Probably Improved Gameplay Mod

[AveiMil]

-GWMod has been fixed but it's difficult to test. Please report it if you actually see it happening in a game - it would help to see a gamesave too.

Worldbuilder a gazillion nukes in a random save game and let loose?

I want to revisit the discussion on lumbermills and forest preserves. I've found the AI has been building a large number of forest preserves which seems to be a problem sometimes. However, I still think the lumbermill could be introduced earlier.

I've noticed the AI builds quite a few Forest Preserves as well.

I never build Forest Preserves. Why?

1. Chopping. Nothing is more important than chopping out early Settlers, Workers and basic infrastructure.
2. Forest Preserves provide +1, why do I care about + when chopping the forest provides Hammers for 1-2 Warriors = +1-2 running HR which also becomes available as you obtain Monarchy. In addition chopping the forest allows me to put down a Cottage or a farm...

Conclusion? Forest Preserves are useless.

Suggestion?

1. Move Forest Preserves to a later tech era (it is redundant to keep it at Monachy).
2. Buff it by providing insane amounts of + and - (say like +3-3).

Now it might actually be worth it to save a few forests.

I am considering going with the suggestion to simply move lumbermills to Machinery and leave it at that. Can anyone point out a significant problem with that? It boosts the power of Machinery a bit, encouraging less of the top path of the tree which high level players commonly take, and it encourages deviating from the religious path a bit as well.

I disagree.

We don't need to boost Machinery, in vanilla Civ4 BtS it's already quite important in terms of military advance. In PIG it's even more valuable because you need it to research Paper (you know the tech req change you guys made to prevent bulbing Liberalism).

Importantly, it also gives a reasonably early-game alternative to forest preserves as a forest-keeping improvement. Flat grass lumbermills will be a pretty awesome tile but to use the lumbermill requires you don't get the bonus from chopping it and you won't be cottaging or farming it - both things that are usually best for grassland tiles. It will increase the viability of the woodsman promotions which might even need toning back soon. Bringing W3 back to 50% forest/jungle attack (from 60) is on my mind at the moment, but leave the 10% healing (instead of 15%) nerf in place.

I've already covered why forest preserves are useless so I won't go over that again.

The problem with Lumbermills is pertty much the same as the problem with forest preserves. It's so important to chop early that you never want to save Lumbermills for the measly return they give in return. Besides, workshops on grassland when running Caste/State property with the appropatie techs' give about teh same hammer yeild as a lumbermill late on anyway.

Suggestion? Buff Lumbermills slightly, make them "production" powerhouse tiles. Not sure if +2 is too much but perhaps +1 at least. Hard to balance, if the buff is only +1 it might still not be worth it to save the forests and if it's +2 (from what we have today) it might be too strong, hehe.

 

[_Phaethon_]

Excellent! I really love this mod. I think it's way more realistic and adding to game play, compared to vanilla BtS.

BUG 4.3 and BULL 1.1 are out, in case you didn't notice (which I doubt).

 

[AveiMil]

Excellent! I really love this mod. I think it's way more realistic and adding to game play, compared to vanilla BtS.

BUG 4.3 and BULL 1.1 are out, in case you didn't notice (which I doubt).

I love this MOD too, so much that I'd probably not bother playing Civ4 without it now. I probably sound like a ungrateful brat half of the time but you're doing a really good job PoM!

 

[PieceOfMind]

Worldbuilder a gazillion nukes in a random save game and let loose?

I tried that but didn't see any effect. I've posted a question to MA for how to test the GW mod but still wait for a response.

I've noticed the AI builds quite a few Forest Preserves as well.

I never build Forest Preserves. Why?

1. Chopping. Nothing is more important than chopping out early Settlers, Workers and basic infrastructure.

Agreed.

2. Forest Preserves provide +1, why do I care about + when chopping the forest provides Hammers for 1-2 Warriors = +1-2 running HR which also becomes available as you obtain Monarchy.

Well, forest preserves can service more than 1 city, don't require upkeep costs and provide up to 0.5. Health is not the biggest problem in the early part of the game though.
IMO their use should be fairly situational and that's probably how it is now. That's why I have a problem with the AI at the moment which seems to be liking them too much. To be honest, I suspect the AI over values improvements giving as part of their bonus.

In addition chopping the forest allows me to put down a Cottage or a farm...

Conclusion? Forest Preserves are useless.

They can also increase the spread of forest but this is difficult to predict and hard to include in strategy.

Suggestion?

1. Move Forest Preserves to a later tech era (it is redundant to keep it at Monachy).
2. Buff it by providing insane amounts of + and - (say like +3-3).

Now it might actually be worth it to save a few forests.

I assume you're kidding?

I disagree.

