Hmm then almost we would have purely multiplicative tech costs with [handicap modifier + beeline modifier] being only one addition inside of it.
Its nice to hear further plans
Also I did that excel voodoo few days earlier
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Single Player bugs and crashes v37 plus (SVN) - After the 24th of December 2016
- Thread starter Dancing Hoskuld
- Start date
Its nice to hear further plans
Also I did that excel voodoo few days earlier
Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
Thank you for the excel sheet. In a lot of cases that can be a great tool for running example numbers with confidence that unless the formula is off, the calculations will be accurate. We'll have to do some more of that as we try to dial things back in after we go back to address more of this later. Your concept of flattening the modifiers makes logical sense, but first I'd like to see the settings get aligned so that we have a direct ratio of production to tech - then we adjust from there. Much like working with a timing belt on an engine. To do that will require adjusting the tech formula and that's going to cast a lot back into chaos for a bit so we'll do it after v38.Hmm then almost we would have purely multiplicative tech costs with [handicap modifier + beeline modifier] being only one addition inside of it.
Its nice to hear further plans
Also I did that excel voodoo few days earlier
Global production modifier was dampened by handicap and era modifiers in equation, that you recently introduced, that its going to be reverted.
This means when global production was set at 80%, it didn't reduce costs by that cost - actual effect depended on handicap and era.
With purely multiplicative modifiers, that are we getting back soon, 50% modifier from something will halve final cost - its effect is fully predictable without excel voodoo.
60% may even make stuff bit cheap, but lets see if players will start getting bored with that setting.
Prehistoric have 0.7x and with global of 0.6 building will cost 0.42x of base price.
Production cost is scaled 1:1 with game speed and amount of turns.
On other hand we have upscaled costs game option - 1.35x increase to cost of techs and units.
I guess it will make that game option useful again.
You may need 0.6x global modifier, when you add back handicap modifiers anyway.
I noticed, that unit cost doesn't depend on era - its always set to 100.
I added production cost calculator, that uses purely multiplicative modifiers.
Also it supports handicap modifiers, currently tables are set to use Noble difficulty modifier - that is normalized to 1.
Why Upscaled Cost game option gamespeed settings have increased cost of techs except for Eternity?
I listed all speeds tech cost modifiers without and with upscaled costs option.
Eternity 20x 20x
Eons - 15x 16.5x
Snail - 12x 13.75x
Marathon - 7.25x 8.00x
Epic - 2.5x 3.5x
Normal - 1x 1.35x
Upscaled Costs game text says nothing about more expensive techs.
<Tag>TXT_KEY_GAMEOPTION_UPSCALED_BUILDING_AND_UNIT_COSTS</Tag>
<English>Upscaled Building And Unit Costs</English>
<Tag>TXT_KEY_GAMEOPTION_UPSCALED_BUILDING_AND_UNIT_COSTS_HELP</Tag>
<English>Building and unit costs, aswell as worker actions time, have all been increased by 35%. This generally puts more emphasis and importance on the choices you make, particularly in relation to what a city chooses to build.</English>
This means when global production was set at 80%, it didn't reduce costs by that cost - actual effect depended on handicap and era.
With purely multiplicative modifiers, that are we getting back soon, 50% modifier from something will halve final cost - its effect is fully predictable without excel voodoo.
60% may even make stuff bit cheap, but lets see if players will start getting bored with that setting.
Prehistoric have 0.7x and with global of 0.6 building will cost 0.42x of base price.
Production cost is scaled 1:1 with game speed and amount of turns.
On other hand we have upscaled costs game option - 1.35x increase to cost of techs and units.
I guess it will make that game option useful again.
You may need 0.6x global modifier, when you add back handicap modifiers anyway.
I noticed, that unit cost doesn't depend on era - its always set to 100.
I added production cost calculator, that uses purely multiplicative modifiers.
Also it supports handicap modifiers, currently tables are set to use Noble difficulty modifier - that is normalized to 1.
