Orbis - the original thread

[Seon]

I have seen a barb Alcinus hiding out at an goblin fort for quite some time, kept on harrasing my cities with spectres so I killed him with Chalid . You know, I think we could have some positive diplomacy bonus because of it, something like "You returned Alcinus to us !"

Or it could be a negative diplomacy bonus of "YOU RETURNED ALCINUS TO US?!!!! !!!!)

 

[Wauthan]

In the middle of a nice game right now, playing as the Mechanos. Love the new boats. The change to food and castles are very good. Nice balancing in my opinion.

Being able to build all three kinds of Great General buildings in the same city is over the top though. As mechanos I can easily get a huge production bonus in a single city and pump out quite a lot of units, that get the bonus from all three buildings. Same deal with the Clan.

One building per city seems like a nice balance and sort of seems like good fluff.
One academy focuses on mimicking animal styles, another on specialized formations and the third is sort of a generic "elite" military academy that can be built anywhere. The AI doesn't seem to make good use of any of them, but that's to be expected.

I'm glad you decided to take a stab at the events. A lot of them are simply annoying, while others make no sense at all. Enabling some events from the vanilla Civ 4 sounds like a good idea, if it's not all truck load of work that is.

 

[TimSLS]

A comment on the new industrious - I'm not sure moving the bonus to requiring base 4 production would be a good thing, as it would seem to advanatage plains hills too much over grassland hills (and one of the changes I like that you made to agriculture civic was removing the strong advanatage of grassland farmland over plains farmland). The powering up of one of the dwarf leaders on mountains seems fine - he needed a boost anyway. Agg/Fin is such a powerful combination to compete with.

 

[arkham4269]

Not a bug, but just wondering if it is possible to do with your coding level.

First off, when you get the dialog box asking if a city could be given to another civ (usually because you took it from them in battle) could a option be added to say, "Never! This city is mine by conquest for all time!" which would keep this pop-up from happening again? (You could still give the city back using the F1 menu)

Secondly, it seems that you can only make colonies when your empire is separated from the colonies by water. This really sucks when you're playing on a Pangea map or are doing good in war but can't afford all the new cities. Worse, if you are playing the Scions, many of the cities are large and that's good, but adding a bunch of smaller cities that will never grow unless you add Awakened/Reborn is a pain since I generally want to use them in my core Scion cities.

Many times I'd like to take over a Civ and then turn around and re-create them as a vassal. However, if they are on the same continent, the game won't let you. You used to be able to; I'm not sure what changed.

It just seems when you take over cities on the same continent that have a different faction than yours, you should have the option of making them a vassal state.

 

[Ahwaric]

Ok, next patch is ready. it breaks saves and requires reinstall. You can get it here.

@Wauthan
Glad you like the changes. Regarding academies, I blocked getting both castra and wild haven in one city. Only military academy can coegzist with any of them. I plan to add some more (but need good ideas for mounted/archery etc academy) and they should follow the same pattern.

@TimSLS
That is exactly why I decided to keep industrious bonus at 3 I wonder if Kandros will still be that good with recent nerf to financial, but only some more tests can show it.

 

[Caradoc]

I'm still two patches behind, but I notice that Govannon does not teach Dimensional.

 

[TimSLS]

It seems that recon units, who do not recieve academy traning when built, can still use the option "train in academy" and get the promotion. Seems unintended.

 

[TimSLS]

Regarding kandros and changes to financial - I'm not sure what happened can be considered a nerf relative to base FfH. In your mod there are so many (very fun) ways to rack up the commerce of plots, so its easier to get to the requisite level for the financial bonus to kick in.

 

[arkham4269]

Getting a repeatable CtD every time I try to take the Luann capital. I haven't patched to F yet since I'm almost at a win in this game and get my Scion trophy. Not sure what's causing it since it doesn't seem to be a graphic error.

UPDATE: One thing to check on this file is the Luann acted really weird in that as a maritime race they never were able to colonize anywhere else. I'm on a tiny/small map (I don't remember) and there were islands close by so I don't understand it. Neither did the Sidar that are stuck on an island by themselves even though and large island was very close by (you can see I've already taken it over).

So either the AI is still massively stupid in regard to boats or that the sea monsters are to nasty. I'm thinking it's a bit of both; the AI doesn't know to mass a few ships together in a convoy to avoid the sea monsters.

Plus, I've noticed that the inquisitors bring up a way to flummox the AI, sort of the same way you used to be able to do in old Civ II & III. Playing as Mechanos or Scions, I build units with the inquisitor promotion and station one in every one of my cities. I then just wait and sure enough any nearby civs that I have an open border with will constantly send missionary after missionary into my territory. Sure they are cheap and easy to build, but because I keep deleting their faith in my cities, they keep trying! So I can tie the AI up in building missionaries instead of combat units or buildings. I would think that after awhile there would have to be some penalty for this tactic. I mean if I was sending missionaries out and they 'convert the heathen' but then get run out of town, so to speak, well I'd take it badly after a time. I would expect some sort of negative "You have torched our missions!" in the diplomatic screen.

