Probably Improved Gameplay Mod

[PieceOfMind]

BULL hasn't changed in quite some time. The only reason I haven't released it is that it is using a very old ACO and UP. If it were a simple matter of merging them I would have done it by now. The trick is that ACO needs to be changed to use BULL's method of grabbing options from BUG, and I've already included some of the UP changes which I rewrote partially.

@PoM - If you could help with this aspect, it would speed up the release of BULL. Fractional Trade is done and working in BULL nicely. Lemme know if you'd have some time to help out. You've already merged the latest UP and ACO into your mod, so maybe it won't be so tough.

If it makes it easier, I could adapt ACO first to use options in a similar way to how BULL/BUG does. Would that help?

In either case, I'll certainly be happy to help out merging them all. SDK merging is not a problem for me. I struggle more with getting different Python components to work together.

 

[TheLazyHase]

For the food corporation, I still don't think there is much of a strategic choice between sushi and cereal. Still, playing another mod have show me that they are not that inbalanced.

In short, in mars-jezt, there is two food corp. The first is a sushi that give money instead of culture. As in, even without courthouse it give more money than the payment. And it consume ressources given by hollywood-like wonder. The other one is like cereal mill, that use more scarse ressource, but unlike cereal give less food per ressource than the other.

It's good from time to time toplay mod where balance is a far away concept, it make your balancing effort look a lot better

 

[PieceOfMind]

It's hard to boost Cereal Mills further because it's already a good corporation. The aim is not necessarily to make more corporations powerful so they're all balanced.

Honestly I'd rather nerf Sushi a little bit, either by decreasing the culture it generates or slightly decreasing its food bonus per resource.

But is this really necessary? It's true that Sushi can be far more powerful but that's usually only because of how most mapscripts put so much seafood down.

 

[TheLazyHase]

Honestly I'd rather nerf Sushi a little bit, either by decreasing the culture it generates or slightly decreasing its food bonus per resource.

But is this really necessary? It's true that Sushi can be far more powerful but that's usually only because of how most mapscripts put so much seafood down.

I would decrease a little the food per unit. Because the issue is not only mapscript, it's also that starting location can get a lot of sea food. I have seen 3 or 4 seafoood start with regularity, not 3-4 wheat start.

Also, seafood seem to be balanced around being more plentiful than other food source

 

[PieceOfMind]

Remember that 'balanced' here does not mean the two corps giving same amount of food on average given number of resources on map. Cereal mills gives better returns per resource so it is cheaper and less likely to suffer from wasted fractions of food than Sushi.

I think the fact Sushi comes earlier is one of the reasons it's considered stronger as well.

Making it give even less food per resource could lead to strange situations on the larger mapsizes where you might have something like 15 seafood resources but only 8 of them count towards making 1 food. This makes the nerf less fun and would encourage micro'ing the number of seafood resources you have.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Some background first perhaps:

• All yields food:, , and ) are stored and added up as whole numbers. The only place a fractional yield occurs is in this new feature, and it's only fractional while adding up the trade routes for a single city. The total for a city is rounded as soon as it gets converted into actual (and and , but in BTS the trade route yield modifiers for those yields are both 0%).

Quoting for emphasis. I think I've just successfully merged in the fractional trade routes (thanks EF!)
I was a bit confused by how they worked (going into the city and seeing 1 trade route worth 2.75 and wondering where the .75 was going) until I went back and read your post.

Apart from a couple of things I wanted to leave out, most of BULL is included now. It will make it into the next release of PIG.

 

[TheLazyHase]

Yay for fractionnal route ! Wall will look a little less good without the +25% commerce, but I'm don't think it need a boost.

For the corp, two last thing :
* don't forget that double ressource does not mean double cost. That's why the food ratio of sushi is most likely very close to cereal, or better.
* interverting the two, or changing the GP for one of them (GA for sushi ?) may be an idea. The former would make people think if they want immediatly a lot of food, or wait a little for the super sushi. The latter would help cereal mill, because you could build it when you are unable to get sid sushi, and will make sid sushi less good for cultural victory.

 

[PieceOfMind]

* interverting the two, or changing the GP for one of them (GA for sushi ?) may be an idea. The former would make people think if they want immediatly a lot of food, or wait a little for the super sushi. The latter would help cereal mill, because you could build it when you are unable to get sid sushi, and will make sid sushi less good for cultural victory.

That's an interesting idea. I could also fiddle with the prereq techs of one or both of them.