We don't need to boost Machinery, in vanilla Civ4 BtS it's already quite important in terms of military advance. In PIG it's even more valuable because you need it to research Paper (you know the tech req change you guys made to prevent bulbing Liberalism).

I've already covered why forest preserves are useless so I won't go over that again.

The problem with Lumbermills is pertty much the same as the problem with forest preserves. It's so important to chop early that you never want to save Lumbermills for the measly return they give in return. Besides, workshops on grassland when running Caste/State property with the appropatie techs' give about teh same hammer yeild as a lumbermill late on anyway.

I'm perfectly happy for chopping to be very valuable early, but what about as you progress into the game, building new cities in the middle ages. At that point, chopping becomes a bigger sacrifice with the better improvements available. Usually chopping some forests is going to be a good idea in most cities but sometimes keeping some forests that you weren't in a hurry to chop anyway will be quite valuable. A 220.5 tile that is more efficient than whipping is not pointless IMO.

Suggestion? Buff Lumbermills slightly, make them "production" powerhouse tiles. Not sure if +2 is too much but perhaps +1 at least. Hard to balance, if the buff is only +1 it might still not be worth it to save the forests and if it's +2 (from what we have today) it might be too strong, hehe.

But as you said yourself, chopping early is too important. If you can only build them at replaceable parts it's probably too late, and not worth waiting that long to get a better-than-a-mine hammer improvement.

Preventing the mass chopping that occurs means introducing an incentive to keep forests early on. Chopping should always be the best way to get a benefit now.

In addition to making LMs available at Machinery, I'd suggest moving the +1 bonus from Railroad earlier to Replaceable parts.

Just a reminder - I'm OK with chopping still being the best way to use a forest most of the time.

 

[AveiMil]

I'm going to edit this post with once I read through the rest of your post but...

Well, forest preserves can service more than 1 city, don't require upkeep costs and provide up to 0.5. Health is not the biggest problem in the early part of the game though.

Wait wah wah what? Will a forest preserve anywhere inside your borders provide the bonus to your entire empire? I thought it was only for the City which had the forest in its BFC? Perhaps I just assumed this was the case and never tested. Can you confirm?

I assume you're kidding?

No. +3-3 might be a bit too much but I still don't think it's that powerfull, this of course goes flying straight out of the window if my perception that the bonus only applies to the City that can work the tile in the BFC is wrong and it's an empire-wide bonus. Then, yes, I must be joking.

I'm perfectly happy for chopping to be very valuable early, but what about as you progress into the game, building new cities in the middle ages. At that point, chopping becomes a bigger sacrifice with the better improvements available. Usually chopping some forests is going to be a good idea in most cities but sometimes keeping some forests that you weren't in a hurry to chop anyway will be quite valuable. A 220.5 tile that is more efficient than whipping is not pointless IMO.

220.5 is not a tile that I would consider working unless there was no alternative. A yeild like that would never be better than to chop for early worker/settler/infra (Granary or border pop asap! even at middle ages) in my opinion. The 0.5 is okay but is rounded down to 0 unless you have two forests in the BFC.

I don't really see any reason not to be in a hurry to chop forests. Unless there's like 15 forest tiles in your BFC I really am in a hurry to chop ALL of them.

But as you said yourself, chopping early is too important. If you can only build them at replaceable parts it's probably too late, and not worth waiting that long to get a better-than-a-mine hammer improvement.

Preventing the mass chopping that occurs means introducing an incentive to keep forests early on. Chopping should always be the best way to get a benefit now.

Yes, chopping is the best way to get a benefit now and in addition, because lumber mills really don't provide much yield, it's probably also best in the long term to chop now and put down a more worthwhile improvement as well.

But that’s why I think a strong buff to Lumber mills might raise the question (not always but more often):

"Hmm, should I take the very important yield NOW or sacrifice some development now to gain access to improved yields later?"

Lumber mills right now isn’t even much of an improvement, so the question per today is:

"Hmm, should I take the very important yield NOW or sacrifice some development now to gain access to marginal benefits later?"

Benefit NOW is generally better than benefit later because you get the bonus of the early benefit over a longer period.

In addition to making LMs available at Machinery, I'd suggest moving the +1 bonus from Railroad earlier to Replaceable parts.

Just a reminder - I'm OK with chopping still being the best way to use a forest most of the time.

I'd much rather just boost it heavily at Replaceable parts instead of moving it to Machinery partly because I'm afraid it's going to change things unexpectedly (what will the AI do now?) and the fact that even if you put it at Machinery I'm still probably not going to value the improvement much more (the fact that it's an expensive improvement in terms of worker turns does not help at that stage). It really would be extremely situational. If lumber mills provided a very high yield later on it might be worth it to save a good amount of them for instance for a production specialized city. Right now I might as well use workshops.

