Suggestions and bug reports.

[Ameranth]

That fixed it, thank you.
The iCorporationMaintenancePercent values in 7.12a decreased with map size, while in 7.0 they were increasing. I changed them back to the 7.0 values, which made Fertility 0.3 and 0.12 again.


I'd been looking in GameSpeedInfo

 

[pie_at]

ah ok, and what settings do you thing fit best? the one in 7.0 or new ones?

DUEL 50 -> HUGE 200 ?

 

[Ameranth]

I think that cults should be a useful starting boost for new cities, but only a minor gain for large developed ones. At most, the equivalent of 1 developed space per cult.
With 3-4 cults in a city that's a huge gain for a pop 1 city trying to grow and build the core buildings, giving it the same output as a pop 4-5 city. For a pop 12 city, it helps but has less of an effect.

I don't know how the different settings in the XML affect eachother, but with the v7 settings on the Eurasia scenarios, the the maximum for each cult is:
Cosmogeny - 15 Res, 6 Cul
Cult of Cybele - 4.8 Food, 2.4 Com, 2.4 Cul
Cult of Dionysus - 6 Com, 6 Cul
Cult of Heroes - 4.8 Prod, 2.4 Cul
Cult of Indra - 2.4 Food, 2.4 Prod, 2.4 Cul
Cult of Isis - 15 Com, 15 Cul
Cult of Mithras - 6 Res, 2.4 Cul
Fertility Cult - 6 Food, 2.4 Cul
Hellenism - 12 Res, 6 Cul

I think those are mostly balanced. Food and Production are limited and they're the most important ones. Cosmogeny, Isis, and Hellenism can't be cultivated so the maximum values are rarely reached, though Isis may need a slight reduction to prevent it being overpowered in a larger empire. Maybe make Isis 12 Commerce and 8 Culture? Dionysus can easily get to 20 resources, so the Commerce is fine but I think the Culture should be half what it is.

 

[Ameranth]

In 7.12a I'm still seeing 40+ units in Barbarian cities by the time I'm producing Settlers, and the number of units keeps increasing over time.

 

[Ameranth]

7.12a (and previous versions)
The Wild Horses event (Pferde) is either getting the civ name wrong, or the location wrong. The popup will say that Horses have spread in a country but the resource will be placed far away from their territory.

 

[Ameranth]

7.12a

Just a display issue, gameplay isn't affected so I'd rate this bug low priority.

The picture on the left is the cost of loading goods in Rome, and is correct. The picture on the right is what is shown when setting up a trade route from a foreign city. Despite what's shown, when the wagon arrives in Rome the correct amount is paid. What I can't figure out is why it's showing some local goods as being doubled, and some network goods aren't.

 

[pie_at]

oh, that's strange. yes, thx, I have to check that.
I noticed another thing: the profit also shows wrong sums when loading goods from trade network... but it's also only a visible thing. I will still check that too.

 

[Ameranth]

7.12a
An odd one. I had a Deer resource in my territory spawning Bears and Wolves every turn until I built a Camp on it.

---
A very old bug going back many versions, or the civopedia is wrong.
According to the civopedia, it's up a 30% chance of building a Trade Road when trading goods. Even trading luxury resources in foreign capitals, building a Trade Road has always been a rare event for me, even though by the midgame I'll see many Trade Roads in the territory of other civs. Is this a player only bug? Is the chance actually much lower than shown in the civopedia?

---
Another trade related suggestion.
A Wagon can't charge resources if they're in another civs territory and that civ hasn't connected the resource, even though collecting it would be allowed in neutral territory. This presents the odd cases where a player could collect seeds for Oats in the wilderness but not if they're in a farm next to a city, simply because the owning civ hasn't discovered Water Storage, or where both civs have discovered the resource but it can't be collected because there isn't an improvement on it yet. Allow collecting resources owned by another civ even if unconnected or undiscovered, by sending a Wagon to the space the resource is on.

---
Regarding my earlier suggestion to allow trading of network goods:

Maybe make it only goods that are produced by the civ, and not temporary ones gained from trades? Currently if I trade a rare good to a civ, it's immediately available to purchase from them. Even at double cost, it could be worthwhile buying your own rare good back just to build trade roads. It also continually breaks automated trade routes if the good you planned to collect doesn't exist when you go to pick it up again.

On the other hand, the slow spread of temporary goods through many civs acts just like the Silk Road so it's historically accurate. The choice is realism vs gameplay, and I'm fine with either one.

 

[pie_at]

Great thx! it's noted.

About the trade ressources only from CIV owned: good idea... yes, this could be an exploit. I try to change that to CIV owned goods. I think, this is better for gameplay.

 

[Cat Whisperer]

I am also having the problem that Ameranth described with barbarian cities mass producing warriors that never leave the city. I am playing on the large Europe 26 civilization map and barbarian cities have 10 to 20 or more warriors garrisoning them by the time you are able to build basket archers. You can move a hunter right next to the city, the barbarians don't leave or attack out of the cities. I have not seen any barbarians on the map outside of cities except animals. In previous versions, the barbarians warriors starting moving around the map rather earlier on and would start swarming your starting city and terrain improvements (which was pretty awesome).

