Stories

[Anastase Alex]

The inclusion of stories, now that I have played a few games with them, seems to me very interesting in the early game but cappers off around the end of the classical era, early mediaval. Getting a few more tiles of land or a worker in the lategame is really dissapointing, and a +3 science on a riverside farm is not that amazing either.

I guess there might be plans to evolve this, by adding stories dependent on the era and/or previous choices, and depending on your neighboors, to promote a bit more interaction.

Also the cultural bonuses of some rewards (like +5 culture on a mountain spot for example) are not taken into account when calculating tourism from terrain in the mod.

 

[Crimson13]

I've noticed that compared to GEM I've hardly gotten any to show up. All the way up to the Renaissance Era and 3 cities 3 have shown up, it was quite a bit more in GEM.

It's disappointing really, I considered the popups to be a really fun feature but I've hardly been getting them.

 

[Anastase Alex]

They now turn up about once every 33 turns, in average. I do not mind that personally as much as the fact that they do not scale up: latter on in the game it is very easy to have a 150 gold reserve when nearing the crucial turns (27 to 39, 60 to 72 are the difficult ones), and the rewards I get are really not that impressive by then.

Knowing when to have money, by the way, is also a problem: I pretty much know when I need to have money storred and it makes it less of a surprise element and more of a planned thing.

 

[Ahriman]

This is part of what I don't like about them: rather than spending my goal on my development priorities, I have strong incentives to save gold in order to get a bonus - but whatever that bonus is is determined largely by the random story.

My larger objections are: 1) that the stories fail for me on a flavor basis because most of the stories feel too "small": I'm supposed to be the monarch/guiding spirit of an entire civilization, and I'm getting events about how to deal with a particular mining accident or now. These are not the kinds of decisions on which the fate of empires are mid.
2) That particularly in the early game the effects of the stories are too large. 2 military units for 150 gold is a huge saving (particularly once beyond classical era).
3) The stories add extra resources which are unnecessary, and end up messing up economy balance.

But I know other people like them so its fine for them to stay in as long as they can easily be turned off.

 

[Delekhan]

I like the stories, but I wish the useless scout story would stop appearing so often. I had one game where it showed up 3 times in a row, and another where the first 2 stories were the scout story.

My favorite stories are the ones that affect a tile improvement.

 

[zeemeerman2]

I do like the concept of these stories, though I think that stories don't always need to cost gold.
Now it's like:
-Gold, +Science
-Gold, +Happiness
+Gold

Why not make it:
-Happiness, +Science
+Happiness, -Science
+Gold

Or:
-Happiness, +Science
-Happiness, +Production
+Gold

If the cost is not always gold, I think it could make some very meaningful choices.

Then if there is a spying wonder, like the modern NSA, that increases the amount of stories you gain, that would be so cool!

 

[mystikx21]

I like the idea of giving the stories other costs besides gold, or more explicit trade-offs. Faith has been previously discussed as a method of "payment". Diplomatic influence with CS is another. Any yield should be useful for it, so science or even food might be worthwhile.

This would also reduce the psychological desire to have more gold on hand to do random things on top of the usual things we do with gold (buy buildings and armies) as you could get a random event that uses some other yield or converts per turn yields.

I seriously doubt modern espionage results in major societal advantages to creativity that that's even worth considering that kind of effect. Collaboration is typically more productive for a society than thievery. Law and order has advantages precisely because it does not permit people to go around taking stuff and information at whim, including governments. Civ's historical use of the Internet to be a tech-related effect is much closer to this idea than the NSA's abuse of the internet.

A more interesting way to title that effect might be an open source project as a result or some set of "intellectual property rights reforms" doing something scientific as a later game event, or in some related fashion increasing story frequency as suggested.

If the frequency goes up though, the potency should stay low.

 

[Crimson13]

I wouldn't be against having them lowered if it meant they occurred more, but they should still matter. Maybe drop a point or 2 for tile based decisions, I don't know honestly I only got 3 of them and 2 were about City States I think.

 

[Crimson13]

Is there a way to increase them by going through the files? I will admit that I have no idea on how to code but if it's a really simple number change or something I imagine that I could modify that.

...Hopefully.

 

[ExpiredReign]

Open CES_Stories.xml have a look at the top few lines.

Where it says <TriggerRatePercent> adjust the figures as you wish.

Bigger should be more often. I think.

 

[Crimson13]

You're right, that did the trick. All the numbers were at 4, so I set them to 10 just to see if higher number were right. And yep, I was getting them from 16 (I think.) to 6 turns.

There was a point (The 6 turn one.) where I was like 'Seriously?'. It didn't help that kept on getting a bunch of the same ones; the duplicate scouts/scout to archer and the scout stories. I was swimming in Scouts and Culture, haha.

 

[Zai]

I like them a lot. I'm not sure they need the gold cost though, it feels sort of arbitrary, especially with the free option sometimes being the best at the moment.

Also the building happiness rewards seem to be bugged, tried them a few times and didn't get any happiness from them, local or otherwise.

 

[stackpointer]

The happiness stories are currently bugged. More work on the YieldLibrary needs to be done.