Another consideration to take is that tiles surrounding (next to) your city should always be chopped ASAP, you never want a strong defensive tile on a tile next to your city.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Excellent! I really love this mod. I think it's way more realistic and adding to game play, compared to vanilla BtS.

BUG 4.3 and BULL 1.1 are out, in case you didn't notice (which I doubt).

Thanks for the kind words.

I hadn't noticed the release of 4.3 and 1.1 actually. That said, the version of BULL in PIG 0.90 is probably very nearly up to date anyway as the code was taken from SVN not long ago.

I'll make sure BUG 4.3 goes into the next release.

For now, this version might be the last one for a couple of weeks because I'll be getting busier. I'm pretty confident it will be very stable so it's a good time to keep it stationary for a little while.

I love this MOD too, so much that I'd probably not bother playing Civ4 without it now. I probably sound like a ungrateful brat half of the time but you're doing a really good job PoM!

Don't worry, I always need someone to keep me honest and give the feedback I need to hear, whether it's agreeing with me or not.

Here's an idea to throw out there:
Scouts only get 100% (not the 150% as in PIG currently) against animals but they get free Sentry promotion. Maybe explorers should get the same.

 

[Fimbulvetr]

Changes: -GWMod has been fixed but it's difficult to test. Please report it if you actually see it happening in a game - it would help to see a gamesave too.

By fixed I guess you mean updated to 1.10?
I suspect what keep Globals Warming and Nuclear Winters from happening is mainly the still far-from-perfect tuning and scaling.

Worldbuilder a gazillion nukes in a random save game and let loose?

That should still work however, unless you forgot to remove the lines where I set NUKE_WEIGHT to zero in my GlobalDefinesAlt.xml.

BUG 4.3 and BULL 1.1 are out, in case you didn't notice (which I doubt).

If that version is built on my 2010-02-17 version (which I doubt, that was today), both release versions of BUG 4.3 and BULL 1.1 are already included. The 2010-02-13 however is really close, since UP 1.4 is already in from the Better AI side and the rest of the changes were mostly consmetic.

 

[PieceOfMind]

I'm going to edit this post with once I read through the rest of your post but...



Wait wah wah what? Will a forest preserve anywhere inside your borders provide the bonus to your entire empire? I thought it was only for the City which had the forest in its BFC? Perhaps I just assumed this was the case and never tested. Can you confirm?



No. +3-3 might be a bit too much but I still don't think it's that powerfull, this of course goes flying straight out of the window if my perception that the bonus only applies to the City that can work the tile in the BFC is wrong and it's an empire-wide bonus. Then, yes, I must be joking.

In general, any improvement or feature that gives or or or gives it to every city that has it in its BFC. Theoretically, a forest can give +1 happy to four cities with the correctly positioned overlap.

It even works across cultural borders, which is not exactly ideal but not usually a problem either.

I assumed you knew the bonus from forest could be shared between cities. It's the same with from forest preserves.

 

[PieceOfMind]

By fixed I guess you mean updated to 1.10?
I suspect what keep Globals Warming and Nuclear Winters from happening is mainly the still far-from-perfect tuning and scaling.

No, I actually had made a mistake in the SDK which I'm pretty sure prevented GW occurring regardless of scaling. It is fixed now, AND the newer version of GW is included.

That should still work however, unless you forgot to remove the lines where I set NUKE_WEIGHT to zero in my GlobalDefinesAlt.xml.

I wasn't using your globaldefinesalt but I did make sure to check all the xml values in that file when I did the test.

If that version is built on my 2010-02-17 version (which I doubt, that was today), both release versions of BUG 4.3 and BULL 1.1 are already included. The 2010-02-13 however is really close, since UP 1.4 is already in from the Better AI side and the rest of the changes were mostly consmetic.

It was the version from the 13th I think. Thanks again for the merge. I guess I'll use your update for the next release of PIG.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Oh, by the way, Fuyu, I noticed you went to the effort to describe your personal modifications in your sdk merge. If it's not too much trouble, could you please put them in a dot point format so I can include them in my documentation? The description for each change does not have to be overly technical. e.g.

• Meltdown chance scales with gamespeed.
• City governor less likely to choose buildings that will cause starvation.

lol I don't want to sound like I'm nagging but I'd also suggest that when you comment the code you write, make it a little more visible.
jdog, glider, EmperorFool, phungus et al tend to use big visible blocky comments making it easy to spot in merges.
Even keeping your comments on their own line rather than on the end of a line helps too.

 

[AveiMil]

In general, any improvement or feature that gives or or or gives it to every city that has it in its BFC. Theoretically, a forest can give +1 happy to four cities with the correctly positioned overlap.

