Rhye's of Civilization - the fastest loading mod Expanded

[Rhye]

Uploaded update v2.13:

- Medieval settler costs 190/4; Modern settler costs 290/5: this should fix some speed problems introduced with v2.1
- Palace gives a 20% bonus defense in its city instead of 50%
- Increased steal technology cost (6)
- More barbarians in South America
- Tuned American, Zulu, Incan, German, Carthaginian, Russian and Japanese strength
- Added a hill that allows a passage through California
- Removed marsh in Virginia
- Radio cost decreased to 52 and not required for tech advancement (these settings are a compromise between as it is now and Conquests patch v1.20 (Radio will probably be removed))
- Sanitation cost decreased to 54
- Included missing civilopedia files

 

[sfjarhead]

Outstanding!

This worked perfect and thanks for the extra effort to include the other missed file.

Seperate note: On the Dawn of History popup; the one that starts "Hail [whatever your name is] of the [whatever your tribe], its the year 4000 BC..." Its displaying your mod version correctly but its not displaying my correct tribe name. I like to use the Germans but change the name to Prussians. It displays my correct leader name but the rest still refers to Germany; although the current unit correctly displays the right nouns and adjectives. Could your look into this, its very minor but it does add to the flavor of the game, Thanks

 

[Rhye]

I tried and it works. What's wrong?

 

[sfjarhead]

This is what I'm getting:
which script.txt should this be in? I'll keep looking and try a reinstall

 

[Rhye]

Just edit the .biq: change adjective and noun and rename the civ

 

[sfjarhead]

Thanks, that worked fine. I was trying to use the ingame ability to change the names, but changing the .biq is just as good.

Keep up the good work!

BTW:

 

[habee]

HI

I read many things about goverments.
And I think There are many funny things with Civ-Goverment.
For example: Republic in the Ancient age. Why ? In the history only Greeks had Democracy... All other civs was in despotism or Nodmad.... so i think:

Product
- despotism
- a monarch rule the State (He is a God)
- Egypt, Babylon, Sumer, India, China
- slave using State
- Ancient Greek and Rome
- feudal
- just in EU
- capitalist
- socialist
Politics
- dictator
- anti-democratic (aristocracy)
- democratic
- relegius
Goverment
- Monarchy
- Republic

So...

- Communism (socialist - dictator - Republic )
- Democracy (capitalist - democratic - Republic )
- Despotism (despotic - dictator - Monarchy )
- Feudalism[Catolic Monarchy](feudal - anti - democratic-Monarchy )
- Fascizm ( capitalst - dictator - Monarchy ( Italy))
- Republic [Oligarchy] (slaver - anti-democratic - Republic)
- [Constitutial Monarch] ( capitalist - democratic - Monarchy)
- [Protestant Monarch] ( capitalist - anti-democratic- Monarchy)
- [Teocracy] (despotic - relegius - Moarchy)
- [Islamic Republic] (capiatailst - relegius - Republic)

 

[Eddiit]

I loaded 2.13 and I got an error when I tried to play it. It said an art flic file could not be found. Can you please look into this Rhye.

 

[Lachlan]

Strange, it works fine for me

 

[Rhye]

Eddiit -> Tell me what file is missing, I'll try to post it here. However, it is probably due to a directory change. You'ce probably moved or deleted the original Conquests from their standard directories.

Habee -> In my plans originally there was the constitutional monarchy, available with Enlightenment. But I gave up because I wasn't sure about how to balance it. I feared to make it a too good government or an useless addition.
Anyway, thank you for your signature!

 

[Eddiit]

I mistakedly got rid of a directory. Its fixed. Thanx.

 

[Roluce]

Rhye,

I love your mod! Thanks for all the hard work. I still however, find it rather easy to dominate early by overwhelming a few neigbors with archers. I've played several games using European civs, and each time it was too easy. Just letting you know.

I also wanted to know if it was ok to create a revised version of your mod on this site, giving you credit for all your work of course. I have been fooling around with some ideas and would like to create a mod based on yours with some added features and ideas.

 

[Rhye]

Why don't you post here your ideas and see what me and the others volunteers of this thread think?

 

[Rhye]

BTW, did you patch the mod before playing? Difficulty was raised a bit in v2.1

 

[Roluce]

Yes and No on the patch thing. I never played v2.1, but went straight to 2.13.

I noticed that in 2.1 you increased the defense of the palace, then in 2.13 you backed off somewhat. Upping the palace defense helps protect the AI but the downfall of that approach is that it benefits the player as well.

Anyway, I think the early human rush problem can only be solved by giving the AI players defensive units at the beginning. One could just add numbers to the defensive unit setting on the difficulty tab, but since most civs don't really have a defensive unit at the start of the game, they just get more warriors. This really doesn't help them. So I think each civ, except #1 (human player) should get at least one spearman to start the game. They won't be able to build more till they discover the appropriate tech, but their capitol will be much harder to take.

I have noticed that every civ will immediately try to build a settler even though it is not beneficial to do so. So in fact, they often waste production waiting for the population to be adequate. Perhaps giving them several unit to begin the game will compensate. When I play, I start building archers as fast as I can. I usually have 6 or more while the AI is still building settlers. So when I attack, the AI is woefully unprepared to defend or counter. And by the way, warriors are basically worthless and serve no purpose against the human player. So no matter how many units you give the AI, both offensive and defensive, it rally doesn't help because they just get more warriors. So again, I think the only solution is to give civs more starting units, archers and spearman, through the scenario properties player tab.

