Project SYNTHESIS

[jtb1127]

I'm going to re-install it and then see what happens.

 

[Leoreth]

Did you simply revert everything you changed for the buildings in the CvPlayer::acquireCity() method? Where is the building protection located now?

 

[Linkman226]

I didn't revert everything, only the part dealing with buildings. I realize that that's not the issue anyways, it's the culture battle between the Arabs and the Seljuks, usually with Arabian culture starving Seljuk cities.

 

[Leoreth]

Okay, thanks.

 

[Alexius08]

I keep crashing in the year 1508. This has happened with three civs in a row now-French, British, Dutch. Any help?

Did it happen when a Catholic civ got Printing Press? On playing as France, I managed to go past 1508. Playing as England made the game crash after proceeding with the Reformation while I am AP resident, however. I played both sessions with v38.

EDIT: I just attached the autosave from two turns before.

 

[Alexius08]

Saw another bug on the latest version. For some reason, I can't get one of my great prophets to build Adur Farnbag. I could build all the other shrines, however.

 

[zeki]

Did it happen when a Catholic civ got Printing Press? On playing as France, I managed to go past 1508. Playing as England made the game crash after proceeding with the Reformation while I am AP resident, however. I played both sessions with v38.

EDIT: I just attached the autosave from two turns before.

I have the same Problem with England . But in 1510, and had it before with the japanese.

 

[Alexius08]

Some more things I've noticed: .

1. The flips are somewhat intolerable. Playing as the Greeks beyond the UHV, Egypt, Phoenicia, Babylonia and Persia all wanted to flip to the Arabs. Aren't they supposed to flip only Jerusalem? From the same game, the Turkish flip also demanded Byzantion from me. Aren't they supposed to conquer it as part of their UHV?
2. The Seljuks spawned right inside Tyros and razed it, never giving me a chance to defend it.

Those heavy-handed stuff might be more appropriate to the AI.

 

[iOnlySignIn]

Hello,

I'm a long time lurker on these forums and have greatly enjoyed RFC, DoC, RFCE, but RFC Synthesis is currently my favorite Civ IV mod.

I especially appreciate the way you added more Asian civs and wonders related to Asian religions. It gives the game (originally a bit too Europe-centered) a great flavor of cultural variety.

However, I believe that this unbalances the Foreign category of the Stability calculation. As Rhye originally designed it (and DoC, RFCS inherited, afaik), whenever a civ meets another civ for the first time they both get a stability penalty. This was supposed to help East Asian civs because they have much less trade than European civs due to less foreign contacts, and hence get a lower Economy stability.

But now when you add in more Asian civs like Korea and Indonesia, India and especially China are really unfairly penalized by this mechanism. They do not actually get more foreign trade (they would have got the same trade from each other, and from Khmer or Japan), but they get massive "first contact" penalties on the 3,000BC start. That is exacerbated by civs like Egypt, Rome and Greece sending random scouts into the Far East (not very historical) to establish contact with China and India. The temporary trade routes in no way make up for the first contact stability penalty in the Foreign section, which is permanent, whereas penalty from poor economy is temporary.

In 3,000 BC start as China or India on Emperor, even if I:

(1) Do not scout out to meet anyone;
(2) Open border/accept demands/keep friendly with everyone I meet;
(3) Never partake in any war;

By the time the Romans collapse I will still have a gigantic penalty in the foreign category (like -30 to -50) due to these first contact penalties, since I am forced to meet every civ that ever spawned up to that time in history (even the Ethiopians) because they keep sending scouts at me.

This implies that the only way to lead a Stable China or India into 1200 or 1600 CE to realize their UHVs is to have a ridiculously strong economy (like, Statue of Liberty in 1600), which is not hard (especially for China) since you can spam some of the best classical wonders (GLH most prominently).

TL;DR I believe the Foreign category of the Stability calculation needs a rebalance, due to the numerous number of new civs introduced in Synthesis, so that 3000BC India and China have realistic strategies. We could eliminate first contact penalties altogether, like in RFCE.