It even works across cultural borders, which is not exactly ideal but not usually a problem either.

I assumed you knew the bonus from forest could be shared between cities. It's the same with from forest preserves.

That does make forest preserves slightly more useful, but sounds a bit hard and very situational to really make it worth it. Besides overlapping city tiles is generally not the best decision.

Nice to learn something new though, thanks.

For now, this version might be the last one for a couple of weeks because I'll be getting busier. I'm pretty confident it will be very stable so it's a good time to keep it stationary for a little while.

Is there any update in regards to the Religious changes? I've play-tested a few times now and I really feel the changes suggested improves gameplay by a lot by providing an alternative tech route. I'd love to see it modded in.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Is there any update in regards to the Religious changes? I've play-tested a few times now and I really feel the changes suggested improves gameplay by a lot by providing an alternative tech route. I'd love to see it modded in.

I don't know how to mod them in yet - that's one of the hurdles. If you want it done sooner it could pay to start enquiring in the Creation and Customization forum. You can be fairly specific about the changes that need to be made. I think some of your suggested changes would be fairly simple for some of the more experienced modders.

As I said, I'll be a bit busier and will have less time to research these sorts of things, particularly in the next couple of weeks.

 

[Silu]

I don't actually use the mod , but when I read that list of changes I always feel like "this is brilliant, and how the standard game should have been in the first place", so I'm an avid follower of sorts Thought to give my 2c on the experimental features (without reading the thread thus far, sorry, feel free to disregard me if I'm talking old news).

Temples cost 60 , down from 80 .

What's the rationale behind this? They're already better than Colosseums out of the box (SPI & Culture > 1XP for melee). The AP alone makes them one of the best -investments, and UoS and/or SM make them downright ridiculous, easily the most cost effective building in the game, winning the equivalent monasteries because they don't obsolete so early.

Theocracy: Unlimited priest specialists.

This I feel makes it too easy to crank out shrine Prophets whenever one feels like it, even with no prior religious investment. It's not supposed to be easy to get random shrine Prophets, which I also think is the reason GPr is the only one not given by any tech (though I 100% agree with DR giving one in the mod) and why Caste doesn't enable Priests. Theo doesn't need a buff IMO - it's already the favcivic of many and often the civic to be in after the infra is in place in more warlike games. Reducing it to Low Upkeep would be an option though I feel even that is uncalled for.

Maybe make (only) the state religion missionaries able to be built like in OR (=without monastery)? That would be great to have and fits the flavor.

Missionaries: Cost reduced from 40 to 30.

This I agree with at least mostly. Spreading religions is very cost-ineffective as it is now, without some extra circumstances like being in FR or being SPI. Though I can't help but feel there could be a more elegant way to achieve this.

Maybe (if possible) enable autospread for cities with a religion already at a much lowered chance, and make religious buildings (= mainly cathedrals) spread them (again, at a lower chance) in addition to the holy city & shrine? Though this is a very big chance and perhaps out of the scope of this mod.

Standard priest: 21

Damn, my gut reaction is that that's wa-ha-hay overpowered. 0/3/4 tile under repr&AWat that gives GP points? Strictly better (disregarding GPP) than an engineer out of the box? Could be worth delaying Computers for this...

Proposed alternative, make AWat affect settled Great Prophets as well as normal Priests. If possible.


All in all, religion has some problems, but it's still very strong and a religion/shrine/AP/UoS/SM based strat is very viable up and including Deity, so I feel it doesn't need as huge a buff as quoted.

 

[AveiMil]

What's the rationale behind this? They're already better than Colosseums out of the box (SPI & Culture > 1XP for melee). The AP alone makes them one of the best -investments, and UoS and/or SM make them downright ridiculous, easily the most cost effective building in the game, winning the equivalent monasteries because they don't obsolete so early.

The change was introduced to buff the early Religious technology path, i.e. Polytheism->Monotheism->Theology->Divine Right.

But I kind of agree that it's a rather unncessary change and that it dosent' really buff the above mentioned tech path anyway.

This I feel makes it too easy to crank out shrine Prophets whenever one feels like it, even with no prior religious investment. It's not supposed to be easy to get random shrine Prophets, which I also think is the reason GPr is the only one not given by any tech (though I 100% agree with DR giving one in the mod) and why Caste doesn't enable Priests. Theo doesn't need a buff IMO - it's already the favcivic of many and often the civic to be in after the infra is in place in more warlike games. Reducing it to Low Upkeep would be an option though I feel even that is uncalled for.

Maybe make (only) the state religion missionaries able to be built like in OR (=without monastery)? That would be great to have and fits the flavor.

You make a good point and it's one that has not yet been considered.

