Pre-v36 Bugfix List

[BlueGenie]

Actually increasing it to 4 per pop will not make much difference, except in the very early PreHistory game.
4 means 1 more per pop needed so in Ancient when food is abundant a 20 city would need all of 20 more food per turn?
No, it would not, because it had probably lost more than that from food decay anyway so those 20 extra would only reduce the decay, and still grow just as fast.

Only once the threshold of reducing decay and increase of food due to total population is reached will it start turning downwards in a noticeable fashion really, and only until reaching Vertical Farming after which it will sky-rocket again.

If you do not trust my non-existent proof just try setting it to 5 in an ongoing Classical game and see if there is much noticeable difference.

Cheers

 

[Thunderbrd]

Actually increasing it to 4 per pop will not make much difference, except in the very early PreHistory game.
4 means 1 more per pop needed so in Ancient when food is abundant a 20 city would need all of 20 more food per turn?
No, it would not, because it had probably lost more than that from food decay anyway so those 20 extra would only reduce the decay, and still grow just as fast.

Only once the threshold of reducing decay and increase of food due to total population is reached will it start turning downwards in a noticeable fashion really, and only until reaching Vertical Farming after which it will sky-rocket again.

If you do not trust my non-existent proof just try setting it to 5 in an ongoing Classical game and see if there is much noticeable difference.

Cheers

I'm not going to stand on the basis of whether its provable or not. And you may well have a very good point. But it would be traumatic to some games if it changed overnight by more than 50% so its a matter of ramping up for the time being.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

1) BG is right about any change to the number of food per pop having any affect early in the game because of the food wastage system we have. 4 food per pop would probably have been a good idea instead of the wastage system.

2) would it not be better to have the food wastage mechanism available to buildings and techs through the XML rather than as it now is, ie hidden in the code somewhere. It would make it much less of a mystery.

3) some of the buildings that give a flat + should probably be giving a percentage instead. That way you have to work plots to get food at all and the % does not start to be too high until it is over 500% or so in a pop 6 or above city.

 

[Faustmouse]

I think the whole food problem would be best adressed after the next release.
I never fully understood the food wasting system as well...

A few people like the concept of buildings employing citizens, iE force 1 Pop to become a "useless" specialist. I never liked that. However, what about having "specialist" buildings increasing food required to grow or reduce food production by a few percent?
The guy who tells stories can't hunt / gather but needs to be fed as well. The Plumber / Carpenter etc doesn't work on a field...
Today, we produce way more food per km² (or whatever US people use, acre?) than earlier in history, yet the amount of people employed in agriculture constantly declines.

In game terms, this ultimatively means a slower growth in early cities depending on how many specialized buildings you have and comes to a point were both area and people available for agriculture doesn't really matter at all for growth (vertical farms, farming robots or even matter assamblers that can manipulate matter on atom basis (picometer engineering) and rearrange atoms to molecules as they want, turning garbage into food).

 

[Toffer90]

However, what about having "specialist" buildings increasing food required to grow or reduce food production by a few percent?
The guy who tells stories can't hunt / gather but needs to be fed as well. The Plumber / Carpenter etc doesn't work on a field...

Concrete suggestions:
→ People sacrificing food at shrines
→ → Shrine -3% , if you think that is harsh, consider this, At the time the 3% will have any noticeable effect a city should have the potential for a 10-20 income from the shrine.

→ Grand Manor (I think thats its name) gives 15% (I think). I believe it's a typical example of the rich taking an unfair piece of the cake.
→ → 10% .


I don't think a carpenter (or plumber) would lead to less food as he takes that particular workload off from everyone else's shoulders. He enables everyone else to focus on other things than carpentry, like food production.

 

[Thunderbrd]

RE: the food wastage mechanic: I didn't design it and it's designed in a way that is mind boggling. Powerful and quick but coding-wise hard to read the full intention. So I can't really even say for sure how its calculated.

 

[Arakhor]

Have you seen this post by Afforess? He's reduced the memory needed for city reclaiming and removed unit tendering because it makes the AI useless at contracting offensive wars.

 

[Faustmouse]

Concrete suggestions:
→ People sacrificing food at shrines
→ → Shrine -3% , if you think that is harsh, consider this, At the time the 3% will have any noticeable effect a city should have the potential for a 10-20 income from the shrine.

→ Grand Manor (I think thats its name) gives 15% (I think). I believe it's a typical example of the rich taking an unfair piece of the cake.
→ → 10% .


I don't think a carpenter (or plumber) would lead to less food as he takes that particular workload off from everyone else's shoulders. He enables everyone else to focus on other things than carpentry, like food production.

I think the problem was is that people tend to avoid all - and - buildings... Soif you have only a few that have a huge malus, it's very likely they'll never been built. So you basically HAVE to spread it over a lot of (useful) buildings.

 

[mart777]

From svn 8387 there is now 4 food per one population set. I am considering starting a new game, just to test it...
- And maybe, what would be typical size of a civ at the moment of entering into ancient era from prehistoric? Just some average playing level. How big capital, how many cities and what total population. Just roughly, since it all depends if someone using slavery would keep these numbers low.
- Maybe this issue of food would need a separate thread?

