Walter Hawkwood
RI Curator
All right guys, last revisions pushed some fairly big changes that we need feedback on.
1) We changed unit role calculation (to what was intended from the start); now when a unit has several roles, their effect is not additive, but averaged. In effect, when a unit has several roles, you will now see much less cost increment. This is especially true for gunpowder regular infantry and later tanks, since they have 3 roles. Also, now you can actually see unit roles and associated increments!
2) A very experimental change that, after some playtesting, I like a lot so far. Every city a civ has raises its research costs. Currently the increase is set at 10%. It is designed for (and is actually quite good at) combating a major design flaw in how research is handled in Civ 4, that is, a smaller civ generally can't keep up in research with a bigger one - therefore, staying small intentionally is very rarely a viable strategy. This has a rather major impact on preventing "runaway civ" syndrome and generally makes the game more dynamic - if a civ gets too much ahead in the number of cities, expect it to lag behind in tech somewhat. Particular numbers, of course, require more testing.
Thank you very much for that input! There are still some wrinkles to figure out with the inner workings of renaming, so for now I don't add any new lists - but as soon as those are fixed, yours are going right in!
And yeah, I think city names are handled by Civ 4 engine in a different way from all other text. I usually try to avoid special symbols in city names, therefore, as one can't predict how they work out exactly.
Yeah, that definitely has to do with Gandhi. I once made an experiment on AI behavior and made a world populated by 12 Gandhis. There were no wars. At all.
I hesitate to remove him from the scenario, though, because Gandhi is such an iconic part of Civ gaming experience...
They are not in the game because the were (don't laugh) also not present IRL. In case of both tanks you mention, there was never a single unit of those fielded in history - if we realistically consider a Civ 4 unit to be a division. More generally speaking, there was never a heavy tank division ever fielded by any country in history. Therefore, there is no "heavy tank" unit in RI.
I think that's actually the main reason why Civ 4 (and many other games in general) has difficulty levels. Because people want to go to different lengths to play the game: more or less effort, more or less micromanagement etc... And instead of forcing them all along the same path, we give them the choice of difficulty level.
I don't think anyone obsessively micromanaging or even using exploits should feel guilty about it - they play for fun, and that is their definition of fun - but these people can just choose harsher penalties to play against. Likewise, those who want to play more casually can lower their difficulty level. For instance, I, as the developer of the mod, know more or less its every nook and cranny, and if I wanted, I could squeeze so much from micromanaging my every move - but I choose not to, instead adopting a more laissez-faire approach to playing.
Anyway, the point of that rant is that we try to accommodate to various kinds of players, and therefore even if I personally would never use an exploit like this with full knowledge that it exists, I can see that it upsets others, and we will probably do something to close it.
A simple balancing reason - if we allow it for ALL crops that people historically distilled alcohol from, every civ will likely drown in it. But the renewed discussion you had here gave me another idea - perhaps we can provide civilizations with the ability to distill from the crop they used most historically, instead of just wheat. Let Russians still have vodka, but let Japanese get their sake from rice, and Vikings their brännvin from potatoes. How does that sound (every civ would still retain the ability to distill high-sugar substrates: grapes and sugar cane)?
One thing that makes me feel that current implementation of Great Works is about right is the fact that there is so much discussion and so little consensus about it. That, to me, is usually a good sign. Anyway, we have some stuff planned for them, but I must say that I don't like obsolescence for GW. To me, Great Works of Science are about slowly building up your scientific legacy, and thus should be the building bricks that you retain indefinitely, rather than interchangeable parts to be discarded.
1) We changed unit role calculation (to what was intended from the start); now when a unit has several roles, their effect is not additive, but averaged. In effect, when a unit has several roles, you will now see much less cost increment. This is especially true for gunpowder regular infantry and later tanks, since they have 3 roles. Also, now you can actually see unit roles and associated increments!