Just my humble suggestion.

 

[Leoreth]

That's a very good point. Didn't think about that while all those civs were added.

 

[jtb1127]

I re installed the game and it crashed again-in the year 1508. It seems to be the year 1508 always. Maybe it has to do with the second coming of Persia, so I am going to go in world builder and delete them. I'll report back in a minute with the results.


Edit: I'm back and that did seem to fix the problem. I deleted the Persian Units and gave it back to the Arabs. I skipped a few turns just to make sure and I went to 1530 before being convinced that the problem was solved.

 

[Linkman226]

Did it happen when a Catholic civ got Printing Press? On playing as France, I managed to go past 1508. Playing as England made the game crash after proceeding with the Reformation while I am AP resident, however. I played both sessions with v38.

EDIT: I just attached the autosave from two turns before.

Will take a look.

Saw another bug on the latest version. For some reason, I can't get one of my great prophets to build Adur Farnbag. I could build all the other shrines, however.

Aware, fixing. Thanks.

Some more things I've noticed: .

1. The flips are somewhat intolerable. Playing as the Greeks beyond the UHV, Egypt, Phoenicia, Babylonia and Persia all wanted to flip to the Arabs. Aren't they supposed to flip only Jerusalem? From the same game, the Turkish flip also demanded Byzantion from me. Aren't they supposed to conquer it as part of their UHV?
2. The Seljuks spawned right inside Tyros and razed it, never giving me a chance to defend it.

Those heavy-handed stuff might be more appropriate to the AI.

Hello,

I'm a long time lurker on these forums and have greatly enjoyed RFC, DoC, RFCE, but RFC Synthesis is currently my favorite Civ IV mod.

I especially appreciate the way you added more Asian civs and wonders related to Asian religions. It gives the game (originally a bit too Europe-centered) a great flavor of cultural variety.

However, I believe that this unbalances the Foreign category of the Stability calculation. As Rhye originally designed it (and DoC, RFCS inherited, afaik), whenever a civ meets another civ for the first time they both get a stability penalty. This was supposed to help East Asian civs because they have much less trade than European civs due to less foreign contacts, and hence get a lower Economy stability.

But now when you add in more Asian civs like Korea and Indonesia, India and especially China are really unfairly penalized by this mechanism. They do not actually get more foreign trade (they would have got the same trade from each other, and from Khmer or Japan), but they get massive "first contact" penalties on the 3,000BC start. That is exacerbated by civs like Egypt, Rome and Greece sending random scouts into the Far East (not very historical) to establish contact with China and India. The temporary trade routes in no way make up for the first contact stability penalty in the Foreign section, which is permanent, whereas penalty from poor economy is temporary.

In 3,000 BC start as China or India on Emperor, even if I:

(1) Do not scout out to meet anyone;
(2) Open border/accept demands/keep friendly with everyone I meet;
(3) Never partake in any war;

By the time the Romans collapse I will still have a gigantic penalty in the foreign category (like -30 to -50) due to these first contact penalties, since I am forced to meet every civ that ever spawned up to that time in history (even the Ethiopians) because they keep sending scouts at me.

This implies that the only way to lead a Stable China or India into 1200 or 1600 CE to realize their UHVs is to have a ridiculously strong economy (like, Statue of Liberty in 1600), which is not hard (especially for China) since you can spam some of the best classical wonders (GLH most prominently).

TL;DR I believe the Foreign category of the Stability calculation needs a rebalance, due to the numerous number of new civs introduced in Synthesis, so that 3000BC India and China have realistic strategies. We could eliminate first contact penalties altogether, like in RFCE.

Just my humble suggestion.

Disclaimer: Not everything you mentioned is mine, a good deal is Leoreth's.

That's a good idea. I'll fix that.

I re installed the game and it crashed again-in the year 1508. It seems to be the year 1508 always. Maybe it has to do with the second coming of Persia, so I am going to go in world builder and delete them. I'll report back in a minute with the results.


