add the capability for timed opportunities. I estimate setting up the framework and debugging it would take approximately 20 hours. I have limited time to work on the mod each day, so I've been focusing on other priorities first.

The reason for the large workload is I need to create a "timer" class with start/stop/pause/save. We do not have access to an event which runs immediately before the player saves a game. This means I have to store every timer every turn, just in case a save happens. Each save/load action may only take take a fraction of a second, but with several dozen opportunity timers active it could add significant lag later in the game, 20-40 seconds per turn. It's possible to turn all the variables into a string to save just once per turn, but that takes more time to code.

 

Ok, thats understandable. Just wasn't sure if it was on your radar at all. Keep up all the good work, I have to say the mod has improved so much since I was last around!

 

How does this look for the Scout Savior opportunity:

• +30 Experience for the Scout (was 20).
• Upgrade to an Archer who ignores terrain.
• Creates a new copy of the Scout (was +20% strength).

 

So the third option is a 2nd Scout? I like it! I can imagine choosing each of those options, depending on the circumstances.

Re: the multipliers and timed opportunities, I would really like to see one or both of the following:

• Benefits from Opportunities are only temporary (+5 for 30 turns, say)
• Non-Happiness benefits are scaled down on later turns (after typical modifiers, 10 on turn 20 is worth about 5–6 by turn 250). Alternatively or in addition, the Happiness benefits from Opportunities could scale up with time.

 

Assuming that every AI gets the same choice, it makes for a livelier (and easier) game. Any idea what they pick?

However, is there a way to limit this Opportunity to on per game? I don't know if what happened in my buggy last game is normal, but I got it for both the scouts I built.

 

It scans their preferences similar to when I make them spend excess gold. The old ones were: 1) expansion 2) defense 3) offense. Duplicating a scout is not useful for an AI who already starts with lots of units, so I'm thinking about 1) expansion 2) offense 3) none.