Why Upscaled Cost game option gamespeed settings have increased cost of techs except for Eternity?
I listed all speeds tech cost modifiers without and with upscaled costs option.
Eternity 20x 20x
Eons - 15x 16.5x
Snail - 12x 13.75x
Marathon - 7.25x 8.00x
Epic - 2.5x 3.5x
Normal - 1x 1.35x
Upscaled Costs game text says nothing about more expensive techs.
<Tag>TXT_KEY_GAMEOPTION_UPSCALED_BUILDING_AND_UNIT_COSTS</Tag>
<English>Upscaled Building And Unit Costs</English>
<Tag>TXT_KEY_GAMEOPTION_UPSCALED_BUILDING_AND_UNIT_COSTS_HELP</Tag>
<English>Building and unit costs, aswell as worker actions time, have all been increased by 35%. This generally puts more emphasis and importance on the choices you make, particularly in relation to what a city chooses to build.</English>
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JosEPh_II
TBS WarLord
What or which "global"? And what do you mean by "global"? In a GlobalDefine file? Your vagueness is and was confusing. Lack of necessary detail especially when things have been changed. How am I supposed to know what this "global modifier" means? I can't mind read.
It was till you changed it all, ...again.
It can be hard to admit when you've done something wrong or badly. Or that you did not listen because you can't shut down your own thought processes. It is what you've made it to be. Sorry that my attempts to tell you fell on your deaf ears. But was instead taken as rantings, b++++ing and trying to usurp your power.
EDIT: Below is Raxo's updated file for the Disease section that shows the new losses in
in percentages and the Totals for each column. All columns stack. The more Diseases allowed the more loss in and the more 
and 
.
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He meant these in globaldefines.xml:
<Define>
<DefineName>UNIT_PRODUCTION_PERCENT</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>80</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>
<Define>
<DefineName>BUILDING_PRODUCTION_PERCENT</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>80</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>
<Define>
<DefineName>UNIT_PRODUCTION_PERCENT_SM</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>70</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>
Also it wouldn't be so much of disaster, if he kept purely multiplicative modifiers (he is going to do that now) with post release intent of changing tech cost modifiers to be purely multiplicative too (this will be done post release).
Just slapping 50 - 70 on BUILDING_PRODUCTION_PERCENT would make building costs bearable on all difficulties.
But that is easy to judge events after they happened.
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Septimius
Warlord
Apologies if I threw you all into a nest of vipers with my comment on production speed. You're all doing great work that we enjoy immensely - and if the game engine would run faster, slow production wouldn't be so much of a problem, but being a 13 year old game engine that's not going to happen.
I'm quite serious with my suggestion that you should consider removing nightmare for v.38 - it can be added in again later as a mod/option. If you're managing to get all the other gamesettings to run at a desired speed (production and research wise), then don't let nightmare be the problem that causes unnecessary delays. Or lands your team in internal problems for that matter.
Joe spent a long time tweaking the speed settings to where we weren't complaining and to see them suddenly change like this, can't have been nice. Obviously Joe shouldn't take it out on Thunderbird, but I guess I feel responsible for making the usual lazy player "It's all bwah!" comment. So apologies for that and hoping that you'll all get past this hurdle.
As for nightmares workings before the changes, I'm probably an era of tech research behind my neighbours and maybe 2 eras behind unmet civs. All those popups about universities being built are great - I just discovered currency... Must be what it felt like being native people suddenly coming into contact with an industrialised juggernaut. My best infantry are still armed with obsidian weapons (couldn't find any copper).
I'm quite serious with my suggestion that you should consider removing nightmare for v.38 - it can be added in again later as a mod/option. If you're managing to get all the other gamesettings to run at a desired speed (production and research wise), then don't let nightmare be the problem that causes unnecessary delays. Or lands your team in internal problems for that matter.