 

[Seon]

Well... Technically it's sort of their fault for sending you missionaries, isn't it?
Seriously, I would like the AI to stop spamming zealots and priests, I once took a city with at least 14 priests in it and about 2 longbowmen defending it. Just for back-up, they also had 7 savants in the city as well. Infernals got some huge bonus by the time I was finshed... Although that was long ago and in base FfH. Now in Orbis, instead of that problems, I keep seeing the AIs attack with Royal guards and longbowman. I even swear that I saw a Mercurian marksman that they were not even supposed to build.

And also to the point of AI spamming missions, yew in one of my games, I managed I find Empyrean and converted 3 other civs to it, only to be beaten in percentage believers by the Order religion that sprung up about 90 turns later

 

[arkham4269]

Thought I'd play a quick game of Doviello before patching to F since I'm waiting to get a CtD report.

One thing that struck me again is that the sea monsters are to strong relevant to their land counter parts.

Problems:
A. Strength: It doesn't seem that sea monsters change during the game in strength like land barbarians. So you have creatures tough enough to take out frigates when all you have is galley's/drakkars.

B. Warning: Since you don't have hills or towers to use, line of sight is much more limited for ships and thus a lot easier to blunder into sea monster. While this is okay in the sense that these creatures swim so are a lot harder to see, it does make it harder for game play since it's harder to avoid them.

C. ******** AI: For some reason, the AI is ******** when it comes to maritime issues. The old AI could get down right evil when it came to ships. It would create squadrons of ships, do naval invasions with multiple ships and even keep raiders along probable lines of transit to catch unescorted transport ships. The seems to barely able to suck it's thumb at sea. So the I think the nastiness of the sea monsters hurts the AI since it doesn't 'know' enough to protect their ships from attack or to create larger convoys to ferry colonists to new lands.

D. Limited Creatures: Right now there are two types of sea monsters; three if you count the occasional griffin flying around. On land you have plenty of different things. For that matter, except for Aifon Island, the sea is pretty boring.

E. Fog of War: It seems like the system generates more creatures since most of the time the sea is covered by the Fog of War. I often come across patches of ocean that have 3+ sea turtles and 2+ sea serpents. Even 2-3 Frigates will fall to that.

Possible Solutions:

A. Variable Strength: On land, the longer barbarians are left alone, they start to spawn stronger units. I believe that the same should be true for sea monsters. So either you have less powerful monsters to start with or you have new creatures with variable strengths that appear during the game.

B. Movement Restrictions: Not sure if this could be coded, but one way to keep the nastier monsters away is to make them unable to enter coastal squares. That way when players/AI is restricted to the weaker coastal vessels, they won't be attacked by the heavier duty ocean going sea monsters.

C. More sea events: Mostly I'm thinking of sort of missions from Sid Meier's Pirates! in the sense of you get a event where you are alerted to a special pirate or monster (Get me the white whale!) and when you destroy it, you get some reward. Plus, another thing to fiddle around with, if possible, would be pirate coves that act like forts. They'd have a defender like Forts, but would spawn pirate ships from time to time until destroyed. (Perhaps, unlike forts, capturing them destroys them)

D. More Sea Creatures: Relevant to A & B is having more types of sea creatures. Some ideas:

1. Ghost Ships: Like Pirate Ships, but having special powers. Perhaps it causes fear or attacking it can cause the unit to become infected with madness and thus randomly become enraged. Perhaps when a ship is killed by a ghost ship, a barbarian drown is created.

2. Tritons: Fancy name for mermen. Good coastal unit low in strength.

3. Kraken: Good intermediate candidate for a unit that changes strength with time. Early ones are weak but later ones get big and nasty.

4. Roc: Perhaps a special event creature. Basically a specialty griffin nest eith only a Roc which would basically be a super-griffin which ranges very far away from it's island nest to feed. Taking the nest might get something equivalent of a small Dragon's hoard.

5. Sea Serpents: I think a little bit of playing around with the animation for these to show different types. The one in use now is more of a sea dragon (pleosaur type) so maybe that could be the weaker version that can only go into sea and ocean squares and then have a larger "Jörmungandr" type serpents that wouldn't have the legs. Plus, it would be nice to have it have a different sound file with more of a hissing. I really, really get tired of listening to that same dragon roar sound.

So these are just some ideas. I wish I knew how to code or do the graphics since I think a lot could be done with these. Plus I guess it might be a good idea to troll around the forums for any work people have done on the Aifons. I know there is some interest in them as a Civ. Perhaps there may be some stuff done for that that could be used.