2) A very experimental change that, after some playtesting, I like a lot so far. Every city a civ has raises its research costs. Currently the increase is set at 10%. It is designed for (and is actually quite good at) combating a major design flaw in how research is handled in Civ 4, that is, a smaller civ generally can't keep up in research with a bigger one - therefore, staying small intentionally is very rarely a viable strategy. This has a rather major impact on preventing "runaway civ" syndrome and generally makes the game more dynamic - if a civ gets too much ahead in the number of cities, expect it to lag behind in tech somewhat. Particular numbers, of course, require more testing.
Thank you very much for that input! There are still some wrinkles to figure out with the inner workings of renaming, so for now I don't add any new lists - but as soon as those are fixed, yours are going right in!
And yeah, I think city names are handled by Civ 4 engine in a different way from all other text. I usually try to avoid special symbols in city names, therefore, as one can't predict how they work out exactly.
Yeah, that definitely has to do with Gandhi. I once made an experiment on AI behavior and made a world populated by 12 Gandhis. There were no wars. At all.
I hesitate to remove him from the scenario, though, because Gandhi is such an iconic part of Civ gaming experience...
They are not in the game because the were (don't laugh) also not present IRL. In case of both tanks you mention, there was never a single unit of those fielded in history - if we realistically consider a Civ 4 unit to be a division. More generally speaking, there was never a heavy tank division ever fielded by any country in history. Therefore, there is no "heavy tank" unit in RI.
The thing is, I already use a high degree of micromanagement, even if I use only workers for an improvement. If a group of workers are building an improvement, and have two turns to complete it (i.e. Building a Watermill (2)), I cancel their orders at the end of my turn, and in the next turn I give the orders to complete the improvement to individual workers. Otherwise some working time might get lost. I do the same thing when I use mixture of workers and slaves.
Sure, occasionally I could deliberately micromanage in a way to make slaves die. Or I could just delete a slave or two once in a while, it is the same thing, but why would I?
Also, if you have an estimation, how often I should make slaves die or delete a slave in order to be as (in)effective as the AI, I'm ready to hear your suggestions.
I think that's actually the main reason why Civ 4 (and many other games in general) has difficulty levels. Because people want to go to different lengths to play the game: more or less effort, more or less micromanagement etc... And instead of forcing them all along the same path, we give them the choice of difficulty level.
I don't think anyone obsessively micromanaging or even using exploits should feel guilty about it - they play for fun, and that is their definition of fun - but these people can just choose harsher penalties to play against. Likewise, those who want to play more casually can lower their difficulty level. For instance, I, as the developer of the mod, know more or less its every nook and cranny, and if I wanted, I could squeeze so much from micromanaging my every move - but I choose not to, instead adopting a more laissez-faire approach to playing.
Anyway, the point of that rant is that we try to accommodate to various kinds of players, and therefore even if I personally would never use an exploit like this with full knowledge that it exists, I can see that it upsets others, and we will probably do something to close it.
A simple balancing reason - if we allow it for ALL crops that people historically distilled alcohol from, every civ will likely drown in it. But the renewed discussion you had here gave me another idea - perhaps we can provide civilizations with the ability to distill from the crop they used most historically, instead of just wheat. Let Russians still have vodka, but let Japanese get their sake from rice, and Vikings their brännvin from potatoes. How does that sound (every civ would still retain the ability to distill high-sugar substrates: grapes and sugar cane)?
One thing that makes me feel that current implementation of Great Works is about right is the fact that there is so much discussion and so little consensus about it. That, to me, is usually a good sign. Anyway, we have some stuff planned for them, but I must say that I don't like obsolescence for GW. To me, Great Works of Science are about slowly building up your scientific legacy, and thus should be the building bricks that you retain indefinitely, rather than interchangeable parts to be discarded.
output should be less than the sum of 
and 
in the capital city. Or maybe, optimizing the upkeep system should be the way to go.
(As I've said: It is fine, but I am not a fan of it.")
