Some observations/issues and questions

[Thunderbrd]

1) Some of my neighbours Assassins have started come into my land and naturally I have a hard time spotting them (as should be). However, the Assassins are pillaging my improvements, should they really be able to do that? I thought that was for bandit riders and such?

Criminals can pillage improvements. Normally Strike Teams, such as Ambushers, cannot. Assassins are a power-combo point for both Criminals and Strike Teams as they are a crossover unit that is the best of both.

Much as Cutthroats are a crossover unit of both Criminal and Ruffian and are generally the best of both there as well.

These crossover points are designed to present uniqueness of challenges throughout differing ages.

2) Tourism seems to be broken, although both me and my friend have cities that should get tourism levels and have researched Classical lifestyle we do not get the autobuildings, am I missing something about Tourism?

@JosEPh_II: Any clues as to why this might be?

3) The only way to produce flour seems to be the Quern, and that one requires Stone. I find it hard to believe (although I'm history expert in any sense) that quality Stone would be the only way to produce Flour? Shouldn't it at least be possible having Prime timber as well (I picture some form of hollowed log with a bottom being used to "thump" Grain into Flour for example?)

I agree that it's a little unusually difficult to get Flour.

@Hydro or DH: You guys usually think these kinds of prerequisite stuff out pretty well. Is there a good way to address this in your opinion?

 

[Hydromancerx]

@Hydro or DH: You guys usually think these kinds of prerequisite stuff out pretty well. Is there a good way to address this in your opinion?

That's hard to say. When requirements are "watered down" in this way it makes them so easy to get that you wonder why they even had requirements in the first place,

 

[JosEPh_II]

@JosEPh_II: Any clues as to why this might be?

What auto tourism buildings do you get from Classical Lifestyle? That's news to me.
EDIT: Classical Lifestyle is when you can Start building tourism points for the Tourism Levels to kick in. The level of points needed per level (there are 10) is defined in the CIV4PropertyInfos.xml

I know there are buildings and wonders that do give tourism. But Tourism does not start until Classical lifestyle is researched. So No you don't get the benefits immediately from researching Class Life. That is when they can start building up to reach the levels. And the 1st level requires 10 points. Which should not take long. In fact the 1st 5 levels are all too easy and to quick to achieve.

@T-brd,
Very Important Point to remember, B.I.B is playing Stock v37. So there has been too much change to give him any answer but this imhpo: Update to latest SVN, Period.

And Tourism has only just recently had any adjustments that I'm aware of. And the adjustments I did was the amount of Crime given per turn for each level. Nothing more nothing less.

Quite frankly and I'm not trying to be rude B.I.B, but all your observations are Ood (out of date). The .DLL and Assets have all changed since the Stock release of v37. This has been pointed out before I believe too. But your choice has been to not to update. Your decision completely I understand.

Plus when B.I.B updated to v37 stock from v36 we do not know if he cleared his cache? If not then his game is "tainted" anyway. Just surprised it has not CTD'd yet if the cache was not cleared.

So No I have No clues.

 

[Thunderbrd]

That's hard to say. When requirements are "watered down" in this way it makes them so easy to get that you wonder why they even had requirements in the first place,

Yeah but bread? Bread, or flour rather, should be pretty easy to get shouldn't it? At least if you have a grain that can give it. Stone is already a huge demand for so much in this era and our Stone resource should be considered high quality stone for construction, like large sandstone slabs and such. But the kind of stone it would take to grind flour would be something you could find literally anywhere.

What auto tourism buildings do you get from Classical Lifestyle? That's news to me. I know there are buildings and wonders that do give tourism. But I don't know what level of points each level requires.

Very Important Point to remember, B.I.B is playing Stock v37. So there has been too much change to give him any answer but this imhpo: Update to latest SVN, Period.

And Tourism has only just recently had any adjustments that I'm aware of. And the adjustments I did was the amount of Crime per turn for each level. Nothing more nothing less.

