Rhye's of Europe Civ Discussion Thread

[3Miro]

Colonial projects are really wonders and would give extra resources and gold. So it is OK to put them in and ask players to build them. I don't know about corporations, there was limited talk, so I guess we can ignore those for now.

 

[jessiecat]

Colonial projects are really wonders and would give extra resources and gold. So it is OK to put them in and ask players to build them. I don't know about corporations, there was limited talk, so I guess we can ignore those for now.

If all they are are wonders which convey certain benefits then why should they need to be part of the UHVs? Or if they are wonders which have to be included could we not leave their benefits for later discussion? I didn't think wonders were one of your must-do coding priorities at the moment. Is it really necessary for us to decide on them before we iron out what the UHVs actually are?

 

[3Miro]

A lot of RFC UHVs involve wonder building (Egypt, Greece, Persia, Maya, France, Russia, USA) and many have UHVs directly linked to wonders (Babylon, India, China, Rome) so we need to put wonders in as at least some UHVs.

 

[eris23]

The following changes won't be made:
-No new civs will be added or altered
-No new religions will be added or altered
-No new civics will be added or altered
-The angle/orientation of the map will not change

so no prussians - i would have loved to see germany collapse at the appearance of the prussians (or before) to be reunited under their flag

i also guess there is no chance of extending the game duration to 1900, just before the world wars that is.

i was also wondering if it was possible to add a historical time date for some key technologies basically making them cheaper, more expensive if you try to research it before its time or are catching up on some neglected tree.

well...you could also try to make colonies into corporations (can only be founded in capital)...you d need a great discoverer (which you get for to found a new colony) and the effects would vary depending on how much cargo capacity your fleet has. if that is feasible. (it could be overpowered though, as then you d start building ships like crazy)

how about new great person class, colonist. settle him down in a city and get additional trade routes (or sth similar) in that city.


the different uhvs would be so much more interesting with extended play to 1900

as prussia (although its not gonna exist) reunite (control) germany by 1863
capture paris by 1871
never lose a city in germany

france
control all of france by (dunno) 1700?
own rome by 1810
vassalize or conquer spain, germany, venice by 1810; capture moscow by 1812
build the eiffeltower by 1889
never lose paris.

austria
conquer or vassalize spain by 1516 (there is no way to implement politcal mariage, right?)
portugal by 1580
control hungary by 1526

hre
build the hanseatic league by 1300
be the first to discover printing press (is that also where protestantism is founded?)
control germany, austria, and genoa by 1600


either way...its not gonna be implemented so why bother in listing this up...except for austria maybe, since it would be within the the timezone.



how about an addition of a stability factor that if you collapse you only lose territory outside your cultural core area. like, if austria collapsed, they d still keep those 3 or four cities that would make up austria on the map

oh well...too much pointless rambling in here...

 

[Cornelio]

... (there is no way to implement politcal mariage, right?)...

That is a brilliant idea!

What about a "prince charming" great person that can buy cities from the independents similar to the diplomat in civilization I? That would be an achievable implementation.

 

[st.lucifer]

Colonial projects are really wonders and would give extra resources and gold. So it is OK to put them in and ask players to build them. I don't know about corporations, there was limited talk, so I guess we can ignore those for now.

If all they are are wonders which convey certain benefits then why should they need to be part of the UHVs? Or if they are wonders which have to be included could we not leave their benefits for later discussion? I didn't think wonders were one of your must-do coding priorities at the moment. Is it really necessary for us to decide on them before we iron out what the UHVs actually are?

Initial proposals were to have some colonial projects be national wonders and others be available to everyone (i.e. East India Company - national wonder; Brazil - great wonder).
The eventual decision on that was to make all colonial projects available to everyone, which I think is reasonable - many countries competed for their colonies.

The colonial wonders provide luxury resources, gold, and trade. They're essential to allowing cities to grow larger (good luck getting London, Amsterdam, or Constantinople to size 20 with the luxury resources available in their general area), and to the endgame. As their effects would be granted to whichever civ controlled the wonder, they may even provide an incentive for late-game wars.

Many civs have colonial project requirements as UHV conditions, which is completely appropriate. What's Portugal going to do otherwise? Should they even be included without colonies?

While figuring out the specifics on colonial projects is probably a fairly low priority, it might be necessary to figure out what they're going to be to code in UHVs.

The ideas proposed for corporations involved representing extranational entities like the Templars, Jesuits, and Medici as corporate entities - a fairly appropriate model, especially for the banking families. As with BTS, they consume a resource in exchange for a benefit and a drawback - for example, the Templars would generate revenue, but would provide instability from the state-within-a-state effect.

Corporations may be one of the last things we look at/implement, but I feel strongly that we should make an effort to include them. As the code is there to begin with, the proposed modifications seem like they shouldn't be terribly difficult to make.