The reason Theocracy was granted "Unlimited Priests" was because we were (or at leats I was) looking at changes that would open up a whole new early-game technological pathway (as mentioned before).

You can read about the changes (most have not been included yet) in my previous post here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8901150&postcount=638

(This would enable players running a Priest specialist economy for a limited time).

I have been simulating these changes in a few test games and it's working rather well so far (but the traditional tech path is still generally better).

If my suggested changes can be implemented and opens up a new way to approach the game I think that will be worth the negative consequence that you mention (that it's fairly easy (or much easier at least) to crank out a Priest for a shrine.) Either way I don't think it's gamebreaking, because Shrine's, although they can be fairly good, takes quite a bit of effort to actually become very strong and I doubt it ever wins you games. (Of course games vary wildly on different settings).

This I agree with at least mostly. Spreading religions is very cost-ineffective as it is now, without some extra circumstances like being in FR or being SPI. Though I can't help but feel there could be a more elegant way to achieve this.

It's not very effective early-game. In my Immortal games even getting a single religion does not always happen. Going for any of the early techs' that found a religion is rarely beneficial (never in my book).

The idea here was to make the Missionary an cost-effective alternative for building Monuments in new cities if you've gone the religious path early game.

Maybe (if possible) enable autospread for cities with a religion already at a much lowered chance, and make religious buildings (= mainly cathedrals) spread them (again, at a lower chance) in addition to the holy city & shrine? Though this is a very big chance and perhaps out of the scope of this mod.

I really hate anything that has to do with auto-spread and "random chance". I feel that such randomness is detrimental to good gameplay. Autospread should just go away altogether if I had my way (Probably a bad idea though, don't listen to me).

Damn, my gut reaction is that that's wa-ha-hay overpowered. 0/3/4 tile under repr&AWat that gives GP points? Strictly better (disregarding GPP) than an engineer out of the box? Could be worth delaying Computers for this...

This makes no sense to me, how is it any stronger than a Scientists with 3 (+3 running Representation)? If you're not looking to get a Great Prophet, why would you ever, EVER, run a 21 Priest instead of a Production tile (that also generates food) or spend that pop on a Cottage to grow it?

Of course you might be thinking later in the game than me, I rarely play the game past 250 turns...

Side Note: Engineer has been buffed to 3. (which is better than 21)

All in all, religion has some problems, but it's still very strong and a religion/shrine/AP/UoS/SM based strat is very viable up and including Deity, so I feel it doesn't need as huge a buff as quoted.

AP cheese is cheese regardless of the relative strength of the Religious path.

Have you ever in a Immortal or Deity game gone for Polytheism->Monotheim->Theology->Divine Right tech's and been successful?

 

[AveiMil]

Wow, I'm really loving BULL so far.

 

[AveiMil]

PoM, did you intend to remove the Machinery prereq on Paper?



Also the Multiple Production Mod option has stopped working! This was becomming a favourite game option of mine.

 

[Silu]

You make a good point and it's one that has not yet been considered.

The reason Theocracy was granted "Unlimited Priests" was because we were (or at leats I was) looking at changes that would open up a whole new early-game technological pathway (as mentioned before).

(This would enable players running a Priest specialist economy for a limited time).

If my suggested changes can be implemented and opens up a new way to approach the game I think that will be worth the negative consequence that you mention (that it's fairly easy (or much easier at least) to crank out a Priest for a shrine.) Either way I don't think it's gamebreaking, because Shrine's, although they can be fairly good, takes quite a bit of effort to actually become very strong and I doubt it ever wins you games. (Of course games vary wildly on different settings).

See below for my comments about increasing raw power against increasing opportunities to exploit the power that's already there.

It's not very effective early-game. In my Immortal games even getting a single religion does not always happen. Going for any of the early techs' that found a religion is rarely beneficial (never in my book).

The idea here was to make the Missionary an cost-effective alternative for building Monuments in new cities if you've gone the religious path early game.

If you can build missionaries, then autospread will quite probably take care of 95% of your border popping needs. Anyway, missionaries are indeed a troubling bunch. The way they are now they are very inefficient. In the current Taxman SG, we decided not to spread non-state religions we have a shrine for, because it's so inefficient. Lowering the absolute hammer cost is one way to attack this but as I said I have a feeling there's a better way It's on the tip of my brain... Civic missionary build bonus is a good idea though.

This makes no sense to me, how is it any stronger than a Scientists with 3 (+3 running Representation)? If you're not looking to get a Great Prophet, why would you ever, EVER, run a 21 Priest instead of a Production tile (that also generates food) or spend that pop on a Cottage to grow it?

Of course you might be thinking later in the game than me, I rarely play the game past 250 turns...

