Seeking advice/comments on minor-tweaks mod

[karadoc]

Over my years of playing Civ4 there have been a few issues which have bothered me a little bit. I think that maybe it is finally time that I made a mod to fix them all. I don't intend to add any new techs, units, or anything else like that. I just want to tweak the game to correct some small things which bother me.

In this thread I'll list the issues that I have in mind and my current ideas for correcting them. I'm hoping to get some feedback as to whether my ideas would be good and balanced and I'd also like to hear what the forum dwellers here would like to see changed in other parts of the game. The target audience of this mod is basically just me and a couple of friends that I play with, but I'm sure there are some important things that I've forgotten about or haven't thought of yet.

Finally, I have no modding experience in Civ4, so if you happen to know that one of my suggested changes is not possible to implement, then please say so!

Here's my list of issues so far:

Serfdom: It seems to me that this is the only civic that isn't ever viable (except for very special situations). I think it needs a buff. My current plan is that it could give +1 commerce for farms and lumber-mills, in addition to its current effects.

Nuclear power-plants: In my experience, building these does more harm than good. The chance of meltdown makes these power-plants worse than having no power at all. I plan to either limit meltdowns to a maximum of 1 meltdown per game, or remove the chance of meltdown completely.

"We have enough on our hands...": It seems silly to me that the AI essentially announces that it is preparing for war. It's an AI quirk that I've grown quite use to, but never the less I see checking trades for WHEOOHRN as exploiting flaw... and it's a flaw that I know can be easily corrected. I intend to move WHEOOHRN down to the bottom of the list of possible reasons for declining war bribes; so that the AI will only say WHEOOHRN if that is the _only_ reason for declining the war bribe. In particular, they should not say it to their enemies.

Automated workers: At the start of the game I like to have complete control over my workers... but in the mid to late game, I don't care too much about when/which/what tiles are improved. I'd like to be able to automate my workers, but the problem is that that there often are a few tiles that I do care about, and automated workers tend to stuff them up. I'd like a system where I could flag particular tiles as being reserved for particular improvements, and for the automated workers to do whatever they normally do, but only build the correct improvement on flagged tiles. For example, I might mark just one particular tile as being reserved for a farm. Automated workers should then do whatever it is that they normally do, except that they must not put anything other than a farm on a the tile I have marked. All other tiles can be whatever they like, but the tile I marked needs to be a farm. If it is currently impossible to put a farm on the marked tile, they should build nothing on it at all. The point of the system is to prevent cottages from being built where I intend to have irrigation chains, and to prevent anything from being built where I want a forest to grow (I'd mark it to built a forest preserve), and stuff like that.

Religion: I like the effect religion affects diplomacy with the AI, but it kind of bugs me that the AI has no 'game' reason for doing what it does. I'd like to give the AI some tangible reason to be 'upset that you have fallen under the sway of a heathen religion'. I don't have any concrete plans for this, but my best idea so far is to give a small trade-route bonus between civs that have the same state religion, and small penalty for civs with different religions.

Game music: I dislike that the game music is interupted every time I open the city screen. I want it to play continuously.

 

[Psyringe]

Serfdom: It seems to me that this is the only civic that isn't ever viable (except for very special situations). I think it needs a buff. My current plan is that it could give +1 commerce for farms and lumber-mills, in addition to its current effects.

I agree that serfdom is a bit underpowered. I'm only using it temporarily in very specific situations (i.e. when I want to build lots of improvements in a short time, for whatever reason). Giving commerce to farms seems pretty powerful, but any change meant to make Serfdom compete against Slavery, caste System, and Emancipation, will have to be powerful anyway. I'd say it's worth a shot. I'd also think about production bonuses instead of commerce (might be more in-line with the system that serfdom actually represents), but that's probably even harder to balance.

Nuclear power-plants: In my experience, building these does more harm than good. The chance of meltdown makes these power-plants worse than having no power at all. I plan to either limit meltdowns to a maximum of 1 meltdown per game, or remove the chance of meltdown completely.