Joe spent a long time tweaking the speed settings to where we weren't complaining and to see them suddenly change like this, can't have been nice. Obviously Joe shouldn't take it out on Thunderbird, but I guess I feel responsible for making the usual lazy player "It's all bwah!" comment. So apologies for that and hoping that you'll all get past this hurdle.
As for nightmares workings before the changes, I'm probably an era of tech research behind my neighbours and maybe 2 eras behind unmet civs. All those popups about universities being built are great - I just discovered currency... Must be what it felt like being native people suddenly coming into contact with an industrialised juggernaut. My best infantry are still armed with obsidian weapons (couldn't find any copper).
There's nothing wrong with the nightmare option, it worked before hammer cost modifier was introduced and it worked after, though it got immensely more difficult after. So much so, that it would require a reevaluation of some values used in the handicap file, something no one wanted to do right before the release.
Septimius
Warlord
An endless slog ain't "difficulty".
Septimius
Warlord
No it was "ok" 2 weeks ago and now it's so obviously not that it's really better to just give it a break and roll out v38, then fix it.
Also I've no idea what people here want nightmare to be. Do you want us to be extremely behind in tech? That's done. Do you want the ai to roll out more units than you? That's done. Do you want the ai to actually use that overwhelming force to murder you? They're about as easy to counter as on any other difficulty level of civ 4.
So all I can say is, it's not difficulty to make a game move slower.
The nightmare will happen when the ai knows to create smaller swift attack stacks, as well as the doomstacks, knows to take medics with the doomstacks, knows to bring in workers to build roads and forts right on your borders, so they have defensible positions to fall back to. And of course can tackle the addition of damaging terrain (staying away from it mainly - and creating units that are specifically good at fighting in certain types of damaging terrain).
What I'd hope for the ai was that they'd be experts at turtling their way forward.
But I know all this takes time to code, so I'm saying don't make the mistake in the meantime and just turn nightmare into something (a great deal) slower.
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You seem to be missing the point, that nightmare will be reverted to how it was two weeks ago in the next TB commit.
There is nothing wrong with the option that would justify removing it at this point.
A compromise I would be ok with would be to change it so that only the AI gets cheaper hammer/beaker costs when player is on high difficulty instead of slowing the human players gamespeed.
There is nothing wrong with the option that would justify removing it at this point.
I agree, I would prefer difficulty to stay far away from hammer and beaker cost, and let gamespeed handle that kind of adjustments on its own.
A compromise I would be ok with would be to change it so that only the AI gets cheaper hammer/beaker costs when player is on high difficulty instead of slowing the human players gamespeed.
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Septimius
Warlord
Yep, missed that part.
But what I didn't miss was all the work that went beforehand. That maybe they were reaching some deeper understanding of the in's and out's of the underlying production system. If all that is working well, then there isn't any reason to let nightmare get in the way of rolling out v38.
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JosEPh_II
TBS WarLord
I did not take anything out on T-brd. I tried repeatedly to say and show there was a problem after the new formula was put in.
But you all need to realize this I have to walk on pins and needles to do anything here. I post something and I'm ranting. I disagree I'm being subversive. I work with a given system and at a whim the system is changed. I start a project and the project is superseded by more grandiose "ideas" or Master Projects. Everything I do is put under a microscope. I don't mind for that for checking for modding mistakes. But I do for being a responsible modder of the C2C Core game play.
I 'm under scrutiny because I don't like certain Options in the Mod and do not want to play them. Therefore I'm in constant dissent with leadership. I try to do a good job of keeping a balance overall for mod gameplay so that the normal player and the uber player can both be somewhat happy with the product. I spend countless hours every day every week playing the mod in sometimes as many as 4 games at a time noting tendencies for the base C2C. I will not do that for the Combat Mod Option nor the SM Options. I have also stated my opinion that the Promotion system is overly complex, another strike against me for having that opinion.
I work in a shoe box, if I venture outside of it the rod comes down.
