Rise And Rule Revisited (epic mod)

I have to admit that until last week, I never read the Park city improvement Civilopedia entry correctly. My mind only processed the "reduce building pollution by one" part and totally ignored the "limit building pollution to one" part. Since i now realize the actual abilities of the Park (and have played my first game understanding its abilities), I think some adjustment to the pollution reducing improvements is needed.

As currently configured, the ability of the Park to limit building pollution to one totally obviates the need for the Labor Union and Recycling Center building pollution mitigating improvements. The Park is cheaper, earlier in the tech tree, provides culture and is more effective.

The Sewage Treatment Plant and Mass Transit System city improvements still retain their viability. The Sewage Treatment Plant can reduce to zero the one building pollution left over from the Park (although I think it nominally reduces two pollution, more than it needs). The Mass Transit System is the only improvement that addresses population pollution.

With the current abilities of the Park, neither the Labor union nor the Recycling Center city improvements have any value. Perhaps if the Park either only reduced pollution by one or limited pollution to no more than 3 (or possibly 2) the other improvements would gain some measure of viability.

Another way to improve the viability of the Recycling Center may be to reduce its maintenance cost to zero or, if possible, make it negative. To me, it is reasonable to assign the Recycling Center a negative maintenance cost, if that is even allowed, or a zero maintenance cost if it isn't, on the grounds that the sale of the recycled material would at least offset if not more than offset any operational costs. Even with the zero or negative maintenance cost, it may need the "limit building pollution to 1" flag of the Park or have the ability to also reduce some population pollution (if that is even possible).

The Labor Union is probably not viable with its current abilities. But considering that labor unions typically improve working conditions, adding a happiness modifier to the Labor Union improvement, in addition to or instead of the pollution mitigation would improve its viability. In all honesty, I never developed a mental rational as to why the Labor Union improvement reduced pollution, I just didn't see the connection. Increased happiness or reduced war weariness or both make logical sense.

Oh and on another point about pollution, I don't think the AI ever builds pollution reducing improvements. Have you noticed that? Maybe other tweaks to pollution are required because of this blind spot on the part of the AI.

 

Some graphic errors from current RARR build:

• No death animation for Horse Artillery.

• No bombardment effect for Heavy Frigates:

Also, not an error, but still quite funny observation: if you set barbarians as a human civ through multiplayer tool, you can even conduct diplomacy with them!


Sometimes they look like weird version of your current leader (which often leads to crash), sometimes they look like empty black space (in F4 they look like default random civ). Unfortunately, neither normal human civs nor barbs are capable to see each other proposals. I don't know how such a diplomacy works with AI, though...
Edit: One balance idea: please, swap costs of Field and Siege artillery. 21 bombardment str of SA vs 20 of FA isn't that serious, but 2 MV of FA vs 1 of SA is - and currently FA is cheaper.

 

Belofon, you should post the part about the barbarian leaders in the barbarian civ thread.

 

I agree, that in my eyes the Labor Union is one of the lamest buildings in RARR/RAR/DyP. Giving it additional happiness would fit, but there are a lot of buildings giving happiness in the mod. Reducing war weariness cummulative would allow nearly endless wars for governments with high ww settings. A building that reduces corruption cummulative with other buildings could be needed in RARR - but Labor Union and reducing corruption ??

In my CCM mod I completely wiped out population- and building pollution. This is in my eyes the best solution for the 'unfun' game element of pollution - but than this mod would be more CCM than RARR, when a core element of the original Civ 3 game is eliminated.

 

Belofon, thank you very much for reporting these minor errors.

Both errors will be corrected with the next update of RARR (what will last some time). A fixed INI file for the correct death animation of the horse artillery is attached to this post.

That is a funny observation. Thank you very much for posting it in this and the Barbarian civ thread.

I will reflect about it. I´m also considering to set siege artillery to charm bombardment in the next version of RARR.

 

Civinator:

Well, I know where you stand on the labor union. Actually, you could turn it around and have something like the FBI for investigating the labor union, and having that reduce corruption.

About the recycling center, do you have any thoughts on what I proposed?

 

Actually, labor union can reduce pollution - but, if possible, this should be population pollution (better living conditions for citizens, etc.). Mass Transit comes quite late while population pollution is already quite large in middle IA - and with LU reducing pop pollution there will be way to deal with it (but, if there is no population pollution decrease, small WW decrease should be good as well - in long wars WW is high even with tomb + WMs in all large cities; as for happiness increase, it may be good for large non-capital/low income cities).
Also, some errors from current build:

• Civilopedia entry for Indian War Elephants states that they require Elephants (they don't):

• WW1 Destroyers can't bombard:

 

ynot56, in my eyes I found a much better way to deal with the 'unfun' game element of pollution in C3C (and used that concept it in CCM), so I don´t think I have to reflect here about solutions that in my eyes are not as good. The current system of pollution is in RARR to upkeep the old tradition of DyP/RAR. If that tradidional concept should really be changed, this should be done well. In that case the traditional system of pollution should be replaced by eliminating the tradidional building- and population pollution and replacing them by giving unhappiness to buildings that former polluted the terrain and abandoning size 3 cities in RARR. Former pollution-reducing-buildings now should give additional happiness to compensate the aditional unhappiness by former 'pollution'-buildings. Even the Labour Union in that case could give additional happiness to the cities, as now much more buildings giving happiness are needed. As you can see when playing CCM, this concept works very well - but at present I have the focus of my Civ 3 modding time on the scenarios SOE and WW2 Global Gold and not on RARR and CCM.

