Rhye's of Civilization - the fastest loading mod Expanded

[Asclepius]

3. why should nuclear power require computers or rocketry?

Because running a nuclear power station requires at least some sort of advanced engineering knowledge (the sort of knowledge that comes with developing jet engines) or some sort of control system that can only be run using computers. Slide rules and an abacus might just cope with a small protoype but not a full scale plant!

4. the ADM difference hasn't changed, it's still the same of the original game. The armoured car is a middle step between pre-industrial and modern units, and it alleviates the problem you said (and remember it requires rubber). A tank in that place would be incorrect except for the propotypes like the MKIV (already discussed).

I disagree. I just have a problem with seeing an armoured car unit as a combat unit. If you replaced the armoured car with the tank (forget the prototypes) but with slightly lower ADM (requires rubber) then upgrade that with a later tank and then modern armour, the progression would look more realistic and they would match the other upgrades to TOW infantry and mech infantry. I've watered my request down to only two units - Heavy Tank and Modern Infantry, come on!

5. In the original game and in basic RoC Sipahis are 8/3/3. Now they are 7/3/3. The blitz ability is a thing that lancers have and don't match the sipahi both for gameplay reasons and for historical reasons (sipahis weren't light cavalry).

Good point. They just seem incredibly strong in the current game.

7. I'll add a 7th point. Let's discuss of the last of the additions: another modern naval unit. Given cemo's and yours suggestion, what do we do now? The SAM destroyer?

To keep the number of units low I'd just go for a multipurpose destroyer that carries missiles and has a high anti-air rating.

 

[Rhye]

I disagree. I just have a problem with seeing an armoured car unit as a combat unit. If you replaced the armoured car with the tank (forget the prototypes) but with slightly lower ADM (requires rubber) then upgrade that with a later tank and then modern armour, the progression would look more realistic and they would match the other upgrades to TOW infantry and mech infantry.

You could do that with the old tech tree. Now late industrial contains units until the 20s, not the 50s

 

[Aeon221]

Just FYI, if you dont want to spend till tomorrow scrolling to find that use the
crtl+f
key combination to find the line #ANIMNAME_PRTO_B-52

could save you a minute... or two... or five hundred... ;p


Archer: 1.2.1 (20 shields)
Spearman 2.2.1 (25 shields)
Hoplite 2.3.1 (25 shields)
Longbow: 1.4.1 (8.0.1) (40 shields)
Pike: 3.3.1 (40 shields)
Crossbow: 1.3.1 (4.0.1) (30 shields)
Musketmen: 2.4.1 (60 shields)

Here is a statistical comparison:

The Longbow is 33% stronger defensively than the Crossbow AND enjoys a 100% bonus to defensive bombardment FOR a 33% increase in price

Musketman is 33% stronger defensively than the Crossbowman AND has a -100% bonus to defense AND has a 100% bonus to attack FOR a 100% increase in price.

Comparison: Hoplite is 50% stronger than the Archer AND enjoys a 100% bonus to attack FOR a 25% increase in price.

The longbowman could use something (say a slight decrease in price, maybe by a few shields) simply to acknowledge that defensive bombardment is a rather marginal bonus.

The musketman, on the other hand, is in serious trouble statistically. It took some plotting of points with my graphing calculator, but I finally figured out what the reason was. Apparently there are two different price lines based on shields per defense. One is the expensive 20 shields for 1 defense point, upon which you placed the pikeman and its ilk; the other is the cheap 10 shields for 1 defense point. The musketman should be on this line, but is instead on the 20:1 line.

A simple readjustment would easily correct this misplacement, and would bring the musketman's cost in line with its value as a unit. Another option would be to provide some defensive bombardment... but it would still be rather expensive comparatively.

In terms of cost vs. utility analysis, I would strongly recommend that players save their money for the upgrade to the next unit and not bother with spending their money upgrading their existing crossbowmen into an inferior unit. This goes doubly for anyone playing as the English; sorry, but you get royally screwed on that deal!

That's my input on the situation; I might turn my trusty graphing calculator on some other units in this mod to check their balance.

EDIT: I forgot the spearman unit, so it might take me a little to re-check the EXACT numbers on the ratio for expensive units, but since I focused on a tight period it is not a major issue, just a minor one that really irks me!

 

[Asclepius]

You could do that with the old tech tree. Now late industrial contains units until the 20s, not the 50s

Exactly! OK I'm stretching it a bit but if the early tank represents a 1930's/40's tank (the first real tanks, forget about the prototypes from 1918) then when you advance to the modern era and the turns start to get shorter an upgrade is needed before the modern armour appears.

 

[Aeon221]

Woah sorry you might wanna disregard the earlier post somewhat except as it relates to musketmen and longbows!

I found a new slope for the line for the expensive units by adding in some more of them; it changes things drastically. I hate to sound like a geek, but this is really starting to interest me and I am going to spend tomorrow establishing the curves for the various upgrade lines, figuring out slopes and whatnot.

The problem before was that I put two different curves in, not realizing that there WERE two different curves until I plotted the r^2 values and got a pattern (which is bad, just to tell you non-statistics people)!

So I plotted a few more units and found that the expensive line slope should be .0755 (defense/shields) and .088 (repeating) for the cheap line (inclusive of musketman) or .15 (exclusive of Mman).