Anyway, here's the rundown of what's coming in next release:

-Added PublicMaps folder with a couple of user-submitted maps from CFC.
-Apostolic Palace and United Nations can now be built even when Diplomatic Victory is disabled. However, the ability to vote for a diplomatic victory would be disabled.
-Merged most of the features of BULL. Most notable is the inclusion of Fractional Trade Routes. Most notable omission is MapFinder. Note: I might have doubled up some of the things in the following list:

Spoiler :

-Fractional Trade routes
-Hurry Assist
-Partial Builds
-Building Additional Commerce
-Trade Detail
-Trade Totals
-Trade Hover
-Food Assist
-Base Production
-Base Values
-Commerce
-Building Actual Effects
-Draft Anger Turns
-Hurry Anger Turns
-Happiness
-Health
-Base Production and Commerce
-Building Icons
-Culture Turns
-Specialists
-Great Person Turns
-Specialist Actual Effects
-Trade Denial
-Production Decay
-Building Additional Health
-Show Sped-Up Techs
-Finance Advisor
-Building Additional Production
-Base Commerce
-Building Additional Commerce
-Building Additional Great People
-Great People Rate Breakdown
-Airport Icon
-Starvation Turns
-Specialist Additional Commerce
-Exit Save
-Combat Events
-Unit Captured Event
-Upgrade Unit Event
-Min/Max Commerce Rate
-Zoom City Details
-Food Rate Hover
-Hurry Overflow (compatible with MPM?)
-Building Actual Effects
-Fortify/Sleep All Action
-Delete All Action
-Remove Specialist Hover
-Foreign Advisor INFO Trade
-All Units Actions
-Sentry Actions
-Pre-Chop
-Unit Name
-Update Plot List
-Upgrade Unit Event
-Expose Deal Cancelability
-Refuses to Talk

-Removed 25% trade modifier from walls.

 

[TheLazyHase]

I can't wait for it, keep up the good (s)work(d) ^^

 

[Elkad]

How did I miss this for all these months? Great job. I did like the GP for DR, too bad that's gone again.

I would like to see the naval hole at steam filled in.

Something like..

Steamship (paddlewheeler) at Railroad Coal+Iron (early transport, 10s 5m 4cargo or something)
Steam cruiser Railroad+rifling Iron+Coal
And then make destroyers require Rifling as well as Combustion
Battleships should require Artillery as well as Industrialism.

 

[TheLazyHase]

Steamship (paddlewheeler) at Railroad Coal+Iron (early transport, 10s 5m 4cargo or something)
Steam cruiser Railroad+rifling Iron+Coal
And then make destroyers require Rifling as well as Combustion
Battleships should require Artillery as well as Industrialism.

I believe adding new unit is oyut of the scope of this mod - it change too much the strategy from vanilla BtS. Also, I don't know if the AI react well to adding new units.

The tech requirement deos not choke me, though.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Well, adding new content is not completely out of the question - it's just not a goal in itself. Another way of saying that is that I won't add content just to increase variety. It needs to address a flaw or something seriously missing.

Bridging the gap between wooden and steel hulled hips could be worthwhile. It's not hard to teach the AI to use new units if they have similar roles to current units (e.g. transports). In fact, it could even help the AI. Units that are not likely to be handled well by the AI are units with drastically different properties to existing units (e.g. a cheap low-strength gunpowder-age militia unit) or ones that introduce completely new game mechanics (like a slaver or inquisitor unit).

The new tech requirements for destroyer and battleship sound pretty reasonable to me. It's pretty disturbing how quickly destroyers can appear in some games and definitely having them appear before rifling is a bit absurd. The two changes would also go well with the new unit by extending its period of use. It also gives a boost to steampower which IMO is a bit of a boring/weak (for its cost) tech at the moment.

Elkad, can you expand on the suggestion by pointing me to what unit art you'd use and trying to be more specific about what attributes it would have?

 

[phungus420]

I would like to see the naval hole at steam filled in.

Something like..

Steamship (paddlewheeler) at Railroad Coal+Iron (early transport, 10s 5m 4cargo or something)
Steam cruiser Railroad+rifling Iron+Coal
And then make destroyers require Rifling as well as Combustion
Battleships should require Artillery as well as Industrialism.

PIG is trying for a sort of community made balancing Patch for BtS that is not constrained by the same Unaltered Gameplay restrictions as the Unofficial Patch. If you want something along the lines of an Expansion Pack, check the link in my sig. I have already made the changes you are requesting, as well as added a bombard unit because the whole Trebuchet to Civil War era cannon thing is just so ******** in BtS. But as stated such changes are outside the scope of PIG, and are already being worked on in LoR.

 

[PieceOfMind]

PIG is trying for a sort of community made balancing Patch for BtS that is not constrained by the same Unaltered Gameplay restrictions as the Unofficial Patch. If you want something along the lines of an Expansion Pack, check the link in my sig. I have already made the changes you are requesting, as well as added a bombard unit because the whole Trebuchet to Civil War era cannon thing is just so ******** in BtS. But as stated such changes are outside the scope of PIG, and are already being worked on in LoR.

