Rat 40 - Introduction to CCM

[Northern Pike]

We've played a lot of games together, for you to assume that I did something completely idiotic. Of course I didn't rush anything at double price with no accumulated shields. All your figures should be less than half of what they are, and then less than that because Vitoria already had its courthouse at the beginning of my round.

 

[barbslinger]

Guys- This is exploratory and at demi its getting beat. We are all here because we love this game and we're now trying to promote CCM. We are also learning this mod and promoting it. Of course we could break out a calculator for every city to analyze all of them and mentally we do. We did at the beginning and it has paid off. Now it is time and it is incumbent on us to provide it.

Let's build ships, land in force and continue the conquering!

 

[Greebley]

I think vxma's question is valid. It is fine to discuss when to rush things and when not, because it leads to a discussion that may help for later games. He got the math wrong which is why he was surprised.

We are likely going to lose population when we switch govts so a hospital is not really a waste. It will get the town back again quicker. Its the same as the Granary discussion earlier. Not sure if we would make back the gold or not over the long haul. May depend on how many times we switch govts. Also gold is less valuable than science unless we go to democracy.

 

[vmxa]

We've played a lot of games together, for you to assume that I did something completely idiotic. Of course I didn't rush anything at double price with no accumulated shields. All your figures should be less than half of what they are, and then less than that because Vitoria already had its courthouse at the beginning of my round.

Well first I did not assume you did anything idiotic. I only used the raw values as I had no idea what sort of partial rushing was done. In fact I know that some of the stuff was done over more than one set. I gave no thought as to who did what.

I am not even saying that there is no value in those things, only that it is more work and expense than I would be willing to put in. Well I am saying the hospital is not a good deal.

I said a little carried away, that does not imply it was all wrong or idiotic. It suggest maybe a bit less would be fine with me, nothing more. If I thought it was idiotic, that is what I would have said.

I would have said it is crazy, not a little carried away. I do not think even the hospital is idiotic, but is is not cost effective. It does have some value in replacing workers quicker. (edit no loss of pop for workers in CCM)

One of the reason toput it out was that maybe someone could show me where I missed something.

Let me restate for the record, I would not be playing, if I did not have respect for you and the others with whom I have played a number of times. I am not even granting myslef the same as I know you have invited players in that you do not even know.

There is no need to fell slighted in any way at any time. Even if I was to have complete contempt for an indivial move or play, (which I do not have) it would not detract from the respect you have earned.

I would like to think that you could completely disagree with me on something and tell me I am nuts and that would not affect the overall perspective. I have had opposite positions from best friends, and argued over and over, but that is put away afterwords. We agree to disagree with no recriminations.

I care about logic, if it is logical, I will adopt it, if it is not then I will reject it. If I do not see the logic, that does not mean it is not logical. It does mean I won't adopt it.

 

[vmxa]

I just put up a structure in the list and rushed it and those are the numbers that came out. A uni would be 1600. I did not take into account any short rushing as I had no way to know what would have been done, if anything.

I just took it from no shields in the box as that was the easiest way to do it. The actual cost would hopefully be much lower. The cost of your time would go up for each short rush or return to the town to await the first shield in the box to short rush with.

Going around to many towns every turn to rush in all the structures would onerous, more so than the gold, which is not hard to come by. I would do that, if the payoff was high enough.

It would seem marginal in some towns, so I would be likely to do a hit and miss on them. IOW not every turn, but at times.

 

[Civinator]

One more time thank you all very much for your great reports and your input about CCM.

Hospitals:

@Civinator: Having to re-build all one's granaries as hospitals at this point in the game seems nothing but irritating, frankly.

Hospital 140 shields in a tundra town? What is the value of double growth in a place that is max pop without yet another structure

We are likely going to lose population when we switch govts so a hospital is not really a waste. It will get the town back again quicker.

