Rhye's of Civilization - the fastest loading mod Expanded

[Iztvan]

In other words, nothing should change with Egypt, Babylon or Sumeria. I could even add some more shields to have their development a little more balanced. When playing those civs, instead of sitting and watching you'll have something more to do (irrigate etc.)

After some more playing in Northern Africa, I'd say: Yes, the Egyptians need more shields, otherwise they'll never stand a chance to build the pyramids.
Perhaps make Flood Plains 2 food + 1 shield, +1 food for irrigation? That would give them a good start, but snce the surrounding desert is useless, the other civs will catch up? Right now I have a city of size 12 with 4-5 shields... I end up rush-buying everything!

Apart from that and early european over-settling of central asia and africa (I discovered Stockholm on the north tip of Madagascar 1200ad!) the mod runs perfectly. I just bought the English worldmap (1515 ad), and saw that the spanish, english and french had 1 small colonie each in Brazil, and the english were exploring New Foundland! Good timing!

(I've also been thinking about a very early new government "Theocracy", available at Polytheism, that removes the despotism disadvantage (good for floodplains) available only for the religious Civs. It would have lower unit support to balance it.)

 

[Rhye]

can you tell the me year of the first barbarian uprising, and what level were you playing?

 

[Iztvan]

can you tell the me year of the first barbarian uprising, and what level were you playing?

Level: Monarch.
1st Uprising: iirc 300-400ad, but I'm not sure.

I can take notes while playing. What info do you need? I'll pbobably be playing 'hard' nations on monarch/emperor.

 

[Rhye]

My problem is that something has messed up after some of my last changes for the next patch. I can't see the reason why in my last biqs civs in crowded areas are very fast (Babylon etc.) regardless of hteir strength and some other civs more far are very slow (England). The same thing happens in Far East: Korea and Mongols a lot faster than China and Japan. I had to edit completely ancient tech weights because some civs were reaching Middle Ages in 500BC instead of AD!

Here's my list of changes until now, but I don't see the reason for this behaviour:

- New graphics: new desert irrigation (modified version of standard), new flood plains (modified version of Yurt's), modified plain irrigation, modified grassland to desert connections (no more mismatch like in India or Andes)
- Fixed Privateer: now ignores ocean movement cost
- Redistributed goody huts in Europe, Arabia, Persia and South America. There are less of them around now
- Modified ancient tech costs: Bronze Working 8; Masonry 6; Alphabet 8; Pottery 6; The Wheel 6; Warrior Code 8; Cerimonial Burial 6; Iron Working 12; Writing 12; Mysticism 10; Mathematics 16; Philosophy 14; Code of Laws 14; Literature 14; Map Making 18; Horseback Riding 12; Politheism 18; Currency 22; The Republic 26; Monarchy 24; Construction 28
- Feudalism cost increased to 28; Education cost decreased to 48; Economics cost increased to 54; Physics cost decreased to 48;Military Tradition cost increased to 50
- Tech rate: 254
- Reduced some ancient wonders cost: The Colossus 30; The Great Lighthouse 25; The Great Library 35
- Communication trading enabled with Electricity
- Modified percentage of optimal cities and defensive starting units in order to make the game less easy
- Completely removed flavours. While they had no effect, they probably caused a bug (techs not showing up in the diplomacy screen)
- Turns to complete railroads reduced to 24
- Palace bonus defense in its city increased from 20% to 25%
- Removed "Increases luxury trade" from marketplace to reduce the number of happy faces, which is already too high for some civs, due to high number of luxuries
- The Great Wall requires silks, as it was build to protect the Silk Road; Sun Tzu Art of War requires silks as in China books were written on silk; The Colossus requires iron as it had some parts made in iron; Knights Templar, Sistine Chapel and Bach's Cathedral require wines
- Raised Holy Way, Knights Templar, Copernicus' Observatory and Magellan's Voyage cost
- Added iron in Greece; added wines in Eastern Europe
- Dyes in Eastern Europe changed into dyes type that will appear later, like the rest of European dyes
- Added some horses in Argentina that will appear at the beginning of Industrial Age
- Opened a blocked passage in India
- Slightly changed Viking, Roman and Ethiopian city order
- Tuned Greek, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Roman, Spanish, Portuguese, Ottoman and Dutch strength
- Tuned Japanese, Austrian, English, Russian, Egyptian and American research speed
- Crippled all European civs until Mapmaking (Rome, Arabia) or Feudalism (rest of the other European civs)
- Changed Ottoman starting tech
- Re-enabled irrigation in flood plains (but not in desert); for this reason a balancement was needed: flood plains will produce 2 food instead of 3 without irrigation
- LM desert now has the same terraform bonuses as desert
- Disease strength increased to 80
- Updated and corrected civilopedia