 

[notque]

If he ends up merging the Sea AI code I have, the AI will make invasions, settle on islands, and bring escorts for boats.

There are still problems though. Sea monsters are still very strong, and sometimes it gets hard to dislodge them even with protections.

 

[Ahwaric]

Getting a repeatable CtD every time I try to take the Luann capital. I haven't patched to F yet since I'm almost at a win in this game and get my Scion trophy.

I do not get CtD, but there is a python error. It is caused by Stewards of Inequity in the city (or rather broken python handling Lodge of Stewards removal). The easiest way to fix it would be removing both stewards and lodge from the city in worldbuilder.
I am going to try to fix it in the next patch, but I am tempted to just remove Stewards. There are plenty of guilds already and they do not add anything to gameplay, nor I have ideas how to change it. I might add some events featuring stewards, but I do not need a real guild for them, no problem with linking events to Bazaar of mammon.

If he ends up merging the Sea AI code I have, the AI will make invasions, settle on islands, and bring escorts for boats.

You bet I will. Just give me the code

I agree that AI needs a lot of work and naval AI needs it the most. I will check what I can find to expand sea monsters/barbarians, but I am not sure what can I do with my skills.
Disciple spamming is not an issue for me. Not a major one at least. Religious victory is a viable option. AI can not have more than 3 disciples of any particular religion at once. Also, it is rare that someone behaves like you do But the most importatnt thing, no idea how to change it now.

 

[arkham4269]

Disciple spamming is not an issue for me. Not a major one at least. Religious victory is a viable option. AI can not have more than 3 disciples of any particular religion at once. Also, it is rare that someone behaves like you do But the most important thing, no idea how to change it now.

I wasn't too worried about it, just that I like to bring up when the AI does something like this, like it has no control over it. It's like in the old or when you could sucker the AI by placing some troops near its border at one point and then wait for the AI to mass forces like moths drawn to a flame and then attack across the border farther away.

I do, however, think that there should be some sort of cumulative diplomatic penalty for using inquisitors on a state religion of a neighbor, especially if that Civ has the Holy City of that religion. Again I would think that the devout in that land would start to agitate to punish the Civ that kept 'persecuting' the faithful. Of course one could argue that there would be a cumulative diplomatic penalty over time of agnostic Civs or the Scions/Illians since to them you are trying to spread the 'god lies' and tempt people away from Humanism or the worship of the Risen Emperor/Allicarn.

 

[notque]

That particularly AI issue I should have fixed as well.

I think you need to see the new AI and then make some judgments on it. I'll get the source ready for Ahwaric on the next release.

 

[Taalen]

I've been encountering a pretty strange problem. I've only been playing Orbis for a couple of days now (thoroughly enjoying it so far, especially love forts and fort commanders for expanding influence), so it could be it's something that's different in Orbis and I haven't figured it out yet, but I doubt it. Using Patch F.

So, the problem is this: At some point, much of my sea areas (and apparently seas all around the world) became blockaded. But there's nobody or nothing doing the actual blockading. Even in worldbuilder I cannot find anything in the middle of the blockaded areas.

Can someone confirm if it is a bug, or just a feature I haven't figured out yet. For a while I thought it might have been my next door neighbours Lanun, but they can't seem to have access to their sea resources either, and the blockades didn't disappear after I formed a permanent alliance with him.

Save attached, in someone wants to take a look. Again, patch F.

 

[notque]

It's a fall from heaven bug. It's fixed in fall further. Mods need to fix it too.

 

[Taalen]

Ok, thanks. Never encountered it in FFH, but it's good to know it's known.

 

[Caradoc]

I like all of arkham4269's suggestions regarding sea monsters. I usually play an archipelago map and dealing with the Sea Serpents is a major pain. For exploration, I like to send out several cheap ships (Galleys or Triremes) hugging the coast and loading/unloading at the start and end of each turn. I also like to have a promoted Fawn on board to mesmerize any serpents or turtles I come across.

 

[arkham4269]

I like all of arkham4269's suggestions regarding sea monsters. I usually play an archipelago map and dealing with the Sea Serpents is a major pain. For exploration, I like to send out several cheap ships (Galleys or Triremes) hugging the coast and loading/unloading at the start and end of each turn. I also like to have a promoted Fawn on board to mesmerize any serpents or turtles I come across.

Well I just used that trick with the Fawn recently and it's cool. Yet it sounds a bit counter-intuitive that the FoL's give you the best access to the sea over OO!

Perhaps mesmerize animals could only be used on land animals and then a OO specific spell be created to allow mesmerizing sea creatures.

I was also thinking it would be nice to have a 'drown' promotion for OO ships so as if the ship is destroyed in battle, a drown is created.