AspiringScholar
King
More feedback, if it's wanted!
Spoiler :
- For livestock resources in jungle, you can build a pasture before researching water pump, but not a farm for rice which is covered in jungle. Is this intentional? I did encounter this specific example, which might be a bug (though, it might have been another cereal bonus which was adjacent to a jungle, and then a jungle spread to its tile over it, which still effectively nullifies parity with the same effect for livestock, since it can be generated on the map in this way when I believe only plantation resources also can). If it is, I'll fish for the save, but I don't have it handy right now. All gameplay considerations notwithstanding, it does make more sense that you could raise and keep at least semi-large populations of livestock in otherwise untamed forest than that you could conduct large-scale agriculture there, but I wanted to report it and make sure anyway.
- I had a peasant revolt that occurred outside of the nominal city of origin's BFC radius, which leads me to ask: does this stem from the city's own cultural borders, rather than its workable tiles? In that case, having a very high culture city which is a massive metropolis could end up being a rather large liability for your empire at large, if it means that cities two or even three tiles outside of the workable land of said city could end up spawning a huge revolt capable of taking any of several otherwise not immediately reachable and more poorly defended border cities. When one can know that this is the case and bear it in mind when planning defenses, it seems reasonably enough I suppose, but not knowing that ahead of time can mean losing a key city against reasonable defenses for its strategic location otherwise, and is a little dissonant with the fact that the revolt size cap is sensibly scaled to the city of origin's size, which is itself tied to workable food rather than culture radius.
- This has come up before, but in light of the new changes to AI behavior with respect to ranged attack capabilities, I'd like to ask what the specific logic is behind target selection for the player. I always target the enemy stack and fire with one unit of artillery at a time (since doing so with the whole stack seems to exacerbate this), but often the ranged attack becomes impossible well before the full damage cap has been reached for all units in the targeted stack. I suppose that makes enough sense from a roleplaying perspective (since, the maximum damage threshold of an artillery battery is as much represented by its own individual accuracy and firepower as it is by the positioning and distance of the enemy's army, and at some point, the rank and file has borne the brunt of it) but as the player, it's frustrating and annoyingly arbitrary when your ranged attacks get absorbed by a random slew of units which are often run of the mill and easy pickings anyway and there remain premium and well-promoted units unscathed when further ranged attacks are technically possible for your own attacking stack (which, with Civ4's combat logic, means that they will be what gets to teleport to the front with the defender's advantage if the situation demands it when you actually commit your forces directly, until they get damaged enough to be shielded by the "protect valuable units" option, which never seems to be the case until said unit becomes less likely to win relative to some other potential defender), which on your part requires a decent amount of investment to defend anyway because artillery is as a rule rather vulnerable on its own against virtually any other unit contemporary with its own era, and this ends up meaning that you as the player consequently have to invest a sizeable amount of time and money and hammers putting your army into a defensible position to barrage to the advertized limit, only to find that full-strength and ready-for-battle artillery pieces are completely impotent for this purpose against otherwise unscathed and fresh enemies within their range, and as a result have to fully waste their intended use-case combat potential (and that of their precious defenders) to a grey square which the Pedia tells you should yield an HP drain against any viable selected target within range, and instead have to forfeit their movement points and skip their turn while contenting themselves with their consumption of the stack's limited logistics and the passive bonus that they provide. I can live with and be content with that (since it at least sort of is believable enough from a historical perspective, because no defender would place its precious units in certain artillery fire if something cheaper and more expendable could shield it) if I knew what the code logic was, so that I wouldn't anticipate it and then invest costly resources against an opponent that offer no return, and play tactically in accord with it.
On a more positive note, however, I can in fact certainly report that the AI is barraging offensively before following through with its own direct combat!
I don't think I've ever seen it happen before, and in a game which became losing for me in early renaissance, I saw it happen at the earliest possible moment with bombards before collateral damage even becomes part of the AI's combat calculus (which, I would assume should become increasingly and hugely important for the utility it provides given how upwardly significant this becomes with ranged attacks from this point in the game on) when it's already doing so initially before that even enters into the decision to commit movement into a ranged attack.