 

[Iztvan]

The changes look good. I'm in favour of making it more difficult and allowing desert terraforming, as you have done & slowing down the Europeans during the ancient period.

 

[troyc2004]

Hurry...Im dying for this patch! I can't play until its done!

Later

troyc2004

 

[Aeon221]

Sorry, it has been a very rough few days. My computer's hard drive fried and I lost everything (so no music, no Civ, NO AIM aaahhh) including the heavily changed thing I made of your mod (which was working very nicely). Anyway, I am just gonna download and play and wait for the next patch to start mucking around (reading about the dutch, so I figure I will play as them and TRY to create a real Dutch empire!) ;p

Glad to see all the changes, but again I must vote against the creation of a passage to India overland from China.

Also, suggestion:

Give Europe no way to build settlers until Medieval Settlers; replace their lack by giving them a few at the start based on how large they should be (for instance, Portugal one, Spain three, France three, Dutch one, England three, Russia four, Germany three, Rome three, Austria three, Greece two, Ottomans three, Babylonians two, Sumerians one, Egyptians four, Arabs two, Carthage three... you get the idea). This will force them to play in a way extremely different from their standard settler orgy, and will also prevent the building of far flung Eurasian cities. It may even be a good idea to restrict the other civs in a similar way, if you do not intend to prevent them from meeting one another.

The pruning that would result from this would surely reduce play time, and would also force players to make very difficult decisions about how to use their settlers and when. The end result will be the building of mid-to-late colonial empires, and importance of building navies to support them will certainly be increased... which is something that should happen anyway, but rarely does.

Anyway, thats just an idea that struck me right now as one that could be helpful.

Keep on going!

 

[Rhye]

These are interesting ideas, but require a perfect planning. There could be more than one way to achieve this (my first thought goes to wonders which produce settlers), so this is a difficult task because everything would need to be re-thinked.

I'll post last patch as soon as possible (as soon I've managed to make British more than a barbarian tribe); then we'll see. There are a lot of projects in my mind and I must choose which one to develop.

 

[Rhye]

The patch is late, but now I've found the problem with British and Japanese weakness.
This is due to the fact that when I've raised difficulty levels, additional starting units were raised. This means early contact for more continental civs, and this explains why England and Japan get stuck researching Writing for the whole game.
Now that I've found this, I'll try to work it out.

 

[habee]

hi
I have two idea:
I. When I played last game a saw i dont build vuilding becuse i spent 100% of my money for scienece. What do you think abouut that change "Rate Cap" in goverments:
- Desp 50%
- Mon 60%
- Rep 70%
- Feud 60%
- Dem 100%
- Comm 80%
- Fasc 80%
????
II. why dont use the zone controle ability for units. I think if many units have zone control u can use cheaper settlers because for example Span cant cross France's terrority??? (understand?)

 

[troyc2004]

I play the English all the time and being on the Island is an advantage. I can build 6 cities on the 2 islands.

Later

troyc2004

PS..I like the Idea of no settlers until either wonder or middle ages.

 

[Jaybe]

Rhye, regarding early development have you considered that much of Europe was heavily forested several centuries ago? Perhaps that would slow things down (once you tested it) in a future version.