The intention for the current setting of hospitals in CCM was the following:

The much more expensive hospitals appear and the much cheaper granaries are going obsolete in CCM soon before the much better governments are available in the techtree. As Greebley wrote, the hospitals in CCM are an element in conjunction with the switching of governments, that in CCM cost population points. So if you don´t switch governments, hospitals in older big cities don´t have much use. If you rush for some special techs in democracy and than when you got them and build your new more advanced weapons and switch to a government without warweariness, hospitals in your cities become a significant factor in gameplay.

It´s not sufficient in my eyes to let the granaries continue their job as in the later stage of the game they are much to cheap for the value they give and the ammount of gold that is in the game at that time, if a government-switching tactic is choosen. On the other side, if granaries would be much more expensive there wouldn´t be a good relation between the production and the use of them in the ancient era.


Buildings going obsolete:

In the current state of the Civilopedia, it's hard to know what improvements expire when. I hope that in the final version of the mod this will be covered more consistently.

At present I have the configuration for the test of betatest CCM version 1.5 on my pc and here a building that is going obsolete is shown in the following way in the techtree and the civilopedia:

In the civilopedia, there is a hardcoded entry for the building if it is going obsolete and about the tech that makes the building obsolete:

In the techtree the techbox of a certain tech shows the buildings that are going obsolete redcrossed in the techbox:

For example in the techbox for the tech Radio the icon for the steamengine is redcrossed (in the techbox below Radio it would be shown that the tech Nuclear Bomb makes the GWs Pacific Fleet (only US) and Blohm and Voss (only Germany) obsolete.

As not every new civer can associate the shown redcrossed icon with the correct building that is going obsolete, there is an additional entry in the civilopedia for each tech about the buildings that are going obsolete with that tech. This was a very good suggestion done by vmxa and is at least in the new civilpoedia for version 1.5 (can´t say without clicking on the download page, if this entries are still available for the civiliopedia of version 1.4).

As you can see in the screenshot, the civilopedia entry now also always shows if a tech can not be traded. This is a nice improvement in the gameplay of CCM, that was suggested by the participants of this succession game.


Technical Error:

@Civinator: This was the first round in which I had any problems with the technical stability of the mod. I lost my work to “Fatal error—cannot allocate draw-buffer” twice.

Sorry Northern Pike, that you had that fatal error. I never had that error and it wasn´t reported yet by any prebetatestplayer and betattestplayer of CCM.

It would be great, if one of the lurkers could explain what triggered that error, as at present I have no idea about it.


Workers and population points:

@Civinator: We seem to have a serious bug, inasmuch as our first towns to produce workers have not lost population.

At present normally produced workers don´t cause population losses in CCM. If you are used to those losses, it would no problem to set such a loss in the next biq. I will have a look at the civilopedia entry for normally produced workers if the given information here is correct.

 

[Northern Pike]

Vmxa and Greebley, thanks for your thoughtful responses. Of course questioning of why I rushed so much, or of any point of strategy, is legitimate and welcome. What provoked me was that Vmxa's figures seemed to incorporate the assumption that I'd made a beginner's error in executing the rushes. I appreciate his explanation of what really happened.

My basic approach to rushing in CCM, agreeing with various things Rat has said, is that the huge sums of gold we accumulate do us no good just sitting in the treasury. This is true generally, and even more applicable when we're entering an era in which we can't buy techs or (since we expect to be tech leaders) steal them very often. One of the most useful things we can do with our gold, then, is to get high-commerce, low-shield cities up to their full research capacity quickly. That was my main goal in rushing during my round, with Spain as the area of emphasis; and I'm confident that the programme as a whole will help us considerably by the end of the game, whether or not every rush in every city stands up to rigorous cost/benefit analysis. As Vmxa points out, the rushing is a long process anyway, and one has to go by general principles.

 

[Northern Pike]

@Civinator: Thanks for your various explanations.

It sounds as though version 1.5 will address my concerns about improvements and obsolescence. You're right that the crossed-out icons on the tech tree are too small and ambiguous to be of much use in themselves. I'll just suggest that to give the player every possible piece of information, if an improvement never becomes obsolete, this should be explicitly stated on its Civilopedia page.

If no one else has reported the fatal draw-buffer error, it could just be random computer terrorism with no relation to CCM.