Quite frankly and I'm not trying to be rude B.I.B, but all your observations are Ood (out of date). The .DLL and Assets have all changed since the Stock release of v37. This has been pointed out before I believe too. But your choice has to been not to update.

Plus when B.I.B updated to v37 stock from v36 did he clear his cache? If not then his game is "tainted" anyway. Just surprised it has not CTD'd yet if the cache was not cleared.

So No I have No clues.

Well... that's actually a host of clues. That things have changed since his fileset version may be it. Last I knew, all the tourism autobuilds opened up at Classical Lifestyle. I take it they are now spread across the tech tree a bit more effectively (as they should be) ?



Oh... another question for you... last I remembered, disease was programmed the same as crime where the population, based on game difficulty, defines the base amounts the city has to contend with. Last I looked it had been changed. Where are the base disease amounts coming from now?

 

[JosEPh_II]

Yeah see my edit. I'm a slooowwww typer.....

 

[Thunderbrd]

I made an edit too to ask you an additional question:

Oh... another question for you... last I remembered, disease was programmed the same as crime where the population, based on game difficulty, defines the base amounts the city has to contend with. Last I looked it had been changed. Where are the base disease amounts coming from now?

 

[JosEPh_II]

Oh... another question for you... last I remembered, disease was programmed the same as crime where the population, based on game difficulty, defines the base amounts the city has to contend with. Last I looked it had been changed. Where are the base disease amounts coming from now?

Don't know off the top of my head. SpecialBuildings and PropertyInfos are the 2 files I remember. But didn't DH do some changes this past fall? The only adjustments I can remember where back when I 1st started modding and a more recent adjustment to diffusion to adj tile % change. I stayed out of Disease after that because that was DH's baby.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Ok... cool. I'll have to eventually do some personal research then unless DH wanders through and clarifies.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Yeah but bread? Bread, or flour rather, should be pretty easy to get shouldn't it? At least if you have a grain that can give it. Stone is already a huge demand for so much in this era and our Stone resource should be considered high quality stone for construction, like large sandstone slabs and such. But the kind of stone it would take to grind flour would be something you could find literally anywhere.

Stone does indeed mean high quality stone that is used in buildings. However that is exactly the type of stone you need to grind grain into flour otherwise you get stone grit in your bread which destroys your teeth.

If you remove the the requirement for stone then you should also remove the +1 health on bread for accuracy.

BTW These were Hydro's buildings not mine.

Don't know off the top of my head. SpecialBuildings and PropertyInfos are the 2 files I remember. But didn't DH do some changes this past fall? The only adjustments I can remember where back when I 1st started modding and a more recent adjustment to diffusion to adj tile % change. I stayed out of Disease after that because that was DH's baby.

I gave up on the health and disease stuff way back when I discovered that those files were not WoC enabled and did not get back to diseases after AIAndy fixed the file processing.

Disease was going to be my baby but Hydro introduced his system which was incompatible with what I intended so I left it as he had it.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Stone does indeed mean high quality stone that is used in buildings. However that is exactly the type of stone you need to grind grain into flour otherwise you get stone grit in your bread which destroys your teeth.

If you remove the the requirement for stone then you should also remove the +1 health on bread for accuracy.

BTW These were Hydro's buildings not mine.

Well, is there, as BIB suggests, not another way to potentially produce flour?

I gave up on the health and disease stuff way back when I discovered that those files were not WoC enabled and did not get back to diseases after AIAndy fixed the file processing.

Disease was going to be my baby but Hydro introduced his system which was incompatible with what I intended so I left it as he had it.

I'm pretty sure if you were to open up to a slightly deeper approach, there's nothing you'll find cannot be modeled accurately now.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Wooden pestles, as BIB suggested, were used to make a paste but not flour.

I suggested one solution. The other is as Hydro suggests just get rid of the buildings and resources because changing it will mean that it is everywhere and wont provide an incentive to trade, war or exploration as it does now.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I suggested one solution. The other is as Hydro suggests just get rid of the buildings and resources because changing it will mean that it is everywhere and wont provide an incentive to trade, war or exploration as it does now.