Side Note: Engineer has been buffed to 3. (which is better than 21)

Simple. I'd run them when I want prod and am out of prod tiles. Happens often enough.

I'd be very wary of buffing the specialist yields - they can spiral out of control. WE/SSE is a tactic that's been proven to work up to & including Deity countless times, most famously by obsolete's series. If you buff spec yields, especially production, you basically promote wonderspam. This isn't necessarily a good thing and may not even fix the problem you want. And hells yeah 3 4 beats a scientist, hands down. Equivalent to 10 IMO. Engineers certainly wouldn't need the buff since GEs are so good, but it's not that influential since engi slots are hard to get for the most of the game and good for symmetry if the priest stats are changed.

Looking at the linked propositions, it would indeed make the religion game immensely more interesting. But there's waay too much power there. 4 / 3 / 3 from a normal damn specialist ('Mids repr, AW, DR) that plops out good GPs??? Holy CRAP, I'd just screw Education and go Rocketry and conquer the world with my unstoppable horde of zealot SAM Inf

AP cheese is cheese regardless of the relative strength of the Religious path.

Have you ever in a Immortal or Deity game gone for Polytheism->Monotheim->Theology->Divine Right tech's and been successful?

I'm not talking about AP cheese (doesn't exist in my world in any serious discussion about Civ4), and yeah, I've seen games like you mention, and tried some myself with varying degrees of success. Grashopa has some nice games in IUs for example demonstrating this (Imm/Deity). And there are tons and tons of games that heavily rely on UoS/SM/AP religion buildings for their midgame punch. However that's not necessarily what I'm talking about.

-----

Anyway. As a summary of the linked religion changes, I feel like you guys are trying to give religion power it already has. It's just hard to access. I'd attack that aspect more than the raw power, since just adding power leads to degenerate situations that don't promote play variety. Some aspects can use the power nudge as well but it's better for fine tuning IMO.

On high levels the most obvious problem of religion is that getting them yourself is a crapshoot. What usually leads to a more religiously oriented game is rushing a neighbor that founded one, this mitigates much of that problem. This means not pursuing Poly->Mono early. To get along in the religion gravy train, usually a prophet bulb or two is needed, which usually means SH or the Oracle (possibly captured as well). I see the religious tech path problem as being twofold:

1) Reliance on GPr bulbs, which relies on some early wonders if you can't get a religion (and thus run a priest). This could be attacked by making getting GPrs easier somehow (without temples!) - not sure how as there aren't any wonders you could feasibly "GPr'ize" on the non-religious tech path. I don't like the lenientness on giving priest slots to everything, as I said IMO they should be kinda hard to get if you're not trying. Giving stuff like ToA and Parthenon some Priest slots (probably 2) is one idea that pops in mind.

2) Exclusiveness of the religious tech path (key problem IMO). To go there you must slog through the Poly->Mono->Theo crap. I see no reason why there couldn't be some changes in this. Maybe make Theology prerequisites (Writing AND (Monotheism OR Monarchy OR Code of Laws) (kinda makes sense), and maybe change DR as well (Theo AND Monarchy -> (Theo OR Philosophy) AND Monarchy or something). This combined with the GPr from DR would make it actually lucrative since SM is a great wonder if you get it running.



General note about testing. If you make changes and fire up the game in order to test those changes, it might be that if they seem to work, they're too good. In a normal game, you don't start it with a certain tech path in mind, you choose it if it feels like the best choice among all. If it is always a viable choice, then there's a good chance it's overpowered.

 

[AveiMil]

Warning: I'm kind of pissed off right now as Arsenal lost with a piss poor performance against Porto in CL.

If you can build missionaries, then autospread will quite
probably take care of 95% of your border popping needs.

I don't understand this sentance.

Anyway, missionaries are indeed a troubling bunch. The way they are now they are very inefficient. In the current Taxman SG, we decided not to spread non-state religions we have a shrine for, because it's so inefficient. Lowering the absolute hammer cost is one way to attack this but as I said I have a feeling there's a better way It's on the tip of my brain... Civic missionary build bonus is a good idea though.

Taxman SG? Anyway, yes, if there's a better way good ideas are welcome

Simple. I'd run them when I want prod and am out of prod tiles. Happens often enough.

Well obvious I struggle to see a scenario when that is actually benefical enough to be worth the 2 the Priest consume though. Two is not a great deal and I honestly can't see how the 1 additional make much of a difference, if any, when looking at the big picture.

I'd be very wary of buffing the specialist yields - they can spiral out of control. WE/SSE is a tactic that's been proven to work up to & including Deity countless times, most famously by obsolete's series. If you buff spec yields, especially production, you basically promote wonderspam. This isn't necessarily a good thing and may not even fix the problem you want. And hells yeah 3 4 beats a scientist, hands down. Equivalent to 10 IMO. Engineers certainly wouldn't need the buff since GEs are so good, but it's not that influential since engi slots are hard to get for the most of the game and good for symmetry if the priest stats are changed.