If building workers isn't supposed to cause population loss, that's a little surprising, but I'm not objecting to it or saying that it should be changed.

 

[vmxa]

NP the fatal error may be an issue with video acceleration. I have not seen it, but I do recall a few other games suggesting to lower the rate in system.

 

[Northern Pike]

Thanks, I'll look into that.

 

[barbslinger]

My basic approach to rushing in CCM, agreeing with various things Rat has said, is that the huge sums of gold we accumulate do us no good just sitting in the treasury.

Let's kick this games ass and Civinator can rebalance. He should look at other folks than us though. We, as a group, are good. Not the best but enough to win most every time. We analyze and have a look at every part of this game. There is a beauty in that, and that is why we are here.

 

[ThERat]

Folks, I am back and can take the game after Greebley

 

[Greebley]

Just hit a spelling error.
In the PediaIcons.txt it needs an WON_SPLASH_BLDG_Capitol entry.
Instead there is a WON_SPLASH_BLDG_Capital entry.

I copied the capital one and made a capitol one.

Sure enough the Capitol wonder splash comes up after I made the copy.

 

[vmxa]

I thought that was fixed in 1.3? Maybe I had to do it my hand as well, can't remember.

 

[vmxa]

Yup just looked and my 1.3 show no Capital and it is date 3/10/2010. Still not sure, if it came that way or I corrected way back then.

 

[Greebley]

Another error: missing Art\Units\German77\..\WW1 Artillery\ArtilleryRun.wav

There is no WWI Artillery directory. I copied the Artillery directory to WWI Artillery directory to solve.

grep show the following for ArtilleryRun.wav.

art/units/150mm Howitzer/150mm Howitzer.ini:RUN=..\WWI Artillery\ArtilleryRun.wav
art/units/152mm Arty/152mm Arty.ini:RUN=..\WWI Artillery\ArtilleryRun.wav
art/units/155mm US Arty/155mm US Arty.ini:RUN=..\WWI Artillery\ArtilleryRun.wav
art/units/6 Pounder/6 Pounder.ini:RUN=ArtilleryRun.wav
art/units/76mm Arty/76mm Arty.ini:RUN=..\Heavy Artillery\ArtilleryRun.wav
art/units/88mm Flak/88mm Flak.ini:RUN=..\WWI Artillery\ArtilleryRun.wav
art/units/Artillery/Artillery.ini:RUN=ArtilleryRun.wav
art/units/BigBertha/BigBertha.ini:RUN=ArtilleryRun.wav
art/units/Frz155/Frz155.ini:RUN=..\WWI Artillery\ArtilleryRun.wav
art/units/German77/German77.ini:RUN=..\WWI Artillery\ArtilleryRun.wav
art/units/Heavy Artillery/Heavy Artillery.ini:RUN=ArtilleryRun.wav
art/units/Heavy Coastal Battery/Heavy Coastal Battery.ini:RUN=..\BigBertha\ArtilleryRun.wav
art/units/Schneider75/Schneider75.ini:RUN=..\Heavy Artillery\ArtilleryRun.wav

 

[vmxa]

Is this another one of those where we need to change the INI to Heavy?

Edit: Yes I know 150mm, 152mm, 155mm, Schneider for sure need to be fixed in the INI. We already did the Schneider.

 

[Greebley]

Note on Mod:
I was looking at Scientific Civs and noticed there are only 3 of them which seems a bit few. You could make America Scientific. A lot of science comes out of the US and their traits commercial and industrious seems overused to me - There are 3 others with the exact same traits, so there are more industrious-commercial civs than science-<anything> civs. My suggestion is scientific-industrial (or scientific-commercial).

Question:
When I saw we had Marine Infantry, I was wondering if they had Amphibious Assault, but they don't. When are the first Amphibious Assault units? Does Scandanavia get some early? (If someone was feeling motivated, the Amphibious Assault entry in the civopedia could list the ones that have the ability).

-----

Preturn: Decide I want to build clippers before they go extinct. They are the only ones to move fast in all squares for a while it seems. Steamers and such are slowed and at only speed 6 they are slower going port to port unless the distance is far.

