Removing Despot Penalty

[vmxa]

I always figured the AI did not clear marshes as it does not have the workers for it and in late gams they have lost, sold or added to towns and further reduced the labor pool.
Maybe that is due to being pressed most of the game. I always wonder why they are so bad at improving their lands, but looking at the ratio of workers to towns and it
becomes clear.

They still have many tiles with forest and jungle went I show with troops. Tiles without a road is not uncommon. At sid I see some civs without a single worker, all scrapped
for lack of maint gold. Even with the massive free unit support, they crank out units and have to scrap some. This is why I started not DoW on them, if I could not reach them.
Being at war just gets them to the cap sooner. If they declare I let them have peace, when they ask, if I cannot get to them, often in early game I do not even know where they are.
They just drop off some units and I kill them and off we go, dropping units for me to leader fish.

 

[Ozymandias]

I always figured the AI did not clear marshes as it does not have the workers for it and in late gams they have lost, sold or added to towns and further reduced the labor pool.
Maybe that is due to being pressed most of the game. I always wonder why they are so bad at improving their lands, but looking at the ratio of workers to towns and it
becomes clear.

You have indirectly raised a very good point here: the AI never builds enough Workers: I use Auto-Production for these.

 

[SayHayKid]

I finally got to the play testing phase of my mod, C3C Enhanced. I am in my first test game and just entered the Middles Ages on a continent's map with 70% water. I am playing at Emperor. I am definitely going to have to make some tweaks. Early things were looking good, but growth snowballed fast at the end of Era 1. The cities are HUUUGE and thus production by the start of the 2nd era is way too fast. Here are the changes:

• Cities size 7, Metros size 15.
• I removed the penalty exception under Despotism for AG civs per Flintlock patch.
• I have workers at 150 per Flintlock patch.
• I kept the tile penalty for Despotism.
• I removed the tile penalty for a new early government, City States, as suggested by Civinator. I already had City States as an early Government, but it had retained the tile penalty.
• I moved irrigation to Pottery (starting tech for agricultural civs).
• I moved irrigation without water at Pottery.
• I moved mining to Bronze Working (starting tech for industrious civs).
• I removed mining from grassland tiles.

The Hittites are the runaway civ. It isn't even close. And they just happened to be my neighbors. They also have a a crazy amount of units. Something is definitely off.

Hittite military. 125 Grenadiers!

Most civs, but not all, have similarly large cities. Here are the Dutch.

Moving irrigation without water to the first column of techs while removing the despot penalty by the second column seems to be too much. Back to the drawing board. Going to start with pushing irrigation without water back, but where???

 

[Civinator]

• I have workers at 150 per Flintlock patch.

This triggers the growth of AI cities by irrigation allowed with the early tech Pottery. CCM wents a different way: Not to accelerate the production of workers for the AI, but limiting the "worker-bottleneck" to the human player, too. As the many CCM succession games show, this limitation provides the player with much more interesting decisions what to do with those precious workers in the early and medium game.

• I removed the tile penalty for a new early government, City States, as suggested by Civinator. I already had City States as an early Government, but it had retained the tile penalty.

The old setting for the government City States is the setting from CCM 2.5. In the next version of CCM the tech, that allows the government City States without tile penalty, also allows irrigation and mining in the game. May be I was not clear enough in my former post, that the clue of the setting of the government City States without tile penalty is, that the same tech, that allows this government, also allows irrigation and mining. This setting forbids the very early irrigation of tiles by the AI without having any profit of those tiles due to the tile penalty for Despotism. The later allowance of irrigation also dims down a too massive early growth of cities in CCM 3, as in Despotism even tiles with big additional growth resources (like wheat) can not be irrigated.

Mining also can not be done before the tech, that allows the government City States, to protect the AI from early mining of plain tiles, that later by the AI never will be changed to irrigation.

I changed the setting of irrigation without direct access to water in CCM 3 back to the tech it was allowed in CCM 2.5 (tech Scientific Method), as this setting with the early tech City States allowed too much early "cherry picking" in irrigating tiles with some special food resources.

 

[Ozymandias]

This triggers the growth of AI cities by irrigation allowed with the early tech Pottery.

@SayHayKid - This is 100% your too-rapid-growth problem.

 

[SayHayKid]

@SayHayKid - This is 100% your too-rapid-growth problem.

Yeah. I realized that real quick. It took a little bit to get rolling, but then snowballed quickly. I figured while I was testing things, I'd try a couple of extreme changes to see what happens.

CCM wents a different way: Not to accelerate the production of workers for the AI, but limiting the "worker-bottleneck" to the human player, too. As the many CCM succession games show, this limitation provides the player with much more interesting decisions what to do with those precious workers in the early and medium game.

Yeah with auto-production of workers it definitely allows for a different approach. Following standard production rules, boosting/perfuming an increase in the amount of workers is a must for more balanced game play. This was a great feature added by Flintlock for those not using auto production.

In the next version of CCM the tech, that allows the government City States without tile penalty, also allows irrigation and mining in the game.

That totally makes sense. Also, with City States being the first "centralized" government with central government planning over more a chiefdom style government, having civil engineering projects like irrigation and mining fits thematically with the style of government. While also working in conjunction with removing the tile penalty. I might keep mining and irrigation with bronze working and pottery as those are starting techs for industrious and agricultural civs. It gives them a slight "trait bonus" to start, but is only one column of techs away so hopefully the AI won't have wasted too many tiles before switching to a City State government. We shall see through my next test game today. I had to cut the last one short to make some adjustments.

 

[SayHayKid]

If irrigation without water is available early, like say Pottery, I am thinking about having unimproved tiles only yield one food, but have the same yield after irrigation. Cities without a food bonus would have to work the land and build up their infrastructure before spamming settlers. However, once irrigated the cities would grow pretty fast. Maybe settlers would cost 3 pop. Hmmm. Could be an interesting test.

 

[SayHayKid]

@Predator145 have you noticed that by removing despot penalty that really speeds up the timeline? My mod has 3 additional required techs and 2 additional optional techs compared to standard C3C for an additional extra cost of 35, but I am getting to Era 2 way too early. I have plenty of other changes, but nothing that should skew the timeline greatly. I don't think.

I am going to have to experiment either with increasing tech costs, minimum research time, and/or the time scale under properties. I am not sure about the best place to start.

 

[Predator145]

@Predator145 have you noticed that by removing despot penalty that really speeds up the timeline? My mod has 3 additional required techs and 2 additional optional techs compared to standard C3C for an additional extra cost of 35, but I am getting to Era 2 way too early. I have plenty of other changes, but nothing that should skew the timeline greatly. I don't think.

I am going to have to experiment either with increasing tech costs, minimum research time, and/or the time scale under properties. I am not sure about the best place to start.

Yes, with cities reaching size 12 more quickly, tech pace does pick up. But then again, I have included another 3 research multiplier city improvements. Still, there was enough time for Ancient warfare. I wasn't missing age 1 should I want to both expand and fight at the same time. The late ancient mass upgrade sword/UU rush was still there. The Deity AI has always been fast to get out of ancient age regardless. But things moving quickly to Industrial and Modern age allows my avg epic game to go through all 4 ages instead of never reaching Modern like in stock game.

Increase tech cost if you want to slow things down a tat. It's the least drastic change.