sman1975
Emperor
There will be a compatibility script for the main WAW mod. It gets a little tricky, however, due to the possibility of game-breaking tech costs when adding new technologies. The way the game engine calculates final tech costs has many things in the equation. If not careful, it's possible to cause an overflow in the variable holding the cost for a specific (late game) tech. When this happens, the game engine - instead of forcing the cost to be the highest (positive) cost that variable can hold, allows the number to overflow, meaning it becomes a negative number, which the game then interprets as 1 beaker. Meaning all of those late game, complicated techs can be researched in 1 turn. It's something I'll have to test a few games with both major mods on Marathon on Huge Maps with 22 civs, etc. Ultimately, with so many new techs in the game, I may have to lower the cost of all of them if both AWAW and WAW are enabled. Problem for another day...
There have been several changes to that original spreadsheet as I've added the improvements into the game. But on the point of gold maintenance, the intent is to have those specific improvements to cost X gold per turn in maintenance, but there are places where you can place them that will also generate gold, thereby offsetting their cost. Sometimes, adding a road to the tile will generate enough gold to offset the maintenance. This means, with proper placement, the improvement is revenue-neutral, with improper placement, it costs you money. I actually like this criterion for all improvements, but that's a discussion for another day. And in the final version, Castrum doesn't generate any gold.
As far as I know, the AI only uses Yields (Food, Gold, Culture, Science, Production, Faith) when determining if and what it wants to build, and doesn't consider other factors like improvement flavors or maintenance costs.
If AI decides it's time for city X to build an improvement, then it looks at what yield it most needs. It looks around the tiles of city X, and finds the tile that can generate the most of that Yield based on all the improvements that are legal for that area. It really doesn't consider any other factor. I've seen conflicting posts about Improvement Flavors (an available, but empty database), but at best those are a "tie-breaker" if the AI decides to build an improvement, and two candidates have the same Yields. Most modded improvements I've researched don't bother to even use Improvement Flavors.
This is the main reason some defensive structures will have a small yield, usually something like Faith. From what I've seen in the past, if a new improvement doesn't have any yields, the AI will never, ever build it. It's one of the things I'll be looking at during testing - what improvements does AI build, what does it ignore. Those improvements it ignores will need to be addressed somehow, as they represent a human player advantage. From my experience in adding improvements in the past, it's complicated to get it right: the AI either ignores the new improvement or spams it.
It's something I'll be watching closely in test. It's possible many of these improvements could drop out, or be "magically" added to AI Civs' cities via LUA in-game.
Yields are impossible to (directly) change in game. Those database values are loaded/cached when you press the NEXT button in the MODS menu and cannot be changed during the game. It's possible to do things in-game via LUA scripting, but not adjusting database values that the AI might understand. It would be easier (and is my fail-safe plan) to use LUA to randomly, periodically, add improvements to AI cities, so they get at least some benefits of the new improvements.
I'll know more after a few test games. Appreciate the comments/suggestions!
There have been several changes to that original spreadsheet as I've added the improvements into the game. But on the point of gold maintenance, the intent is to have those specific improvements to cost X gold per turn in maintenance, but there are places where you can place them that will also generate gold, thereby offsetting their cost. Sometimes, adding a road to the tile will generate enough gold to offset the maintenance. This means, with proper placement, the improvement is revenue-neutral, with improper placement, it costs you money. I actually like this criterion for all improvements, but that's a discussion for another day. And in the final version, Castrum doesn't generate any gold.
As far as I know, the AI only uses Yields (Food, Gold, Culture, Science, Production, Faith) when determining if and what it wants to build, and doesn't consider other factors like improvement flavors or maintenance costs.
If AI decides it's time for city X to build an improvement, then it looks at what yield it most needs. It looks around the tiles of city X, and finds the tile that can generate the most of that Yield based on all the improvements that are legal for that area. It really doesn't consider any other factor. I've seen conflicting posts about Improvement Flavors (an available, but empty database), but at best those are a "tie-breaker" if the AI decides to build an improvement, and two candidates have the same Yields. Most modded improvements I've researched don't bother to even use Improvement Flavors.
This is the main reason some defensive structures will have a small yield, usually something like Faith. From what I've seen in the past, if a new improvement doesn't have any yields, the AI will never, ever build it. It's one of the things I'll be looking at during testing - what improvements does AI build, what does it ignore. Those improvements it ignores will need to be addressed somehow, as they represent a human player advantage. From my experience in adding improvements in the past, it's complicated to get it right: the AI either ignores the new improvement or spams it.
It's something I'll be watching closely in test. It's possible many of these improvements could drop out, or be "magically" added to AI Civs' cities via LUA in-game.
Yields are impossible to (directly) change in game. Those database values are loaded/cached when you press the NEXT button in the MODS menu and cannot be changed during the game. It's possible to do things in-game via LUA scripting, but not adjusting database values that the AI might understand. It would be easier (and is my fail-safe plan) to use LUA to randomly, periodically, add improvements to AI cities, so they get at least some benefits of the new improvements.
I'll know more after a few test games. Appreciate the comments/suggestions!
for Civ, at least for me.