Belofon, thank you very much for reporting this error. War Elephants should need elephants as a prerequisite. This will be fixed in the next version of the RARR biq

This is not intended. I will have a closer look to it.

 

First, I am just trying to help make a better game, you have created a masterpiece, I am just a kibitzer

I noticed that the Admiral of the Fleet does not upgrade to the WWII carrier.

This may be as intended, but in case it isn't, I thought I'd let you know.

 

Yes, and ynot56, you have contributed a lot to make RARR a better game.

With the changes in RARR 1.7, the WW2 battleships were transferred from era 3 to era 4. To give those wonderful units enough 'place to breath' in the game, they were set to dissappear from the construction queue with tech Fission (when cold war carriers can been built) and no longer with WW2 carriers. This means 'Admiral of the fleet' units that are autoproduced when tech Fission is researched or later, upgrade to cold war carriers, the same with all upgrades of the original 'Admiral of the fleet' unit, but the WW2 battleships. Existing WW2 battleships can not be upgraded any longer and this is also true for WW2 battleships which originally were 'Admiral of the fleet' units.

'Admiral of the fleet' units in RARR 1.7 can never be upgraded to WW2 carriers, as those ships are no longer in their upgrade chain.

 

I thought it might be the case that the WWII carrier was intentionally not on the upgrade path.

 

A couple of minor nits

First, mosque is in the wrong alphabetical position in the city build list. This may be unavoidable, as per the City Fortifications

Secondly, the troopship does not appear to disband.

 

Hi Civinator, I am now playing a 'normal' Rarr game on the largest map with the maximum of AI opponents. Two strange things: 1) the AI reached 50.000 culture points for its entire civilization but wasn't awarded the victory. Can't the AI get a cultural victory? and 2) I got a message that the game will end in 20 turns, and in 20 turns it will be 1850 AD. Isn't that a bit early?

One other thing: whenever I won it was almost always a cultural victory, only once a diplomatic victory. On the largest map it seems not possible to reach an other kind of victory because the 50.000 culture points is already reached. The 25.000 for one city seems fine, but I think the bar for the entire civilization must be put higher.

 

I turned off Cultural Victory. It tends to end the game far earlier than I am happy with.

 

Yes, it is 'unavoidable', as there is no filter in the editor to list the buildings in an alphabetical order. They appear in the order they were added in the biq. Now when a building is replaced by another building, in the list it has the place of the building it does replace.

ynot56, thank you very much for reporting that minor error. The disband option was not enabled for that unit.

 

May be there will come a time, when I also add the cultural system I had developed for CCM (including monks and great artists), to RARR. In my eyes it would fit well to RARR, too and harmonize with the religious system I have added from my mod CCM to RARR.

The time scale in RARR is still the time scale of RAR. I will have a look at the number of turns and the year when that number of preset turns ends to decide, if some more turns should be added.

 

Turning a Cultural Victory off is a bit drastic for me. I do like to get a Cultural Victory but not too easy. The 25.000 bar for a single city is ok for me, so far I never reached that amount of points for a single city, but the 50.000 for the entire civilization is reached too soon. In my humble opinion it should be at least 100.000, especially when playing on the largest map.

Still my question stays, why did the AI (the Iroquois in my game) not get the victory when it reached first the 50.000 for its civilization? I, as the Babylonians, had a very difficult start and had about 41.000 at that time.

Having played several CCM games I very much liked the monks and great artists and kind of miss them in RARR but when including those in RARR the two values must be set much higher, otherwise it will be very short games. I also do like the specialists more in CMM, there they are much more effective than they are in RARR. The workers are more realistic in RARR, though.

 

XTC, the RARR 1.7 biq (and its variants) has a variable configuration option for the victory limits when a game with that biq is started (inside the limits of the used editor). If you think you want a victory limit of 100000 culture points in the new game you will start, you can set this limit yourself without any problems during the starting procedure of that game.

You only have to push the button Game Limits in the Player Setup screen.



Than this window will open, allowing to change any of these options (within the limits of the editor that was used to modify that biq) :



When the button for the 'culture limit all cities' is triggered, the following window will open, allowing to change that value (up to 500.000 culture points). Now you insert your 100.000 culture points you want to use for playing your next game.



Now the 'culture limit all cities' for the new game you want to start is 100.000 points.



When the new victory limit is set, you can continue in starting your new game like you normally do.

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XTC, I don´t know, why the Iroquois in your last game didn´t receive a cultural victory. One possible option could be, that inadvertently that victory option was disabled when starting your last game.

 

Thanks Civinator, when I start a new game I will see if that option was disabled.

 

I started a new game and the Culture Victory option was able, so it wasn't inadvertently disabled. A strange case...