[QUESTION] What is 'absolutely essential'?

[ExpiredReign]

@dylansan

That is precisely my point. What 'I' need is guidance from those with some background in balancing aspects of the game. I'll state from the outset, I am rubbish at balancing the various aspects of the game, I simply don't have enough experience to be able to do that.

What I can do though, is spend time doing the edits. So if those with vision can provide me with guidance, this mod shouldn't need to fade into oblivion.

 

[Gokudo01]

ExpiredReign, you know what you should do ?

Start by doing a post about what's the most essential aspect of the game for you.
And ask us to give our point of view.
Because i dont know what you are thinking or wondering atm, so just do theme post:

What do you think about the culture flow ?
What do you think about technologies?
Policies, Civilization ?

etc ...
Because it's better to know where you want to go, instead of applying band-aid over band-aid.
Leading you to unsolvable issue.

To construct something good, start with solid foundation.
To start with solid foundation, have a nice plan

 

[Zarggg]

There have been a few threads where we recently discussed potential direction for the mod, e.g., military unit lines. If we want to revisit those discussions, that might give us a place to start planning.

First step should be making sure there is a bug-fixed release ready, though.

 

[mystikx21]

The military unit lines are/were done already and fixed. They just are in a mod-mod rather than in the mod itself because they were taken back out. There's no planning there required.

There's some minor balance tweaks for units still out there but I think we can say those are mostly done. I think the ranged UU knights would be one place to look for balance adjustment.

Culture needs a hit of adjustment (mostly down, or tourism up, ideally by improving great works somehow).
Beliefs need resorted. They're worse in general layout (which are follower, which are enhancer) than vanilla in my opinion too.
Tech tree needs some adjustments, mostly toward the middle-late end of the tree, but some earlier-middle tweaks on freshwater tiles for balance would be appreciated
Several policy trees need adjustment or overhaul
A few leaders have some fixes or tweaks to do, but leaders are mostly done/fine.
We need a thread on ideologies at some point. We never had one.

UI stuff can maybe be passed off to other mods if they're going dll route to fix issues like the yield library being all screwed up. But a listing of the essential bits of that would be useful here so we know what is already available elsewhere and what would need assistance.

 

[ExpiredReign]

...
UI stuff can maybe be passed off to other mods if they're going dll route to fix issues like the yield library being all screwed up. But a listing of the essential bits of that would be useful here so we know what is already available elsewhere and what would need assistance.

This was my reasoning in starting this thread.
The different parts of the game, beliefs/policies/units/buildings/etc. can be easily adjusted by us, and most are fine the way they are. The problem for me arises when we want to fix something that might need to access a function that doesn't quite do what we intend it to do. In the past this would mean writing a lua function to take over that aspect and then anyone can write sql/xml to access the new functionality provided.

I wanted to see just how much of this mod is intrinsically tied to custom lua functions and how much could be divided off. Even basic yields on a lot of the game elements are using some form of custom lua code and that means ALL the UI elements need updating whenever we add a new function to something, otherwise we get the problems now faced where the core functionality works but the user gets no feedback of it working and assumes it is broken.

IF I started afresh, just what would be needed to get a reasonably working mod up and running without too much hassle. Answer, not much. CEP is at it's heart a lua mod. I wonder just how much the users of this mod appreciate the amount of code written exclusively for this mod! It is staggering. Even simple things like using a vanilla function that might, for instance, give a yield boost to , and change it to give that boost to means writing a new function, if the vanilla function isn't designed to be adapted. A great many of the vanilla functions fall into this category.

So, to answer my opening post's question: 'What is absolutely essential?'
Someone to steer the design of this mod so we can fix this to the best stage our current skills allow.

I'll state from the outset that someone should not be me. I have not the experience of playing the game to make balanced opinions on what does or doesn't need work.
I'm happy, relatively speaking, to oversee the actual coding, that is the HOW to proceed, but WHAT to tackle next is for someone else.

 

[mystikx21]

I recognize a lot of functions that require some code running in the background. Pretty much all the yield functions are/were broken in vanilla and have to be fixed in order to make adjustments to them easily. Several wonders and leaders rely on some unique coding. And so on.

