Probably Improved Gameplay Mod

[AveiMil]

While I agree this changes TGL, it still leaves no downside to acquiring its obsoleting tech. Perhaps change the tech that obsoletes it to something earlier in the tree.

I don't quite understand why this is such a problem. The major downside with researching Corporation is that; you have to research Corporation If we obsolete TGL earlier in the Tech tree then we nerf the wonder even further, do we really need to do that? If anything it should become obsolete at a later tech instead.

What this means is that Corporation is no longer a tech you neccessarily want to avoid. Why is that such a bad thing? Perhaps I'm missing something...

Don't forget the free Priest specialist! Build the <whatever that thing is that's available with Philosophy> and you've got a 2 Priest!!!!1!1!11!!1!eleventyone

 

[Silu]

^ It's a bad thing since it removes play variety. No more point going fancy with Spain and 10 XP armies of Arty/MCG followed by cleanup Rifles with the TGL still going at modern times.

ToA is very good for WE/SSE if you can get it (=BFC Marble). 5 GPP from a single wonder is very good, only TGL can match that. AIs go for it really early though so it's kinda hard to get.

 

[AveiMil]

^ It's a bad thing since it removes play variety. No more point going fancy with Spain and 10 XP armies of Arty/MCG followed by cleanup Rifles with the TGL still going at modern times.

That's more like abusing a weakness in the technological tree than play variety in my opinion.

ToA is very good for WE/SSE if you can get it (=BFC Marble). 5 GPP from a single wonder is very good, only TGL can match that. AIs go for it really early though so it's kinda hard to get.

I would never stunt early growth to get that wonder even with Marble (at which point I'd rather want The Oracle anyway).

 

[Silu]

"Abusing" a weakness? With that definition any kind of beeline is abusing the tech tree. Should just make every tier have all of the previous tier as prerequisites in F6

ToA is usually better than Oracle for WE/SSE if you have Marble. Also often there's time to grab Oracle and then go ToA for a double feature. In any case it's not a weak wonder though the hammer cost is pretty steep.

 

[AveiMil]

"Abusing" a weakness? With that definition any kind of beeline is abusing the tech tree. Should just make every tier have all of the previous tier as prerequisites in F6

I disagree.

Getting modern technologies by keeping an ancient wonder operational by bypassing certain tech's, do you really believe that was intended?

ToA is usually better than Oracle for WE/SSE if you have Marble. Also often there's time to grab Oracle and then go ToA for a double feature. In any case it's not a weak wonder though the hammer cost is pretty steep.

If the hammer cost is too steep then dosen't that by definition mean it's a weak wonder? Obviously you can't get these wonders without investing in them and wonders, as far as I understand, is about return on your investement.

By the way, what's WE/SSE? Wonder Economy/SpecialistS... Economy? How does a WE work anyway? Got any examples (high level difficulty)?

 

[Silu]

I said the hammer cost is "pretty steep", which is also true for 'Mids and GLH for example. That doesn't mean they're weak. And considering many ancient wonders stay operational throughout the game, I very much believe it's intentional to be able to keep some of the others operational longer as well. People whine a lot about Castles having a short time span of usage, well, they don't if you work the tech tree to it's fullest

WE/SSE stands for Wonder Economy/Settled Specialist Economy, where you aim to get a truckload of wonders and settle almost all specs to get an insanely powerful capital, usually with Ind or Phi leaders but if you have both Stone and Marble then any will do. It's a strategy that is proven to be very effective up to and including Deity, most famously by obsolete's Ind series where he routinely won a Deity game with all the Ind leaders. Those are easy to find for example from the S&T forum sample games sticky post. I have gone the same route in many of the posted forum games like Immortal University but too lazy to look them up (and they're not really that educationally reported anyway) Anyway, since you want a lot of GPP ToA is very good there.

All that said, it's still one of the weakest wonders (while not necessarily being weak), so at least it doesn't need another wonder to steal its thunder

 

[AveiMil]

Got a link to obsolete's Ind series? Can't seem to find it.