I very, very rarely have any meltdowns at all. That's probably connected to me very rarely building nuclear plants in the first place. Usually I build coal plants (or water, where possible) as soon as I can, the production bonus is too important to wait and the unhealthiness can usually be dealt with. Thus, spending all these hammers on a nuclear plant just for replacing the unhealthiness with a (small) risk of meltdown seems like a waste most of the time. I guess that one of the intended game effects of the nuclear plant was to give players without coal (or many rivers) an alternative power source, but imho they come to late to be a viable alternative. If you were without power for as long as nuclear plants become available, then building them won't let you catch up. This also means that I disagree with your statement that having no power at all is better than having a nuclear plant.

I also regard taking a feature out, or introducing hard caps such as "once per game", as a last resort when nothing else works. I'd prefer fixing features instead of removing or hard-capping them.

"We have enough on our hands...": It seems silly to me that the AI essentially announces that it is preparing for war. It's an AI quirk that I've grown quite use to, but never the less I see checking trades for WHEOOHRN as exploiting flaw... and it's a flaw that I know can be easily corrected. I intend to move WHEOOHRN down to the bottom of the list of possible reasons for declining war bribes; so that the AI will only say WHEOOHRN if that is the _only_ reason for declining the war bribe. In particular, they should not say it to their enemies.

Noticing that another nation (with which you have diplomatic relations) is preparing for a war is by no means silly imho, neither in terms of realism nor in terms of gameplay. You can get this information out of the power graph (nations preparing for war will often show a steep increase in power). The fact that the effect is shown in diplomacy too just makes noticing it a bit more convenient, you don't have to study the power graph every turn. I can see where you're coming from, but personally I wouldn't like that change.

Automated workers: At the start of the game I like to have complete control over my workers... but in the mid to late game, I don't care too much about when/which/what tiles are improved. I'd like to be able to automate my workers, but the problem is that that there often are a few tiles that I do care about, and automated workers tend to stuff them up. I'd like a system where I could flag particular tiles as being reserved for particular improvements, and for the automated workers to do whatever they normally do, but only build the correct improvement on flagged tiles. For example, I might mark just one particular tile as being reserved for a farm. Automated workers should then do whatever it is that they normally do, except that they must not put anything other than a farm on a the tile I have marked. All other tiles can be whatever they like, but the tile I marked needs to be a farm. If it is currently impossible to put a farm on the marked tile, they should build nothing on it at all. The point of the system is to prevent cottages from being built where I intend to have irrigation chains, and to prevent anything from being built where I want a forest to grow (I'd mark it to built a forest preserve), and stuff like that.

Hm ... it might be possible to implement such a feature (you could use the "place sign" feature to label tiles with certain codes, and have the worker AI check those codes), but it still sounds rather unwieldy for the user, and difficult to program, it might also shoot worker AI calculation times through the roof. I think it's better to simply not automate workers, or to set them to "safe" automation types, like "build trade network", or "improve a city where things can't go wrong", or to set them to "leave old improvements" and issue orders which replace old improvements manually.

Religion: I like the effect religion affects diplomacy with the AI, but it kind of bugs me that the AI has no 'game' reason for doing what it does. I'd like to give the AI some tangible reason to be 'upset that you have fallen under the sway of a heathen religion'. I don't have any concrete plans for this, but my best idea so far is to give a small trade-route bonus between civs that have the same state religion, and small penalty for civs with different religions.

I don't see a problem with the original implementation, but giving a small bonus such as you suggested seems like a nice idea.

Game music: I dislike that the game music is interupted every time I open the city screen. I want it to play continuously.

I'm not sure if that's possible. I usually switch the music off anyway (it get's rather unnerving after a while, especially the whimpering Christian chorals and the hectic modern age music), but tastes differ greatly in that regard, so I'm sure such a feature would be appreciated by some.

 

[logarithm64]

Religion: I like the effect religion affects diplomacy with the AI, but it kind of bugs me that the AI has no 'game' reason for doing what it does. I'd like to give the AI some tangible reason to be 'upset that you have fallen under the sway of a heathen religion'. I don't have any concrete plans for this, but my best idea so far is to give a small trade-route bonus between civs that have the same state religion, and small penalty for civs with different religions.

You already get a "We will not fight with our brothers and sisters in the faith" unhappiness penalty if you are fighting a civ with the same state religion.