I will report back to you guys on this sometime thursday probably; this might take a bit ;p

 

[Blasphemous]

Aeon, you're missing the real point: a Knight stack will have a much harder time taking down a Longbow stack than it will a Crossbow stack. The hard numbers alone don't matter, what matters is how they compare to their contemporary strongest attacker. Can you fit that into your equasions?

 

[Rhye]

Excellent Aeon! I love this kind of analyses. I'm lloking forward to see the curves

 

[Aeon221]

I actually have no idea how I am going to fit the UUs into the various set-ups. I mean the other things are just entries into a list and knowing how to manipulate it, but those things are going to be outliers every time, so they will skew any data I get.

I think I am going to have to present it all with and without them to get things right.

*Opens up stats book and checks* yup, with and without, thats how we deal with an outlier ;p

 

[Blasphemous]

Well, the way to present the UU curves would be to compare how much more effective they are per cost over time in the same line.

 

[Beernuts1987]

I found another problem. Mercantilism says it requires banking but banking does not need to be researched in order to get Mercantilism.

 

[Lachlan]

Problem too : Lancer 6/3/2 doesn't require horse

 

[Rhye]

You are right! Thanks Lachlan and Beernuts!
Now I understand why there were so many lancers and so few cavalry around....

 

[cemo1956]

Rhye,
still interrested in how you work out WW2/Modern units. What tech you're adding in XPack, aircraft development, ship development, and the issue of the armor development. Civ3 normal Tank to Modern Armor and just one upgrade from infantry to mech. infanrty is very short.

Mech Infantry is surely the first M113, but then it should upgrade to the standards of the Bradley (which I believe is the standard Civ Mech unit).

Look at tanks from early WW2 (Matilda, Pz2) to late WW2 (Sherman, Tiger), then Cold war time up to todays Abrams, Challengers. They are a world of difference in power.

Have you given the Longbow Apache helicopter a thought ??

Of course as I mentioned before at least Carriers need to be upgradeable. WW2 Carriers, Modern Carriers at least.

Just spilling out my views to make an outstanding Mod a little bit more flexible.

Cemo

How's the time for that Xpack to release.

 

[Rhye]

cemo, you have never seen the new tech tree (do you want to see a screenshot?). If you saw it, you'd probably see that there's no room for the units you're saying.
Keep in mind that the modern tech tree is a modified version of the old modern t.t. plus the late part of old industrial. This means that marines, tanks and helis come in early modern and everything's much shrunk.
Sure there's a world in difference, but they're good for ww2/modern scenarios. In this mod, you couldn't distinguish between them.

I'm going to put in an upgrade of the Destroyer, because it was much asked. Do you agree with the "SAM Destroyer" name?

 

[Asclepius]

I'm going to put in an upgrade of the Destroyer, because it was much asked. Do you agree with the "SAM Destroyer" name?

Well, I seem to be invisible around here but I'll repeat one last time. SAM stands for Surface to Air Missile. Anti-Aircraft missile. Not any sort of SSM or TLAM. So SAM Destroyer is only correct if its sole task is to shoot down planes.

If you saw it, you'd probably see that there's no room for the units you're saying.

You could easily place upgrades to the Tank and Infantry in the chain if you wanted to. It doesn't require any new techs. You could then have appropriate unit pairings of Infantry&Tank - Modern Infantry&Heavy Tank - Mech Inf&Modern Armour.

 

[Rhye]

Well, I seem to be invisible around here but I'll repeat one last time. SAM stands for Surface to Air Missile. Anti-Aircraft missile. Not any sort of SSM or TLAM. So SAM Destroyer is only correct if its sole task is to shoot down planes.

I'm sorry, I did not read that. The name SAM destroyer wasn't invented by me anyway.
So, modern destroyer?

You could easily place upgrades to the Tank and Infantry in the chain if you wanted to. It doesn't require any new techs. You could then have appropriate unit pairings of Infantry&Tank - Modern Infantry&Heavy Tank - Mech Inf&Modern Armour.

There are no free techs for that! You see the tree, right?
I will not put an upgrade for each adiacent tech.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

I'm sorry, I did not read that. The name SAM destroyer wasn't invented by me anyway.
So, modern destroyer?

Guided missile destroyer.

 

[thestonesfan]

Modern Destroyer or Missile Destroyer would work best, I think.

Can anyone be bothered to post some screen shots of games in progress? I'm following this mod, but I can't download it yet. I'm always curious to see games playing out on real world maps. But no big deal...I understand it's much more imprtant to work out the kinks.

 

[Blasphemous]

Or even plain Missile Destroyer. (EDIT: Been beaten to that. :'()
By the way, I still think some of the modern vessels should have the bombard of a cruise missile (same bombard stats, just without the need to build a unit especially.) It makes sense for them to have a constant stock of missiles to use.

 

[Blasphemous]

Can anyone be bothered to post some screen shots of games in progress? I'm following this mod, but I can't download it yet. I'm always curious to see games playing out on real world maps. But no big deal...I understand it's much more imprtant to work out the kinks.

I'll get some screenshots of my medieval German Republic later today when I play.
I took out both France and the Netherlands earlier and planted a city in the southeast along with a city in Denmark (I only have two cities in modern-day Germany). All my cities have been renamed to represent provinces (Frankreich-Zentrum, Ost-Deutschland, die Niederlande, and Daenemark, among others) and I intend to be peaceful and scientific till infantry comes along. By then I will have alot of units to upgrade and the capacity to produce alot myself. I hope to take central and southern Europe and Iberia at that time. I'll definately bring screenshots when that's done.