 

[Silu]

:: Industrious-Deity Series Archive ::

• Augustus
• Roosevelt
• Ramesses II
• Louis XIV
• Qin
• H. Capac
• Stalin
• Bismark
• De Gaulle

And one other bonus game (Team Deity) with Snaaty & Zulan here: Team Deity

 

[AveiMil]

Thanks

 

[Silu]

Question: are resource spawns in PIG (metals in mines, and PIG-induced grains on farms) scaled to game speed in the mod (normally they're not)? It's not uncommon to get 10 resource spawns in Marathon games, and this would be really degenerate with food resources.

 

[Fimbulvetr]

yes that part scales to gamespeed [Unofficial Patch]

 

[EmperorFool]

Note that the Unofficial Patch doesn't spawn resources on Farms, so it can't scale the rate due to game speed.

Now, if the code that spawns is generic and configurable

doSpawn()
    for each plot
        if [B]doesImprovementSpawnBonuses(plot.getImprovementType())[/B]
            calculate rate based on game speed
            if (random < prob)
                [B]spawnBonus(plot)[/B]

then the rate of spawning will be affected. However, I doubt the original code was nicely refactored like that.

</nay-saying>

 

[Fimbulvetr]

Whether you believe it or not, bonus spawning from worked improvements is as generic as your example, only it doesn't just go per plot but per resource that can be spawned - CvPlot::doImprovement() :
int iOdds = GC.getImprovementInfo(getImprovementType()).getImprovementBonusDiscoverRand(/*BonusInfos*/ iI);
So yeah it can all be configured easily in CIV4ImprovementInfos.xml (iDiscoverRand in BonusTypeStruct), and for every improvement type all resource spawning will scale to gamespeed.

 

[EmperorFool]

Whether you believe it or not, bonus spawning from worked improvements is as generic as your example.

Color me shocked.

Now, I wonder if there's any way to logically do this for Pasture bonuses like Pigs or Horses. For Mines it makes sense: you dig and dig and eventually discover an area with a different composition.

For Farm-based bonuses, theoretically you discover a way to make that area of land more fertile? Seeds get blown onto the area? A bit of a stretch.

But you cannot build a Pasture without a bonus already present, so we can't use the same mechanism. And given what Fuyu said--that it works through doImprovement()--you couldn't have them appear on unimproved terrain. But that is the only logical thing that makes sense to me. If you're working an unimproved tile, it would have a chance to spawn Pasture and Plantation bonuses. This mitigates slightly the negative of keeping and working unimproved terrain. Should that be mitigated? I dunno, but it seems you should get some reward for working a tile regardless of it having an improvement or not. Maybe it should have a lower rate?

 

[AveiMil]

I'm not really a huge fan of the grain/corn/rice discovery chance introduced with farms. If you get lucky early it can really make a big difference on your game and ultimately I don't like to increase the number of elements in the game that introduces x-chance (luck).

Additionally working unimproved tiles certainly should not grant any bonus in my opinion.

 

[TheWilltoAct]

Yea, I'm not sure what to think of it. I had rice appear by my capital, which already had 2 clams and a fish.

900 posts, yey

 

[XCodes]

As to the luck of getting an early food bonus from a farm, that doesn't strike me as particularly horrible considering how much luck already plays into getting a good starting position. If you start next to Stone, for example, then you're almost guaranteed to get Stonehenge, Pyramids, Great Wall, etc if you want to.

 

[TheWilltoAct]

Yea, in my case it was more of an overabundance (of food) than any actual imbalance. I built a city closeby to eat the offending rice.

 

[XCodes]

Can you post a .zip of the mod folder and whatever else I might need to use this mod? .exes aren't Mac friendly. Thanks in advance.

 

[phungus420]

This mod uses a custom dll, like pretty much every other mod that uses an .exe installer. Thus a .zip would be useless to you because you can't run it on Mac anyway.