It not you fault Septimus at all. It's me for not being 100% in line with leadership's ideas and goals and raising the objection to some of them from time to time. I do get very tired of it all sometimes and I can and do get cranky. That in turn makes me blunt and brusque in my responses. And I make mistakes when I type posts. So that sometime part of what I'm trying to say is missing or garbled. Mind much faster than
fingers.So here we are. I'm an ***hole again because I could not see nor did Iike another new way of doing something that I was just again getting a decent handle on. I'm not to good a switching horse in the middle of a stream. So here I am all wet again and in trouble to boot. What do I do? What can I say?
And this post will get me into further hot water too. Just wait and see.
Septimius
Warlord
Yeah, the ten finger system is a great thing to learn - also the old saying "write angry letters, then throw them out before you send them.".
I know and respect the amount of work you've put into making the speed aspect work well for all of us. Among other things.
What it seems to me that they're getting closer to, is a better way of controlling the game speeds, production settings etc. Having one system that's easier to deal with, than many twerks and twists along the way. Maybe that's an incorrect view, but I'm not a coder, just a gamer nerd, so I don't really understand all the stuff they're talking about.
That you've done a lot of the twerking and twisting along the way, shouldn't alter the fact that they were needed and necessary. But if the system can be made easier to tweak, I think is a great victory for the mod - and for you.
Rest more on the laurels of your work, Joe. And don't allow yourself to get too tired, the body and mind breaks down when it's too tired. And stress sneaks up on you like the mind-killer it is. One of the primary symptoms of stress is trouble sleeping - and spending too much time in front of the screen
I'll take my unrelated musings out of the bugs section now... Apologies for derailing the buggy debate, but I'm also getting to be a rambling middle-aged man.
- also the old saying "write angry letters, then throw them out before you send them.".I know and respect the amount of work you've put into making the speed aspect work well for all of us. Among other things.
What it seems to me that they're getting closer to, is a better way of controlling the game speeds, production settings etc. Having one system that's easier to deal with, than many twerks and twists along the way. Maybe that's an incorrect view, but I'm not a coder, just a gamer nerd, so I don't really understand all the stuff they're talking about.
That you've done a lot of the twerking and twisting along the way, shouldn't alter the fact that they were needed and necessary. But if the system can be made easier to tweak, I think is a great victory for the mod - and for you.
Rest more on the laurels of your work, Joe. And don't allow yourself to get too tired, the body and mind breaks down when it's too tired. And stress sneaks up on you like the mind-killer it is. One of the primary symptoms of stress is trouble sleeping - and spending too much time in front of the screen
I'll take my unrelated musings out of the bugs section now... Apologies for derailing the buggy debate, but I'm also getting to be a rambling middle-aged man.
Dancing Hoskuld
Deity
The problem never was with the harder difficulties it was with Noble and the fact that the research rate was far outstripping the build rate.
Build rate will be speed up - costs of building are going to be reduced.
This: (couldn't be really felt in additive formula, that is getting reverted now)
<Define>
<DefineName>UNIT_PRODUCTION_PERCENT</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>80</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>
<Define>
<DefineName>BUILDING_PRODUCTION_PERCENT</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>80</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>
<Define>
<DefineName>UNIT_PRODUCTION_PERCENT_SM</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>70</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>
Probably will be changed to this to ease all issues stemming from buildings being too expensive in relation to techs.
<Define>
<DefineName>UNIT_PRODUCTION_PERCENT</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>60</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>
<Define>
<DefineName>BUILDING_PRODUCTION_PERCENT</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>60</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>
<Define>
<DefineName>UNIT_PRODUCTION_PERCENT_SM</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>50 ?</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>
Then after release he will do further work.
I have weird feel, that only Thunder and maybe few others knew about these things - there are a lot of things in globaldefines.xml
Dancing Hoskuld
Deity
As I have said before, Firaxis reckons you should leave GlobalDefines.XML alone and only have and changes and additions in GlobalDefinesAlt.XML so that people (modders) can see what is being done. It would be a fairly simple and probably tedious task to get C2C back on that path.