Are you suggesting that bread was hard to come by in the Ancient Era? I mean, I can see it being a LITTLE restrictive but it seems like a fairly simple staple. Let's put it this way, if someone was to end up on their own next to a wheat field, couldn't they create flour pretty much regardless of what other resources were on hand? I mean, the grain resources in vicinity alone makes it a little infrequent to obtain. Then requiring stone on top of that seems really too restrictive. At this stage of the game, many settings keep nations from being able to trade anyhow, and it ends up making a whole tech, more often than not, an empty achievement for the player. It's a little frustrating when you're lucky enough to have access to grain that you may still then be denied a path to flour as well. At least, that's how it feels when you know that if you were a survivalist on your own you could easily create flour if you could find some grain. I mean, didn't they used to just thresh the grain until they had flour if they couldn't grind it industrially?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Threshing is getting the grain off the stalks. It can involve hitting with wooden objects so I suspect that most wood is not hard enough to turn grain into flour.

If you are going to remove the requirement for stone then you may as well remove the quern building and flour resource and just have the bread making building require grains.

 

[B.I.B]

Woah, quite a discussion created by just thinking on top of my head. I did some reading and didn't really see any stone-free variant of making flour so I'm all good now with the requirement. Sorry for asking here before I did a quick lookup online first.

@JosEPh_II
Yeah, I know I'm using almost a stock v37 ... but I didn't think that made any of my observations irrelevant. If I run across a bug that haven't been spotted or seen since wouldn't you want to know?
As for the tourism there is an issue if you mean that the tourism points shouldn't start building until Classical Lifestyle, coz when entering Classical Lifestyle I had at least one city that had generated quite a lot of tourism property (200+) thanks to wonders before reaching that tech. If you now mean that my tourism property was actually 0 due to me not having reached Classical Lifestyle then either you are wrong (simple misunderstanding due to me not being a native english speaker perhaps) or something is off in the game since my city screen has been showing and tallying Tourism since the beginning of the game (except for the cases where tourism is 0 and no change has occured last turn)

As for my observations or questions/issues being useless due to me not running the latest SVN, if thats how y'all freel then please let me know and I'll spare you from them (I do not want to spam you guys with irrelevant questions or issues, I want you to be able to focus on making the best game ever)

 

[JosEPh_II]

@JosEPh_II
Yeah, I know I'm using almost a stock v37 ... but I didn't think that made any of my observations irrelevant. If I run across a bug that haven't been spotted or seen since wouldn't you want to know?
As for the tourism there is an issue if you mean that the tourism points shouldn't start building until Classical Lifestyle, coz when entering Classical Lifestyle I had at least one city that had generated quite a lot of tourism property (200+) thanks to wonders before reaching that tech. If you now mean that my tourism property was actually 0 due to me not having reached Classical Lifestyle then either you are wrong (simple misunderstanding due to me not being a native english speaker perhaps) or something is off in the game since my city screen has been showing and tallying Tourism since the beginning of the game (except for the cases where tourism is 0 and no change has occured last turn)

All I can go off of is the xml files that pertain to Tourism. And the Prerequisite Tech for Tourism is Classical Lifestyle. That is when the levels are supposed to start tallying for each level of Tourism to be acquired, All this according to the xml files. But as to the Property Tourism then T-brd Needs to answer this because I did not build it. Iirc he did. If buildings and wonders give tourism before then then (and I agree that I've seen this too) then as you say something is off. But it's been Off for as long as Tourism has been part of the Mod. Perhaps it's just that this is a display issue. Or those point gained before Classical Lifestyle (which is a relatively New tech in terms of Mod life) while displayed are meaningless. As I do Not code I can not answer this part of the perceived problem.

