playtest feedback

[davidlallen]

I couldn't figure out how things work with those fuel trucks. In the whole game, I popped one from a bunker (goody hut), and another one popped on the oil well shortly after I connected it. After that, zip. So I had only two fuel refuel possibilities.

I have reduced the speed at which fuel trucks spawn. Maybe too much In 0.6, fuel trucks randomly spawn at each oil well. You automatically get one when you first build it, so that you can see where they come from. Each well has a percent chance per turn to spawn another one. In 0.5 and earlier, the complaint was "too many" fuel trucks. Maybe now it is "too few", hopefully with some more feedback I can get it "just right".

It is easy to modify in the python if you want to try different values. In file Assets/python/CvFuryRoadEvents.py, find the buildGasTruck function definition. Under that find the "thresh" variable. Today it is set to 25, which is 2.5% per turn. You can make it anything. There is some other code which tries to prevent huge stacks of trucks from accumulating there unused, but that may never happen anymore.

Also, the AI seems to wait before fueling its vehicles. When I first approached a hostile city, all jeeps in it had an empty tank. Two turns later, its whole stack had moved out to intercept my force.

I guess that means it just brought in a fuel tanker from a nearby well. It may be a good strategy to go around disconnecting or razing wells before attacking.

 

[davidlallen]

Maybe within first 15 (Time to build a another Warrior) turns no barbs should spawn in the immediate vicinity of the cities.

Good idea. I can add some code for that. At least make it more unlikely, I guess an animal could pop N plots away and beeline for the city due to some random numbers.

I have a bug (?) for you as well David. Was trying out the Horseman in the game... Apparently they are not eligible for any promotions.

Ooh, that is by mistake. When you *add* a unitcombat, you have to mark each promotion as available to that unitcombat. There were no mounted units before, and I forgot to make this big edit to the promotions file. Thanks for spotting it.

 

[GeoModder]

I guess that means it just brought in a fuel tanker from a nearby well. It may be a good strategy to go around disconnecting or razing wells before attacking.

What I meant was that the AI's jeep stack was unfueled while a few fuel trucks were present in the city. I thought the AI was smart enough to wait until he really needed it and then assembled as much wheeled units as it had in the same city before fueling them all at once, thus saving other trucks for later.

 

[GeoModder]

Thats odd - if by survivor gunman you mean that "Guardian" Pumpgun-Guy - it shows on my game.
Not sure what could make the difference here... Does he animate properly otherwise ?

Yep, I meant the pumpgun guardian.
It animates just fine, and the soundtrack is that of a machine pistol.

 

[davidlallen]

What I meant was that the AI's jeep stack was unfueled while a few fuel trucks were present in the city. I thought the AI was smart enough to wait until he really needed it and then assembled as much wheeled units as it had in the same city before fueling them all at once, thus saving other trucks for later.

I wish the AI were that smart There is a routine which is supposed to run at the end of each turn, and if there is an AI tanker in the same plot with even one vehicle whose tank is empty, it should trigger the refuel action. I can put a "consistency check" in to make sure this is happening, and then try to debug from there. But I am glad that the AI "seemed" smart to you.

 

[Refar]

Yep, I meant the pumpgun guardian.
It animates just fine, and the soundtrack is that of a machine pistol.

The sounds i had fixed today, they should be ok in next update. But i cant recreate the missing flash, so i am not sure what might be wrong.
All the other units do show effect for you ?

 

[westamastaflash]

Fun mod .

However, vision victory seems too easy. I played epic mode and won on turn 224 on a standard map. It was on "Noble" difficulty though.

 

[davidlallen]

Here is a release question for you. I have made a number of big changes in gameplay. I have not done much playtesting yet. Should I release it and you guys can help playtest, or should I do more playtesting myself first? I will be busy the next two weeks at work, so I may not have a chance to do much of either development or playtesting.

Here are the major changes already done:

* "Safety" statistic replaces culture. Idea suggested by refar in this thread. Instead of theaters generating culture, we have buildings like walls and barracks which generate safety. Without a sufficient level of safety, the survivors will not venture far from the city. There is a "protector" specialist and "great protector". The minimum city distance is now 3 instead of 2, which gives a lower city density. The safety level for ring expansion is raised and there are fewer levels; instead of 10, 100, 500, 5000, 50000 it is now 10, 500, 30000. But that 30000 counts as legendary, three legendary cities is a safety victory.

* New method for founding visions. Previously the first player to reach a tech would found each vision ("religion"). Now there is a capitol building, available under the Diplomacy tech. This is a national wonder with a world limit of 6, matching the number of visions available. When you build the building, you can pick any one of the remaining visions to found. Each AI will aim to build the building and pick its favorite vision, or another random one if they did not get there in time. A human player who builds the capitol will be prompted for which vision they would like to choose. No civ can found more than one vision, which should make the vision victory harder. The visions themselves continue to have no specific effect on the game.