 

[Derakon]

You already get a "We will not fight with our brothers and sisters in the faith" unhappiness penalty if you are fighting a civ with the same state religion.

If anything, that should be a reason why the AI would prefer it if you were a different religion.

I know I generally avoid converting to the same religion as my neighbors, because they're who I plan to attack next...

 

[Lemon Merchant]

AFAIK, the core game music controls are buried in the .exe file, and are inaccessible to modders, though we have found a way to kill the background music and leave the other music intact.

See my post at the bottom of this thread's page:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=242253&page=79

 

[karadoc]

ahh.. I just wrote a massive reply addressing all the points raised so far.. then I fumbled on my keyboard and accidentally pressed "back". My entire reply was lost, and now I'm frustrated.

I'll rewrite some stuff later.

 

[Revenant]

I'd like to see positive diplo modifiers for "You declared war on our worst enemy". It always seemed like an odd one to leave out.

Edit: I agree completely on the subject of the music stopping every time the city screen is opened. It really disrupts the flow of the music.


Also not a big fan of the medieval and modern era music but at least I can just press ctrl-m to turn it off and on again until I get music I like.

 

[Psyringe]

I just wrote a massive reply addressing all the points raised so far.. then I fumbled on my keyboard and accidentally pressed "back". My entire reply was lost, and now I'm frustrated.

Sorry to hear that ... I know the feeling, happened to me too a couple of times - until my browser (Opera) implemented a function that remembers the content of the editbox when I return to the page by pressing "forward" again. Now, when I accidentally press "back", I just praise my browser instead of cursing my luck. Well, this probably won't comfort you since already lost your post, but I just wanted to tell you that if you're looking for ways to prevent this, it's possible.

 

[karadoc]

Sorry to hear that ... I know the feeling, happened to me too a couple of times - until my browser (Opera) implemented a function that remembers the content of the editbox when I return to the page by pressing "forward" again. Now, when I accidentally press "back", I just praise my browser instead of cursing my luck. Well, this probably won't comfort you since already lost your post, but I just wanted to tell you that if you're looking for ways to prevent this, it's possible.

Actually, I was very surprised that I lost the post, because I thought my browser had a feature like that. (Chrome 6 beta) But I did lose the post, and I've tested it again on this forum and on a different site — it doesn't remember the data when I press forward again. Maybe the feature got broken somewhere along the line and hasn't been fixed.


Anyway... I'll just try to say what was lost.

Regarding nuclear power. I see nuclear power as an alternative power source for civilizations that don't have coal. Nuclear power comes later in the game, and the power-plants are more expensive to build, and they still require a special resource; so it is clear that they are significantly weaker than coal. From what you (Psyringe) said, it sounds like nuclear plants are so much weaker that you'd just lose the game if you didn't have coal... well I don't think it's quite that bad, but they are definitely weaker.

However, in addition to all that, nuclear plants can meltdown. If you power your entire civilization with nuclear power, you are almost sure to see a few meltdowns before the end of the game; and each meltdown destroys a bunch of buildings and units and population and tile improvements. Rebuilding what was destroyed by the meltdown is likely to cost a whole lot more than what you actually gained from the power productivity boost. That's what I meant when I said they were worse than having no power: by building them you lose more productivity than you gain. — So, although I agree that it is generally a bad thing to remove features from the game I feel that removing meltdowns would essentially be adding nuclear power-plants to the game, because as it stands, nuclear power-plants are just completely useless and might as well not exist. I think that the late technology, the resource requirement, and the higher hammer cost is at least enough to balance nuclear power against coal power. The meltdowns are just a kick in the teeth, when you are already feeling the pain of not having coal. Something needs to be changed to balance it; and I'd rather remove meltdowns than, say, increase the productivity bonus. Another option would be to change the meltdown so that it wasn't the same as a nuclear bomb. Instead it could, for example, destroy the power-plant + poison the water supply (like the espionage mission) + scatter some fallout around the city. That wouldn't be so devastating.

Regarding serfdom. I am starting to think that + commerce on farms might be too powerful. It occurs to me that in general there are a lot more farms being worked than workshops... and so the commerce bonus would probably be more valuable than the caste system workshop bonus. In fact, a lot of the times workshops are only made viable by caste system — it isn't just a straight productivity bonus, whereas commerce on farms would be. So maybe it's too much. Unfortunately +0.5 commerce would have other problems. I guess I'll just try it a few times and see how it goes. The good news is that it is really easy to implement. It took me about 5 mins to set it up.