I'd be wary too But honestly the GE's 1 buff is quite irrelevant as you stated GE slots are very hard to come by and won't be available until later in the game.

Also, I don't understand what you mean here:

"And hells yeah 3 4 "

3 4? Representation adds 3 and the basic priest is 21 in PIG at this moment. With my suggested changes you could potentially get a 433 Priest for a limited time, which is sick! However that requires investing in both The Pyramids, the neccessary techs AND Angkor Wat.

6 Scientist is not much better than 213 Priest. Though of course I'd say is the best yield as you can always Build Wealth/Science/Culture etc with it, but the difference is marginal as you obviously cannot run that many Priests. Additionally if you do run THAT many priests, you throw away the oppertunity to get any scientists, at least for a good portion of the first 250 turns.

Looking at the linked propositions, it would indeed make the religion game immensely more interesting. But there's waay too much power there. 4 / 3 / 3 from a normal damn specialist ('Mids repr, AW, DR) that plops out good GPs??? Holy CRAP, I'd just screw Education and go Rocketry and conquer the world with my unstoppable horde of zealot SAM Inf

Two things:

1. Very good point, did not realize that you could go for Rocketry without Education. But that's very easy to fix by just adding Printing Press for instance as a second obsoleting tech.

2. You rate the Great Prophet as a good great person? In my experience if you "contaminate" your early GP pool and dont' end up getting one or two scientists early you can forget about winning Liberalism. Perhaps I'm misguided or just not good enough but that's my experience.

I've seen games like you mention, and tried some myself with varying degrees of success. Grashopa has some nice games in IUs for example demonstrating this (Imm/Deity). And there are tons and tons of games that heavily rely on UoS/SM/AP religion buildings for their midgame punch. However that's not necessarily what I'm talking about.

Could you download PIG and try playing such a game for me (early Theology&DR push)? Pick a leader or generate a map that seems suiteable for it if you must and send me the 4000BC save so we can do some testing.

Anyway. As a summary of the linked religion changes, I feel like you guys are trying to give religion power it already has. It's just hard to access. I'd attack that aspect more than the raw power, since just adding power leads to degenerate situations that don't promote play variety. Some aspects can use the power nudge as well but it's better for fine tuning IMO.

I kind of need direct examples, vague statements confuse my brittle mind.

On high levels the most obvious problem of religion is that getting them yourself is a crapshoot. What usually leads to a more religiously oriented game is rushing a neighbor that founded one, this mitigates much of that problem. This means not pursuing Poly->Mono early. To get along in the religion gravy train, usually a prophet bulb or two is needed, which usually means SH or the Oracle (possibly captured as well). I see the religious tech path problem as being twofold:

I think an early Great Prophet wonder (Stonehenge, Oracle..) will provide you with a GP just in time to bulb Theology.

In one of my test games I granted Temple's +2 Priest slots instead of 1. That enabled me to push out enough Prophet's to make a push towards DR early.

1) Reliance on GPr bulbs, which relies on some early wonders if you can't get a religion (and thus run a priest). This could be attacked by making getting GPrs easier somehow (without temples!) - not sure how as there aren't any wonders you could feasibly "GPr'ize" on the non-religious tech path. I don't like the lenientness on giving priest slots to everything, as I said IMO they should be kinda hard to get if you're not trying. Giving stuff like ToA and Parthenon some Priest slots (probably 2) is one idea that pops in mind.

Well, if you can't get a Religion nor a GP wonder then maybe you shouldn't be able to get a GP (until Theocracy at leats). Hehe. It is possible to get Judaism on Immortal games at least, but yeah, probably a lot more difficult to go that route on high difficulties. Of course this does not apply to multiplayer games, which I am ultimately more concerned with.

2) Exclusiveness of the religious tech path (key problem IMO). To go there you must slog through the Poly->Mono->Theo crap. I see no reason why there couldn't be some changes in this. Maybe make Theology prerequisites (Writing AND (Monotheism OR Monarchy OR Code of Laws) (kinda makes sense), and maybe change DR as well (Theo AND Monarchy -> (Theo OR Philosophy) AND Monarchy or something). This combined with the GPr from DR would make it actually lucrative since SM is a great wonder if you get it running.

Theology a prereq for Writing? :S

But yeah, I understand what you are getting at and perhaps something nifty could be done with prereq's.

General note about testing. If you make changes and fire up the game in order to test those changes, it might be that if they seem to work, they're too good. In a normal game, you don't start it with a certain tech path in mind, you choose it if it feels like the best choice among all. If it is always a viable choice, then there's a good chance it's overpowered.