 

[eris23]

how about if you establish a political marriage diplomatically you inherit their realm if they collapse (or make them a vassal if they collapse) for otherwise you d be very likely to collapse yourself. this works of course both ways...it would also give a likeness bonus, they would like you more for having a political marriage...

then again, the prince charming idea is good, for otherwise you d try to have as many of them. your palace could build them (making sure you dont have too many of them and maybe the austrian up would be generating additional of them)

you could then for example try to conquer some cities and gift it to them to try and destabilize them.

 

[3Miro]

I was thinking making political marriage instead of defensive pact, would make sense. The difference would be that the marriage would come with open borders and some trade benefits.

 

[eris23]

but the interesting bit would be inheriting their realm, as that is how the habsburgers got to be king of spain, portugal,
well, then again, having it like that would definitly be easier as that is already coded (well, almost). and since i m not doing any of the work its really up to you. if you find the time though...

but what about the other thing, binding technology to a date and thereby altering its price depending on when you research.
it then would still pay off to research ahead, for you can trade your extremely expensive modern technology for lots of old ones and so on, but could be a nice way to "force" a historical development of technology.
then again...that is just another additional workload...

 

[3Miro]

we would do techs RFC style, modify cost and priorities for the AI so that one can beeline, but overall would stick relatively close to actual history. Our problem was that some nations were historically ahead of everyone else most of the time and other caught up relatively late.

 

[st.lucifer]

I was thinking making political marriage instead of defensive pact, would make sense. The difference would be that the marriage would come with open borders and some trade benefits.

Is this codeable? It would be a great diplomatic feature. I'm hesitant to offer this kind of suggestion, but it makes a lot more sense than the defensive pacts that come with nationalism.

I'm not sure about inheritance of realms. While historical, the computer's not going to be able to handle holding territories across the map from each other, and the stability issues are going to be problematic. It seems like the type of thing that would be really hard to balance.


I definitely don't want to bring back diplomats, or other units to take on diplomat functions. While, again, there's a historical value to having them, many of their functions have been taken over by spies, and they were vastly overpowered in all versions of civ. If I remember correctly, the code for diplomats was buggy in civ II - I distinctly remember having whole stacks of my units bribed while in democracy, when both stacks and democracies were supposed to be immune to bribery.

While it would make sense to have a great explorer unit, what would generate great explorer points? Would it replace an existing great person type, or would we have to write the whole thing over? If we're tweaking great person types, can we change 'great prophet' to 'theologian'?

I don't like the idea of binding techs to years. To some extent, this is done already as techs get cheaper when knowledge of them is widespread. That system seems to work well - changing it would make the game too deterministic.


The game dates should have been on the list of things that weren't going to change. My mistake.

 

[3Miro]

There are many possibilities in the future, marriage is surely codeable, just probably for later. Now we need UHVs and all the UU, UB, Wonders and to clean the tech tree a little. I changed all the ares to Medieval for graphical purposes. I am coding slowly, but sometimes I need more details, we have to be specific for the code, otherwise things work at random.

We may have RFC Europe 1800AD, but that is in the distant future.

 

[civmademepoor]

. . .Thus the Norse achieving control of all of Britain and Ireland in 1000AD is impossible given their start date. (57 turns to build everything from scratch from 2 or 3 cities?). Unless you gave them a huge army of ships and troops to start with. Which isn't feasible either is it? I could think of other examples but the point of UHV

I keep forgetting how much larger Britain will be on this map! I might as well suggested having them colonize Siberia by 1000.

To the marriages and Prince Charmings, I like the idea, but how would this work with our republics? Religion would have an added oomph, Saladin couldn't marry Eleanor without one of them converting, but it would make those pesky "politcally arranged marriages collapsing" messages more interesting. ;-)

 

[jessiecat]

There are many possibilities in the future, marriage is surely codeable, just probably for later. Now we need UHVs and all the UU, UB, Wonders and to clean the tech tree a little. I changed all the ares to Medieval for graphical purposes. I am coding slowly, but sometimes I need more details, we have to be specific for the code, otherwise things work at random.

We may have RFC Europe 1800AD, but that is in the distant future.

I tried to compare autoplay times in the new version compared with the previous one. The English took 7mins. 30secs. in the older one but about 1 min. less in the newest one. So some improvement there but not dramatic.

I understand the need to code wonders but I agree with you that we should finish the UHVs, UUs and UBs as well. So later today I'll post a list of the latest civs and proposals so we can decide on everything step by step.

 

[jessiecat]

I've moved the latest revised proposals here following our recent discussions.

Norse....THE POWER OF THE SEA (can cross oceans, no instability for founded cities )
...............UHV 1. Control 50% of Britain in 1000AD
......................2. Have at least 1 city in Ireland, Iceland, Britain and France in 1200AD
.......................3. Explore all sea and ocean tiles by 1500AD
................UB -Trading Post (replaces lighthouse +1 gold for sea tile in city)
................UU - Beserker (replaces axeman, same as BTS)

Venice...THE POWER OF TRADE ( starts with Merchant Republics)
................UHV 1. Control the Adriatic and 1 city in mainland Greece, Crete and Cyprus in 1500AD
.......................2. Control 8 luxury resources by 1700AD
........................3. Be the first to have 80% of the map revealed
.................UB - Arsenal (Naval shipyard) - reduced costs for shipbuilding and repairs
.................UU - Galleas ( Carries 2 troops, +2 sea movement?)