The music thing... it's a shame that I can't make it do what I wanted it to do. I guess I'll just leave that out of the mod.

I agree with Derakon that "We will not fight with our brothers and sisters in the faith" is more a reason to want other civs to _not_ be the same religion... Again just let me emphasize that my idea to change religion is not for balance, or to change the AI. The point of my idea is to make it seem like the AI has game related reasons for wanting other civs to share their religion, rather than just arbitrary role-playing reasons. So it isn't a really important change. It's just to make the AI seem like they are playing the game the same way as the human player.

About WHEOOHRN. There are other indicators that the AI intends to go to war, including sharp growth of their power graph, and troop buildup on their borders... but to seeing these things isn't just about clicking a button; you need to have scouts on the borders and espionage for the graphs. Also, there are other reasons for power growth and troop buildup. A human player could launch a surprise attack against another civ, and I think the AI should have the same power to do that. It should be able to prepare for war without telling the human player it is doing so; just like the human player can prepare for war without telling the AI. That's my opinion on this. WHEOOHRN could be seen as good AI role-playing, but I just see it as a flaw in the AI. The AI should only tell its allies that it is preparing for war, not its enemies. Maybe I won't move the WHEOOHRN right to the bottom of the list, but it should certainly be below "We don't like you enough."


Finally, about the automated workers. This is probably the most difficult thing to implement of what I've suggested; but it's also the thing I want the most... Ideally it would be a separate strategy layer which can be displayed or hidden and it would just show where you have flagged to have certain improvements, and you could flag the locations using a special button for each kind of improvement. However, the idea of just using the existing sign placement feature is probably easier to implement, and should be good enough for my purposes.

Actually, already I often mark particular tiles as "f" for farm to remind myself of where I intend to have an irrigation chain. So if I could just mod the game so that automated workers respect my "f" signs then I would be a lot happier. Better still if they could also read w, c, and p; for workshop, cottage, and forest preserve. When I manage to get the dll source code to compile I'll see how difficult it would be to implement. But I really do think it will be worth while.

 

[Psyringe]

However, in addition to all that, nuclear plants can meltdown. If you power your entire civilization with nuclear power, you are almost sure to see a few meltdowns before the end of the game;

I think that's the main difference between our perspectives. I agree with your reasoning in general, I just never had enough meltdowns in my games to make them feel like a problem. But as I said, this may be due to me rarely building them in the first place. (Though I'm not sure whether other factors, like usually having few unhappy people and sufficient espionage defense, play into that as well.)

Anyway, if your assessment above is correct, then I agree with your sentiment that the expected loss of infrastructure due to meltdowns may make nuclear plants worse than having no power.

I agree that raising the production bonus of the plant wouldn't work well. But I like your suggestion to tone he effect down. This would simulate a leakage rather than a meltdown.

Regarding serfdom. I am starting to think that + commerce on farms might be too powerful.
(...)
I guess I'll just try it a few times and see how it goes.

Yep. By the way, I wondered why exactly serfdom was designed so underpowered in compariso to the others ... I think I may have found one possible answer. In unmodded vanilla Civ4, the AI was extremely fond of pillaging. In almost every war, you had lots of enemies looting the countryside. Therefore, after the war, a major rebuilding effort had to take place. In this original design, serfdom may have been a better (albeit situational) choice.

About WHEOOHRN.
(...)
WHEOOHRN could be seen as good AI role-playing, but I just see it as a flaw in the AI.

That's probably where we differ. When I play Civ, then I usually do a bit of roleplaying myself, so I'm still (roughly) on even footing with an AI that does this too. But for a player who doesn't roleplay by himself, these features are rather exploits which put the AI at a disadvantage. It's a matter of taste I guess, different strokes for different folks. There definitely are many players who'd regard such a change as an improvement.