Now on to an idea. I played around with adding units to player 2-31 in the scenario properties. I discoverd that when you give extra units to a player, say #10 for example, that a random civ (except the human player who is always #1) will get those units. So each time you start a game, #2-31 will be random. This feature could be used to randomly strengthen different civs making each game unique. So for example, you could create several civs that begin defensively strong by giving them 2 or 3 spearman, while others could be offensively strong by giving them several archers. Also some civs might be given an extra settler, others an extra worker, or any other combination. The interesting thing about this would be the randomness of each game. You would never know what to expect from those neigboring civs.

 

[EL_OSO]

Rhye,

I vote that you leave it alone as it is. Individuals that desire to change it to suit their individual ability levels should be the course from here on out. Roluce is either lucky or a much better player than I. He thinks its too easy and I think its too hard. Maybe he should play one of the extra-european nations, a higher level of difficulty, or adjust it to his liking.

Honestly, I haven't played the new version yet since I've been busy working on a mod for another game and just haven't had the time.

I think that this mod will always favor the European civs unless you muck it up a lot. I'm speaking regardless if it is player or AI. When I play one of the continental European civs, I'm unstoppable too. The problem is that I don't want to have to play one of them every single time. I enjoy vareity and will choose a different civ every time I play.

The AI is going to build settlers as long as there are squares to populate. There is not much you can do about that. It must be hard coded somewhere and it really isn't taking into consideration the extra costs involved for a settler. By giving the AI a larger military to start with, they will be demanding tribute left and right.

This mod achieves what it was set out to do. Faster loading times. It never claimed to be the most balanced 31 civ world mod ever and I've accepted that.

 

[Roluce]

Perhaps my musings are influenced by my choice of civs. I have played the French, German, Roman, and the English. However, my English game was before the 2.1 or 2.13 changes. Playing a civ that is seperated from others would create a different situation. But a lot of the civ choices fall in the same category as my games - civs that have neigbors that are too easy to defeat early in the game. I think the problem lies only in the early part of the game. Given time, the AI can be more formidable, assuming the human player hasn't gained an early advantage. Of course, I could just be non-aggressive, but if you can, why not?

I'm not sure my aim is to be balanced, just challenging. I like this mod because it accomplishes quicker games on a "reasonable" size world map. And it has better load times and a more reasonable city dispersion. Its weakness though, is that only some civs are challenging. Or at least it seems so - I guess I need to play some of the disadvantaged civs.

 

[EL_OSO]

I'm playing on the Monarch level. I've played the Germans, English, Rome, Persia, Japan, China, Russia, America, and the Inca.

Out of those games, I won by domination with the Roman in the year 2050. My best unit was the Cavalry. I had eliminated everyone to the point that the 8 turn minimum study time had crippled my tech. I didn't finish the German game because it was going at that same pace. The English were interesting in that they are on an island, yet close enough to stay pace and can dominate the seas easily. I haven't finished that game and don't know if I'll get to space first. I won with the Inca as a space race. Tech was slow, but I was huge and had every resource I needed. I won by score with Persia but it was still a tough game. I lost as the Chinese to a cultural victory. I didn't finish the Japanese, but let me tell you that the battle odds were way in my favor to take the Koreans and I lost way too many samurai to make it remotely realistic. We're talking 30-40 samurai to one elite pikeman. That was with the palace defense bonus set at 50%. America isn't even in the game. You spend the whole time fighting Barbs and your growth potential is severly hampered. I already went over this with Rhye and that is the way he intended it. When I play this mod, I think of the American civ more as another native tribe than what my preconceived notion of the American civ is. The game as Russia was extremely tense and I was constantly being invaded by France, Rome and Germany.

I guess it all depends on what you're looking for in a game. I don't want to win by a cake-walk either, but I don't like seeing a stack of death that took 12 to 20 turns to build get wiped out either to one to three defenders. I can deal with that happening once in a while, but to have it happen consistently is absurd IMHO.

 

[Rhye]

What do you think if I decrease by 1 additional defending starting units for all levels and then add a spearman to every AI player (2-31)? It shouldn't make the game more difficult at all but simply prevent a player rush a bit more.
Well, the fact that you see AI with a spearman and they don't have Bronze Working is a bit odd....do you all think that this is a good idea anyway?

 

[EL_OSO]

I'm not sure that would really change much. The key here is the tech. If I have Warrior Code, I can still build up an archer rush and that one spearman isn't going to be able to stop it consistently.

A few ways to change this. One as Roluce suggests. Its not that bad of an idea to add some randomness (increases replayability)and will make the player think twice before attempting early aggression. The downside is what I mentioned in my previous post. You might find yourself embroiled in early wars which when outnumbered are always crippling.

The other is as you suggest, but I also agree that a spearman without bronze working is odd.

Another option would be to remove the bonus starting tech. This would probably take some more tweaking and testing. The player would still have the option for a warrior rush but its chances of success are much lower than an archer rush. It might also disrupt the timeline flow that's already been incorporated and that's where the tweaking comes in. If you got rid of the starting tech, you would probably have to lower the cost of research for all of the lower end techs on the tree and bump up the cost of the second tier ones to balance it. You could always eliminate warrior code as a bonus tech and exchange it for something else such as bronze working. I'm not sure how others would feel about that idea.