- BUG: In the attached save, it seems that trading for seafood resources consistently forces me into a switch to Judaism. This literally happened about 3 or 4 times, and I never once went to the religious advisor and did it myself or responded to an event prompt to do it. So, in this game, that resulted in a lot of expensive anarchy when I could have enjoyed an unperturbed and rock-solid triangular alliance of the Solar Faithful, but privateers and sporadic religious enemies kept pillaging my own seafood, and trades made to smooth the reintroduction of my native resources for some reason kept force-changing my religion to Judaism (which, I guess, has something to do with the health effects that some religions do or don't get with some resources? - otherwise, I really don't have an idea where to point a finger at the code from a user standpoint
). [Save Included]
- In a subsequent game as Rome, I was able to build the classical warband (Polybian Legionary) even when the iron-upgrade (Imperial Legion) was also available. Is this intentional? I in fact am kind of appreciative of this because the hammer (and food, being an irregular ) cost of the former is a lot lower even if I do in fact have iron, even if the units' strength difference is commensurate, because spamming classical-era buffed Roman warband is still a good value against early medieval attackers, even when their attackers are one-on-one their better, price notwithstanding. Is this intentional? There are a few civs (France with its Foreign Legion, America with its Marine Corps) that have a comparable transitional upgrade line, and it makes sense to me, but I just want to make sure that it's in-step with the historical spirit of the mod if Polybius could write of lorica segmentata-laden men salting the earth of Carthage just the same as the soldiers of his own day, or if Trajan could do the same if the former were bearing the brunt of Dacian wrath with the plate-iron held in reserve. One of the recent commits removed the ability to train classical swordsmen when "medieval" swordsmen become available (formerly possible, with no obvious historical or gameplay reason to omit) so I just want to make sure that the "special" multi-tier UUs like Rome's, France's and America's aren't somehow intentionally special, because they deliberately are modeled to be cool beyond an acute time-period.
- I noticed that captured slaves cost unit maintenance the same as workers and your own properly built units. As "spoils of war" in a sanctioned cultural mentality only available when you have officially endorsed the civic and paid anarchy for it, that not only have they no rights to enjoy the full participation in your society (else city happiness should have some bearing on your revolt risk, the standing argument against that being that they in fact do not), but that they also get a chance to die after building improvements because they don't (and even build them slower than "state-fed" proper workers) and in-game are treated as short term exploitable "flares" of doomed labor either to be worked to death in the countryside or hurried for production of an urban building without heed of longevity or quality of life, what is the warrant for paying anything to maintain them if they've been (against 4:1 odds in battle and their peers of the outright vanquished) captured rightfully by a society which already tolerates or even celebrates this institution? They are already modeled to spend the rest of their lives on an on-ramp to an early death, and historical classical slavery fully supports that scary reality (unless we could get a cool and rare literate slave, that was something like a diminutive great scientist that you could settle in the city for a research bonus
). I don't think captured slaves should have maintenance cost just like the rest of your units which are always the recipient of some kind of a payroll.
- As Rome, I noticed that I could build the Ballista without siege-craft. (Inconveniently, I also noticed that they are worthless in bringing walled defenses down!) Isn't a Ballista already more complex than an onager, which other neighbor-civs of Rome were able to build? If this is a gameplay decision, I can see the reason, since requiring a later tech nerfs the NU, but from a historical standpoint it's hard to imagine that I can build a special giant crossbow but not a proto-catapult.
- I had a peasant revolt that occurred outside of the nominal city of origin's BFC radius, which leads me to ask: does this stem from the city's own cultural borders, rather than its workable tiles? In that case, having a very high culture city which is a massive metropolis could end up being a rather large liability for your empire at large, if it means that cities two or even three tiles outside of the workable land of said city could end up spawning a huge revolt capable of taking any of several otherwise not immediately reachable and more poorly defended border cities. When one can know that this is the case and bear it in mind when planning defenses, it seems reasonably enough I suppose, but not knowing that ahead of time can mean losing a key city against reasonable defenses for its strategic location otherwise, and is a little dissonant with the fact that the revolt size cap is sensibly scaled to the city of origin's size, which is itself tied to workable food rather than culture radius.
- This has come up before, but in light of the new changes to AI behavior with respect to ranged attack capabilities, I'd like to ask what the specific logic is behind target selection for the player. I always target the enemy stack and fire with one unit of artillery at a time (since doing so with the whole stack seems to exacerbate this), but often the ranged attack becomes impossible well before the full damage cap has been reached for all units in the targeted stack. I suppose that makes enough sense from a roleplaying perspective (since, the maximum damage threshold of an artillery battery is as much represented by its own individual accuracy and firepower as it is by the positioning and distance of the enemy's army, and at some point, the rank and file has borne the brunt of it) but as the player, it's frustrating and annoyingly arbitrary when your ranged attacks get absorbed by a random slew of units which are often run of the mill and easy pickings anyway and there remain premium and well-promoted units unscathed when further ranged attacks are technically possible for your own attacking stack (which, with Civ4's combat logic, means that they will be what gets to teleport to the front with the defender's advantage if the situation demands it when you actually commit your forces directly, until they get damaged enough to be shielded by the "protect valuable units" option, which never seems to be the case until said unit becomes less likely to win relative to some other potential defender), which on your part requires a decent amount of investment to defend anyway because artillery is as a rule rather vulnerable on its own against virtually any other unit contemporary with its own era, and this ends up meaning that you as the player consequently have to invest a sizeable amount of time and money and hammers putting your army into a defensible position to barrage to the advertized limit, only to find that full-strength and ready-for-battle artillery pieces are completely impotent for this purpose against otherwise unscathed and fresh enemies within their range, and as a result have to fully waste their intended use-case combat potential (and that of their precious defenders) to a grey square which the Pedia tells you should yield an HP drain against any viable selected target within range, and instead have to forfeit their movement points and skip their turn while contenting themselves with their consumption of the stack's limited logistics and the passive bonus that they provide. I can live with and be content with that (since it at least sort of is believable enough from a historical perspective, because no defender would place its precious units in certain artillery fire if something cheaper and more expendable could shield it) if I knew what the code logic was, so that I wouldn't anticipate it and then invest costly resources against an opponent that offer no return, and play tactically in accord with it.