A lot of the UI works this way that we could turn it over to a different mod that then would accompany the balance adjustments, things like the tech tree, etc. This I believe is how the mod was originally constructed in GEM/VEM versions, with a UI feature that ran most of the changes that the gameplay mod then did. This wasn't the approach with the BNW modifications and it seems to be a stumbling block now that it wasn't.

But if much of that can be done with dll and make some AI adjustments and simplify/fix the code in some areas, then there may be other things we can do with xml/sql fixes from there (some which weren't possible even before). I will investigate the progress of some of the AI fixes or dll mods to see which could be adapted for compatibility in this way, though we may have to cobble several together. I suspect there will always be some lua functions available for certain things, or at least there would be for some custom features of the gameplay mod which are unique and enjoyable (wonders/leaders effects in many cases), but if some basic underlying things are repaired elsewhere (UI/yield table) then there's less work to do here to build up what's been built already. Fixing the skeleton is the biggest work hurdle I bet to what we can do to keep it active.

My thinking and I think I see some others involved here thinking similarly is to ask whether some of what was built up is worth keeping the way it is and re-balancing other things from there, or to ask what we should direct it to do instead if not. That's more fleshing out what's on the bones.

 

[mystikx21]

Looking at the dll mod thread, I'd have to say we may have to bite a bullet and figure out a listing of stuff that's in the lua right now to deduce what this would mean for "what is absolutely essential". Some may have to stay there and some maybe can be added as functions in the dll mod and some could be dropped (either immediately or over time).

The advantage of doing this could be that the dll mod focus on customizing features could give us some resolutions to issues that could then be dropped in xml/sql for easier editing and a clear balance effect, as well as ideally resolving some of the balance issues from the more inept AI processes and related functions. It doesn't sound like we can shunt off the yield library problems, but maybe some of the solutions could be made easier. That'd be a start too.

 

[Gokudo01]

Looking at the dll mod thread, I'd have to say we may have to bite a bullet and figure out a listing of stuff that's in the lua right now to deduce what this would mean for "what is absolutely essential". Some may have to stay there and some maybe can be added as functions in the dll mod and some could be dropped (either immediately or over time).

The advantage of doing this could be that the dll mod focus on customizing features could give us some resolutions to issues that could then be dropped in xml/sql for easier editing and a clear balance effect, as well as ideally resolving some of the balance issues from the more inept AI processes and related functions. It doesn't sound like we can shunt off the yield library problems, but maybe some of the solutions could be made easier. That'd be a start too.

Mystik21, i hate you. When i read your posts, there is not so much for me to add.

By the way, how works lua, it's imperative or is it a script language like bash or J Script ?

 

[ExpiredReign]

...
By the way, how works lua, it's imperative or is it a script language like bash or J Script ?

Wow, that's a broad question. I may not be able to think up new lua functions but I can tell you a little about it.

It is an 'interpreted language', that is it isn't compiled and run like C++. The lua in the game, and inside mods, is used to either gain access to the C++ functionality or to make new functions that are missing. Firaxis' use of lua is also slightly different to the lua you might find elsewhere. They use a lot C++ crossover stuff, definitions and the like.

This mod is built on lua from many, many authors and as such the structure isn't always the same. Some used 'camelCase' others 'Polish notation' and on top of that there are multiple ways of gaining access to the game's database that provide the same information, but maybe faster/slower. What this means is when you start to read the code you are not only trying to understand what the function is, but how it relates to some other code that looks entirely different, structurally that is. Trust me, this is not an easy task to understand all the code in this mod. Others much more skilled than I have despaired over it's 'dog's breakfast' appearance.

Having said that, the forum has many great tutorials and documentation guides about scripting in lua, have a look around.

Hope I haven't dampened any enthusiasm for checking it out.

 

[mbbcam]

Have you seen this?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=525904

(The Medmod VI: Still Civ V, only better). It might help you to reflect on where you are. I can't help feeling that some of the discussions get a bit too "theoretical" at times. My advice would be to step back for a while, stop coding, and play a few games. Indeed, I would play with the vanilla for a while. Once you have a feel for what is wrong in the vanilla game, you can work from that baseline. After all, it's the *game* that people would like to see improved -- most of them don't care what the code looks like ;-)

But congratulations on all the work achieved so far. It's a heroic effort.

 

[ExpiredReign]

Let's end this thread here.
Get your ideas in mind, I'll be starting a specific thread shortly about policies.

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