Same with North America; and North Africa was not as arid, and ...
[edit]... Lebanon had great forests (that built alot of ships).

 

[Rhye]

habee, that cap means that some civs with despotism will remain stuck before discovering The Republic or Monarchy

 

[Rhye]

Just found the problem that caused English and Japanese isolation, difficulty levels need to be changed in other ways.
Additional starting units are useless because they're all warriors and go around destroying barbarian camps too early and making contact with too many civs of the continent. So, every change I made to match the new research speed must be re-changed accordingly with the new difficulty settings. The difference between Monarch and Emperor are very important: from now on, I'll test games with the latter.
Too much upkeep bonus will make most of the civs switch to Republic (right now instead it seems that removing happiness bonus from marketplace has a balancing effect).
So, I have to find a new way to introduce some difficulty more than only the percentage of optimal cities.
I think that I'll remove the bonus settler with Emperor and instead deprive the human player of the first worker. Then we'll see how you can hurry muhahahaah

 

[Aeon221]

I like the wonder idea the best! Make it a small wonder available at start, at the cost of an ancient settler. have it build them every thirty turns, and go obsolete at either Construction/Philosophy/Polytheism (early so that the world is thrown back into war as the only means of expansion). Then have a new one buildable at Astronomy that gives a settler every twenty turns (colonization) at the price of a modern settler. Have it go obsolete with... something that seems right I guess. I am trying to think of a way to time them so that they cannot produce more than five or six settlers each before they are obsolete *UNLESS* you choose to hold back your research so as to benefit for more settlers. Perhaps you could make a strategic resource cereals (as in the grains) that is required for it (to show that excess food production is necessary to produce the populace required for settlers). The only problem is the risk that a civ will find itself unable to rebuild after its capital is taken... however, since it is annoying when you slay someone, say the french, and they build some ridiculous empire in Asia that makes no sense, it is an even better bonus!

I really like this idea of making settler production based entirely on wonders as I hate seeing stupid looking ahistorical empires spread all over the place. Perhaps you could even have the settler wonders only available when a civ is historically settling like crazy (ie: the Dutch get theirs with Navigation, Portugese with Astronomy) so that you can have empires from tiny countries that only appear mid-to-late game (as is historically accurate). Plus, this would allow you to make variations in frequency and cost for the various civs (cheaper for Babylon, more frequent for Russia, etc)

Also, I vote get rid of goody huts; they are too random, and without them the game is less luck based

Final Idea. The bonus units are meant to defend the AI in the early game. Sooo why not create an immobile defender and give them that (to prevent early contact)


BTW Rhye, you are a sick sick soul... thats why we love you, but you are still evil ;p

Sorry for length (not really... ;p)

 

[Rhye]

Aeon, I have already said that these are good ideas and are worth a try.
But if you don't want next patch to come out in November 2005, it's better if I proceed step-by-step!
For now, what do you think of my proposal for difficulty levels? (no worker)

 

[troyc2004]

Please just hurry!

LOL!

later

troyc2004

 

[Jaybe]

habee, that cap means that some civs with despotism will remain stuck before discovering The Republic or Monarchy

But if it could work, civs would have plenty of money to do upgrades (and BUY techs)!
Would probably involve alot more tuning of the pre-government tech costs.

Off to a previous subject: an alternate to adding more forests to civ starting areas you want to slow down in the early millenia would be to delay mining/irrigation by having a tech requirement, like they did in the DyP mod.

 

[Aeon221]

I think that it is an excellent way of slowing people down in higher levels. I hurt my wrist, so I have also found a way to slow someone down... at least in typing ;p

Sorry I get excited about everything ;D


I kinda like the idea of more forests; wasnt Germany etc almost entirely forest?

 

[Iztvan]

For now, what do you think of my proposal for difficulty levels? (no worker)

Good idea. Doesn't affect the AI at all, just the player. Maybe increase the price to 20 shields?