 

[JosEPh_II]

From svn 8387 there is now 4 food per one population set. I am considering starting a new game, just to test it...
- And maybe, what would be typical size of a civ at the moment of entering into ancient era from prehistoric? Just some average playing level. How big capital, how many cities and what total population. Just roughly, since it all depends if someone using slavery would keep these numbers low.
- Maybe this issue of food would need a separate thread?

Your questions ALL depend upon map size, game speed, and # of AI at Game set up. Plus whether you use REV and/or BarbCiv too.

The transition from Prehistoric to Ancient is at Sedentary Lifestyle. Using tribe once tribalism is researched on a huge map with 12 AI, Marathon to Epic gamespeeds, No REV, No Barbciv options, I can have 4 -8 cities (because of the change to Civics and the 1st 2 Gov't selections there). My capital can be 6 -10 pop depending upon resources revealed leading up to Ancient era. I do not use slavery ever.

Too many factors to say it will be X number of cities and x size.

JosEPh

 

[Thunderbrd]

Have you seen this post by Afforess? He's reduced the memory needed for city reclaiming and removed unit tendering because it makes the AI useless at contracting offensive wars.

Tendering the way it was setup has some issues for sure but I think I've been able to figure out what was really afoot there and I have addressed some of it - still a little work to do there to get it quite right though. Proper application will make it even more useful than just removing it.

 

[Toffer90]

I think the problem was is that people tend to avoid all - and - buildings... Soif you have only a few that have a huge malus, it's very likely they'll never been built. So you basically HAVE to spread it over a lot of (useful) buildings.

I agree that there should be even more buildings with penalties as long as their positive gain can be worth it in certain situations. As for my examples, I would definitely consider building them in certain cities.
-Cities that are growing too rapid for me to control the negative properties, which usually some of the first 4 cities often does around classical era.
-The amount of from the grand manor can be humongous and well worth a slower growth in a city. The grand manor is usually not active for a long time because of its civic requirement, so I wouldn't even need to remove it manually from the cities I build it in.
-The money a shrine can give might be essential for maintaining a high research output.

A lot of building could benefit gameplay strategies better through a stat reevaluations; like the "Mausoleum" that is too expensive to ever build in any situations because even a "Wise Woman" unit at level 2 can do a better job at less cost.

These conversations belongs in another thread though.

 

[Faustmouse]

And this other thread would be the existing building discussion thread.
But I also think that the whole food thingy needs a seperate thread, and I highly recommend reverting the 4 food per pop back to 3 until after the next release, and then take some more time to think about this whole topic thereafter.

 

[Thunderbrd]

And this other thread would be the existing building discussion thread.
But I also think that the whole food thingy needs a seperate thread, and I highly recommend reverting the 4 food per pop back to 3 until after the next release, and then take some more time to think about this whole topic thereafter.

Well... so far the only negative feedback has been that it isn't enough. So I'm curious why you'd suggest it be retracted.

 

[JosEPh_II]

And this other thread would be the existing building discussion thread.
But I also think that the whole food thingy needs a seperate thread, and I highly recommend reverting the 4 food per pop back to 3 until after the next release, and then take some more time to think about this whole topic thereafter.

A BIG +1!!!

JosEPh

 

[Toffer90]

And this other thread would be the existing building discussion thread.
But I also think that the whole food thingy needs a seperate thread, and I highly recommend reverting the 4 food per pop back to 3 until after the next release, and then take some more time to think about this whole topic thereafter.

I've done 3 playtests from prehistoric to mid ancient with the 4 food per pop. and have concluded that it leads to a more balanced game.

 

[Faustmouse]

Well... so far the only negative feedback has been that it isn't enough. So I'm curious why you'd suggest it be retracted.

Just because I had the impression that it was just "a lucky guess" and didn't undergo some testing. And it might confuses players. I'd rather hold this off and adress this after the release since it seemed like a major change to me. That's all, no playtesting or anything and I also think it will balance the game better, but it is so close to a release (I thought we are in a freeze?) that it seemed hasty.

 

[Thunderbrd]

It's not exactly a random guess and to say we're in a freeze just means we're debugging. A major bug at the moment appears to (have been) be that cities are getting waaaaaaay tooo big too soon. As others have mentioned, the impact from this adjustment will be somewhat slim compared to what might be imagined thanks to the food waste mechanism but it should at least be a move in the right direction. There's still many weeks to go before I can say other problems are resolved so we have plenty of time to test it out.

 

[Toffer90]

Something that should be on the list of bugs:

-Barbarian cities spawning without defenders.
This happens, in my experience, with 90% -ish of every spawned barb. city.

It allows free tech and captive - civilian farming for the player as barb. cities tend to respawn 5-20 turns after it has been razed; I think ruins increase the spawn rate, and this might be the place in the code that spawns them without defenders..

 

[mart777]

Empty Barbarian cities - that happen to me also, but less recently, than in v28 or so. Or it is my impression that it is less.

But once I noticed something, like a barbarian city had deffenders in one turn, then some few turns later it was empty.
Do they leave the cities?