At least 7 years too late.
You can see changelog for selected file - SVN manager (tortoise or like that) can show only SVNs, where selected file was changed.
It was touched since 2011. I guess it was touched before Caveman2Cosmos was a thing too.
You joined in 2004 so probably you know that
Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
This is the kind of language that makes working with you difficult. Your priority is to get me to what? Break down and cry and blubber about how sorry I am? Revert a fix that would thus result in ignoring that there was a problem in the first place? Have you even admitted there was a problem to address? You haven't spent a moment discussing that. All you've worried about is that I see 'the error of my ways' and that everyone else does as well. This seems to be your only concern.
Outside of that, I'm not trying to say that your limited input is not valid or even that its not valuable. But I have to question how 3 comments come in saying everything seems back to normal and another 3 comments come in saying it's much more difficult, those last 3 saying it from a nightmare mode perspective which completely confirms the formula was doing as intended - and then there's you saying everything is doubled. At first, everything WAS doubled. Did you see that and then never test again after the next fix? I don't know because you never stated the parameters of your testing.
Obviously some things needed tweaking and some things I hoped would be more functional weren't as satisfactory in the end. And you can also go ahead and rub it in that the argument we had at the beginning of this development cycle about tech cost calculations finally shows you to be correct about keeping all modifiers multiplicative now that we are trying to align production and tech costs and it became obvious that trying to make the formula for production costs like the tech costs formula had a fundamental flaw that was the same as was introduced at the beginning of the cycle to the tech costs formula.
In part, it was your feedback making that clear. Perhaps I didn't tell you so directly and you felt brushed aside because of that but I was paying attention. I gave you some formulas so you could show me in return, in the way I showed you, how the situations you were seeing came out through that formula. But I doubt you even saw that for what it was, an attempt to improve our ability to communicate.
To fix this fundamental mistake in tech calculations will throw everything into chaos, which I didn't want you to suffer through. Sorry for trying to respect your efforts while you're trying to highlight my mistakes as much as possible. Knowing that you have spent a lot of time and effort on zeroing in on tech progression balance, I didn't think the chaos of 'correcting' that error that changing the original tech calculations was would be a good thing to do right before release. Therefore, at this point, we must admit that DH's Noble level complaint cannot be resolved pre v38 release. But it IS going to have to be resolved immediately thereafter and if that's too much for you to deal with having to rework it all again, I understand and will happily assign someone else to work on it.
If you could understand what I'm saying and show an understanding of what I'm saying then maybe we can continue making forward progress here.
I was quite surprised when TB suddenly added the hammer cost modifier tags to difficulties so close to the v38 release, I felt it was rash decision and should have waited until after v38 was released.
However, I did technically agree with the change. It is important that game balance is the same across all the difficulties, that the rate you can build buildings/units compared to the rate that you unlock new buildings/units should be the same for all difficulties.
I then accepted that release would have to be delayed again, and when hostilities broke loose in this thread I tried to stay out of it thinking it would quickly sort itself out. Boy was I wrong there.
I'm not sure what it was exactly that was bothering Joe in this case, but I believe TB is addressing it by removing the new tags again before release.
@JosEPh_II: Am I wrong about it being addressed, is there something else you want changed before release?
Well, anyhow, this is how I've perceived recent events here, events I find somewhat confusing.
However, I did technically agree with the change. It is important that game balance is the same across all the difficulties, that the rate you can build buildings/units compared to the rate that you unlock new buildings/units should be the same for all difficulties.
I then accepted that release would have to be delayed again, and when hostilities broke loose in this thread I tried to stay out of it thinking it would quickly sort itself out. Boy was I wrong there.
I'm not sure what it was exactly that was bothering Joe in this case, but I believe TB is addressing it by removing the new tags again before release.
@JosEPh_II: Am I wrong about it being addressed, is there something else you want changed before release?
Well, anyhow, this is how I've perceived recent events here, events I find somewhat confusing.
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