* Reduced micromanagement of fuel trucks. A gas-powered unit has 1/4 tank, instead of empty, when created. Also instead of giving a percent chance to decrease the gas level, it decreases after a constant number of turns: 4 for ground units, 2 for gunships, longer with the "less fuel" promotion.

Here are the minor changes already done:

* Added back original government civics. Original table is 5x5, 0.6 table is 3x3, new table is 5x4 (no religion civics).

* Bug fix, survivor cavalry unit was not allowed any promotions

* Added barricades, a "low wall" with barbed wire; graphics by seZereth

* Added three unique hero units, The Pilot, The Wanderer, The Tankbuster. They may randomly appear in ruin plots that you own.

* Ranged units like crossbow and flamethrower now get free promotions for protective trait

* Mapscript: remove peaks or fallout on one-plot land bridges which could isolate players; also remove fallout adjacent to any player's start position. This led to occasional "crib death" where a radioactive monster would spawn right next to a starting city and reach there before the survivor did.

* Reduced number of radio towers required to build Voice of Badlands wonder

 

[westamastaflash]

If you'd like to release, by all means, I'll take a run at a game or two.

 

[Refar]

There are lots of changes, and you got a few people playing and posting here now, so a release might be worth it.

I have some art in the pipeline, but there will allways be something, so thi should not be a reason to delay .
I uploaded the final (so i hope) Basic UTE in the art thread, if you want to put it with the release.

 

[davidlallen]

OK, I have a family event tonight but I can probably put out a release (*with* the new ute, looks awesome). It won't crash, but it may not be balanced.

 

[westamastaflash]

I was thinking more about this, and I really liked the idea of the "safety" mechanic. I *also* think that since most units are limited in number, promotions should take on a very strong role as well. I really like the Ute upgrades, and the Road Warrior upgrade :-D. Perhaps increasing the XP cap from barbarians to say, 30 instead of 10 (100 is a bit much as in FFH, but I think since there are lots of barbs, you should be able to build a few nice units off them).

 

[davidlallen]

Perhaps increasing the XP cap from barbarians to say, 30 instead of 10

This appears to be one of those issues where half the people feel strongly one way, and half feel strongly another. Another playtester has commented that getting XP off the barbs was too easy, and I proposed to *decrease* the XP cap. Until more votes are in, I think I will leave the cap at the default level. Of course once we have a bunch of level specific ute art, people may want more high level utes.

 

[davidlallen]

OK, version 0.7 is released. Download link. Details.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated. There are existing discussions on the vision victory in this thread and the "safety" mechanic in this thread.

 

[Refar]

Cool. I was just thinking if i should start a (regular) civ game. Will try the new release instead

 

[davidlallen]

Not sure if this is best in the playtest thread or the vision thread. I completed a game with 0.7, and I had a surprise loss. I was in last place on points, but I was about to get heavy weapons so I had some hope. I noticed that Monty (the leader on points) had 46% vision, and 51% is a vision victory.

Two problems: (a) There was nothing I could do about it. (b) The next turn he won, there was no warning.

Increasing the threshold for vision victory, say to 67%, doesn't directly address either problem. In Gods Of Old, and probably other mods, there is an Inquisitor unit who can remove unwanted religions from a city. That would help a little, but I'm not sure how to teach the AI how to use it. It could be another Advocate mission, or a new Diplomat unit.

For the lack of warning, I see there is an iVictoryDelayTurns parameter in the XML. I will have to see if this actually provides some kind of warning on its own.

 

[Refar]

I had a similar loss on 0.6 in my other game (and a similar win - in the AAR one). I had some more warning, as i was monitoring the situation, however there apparently was nothing i could do about it.

And you are right just increasing the threshold will not help it much.

The VictoryDelay should display "X turns to victory" if someone hit the condition. However so far i only seen it for my self...

There is another possible problem: To fight my upcomming Visions loss i tried to spread other Visions in big cities that had the Winning Vision (To water down it percentage).
However those actions seemed without effect: While the % of the religions i spread increased, the % of the Winning religion did not drop...
That brings up the question: if a city has 3 religions, does each of them count 1/3 of the pop ? Or All 3 the full Pop ?

I had meant to investigate myself, but did not come to do it yet.

 

[westamastaflash]

An inquisitor would be great to have . I am going to try .7 now.

 

[Refar]

Actually i think that if the % calculations work properly - crediting only partial population in cities with multiple religions - no inquisitor should be required - you can allways counter a opposing religion by spreading your own.
Seem to make more sense to me as well - if it does work.

 

[westamastaflash]

You know what I'm not a big fan of - the starting spot being pre-settled, and the maps not generating *usable* starting locations. With the amount of plains and desert, sometimes you are stuck with a capital with no food resources and lots of plains hills. If you gave a starting settler instead of a automatic start location, you could move to a more hosiptable place. I would imagine that in a future scenario like this, people would congregate at the few "gardens of eden" with desolate wastes in between..