Oops, did you notice the cross post?

To be fair, I see PIG as more than just a community balance patch. Adding a new unit at steam could definitely be considered to be addressing a balance issue anyway.

One could ask where do I draw the line. I guess the answer is that the line will bend and shift to my own wishes and can be strongly influenced by the good suggestions of contributors to this thread.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

While on the subject of tech requirements, as it is now the Apollo Program can be built without having researched electricity.

 

[phungus420]

I posted my response about the same time as yours, and missed it.

I missunderstood the purpose of PIG then, as I thought it's goal was filling a vacant niche in the mods available, as it currently does. If you want to take it down the expansion path, be aware there are already many mods that do this. Legends of Revolution, Quote Capita, Varietas Delectat (with modern era enhancement), History in the Making, Rise of Mankind, and WolfRevolution are all actively supported mods in that category. Not to mention the Wolfshanze mod and Thomas War, which are still being downloaded and played but are no longer actively supported by their creators, or mods like World of Legends and Dom Pedro's Test of Time which while not currently available, are under development. So PIG will then be leaving the realm of existing in it's own unique niche, to a spot where it is competing against already established mods. That's not bad in it's own right; but my question is if PIG is to join the list of other expansion style mods, what would it offer that the others currently available do not?

 

[TheLazyHase]

As of I, I would rather balance the sea unit issues by making the existing steamclad more worthwile. Something along the line of giving him +1 move, the ability to go to ocean and maybe some strength bonii (not necessary I think, even if the somewhat low odds against wood navy is sometime irritating).

The transport between galleon and transport seem useless to me, and severely reduce the dutch UU usefulness, in my opinion. And privateer are also somewhat impacted by a strength 10 transport that early.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Well, phungus, I don't agree it is leaving its current niche. As I said earlier, content additions will probably be few and far between and I would give them due consideration if they fill a really bad gap or could really improve balance.

LoR is an unofficial expansion and even if PIG added a single new unit you'd agree the scope of LoR is still far beyond PIG's. Most other modpacks end up adding new units, techs, civics etc., often on the order of hundreds. This is what I call intimidating to people who are looking for a simple or very focused mod. If PIG introduces a single unit, the sky's not going to fall in. A single steam powered unit should probably have a negligible effect on gameplay compared to what mods like RoM and WolfRevolution would do.

That's not bad in it's own right; but my question is if PIG is to join the list of other expansion style mods, what would it offer that the others currently available do not?

Considered additions.
As I have said, PIG does not believe that variety is always a good thing. Most other modpacks (especially RoM) do essentially believe variety is a good thing. Any new wonder or tech that's interesting will be added. Never mind the impact on the game.

I think you're being highly pedantic to say PIG is going to exit its current niche by adding a new unit. I haven't even committed to the unit yet anyway. I'm still waiting for a more detailed description of what the unit would be. So I think it's jumping the gun to be worrying about the future direction of this mod just yet. Make no mistake, the goals and directions of PIG are still the same as in the document I posted in the OP.

The one sentence I guess, in the document, that isn't really 100% accurate is when I say "It works with what already exists in the game". This is something I'm going to try to stick to mostly, but obviously I haven't followed that religiously because I've included event images and SDK changes that are changing the gameplay (is a logic improvement (e.g. one in BBAI) to be considered an addition?).

The point of being careful about changes is not to be restrictive just for the heck of it. Take Better AI - at some point the decision was made to start adopting UP additions and other very small gameplay additions. Has that drawn people away from the mod? I remember some people were very vocal (I'm thinking of Woden) about keeping gameplay changes out of BBAI.

 

[TheLazyHase]

In any case, thoses new unit will cause trouble for at least two underused boat : the ship of the line, and the ironclad. Buffing them may look good, or making ship of the line directly a steam ship maybe.

 

[PieceOfMind]

As of I, I would rather balance the sea unit issues by making the existing steamclad more worthwile. Something along the line of giving him +1 move, the ability to go to ocean and maybe some strength bonii (not necessary I think, even if the somewhat low odds against wood navy is sometime irritating).

The transport between galleon and transport seem useless to me, and severely reduce the dutch UU usefulness, in my opinion. And privateer are also somewhat impacted by a strength 10 transport that early.

Thanks for the input, and I mostly agree.

It probably would be better to alter the existing ironclad. Is there going to be any unintended consequences by making it an ocean-going vessel?

Privateers are already a pretty difficult unit to keep well balanced among the others. If it's too strong compared to other units of the time it becomes abusable; if it's too weak it becomes pointless.

What about ironclad gets 3 moves, ocean-going, and a combat bonus vs. ship of the line and frigates?

Is there any historical reason why ironclads should not get a bonus against these sorts of ships?