I want rails fast as moving units is taking a lot of time. I will build workers. Probably too many

Was noticing something ironic about the name 'royal barracks'. The only place you don't build them is in the capitol.

I think we want the Eiffel Tower so I rush the light industry in capitol. I think it starts a GA for anyone.

I will not continue to protect every worker now we can build them. I don't think there are many invisible units in our lands. Ones on borders only will be protected.

IBT: Westminster Palace completed by England.

1756 AD: I cancel the ROP and silks deal with Aztecs. I don't want them active when I declare.
We already have Aztec units (well at least one) deep in our terrritory.

1758 AD: We rush Industrial core Center in our capitol. I also rushed heavy industry there last turn.

1760 AD: I assume the point of the non-pop workers is to allow for a vast number after of workers for rails for quick rails? That is how I plan to use them. I wonder if they should be more than 10 shields though since you took away their main cost. When even lesser cities can pump out 1/turn, it means a big force quickly. Maybe 30 shields would be better? Just a thought.

I try pushing Russia into the industrial age to see if I can get a tech but they get Industrialization.
We have now met everyone.

1762 AD: As predicted the cost for techs have gone up. 9 turns to Atomic theory.
Units are arriving at Lagos now.

1764 AD: Send some units toward the Aztec towns on our Contintent.

1766 AD: Starting to make progress on rail backbone. Trying to reduce time to Eifel tower as well by improving capitol. I think I just need a few more shields to do it.

IBT: also missing Art\Units\German77\..WW1 Artillery\ArtilleryRun.wav
Lose Incense and Dyes

1768 AD: I trade to Rome for Incense and Dyes and some gold.
Eiffel Tower reduced to 1 turn.

IBT: Eiffel Tower Completes We start our Golden Age

1770 AD: Finished building workers. All towns will switch to something else as I don't want GA towns building 10 shield units. Besides we have a good number now and should be able to get Railed towns fairly quickly.

Trade away compound Steam Engine for Nationalism. Trade it with everyone for cash since it will be traded around anyway on the AI turn.

The Settler has arrived so the ships are off toward the Aztecs.

1772 AD: Our way is blocked by Aztec units and only the Clippers could land so I wait a turn to attack.

1774 AD: Declare war on the Aztecs and land our forces. Next player gets to fight.
Capture Tamuin on our home continent.

Notes:
I did not upgrade units. I suggest rushing a barracks in the new town of the landing and upgrading things as needed. The number of landed units is 80.

Note the Aztecs didn't have physics so shouldn't have def 5 musketeer or the attack 6 hussars. They will likely have def 4 (or 3) units and might have some Bombards. I am not sure on that.

Our capitol is up to 264 shields and can build national monument in 4 and misses by just a few shields. 267 is 3 turns. Next turn I recommend cutting down all the forests and replacing with mines. If we get lucky and one has a shield then we might get to 268 and be able to complete in 3.
I should have done that on my turn (so only 267 would be needed) but I realized it too late.

We can start building settlers next turn.

I am not completely sure I balanced happiness. You might want to check.

 

[Northern Pike]

I can't load the save again, but that sounds good.

I appreciate the running discussion of technical problems, but could someone please post in one place what it's necessary to do to get the save working now? Thanks.

 

[vmxa]

In Art/Units for any unit that has the issue (listed by Greebly) I think you have to go to the ini for that unit and change the WW1 artillery to Heavy Artillery like this:

[Sound Effects]
BLANK=
DEFAULT=
WALK=
RUN=..\Heavy Artillery\ArtilleryRun.wav
ATTACK1=..\Heavy Artillery\ArtilleryAttack.amb
ATTACK2=
ATTACK3=
DEFEND=
DEATH=..\Heavy Artillery\ArtilleryDeath.wav
DEAD=
FORTIFY=..\Heavy Artillery\ArtilleryFortify.wav
FORTIFYHOLD=
FIDGET=..\Heavy Artillery\ArtilleryFidget.wav
VICTORY=
TURNLEFT=
TURNRIGHT=