Of course! To mitigate this problem I played the same map two times in all my tests so far. One going for the upgraded religious path and the other going for a more traditional approach. (Built city in same locations and did not take advantage of map knowledge etc...) Of course it's still not a 100% valid test but it's as close as I can get testing these things by my self atm.

 

[Silu]

Damn these posts are getting way too huge, rambling and technical I'm just addressing one part at a time for now... For some confusion I converted some of the spec yields from to in my last post as those are roughly equivalent science: is slightly better of course). is way better than either of course, and not because you can build Wealth/Research.

And GPr is a good GP in the sense that it's not a GA or GSpy. Settled GPrs are very good, obviously shrines and early game bulbs (if going that way) even better.

Theology a prereq for Writing? :S

The other way around (Writing part didn't change, it's currently a prerequisite for Theology). My from-the-top-of-my-head proposition in the last post was (current in parenthesis):

Writing AND (Monotheism OR Monarchy OR Code of Laws) -> Theology
(Writing AND Monotheism)

Monarchy AND (Theology OR Philosophy) -> Divine Right
(Monarchy AND Theology)

Was just an example on trying to make the religious side more accessible without having to dedicate 100% to it from the get-go.

The KISS principle applies to this religion buffing as well 1 good change is better than 10 okayish changes if the end result is about the same. Especially in a mod that's core idea (in my eyes) is simplicity and not new features you need to study beforehand, which those extensive religious buffs would be. Anything that couldn't simply be found accidentally as a "hey, that's a nice change"-experience during gameplay doesn't belong to what is my perception of PIG mod and in a more gameplay-changing mod instead. Then again I don't develop it or even use it so I'm not much of an authority regarding that

 

[PieceOfMind]

I seem to have left off the engineer 3 buff in v0.90. That was an accident.

PoM, did you intend to remove the Machinery prereq on Paper?

No that was left off by accident. There are a couple of other things too (only minor XML changes though). I'll post an update as soon as I can. The internet at the moment won't let me upload the file so it might be about 12 hours away or more.

Also the Multiple Production Mod option has stopped working! This was becomming a favourite game option of mine.

MPM is working for me. How did it stop working?

Everything in the SDK is merged and its XML files are included. I can fire it up in game and build two warriors on the first turn when I settle 10 great engineers.

If you can't get MPM to work maybe try reinstalling PIG or as last resort re-installting BtS and the 3.19 patch.

EDIT!
Actually, I have a feeling the MPM option has been accidentally switched with one of the other 4 game options at the end of the list! So it might take enabling "Culturally Linked Starts" to get the option working.
I'll try to get this fixed for the next update.

EDIT2
Indeed, if you want to fix it now here is what you need to change:
In PIG Mod\Assets\XML\GameInfo\CIV4GameOptionInfos.xml

The last four gameoptions in that file should be as follows (order is imporant):

		<GameOptionInfo>
			<Type>GAMEOPTION_MULTIPLE_PRODUCTION</Type>
			<Description>TXT_KEY_GAMEOPTION_MULTIPLE_PRODUCTION</Description>
			<Help>TXT_KEY_GAMEOPTION_MULTIPLE_PRODUCTION_HELP</Help>
			<bDefault>0</bDefault>
			<bVisible>1</bVisible>
		</GameOptionInfo>
		<GameOptionInfo><!-- GWMod New Option M.A. -->
			<Type>GAMEOPTION_RISING_SEAS</Type>
			<Description>TXT_KEY_GAME_OPTION_RISING_SEAS</Description>
			<Help>TXT_KEY_GAME_OPTION_RISING_SEAS_HELP</Help>
			<bDefault>0</bDefault>
			<bVisible>1</bVisible>
		</GameOptionInfo>
		<GameOptionInfo>
			<Type>GAMEOPTION_CULTURALLY_LINKED_STARTS</Type>
			<Description>TXT_KEY_GAME_OPTION_CULTURALLY_LINKED_STARTS</Description>
			<Help>TXT_KEY_GAME_OPTION_CULTURALLY_LINKED_STARTS_HELP</Help>
			<bDefault>0</bDefault>
			<bVisible>1</bVisible>
		</GameOptionInfo>
		<GameOptionInfo>
			<Type>GAMEOPTION_INFLUENCE_DRIVEN_WAR</Type>
			<Description>TXT_KEY_GAMEOPTION_INFLUENCE_DRIVEN_WAR</Description>
			<Help>TXT_KEY_GAMEOPTION_INFLUENCE_DRIVEN_WAR_HELP</Help>
			<bDefault>0</bDefault>
			<bVisible>1</bVisible>
		</GameOptionInfo>