On a more positive note, however, I can in fact certainly report that the AI is barraging offensively before following through with its own direct combat!
I don't think I've ever seen it happen before, and in a game which became losing for me in early renaissance, I saw it happen at the earliest possible moment with bombards before collateral damage even becomes part of the AI's combat calculus (which, I would assume should become increasingly and hugely important for the utility it provides given how upwardly significant this becomes with ranged attacks from this point in the game on) when it's already doing so initially before that even enters into the decision to commit movement into a ranged attack.- BUG: In the attached save, it seems that trading for seafood resources consistently forces me into a switch to Judaism. This literally happened about 3 or 4 times, and I never once went to the religious advisor and did it myself or responded to an event prompt to do it. So, in this game, that resulted in a lot of expensive anarchy when I could have enjoyed an unperturbed and rock-solid triangular alliance of the Solar Faithful, but privateers and sporadic religious enemies kept pillaging my own seafood, and trades made to smooth the reintroduction of my native resources for some reason kept force-changing my religion to Judaism (which, I guess, has something to do with the health effects that some religions do or don't get with some resources? - otherwise, I really don't have an idea where to point a finger at the code from a user standpoint
). [Save Included]- In a subsequent game as Rome, I was able to build the classical warband (Polybian Legionary) even when the iron-upgrade (Imperial Legion) was also available. Is this intentional? I in fact am kind of appreciative of this because the hammer (and food, being an irregular
) cost of the former is a lot lower even if I do in fact have iron, even if the units' strength difference is commensurate, because spamming classical-era buffed Roman warband is still a good value against early medieval attackers, even when their attackers are one-on-one their better, price notwithstanding. Is this intentional? There are a few civs (France with its Foreign Legion, America with its Marine Corps) that have a comparable transitional upgrade line, and it makes sense to me, but I just want to make sure that it's in-step with the historical spirit of the mod if Polybius could write of lorica segmentata-laden men salting the earth of Carthage just the same as the soldiers of his own day, or if Trajan could do the same if the former were bearing the brunt of Dacian wrath with the plate-iron held in reserve. One of the recent commits removed the ability to train classical swordsmen when "medieval" swordsmen become available (formerly possible, with no obvious historical or gameplay reason to omit) so I just want to make sure that the "special" multi-tier UUs like Rome's, France's and America's aren't somehow intentionally special, because they deliberately are modeled to be cool beyond an acute time-period.- I noticed that captured slaves cost unit maintenance the same as workers and your own properly built units. As "spoils of war" in a sanctioned cultural mentality only available when you have officially endorsed the civic and paid anarchy for it, that not only have they no rights to enjoy the full participation in your society (else city happiness should have some bearing on your revolt risk, the standing argument against that being that they in fact do not), but that they also get a chance to die after building improvements because they don't (and even build them slower than "state-fed" proper workers) and in-game are treated as short term exploitable "flares" of doomed labor either to be worked to death in the countryside or hurried for production of an urban building without heed of longevity or quality of life, what is the warrant for paying anything to maintain them if they've been (against 4:1 odds in battle and their peers of the outright vanquished) captured rightfully by a society which already tolerates or even celebrates this institution? They are already modeled to spend the rest of their lives on an on-ramp to an early death, and historical classical slavery fully supports that scary reality (unless we could get a cool and rare literate slave, that was something like a diminutive great scientist that you could settle in the city for a research bonus
). I don't think captured slaves should have maintenance cost just like the rest of your units which are always the recipient of some kind of a payroll.- As Rome, I noticed that I could build the Ballista without siege-craft. (Inconveniently, I also noticed that they are worthless in bringing walled defenses down!) Isn't a Ballista already more complex than an onager, which other neighbor-civs of Rome were able to build? If this is a gameplay decision, I can see the reason, since requiring a later tech nerfs the NU, but from a historical standpoint it's hard to imagine that I can build a special giant crossbow but not a proto-catapult.
Attachments
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. Ranged attacks are already set up in a way that's supposed to ignore the "Protect valuable units" setting. I guess I'll go digging and see for myself, as I never looked at that bit of code.
). In regards to what I said above, tech diffusion seems to be very good on harder difficulty levels couple with the politician trait and money begging. I'm not to fan either of the opinion modifiers regarding score, being more or less of a threat number wise should not have a big impact on civs relations.