Edit: I'm back and that did seem to fix the problem. I deleted the Persian Units and gave it back to the Arabs. I skipped a few turns just to make sure and I went to 1530 before being convinced that the problem was solved.

Hmmm.... . Interesting. I'm GUESSING it's graphical OR python error. Are your python exceptions activated?

 

[iOnlySignIn]

Thanks guys! I really appreciate it.

A supplement: It's not just about India and China, it's just that their problem is more prominent. In DoC, but especially in RFCS, it's near impossible to maintain a >0 Stability in the Foreign category no matter how you play and what you play.

A particular example is England. Since all of its trade routes are overseas, I like to play a "Splendid Isolation" game with England, and Open Borders with every European civ for lucrative trade routes. In the original RFC a Pax Britannica England on Emperor can get to +15, even +20 in the Foreign category. In DoC and RFCS it always end up negative (around -10) by the time you've got a full world map.

There is also a problem with the Open Border bonus in Foreign stability. Every time you Open Borders with a civ you get a bonus (around +1), but every time Open Border is cancelled you get a penalty (-1). This is realistic, except when the other civ collapses, it counts as them canceling their Open Borders with you. This is on top of the stability penalty you already get for having an Unstable/Collapsing neighbor when you're Stable or Solid.

I think RFCE did away with the entire Foreign Stability category for good reasons. When you have a lot of different civs that are frequently collapsed and reborn, the tiny errors and inconsistencies in the Stability calculation just snowballs. That is why I have never seen an AI China in RFCS or DoC survive past 1000 CE.

Another easy way to eliminate the unrealistic contacts between ancient Mediterranean civs (Carthage, Ethiopia in particular) and Far East civs is to:

(1) Not let vassals come into contact with all civs that its master is in contact with. There are numerous times when I slam my table in frustration in my China game when Egypt or Greece or Carthage or Ethiopia vassalized to Persia (who invariably meets China, as was historical), just to give me that annoying First Contact Stability Penalty. Even if they Open Borders, they don't offer any useful trade routes and soon collapse anyway.

(2) Spawn more animals in Siberia and Central Asian steppes, and adjust their strengths so they kill early units more easily. It is annoyingly unrealistic how a lone Roman Chariot or and Egyptian War Chariot can roam all the way to Korea. It is even more annoyingly unrealistic how Augustus would declare war on China later because of the Roman war distance multiplier and because I refused to declare war on Persia. In historical reality, the Romans and Han Dynasty China were only dimly aware of each other's existence.

This is especially egregious considering how difficult it is for a lone Galley to travel between China and Egypt, because Galleys are stuck near coasts and one single Barb Tireme on the way means unavoidable death. On land scouts have much more freedom of movement and can hide in forests and hills to easily defeat Barbs, let alone Animals. While in historical reality, the difficulty to establish trade routes via sea or land across ancient Eurasia were comparable, and the Silk Road traveled over sea as much as it did over land.

 

[iOnlySignIn]

Also a smaller and much more specific problem.

The Porcelain Tower does not boost domestic trade much. It seems that domestic trade routes are regarded as overseas, but not foreign (or was it the other way around, not entirely sure).

The construction of this wonder still does not warrant China or Japan to switch to Mercantilism (instead of Free Market), which I suspect was the original intent of this wonder, even if foreign contact is minimal (with other East Asian civs only). With Korea of course you should never run Mercantilism because you get massive trade routes from China and Japan.

 

[Leoreth]

Both good points.

Do you have any idea how to improve the Porcelain Tower?

 

[jtb1127]

Are your python exceptions activated?

Honestly, I don't know what that means.

 

[Leoreth]

Python exceptions are error messages that show ingame when there's a problem with the code. They include information where the error was caused, so it's easier to fix.

Take a look into the stickied bug reports thread to see how to enable this.

 

[iOnlySignIn]

Both good points.

Do you have any idea how to improve the Porcelain Tower?