Hungary ...THE POWER OF TOLERANCE ( No penalty for non-state religions)
..................UHV 1. Control the most territory in Europe in 1500AD
.........................2. Be the first to adopt Free Religion
..........................3. Never lose a city to Mongols or Ottomans by 1600AD
...................UB -Stronghold (increased damage to enemy units in city tiles)
...................UU - Lancer (+50% against mtd. units) Art in files.

Kievan Rus...THE POWER OF GROWTH (2 extra food per grain resource)
....................UHV 1. Control 6 grain resources in 1300AD
............................2. Control Black Sea coast east of Carpathians in 1500AD
.............................3. Build 2 Orthodox cathedrals and 8 monasteries
......................UB -Steppe Stable (+2 extra experience pts. per mtd unit)
.......................UU - Cossack (as in BTS)

Germany....THE POWER OF INDUSTRY ( -25% unit costs with Gunpowder, must aquire saltpetre)
.....................UHV 1. Control the east bank of the Rhine in 1400AD
............................2. Have at least 3 vassals by 1500AD
.............................3. Have the largest army in Europe in 1700AD
.......................UB -Rathauss (replaces courthouse, as in BTS)
.......................UU -Landknecht, replaces Swiss pikeman)

If there are still disagreement on any part of the above proposals then let's sort them out now. If not I'd like the go-ahead to put all the above in the wiki as agreed for now. Then I'll start on the next civs. OK?

 

[3Miro]

Venice: 80% if the map is mostly mainland Europe, that has little value. The Dutch in RFC had exploring UHV, but that meant great explorations and great opportunities for trade, what does mainland Europe bring to Venecia. How about making it: uncover the entire edge of the map, those are the most-North, most-South, most-East and most-West rows and columns of tiles. It would imply both going into some of the ocean tiles and somehow getting parts of Byzantium, Arabian and/or Turkish map (i.e. explore west to the new world and east towards Asia: Marko Polo)

Kiev: 2 food per grain is a lot (with 6 grain that is 12 food per city, 6 extra specialists is a lot). My understanding was that we would give +2 food per city not resource. We could give bonus per recourse, but make it +1 food per grain.

 

[Hitti-Litti]

Doesn't RFC have a Trading Company national wonder? Being the first to BUILD(so conquering isn't an option) a trading company could be a part of Venetian UHV, as Venice was wealthy thanks to trading.

 

[3Miro]

RFC had trading company wonder, RFC Europe currently has no wonders, actually there is a Trading Companies technology.

 

[jessiecat]

Venice: 80% if the map is mostly mainland Europe, that has little value. The Dutch in RFC had exploring UHV, but that meant great explorations and great opportunities for trade, what does mainland Europe bring to Venecia. How about making it: uncover the entire edge of the map, those are the most-North, most-South, most-East and most-West rows and columns of tiles. It would imply both going into some of the ocean tiles and somehow getting parts of Byzantium, Arabian and/or Turkish map (i.e. explore west to the new world and east towards Asia: Marko Polo)

Kiev: 2 food per grain is a lot (with 6 grain that is 12 food per city, 6 extra specialists is a lot). My understanding was that we would give +2 food per city not resource. We could give bonus per recourse, but make it +1 food per grain.

Kiev; I'll change that to +2 per city. For Venice how about having to reveal the most territory by 1500AD. Like the Dutch UHV in RFC but giving it access to the Silk Road if it reached the eastern edge of the map. (increased trade revenue and enabling a wonder like The Silk Road?).

 

[st.lucifer]

Kiev; I'll change that to +2 per city. For Venice how about having to reveal the most territory by 1500AD. Like the Dutch UHV in RFC but giving it access to the Silk Road if it reached the eastern edge of the map. (increased trade revenue and enabling a wonder like The Silk Road?).

The silk road is already represented on the map by the silks next to Damascus and Aleppo, so I'm not sure what your proposal would look like.
As a compromise of Hitti-Litti and others' suggestions, why not make the third Venice UHV condition tech-based? Many of the RFC UHV conditions involved being the first to a tech or several; we could do the same for several of the trading techs. We're probably going to have to define the 'control the Adriatic' condition a little bit better - what does 'control' mean? Does it involve having full cultural dominance over it? This probably entails capturing Rome and Florence. I'd also like to see Rhodes back in the UHV condition, just to require them to mount a naval invasion (even if it's an independent rather than a Byzantine city). If others are against this, I'm ok with leaving it.
If we're looking at Marco Polo as the model, we could also require them to spawn 3-5 great merchants by a certain date.

For Kiev, the original proposal was +1 per grain; Miro suggested +2 in the city square. Either one's fine; +2 per grain is too powerful.