If my reminding T-brd that you Are using v37 stock upsets you I'm not sure what to tell you. I have asked you to Update but you have specifically stated you do not want to. This has to be factored into trying to find an answer none the less. Therefore what you perceive as a bug may or may not be a "bug" after all or in the same sense that you may think it is. Or not one now in terms of the .dll we are working with at this time. Jumping back to older .dlls is a time consuming task, or so T-brd tells us as he is the one that is dealing with it (ie has the skill set to do so).

And I prefaced my statements to you about Not trying to be rude but trying to get more details

Quite frankly and I'm not trying to be rude B.I.B, but all your observations are Ood (out of date). The .DLL and Assets have all changed since the Stock release of v37. This has been pointed out before I believe too. But your choice has been to not to update. Your decision completely I understand.

Now if you had/have Updated and you still have this problem then it becomes easier to track down. Just ask T-brd about that.

Tell you what I'll just stay out of the conversation from now on over your observations. That way you won't get upset with me. But please remember to give T-brd and whomever else responds to your post the details ie svn version your game is being started from and it's current svn state. All of which can be found by hovering your mouse pointer over your empires Flag next to the red End of turn Button.

I'll leave you alone now.

 

[Shoobs]

Early Wonders:
These have tourism values but do not give any tourism past the Prehistoric Age. Is it possible to get them to instead lose their main bonuses and atleast let them keep their tourism values so they can be useful past Prehistoric?

Re: Stone / Flour

Maybe include Marble into the ability to properly grind flour? Maybe Silver too, due to its density?

 

[Thunderbrd]

Threshing is getting the grain off the stalks. It can involve hitting with wooden objects so I suspect that most wood is not hard enough to turn grain into flour.

If you are going to remove the requirement for stone then you may as well remove the quern building and flour resource and just have the bread making building require grains.

I'd have to do some further personal research on the subject. It seems to me that even just some pestles and mortars could do the job if needbe, but we'd have to model in the fact that it would take a hell of a lot more of the workforce effort if that's how it's being derived. Maybe a 'hand grinding hut' that gets replaced by the Quern and provides the flour if grain is present, BUT does so at the cost of employing a full citizen.

For now, you've made a surprisingly good case for requiring stone... it just seems like bread would've been so much more common back then.

 

[Shoobs]

I'd have to do some further personal research on the subject. It seems to me that even just some pestles and mortars could do the job if needbe, but we'd have to model in the fact that it would take a hell of a lot more of the workforce effort if that's how it's being derived. May a 'hand grinding hut' that gets replaced by the Quern and provides the flour if grain is present, BUT does so at the cost of employing a full citizen.

For now, you've made a surprisingly good case for requiring stone... it just seems like bread would've been so much more common back then.

I'm surprised at the focus on getting querns in... in almost all of my games I hardly ever see the primary "bread" resources anywhere near me, and if they do, there's no stone for many tiles.

In response to the post below me:
I think Joe is annoyed that BIB is mucking up the waters by using a version that is not the most recent and then complaining about it, repeatedly, similar to me and version 36 and his jabbing at me to update to the svn.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Tell you what I'll just stay out of the conversation from now on over your observations. That way you won't get upset with me. But please remember to give T-brd and whomever else responds to your post the details ie svn version your game is being started from and it's current svn state. All of which can be found by hovering your mouse pointer over your empires Flag next to the red End of turn Button.

I don't know what you're reacting to here but I'd like to just say... I didn't see anything snide or sarcastic or sour in his response. He never said anything about being upset with you that I read.

To clarify, too, I didn't design Tourism. I commented on it during design and my comments were considered into the picture. But I believe it was Hydro who sorted out tourism design and its effects.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I commented on Tourism elsewhere. The decision to move them to Classical Lifestyle was made so we could get a version out the door. It was a quick fix to cities collapsing due to Tourism induced Crime in the Prehistoric Era.

Tourism needs to have a thorough review. As to when it starts I would suggest Trade is the most appropriate as that is when movement between cities and nations starts to be formalised.