Finally, about the automated workers. This is probably the most difficult thing to implement of what I've suggested; but it's also the thing I want the most... Ideally it would be a separate strategy layer which can be displayed or hidden and it would just show where you have flagged to have certain improvements, and you could flag the locations using a special button for each kind of improvement. However, the idea of just using the existing sign placement feature is probably easier to implement, and should be good enough for my purposes.

You could try to get in contact with the BUG mod team and/or the Better BtS AI mod team. Both have worked on worker features, so they might be interested in these ideas, and/or might be able to give you much better feedback than I can provide.

 

[r_rolo1]

On the WHEOOHRN : there is a entire thread about that in Better AI mod with back and forth argumenting , so I'll restrain of doing that again

On nuke plants: well, first, nuke plants are not Fat ladies with a plug out to deliver power, so they should not be treated as nuke bombs when they meltdown. Second, even if you remove meltdowns, nuke plants will probably still need a boost, since that health corcerns normally are not enough of a issue to make them a atractive proposal vs coal plants, especially if those are already in the spot

 

[Derakon]

Just say that your nuke plants are one of the dozens of designs newer than the Chernobyl/Three Mile Island types which are unable to meltdown. Modern plants don't have runaway chain reactions; in fact, the reaction has to be continually maintained through outside input, or it simply stops.

In other words, I agree with the OP's reasoning. The cost of coal plants is that they cause unhealth; the cost of nuke plants is that they show up later. If you want to add a secondary penalty for nuke plants, I'd much rather it be a chance of causing temporary unhappiness in the city as a bunch of anti-nuke protestors blockade the place.

 

[Kid R]

Maybe the simplest way of buffing serfdom would be to improve the benefit it already has. Like instead of +50% worker speed in the XML...

<iWorkerSpeedModifier>50</iWorkerSpeedModifier>

...make it whatever you think would be reasonable. +150% would be good as then a farm would take 2 turns instead of 5 and it might be worth using the civic from time to time!

 

[pevo]

1) Change "You failed to give tribute" or similar -1's to a more accurate "You didn't kiss my ass!" or just get rid of those negatives.
2) Add some way to see what your own war weariness is. If that exists somewhere, I don't know where..

 

[Derakon]

1) Change "You failed to give tribute" or similar -1's to a more accurate "You didn't kiss my ass!" or just get rid of those negatives.

In my experience, if the AI's demanding stuff from you, it's already at the point where it'd consider going to war with you. So by giving them tribute, what you're really doing is buying a 10-turn peace treaty. If you don't give them tribute and everyone else does, though, then they have this nice big army and only one civ to use it on...

In other words, I do think there should be a negative diplomacy mod for not giving the AI stuff when it demands it.

 

[karadoc]

Regarding serfdom again, the bonuses from slavery and caste system are so reliable and powerful that I don't think there is any reasonable worker-speed improvement that could match them. I mean, instant improvements would be pretty powerful, but at that point it just becomes a bit silly. I think I'd rather buff serfdom it in some other way. That said, I've gone off my original idea about the commerce for farms a bit. The main issue is that I suspect it is too powerful. Farms might be just too common to give a bonus to. If I could make it only apply to farms that don't already get the riverside commerce bonus then maybe that would be better. I'm toying with the idea of something like +1 hammer for plantation tiles instead.

I don't think there is a problem with negative relations for refusing AI demands. I think that's fine as it is.

As for war weariness, I've always been a bit unsure about whether the war weariness numbers in the foreign adviser screen are my civ's weariness or the enemy civ's weariness... I think it would be useful to clear up that ambiguity and to give both numbers so that you could estimate how much war weariness the enemy is being forced to deal with. (Although, I have a pretty basic rule of thumb for estimating enemy war weariness: it's zero. They seem to be able to suicide unlimited stacks of units attacking my cities without ever slowing their economy. That's probably related to the difficulty level I play at.)

 

[Kid R]

Regarding serfdom again, the bonuses from slavery and caste system are so reliable and powerful that I don't think there is any reasonable worker-speed improvement that could match them. I mean, instant improvements would be pretty powerful, but at that point it just becomes a bit silly.

Eh? If the bonus is too weak at the moment and taking it to the other extreme is too powerful, just choose the appropriate mid-point and it would be "correct"!

Otherwise since serfdom is a labor civic maybe adding hammers somewhere would be better than commerce? +10% in all cities like state property?