I haven't looked at the code that implements this wonder (in Python, I think). I only do a little bit of xml editing, very amateurish. But my suspicion is that even if the Porcelain Tower does exactly what it says, domestic trade routes will still be much less profitable than foreign ones.

As it is now domestic trade routes with Porcelain Tower are about 50% more profitable than without, but foreign trade routes are regularly 3 or more times more profitable than domestic ones, because

(1) Longer distance means more profitable trade routes. Even with countries as large as China, the distance between its furthest corners are still less than its distance to Japan, Khmer, or Indonesia.

(2) Foreign trade gets a huge bonus from "Sustained Peace". I regularly get +150% bonus from "Sustained Peace" with my stable trading partners. No domestic trade routes can beat that.

(3) Custom Houses. +100% bonus to foreign trade. That alone is more than what Porcelain Tower can compensate for.

(4) Population bonus for trade routes. The larger the two cities involved in the trade route, the more profitable it is. It's much easier to find foreign cities with huge populations (Tokyo, Kyoto, Bangkok, most Indian and Indonesian cities) than domestic ones (you're stuck with cities in central Asia or Tibet, and since Silk Road does not spread into China those cities can hardly exceed 5 pop).

It's not even RFC that caused this. It's a feature of the original BTS. Sid Meier is apparently such a great proponent of Free Market that he is willing to unbalance his game design to promote the idea.

I think the current Synthesis build offers the only incentive to run Mercantilism, but not for China or Japan. It's for England and Netherlands to fast spread Trading Company. In this way, for these far flung colonial empires, domestic trade routes are almost as profitable as foreign ones because

(1) Domestic cities have great distance multipliers between them, unlike with China or a not crazy colonial Japan.

(2) Domestic cities have fast population growth due to Trading Company, further improving its trade route yield.

These are on top of the bonus of the Company itself, and the free Engineer (because you get free Forges in colonial cities) from Mercantilism to ensure that your colonies are productive.

So England has a very comfortable peaceful world domination game right now where it can control almost every Trading Company resource on the entire globe before the Dutch spawn.

My way of boosting the Far Eastern civs to compete with this (as well as ensure they like to adopt Mercantilism) is actually modifying the Forbidden Palace wonder. China/Japan do not need another organization center because they're not global empires, especially when the Forbidden Palace is about twice (or is it three times) as expensive as the Topkapi Palace. What I did to the Forbidden Palace is this:

(1) +1 gold for all specialists in all cities;

(2) Construction cost upped to levels (1200, for example) comparable to (but slightly less than) the Statue of Liberty (1500);

(3) Double construction speed with Timber (much harder than Copper for SoL). Historically the Forbidden Palace used up a lot of high quality timber (taken from Southern China) to construct.

This, *together* with Porcelain Tower, will make it more profitable for China/Japan to run Mercantilism than Free Market until the Europeans build up their empires and establish contact.

You could also let Silk Road spread to Chinese cities outside of the historical Great Wall. This is historical, but also maybe a little redundant seeing how the map of those areas are improved (so that Dunhuang is actually somewhat useful).

 

[iOnlySignIn]

Also, another perspective. I think the Porcelain Tower as it is now requires only a little boost, if any at all, because all it needs to be is generate more profit for China than the San Marco Basilica. The idea is that a small country (medieval England or Italy) should get San Marco's because it boosts only one city, while a large country like China should get Porcelain Tower because it boosts every city.

In China games where I founded Christianity I actually find these two to be comparable as they are right now. San Marco's becomes significantly more profitable only if you also build Wall Street (or is it called Stock Exchange) in the same city. But Wall Street is no longer a high priority now since Company Headquarters no longer exist.

Yes. In short Porcelain Tower only needs a small boost (1 free Priest/Merchant is enough IMO) to be as worthwhile as San Marco's. Instead, change the Forbidden Palace to make it actually useful and justify Mercantilism.

 

[AOS9001]

I agree with the above posts on trade issues and the Porcelain Tower. I can go with those ideas.