 

[Ameranth]

12a

In the scenarios all civs are set to Noble difficulty, but there's a few exceptions. I don't know if this was intentional, but it seemed out of place so here's a list of all the non-Noble handicaps in the 12a scenarios, not including the several dozen Settler difficulties which I'm assuming are all Barbarians.

Eurasia XXL 35 - Macedonia - Prince
Iberian Conquest - Iberia - Prince
SecondPunicWar-218BC - Rome - Monarch

---
Another one for 12a, but this time it's just an observation and hopefully not a bug...

In all prior versions the AI generally wouldn't start wars until it was low on room to expand or had cities placed near eachother. In two starts on 12a every country I'm in contact with is in a perpetual war with at least one nearby country, all started when they had just 1-3 cities and plenty of room left to expand. In several cases they weren't even neighbours. Did anything change with the AI since 11b, or is this just the diplomacy rng being weird? Building huge armies of weak units that have little hope of capturing a city has crippled the already abysmal job the AI does of developing its economy.

Yeah, the Civ4 AI has issues.

---
While I'm thinking of the AI, would it be a good idea to place critical techs in bottlenecks, forcing the AI to take them in order to advance so there's no possibility of an essential unit/upgrade being skipped?
Currently it's possible to get to the Bronze Age and beyond without ever being able to produce Settlers or even getting the Palace.
Make Leadership a prerequisite for Priesthood and Metallurgy. (Metallurgy currently needs Pottery but this is superfluous since both the techs that lead to it require Pottery anyway.)
Make Internal Colonization a prerequisite for Astronomy.

Start all civs with a build item that gives 10-15% Research/Gold/Culture, depending on how the rounding works. I'm naming it Idle for now, but that's a terrible name and I'm sure someone else could do better.
Making it 20% Gold/Culture would also work.
Currently the AI is forced to overbuild Warriors if they go down the Fishing/Husbandry/Agriculture paths like they tend to do, and the maintenance costs from these excess units is one way they cripple their economy in the early game.
Having an early Gold/Culture build would also alleviate some of the issues with unit costs and not being able to connect resources or cities together until Fertility Rites, which is a major block in the early game.

If you don't want early Culture, perhaps add the ability to build Trails (cost 0-1 Gold, half the build time of a Camp) as a starting improvement, so that cities can be connected before Spoked Wheels?
Alternately, automatically build Trails to any cities within 5 spaces of a newly placed city on the same continent, the same way Trails are automatically placed from an improvement to the nearest city. This would connect cities without the AI wasting time building Trails in every single space they can reach, but it may make things too easy.
There would also need to be a way to connect resources just outside the city radius, since often the resources needed to expand Culture can't be connected until after Culture expands the city. Maybe a Trading Post type improvement that gives no bonuses but collects the resource, and could only be built on a discovered resource within 2-3 spaces of your cities, with automatic Trail placement?

Is there any way to make the AI emphasize building Settlers more when there's empty space to expand and the economy could support another city?

Yeah, this was a lot. I started out posting about one issue and just started adding more as I thought of them.

 

[Ameranth]

I don't know the current state of natural disasters since I've played with that option off for a long time. What made me disable them was the too-frequent meteor event that could devastate an entire country early on with around 12 spaces turning to Burnt Forest, and staying that way permanently which damaged that civs economy. Realistically it should be just one space, since even major impacts like Tunguska affected an area smaller than a Civ4 map space. There should be also be a random event to turn Burnt Forest back to Forest, representing forests regenerating over time.

Storms at sea were balanced.

 

[Jaguar55]

Trading looks good, no major bugs so far. Also, not sure if its some of the latest patches, but in scenario Rise of Egypt i have that stuttering when enemy/barbarian attacks.

 

[Cat Whisperer]

I don't know the current state of natural disasters since I've played with that option off for a long time. What made me disable them was the too-frequent meteor event that could devastate an entire country early on with around 12 spaces turning to Burnt Forest, and staying that way permanently which damaged that civs economy. Realistically it should be just one space, since even major impacts like Tunguska affected an area smaller than a Civ4 map space. There should be also be a random event to turn Burnt Forest back to Forest, representing forests regenerating over time.

I play with the disasters on because I love finding orichalcum and obsidian, but I support making the disasters less disastrous and letting burnt forest grow back to forest. I suggest reducing the size of area affected by earthquakes, comet strikes, and volcanic eruptions.

 

[pie_at]

I am also having the problem that Ameranth described with barbarian cities mass producing warriors that never leave the city. I am playing on the large Europe 26 civilization map and barbarian cities have 10 to 20 or more warriors garrisoning them by the time you are able to build basket archers. You can move a hunter right next to the city, the barbarians don't leave or attack out of the cities. I have not seen any barbarians on the map outside of cities except animals. In previous versions, the barbarians warriors starting moving around the map rather earlier on and would start swarming your starting city and terrain improvements (which was pretty awesome).

Thx, I will try again, I hope this is not hidden in the BTS vanilla SDK version, because I am almost back to the roots...

12a

In the scenarios all civs are set to Noble difficulty, but there's a few exceptions. I don't know if this was intentional, but it seemed out of place so here's a list of all the non-Noble handicaps in the 12a scenarios, not including the several dozen Settler difficulties which I'm assuming are all Barbarians.

Eurasia XXL 35 - Macedonia - Prince
Iberian Conquest - Iberia - Prince
SecondPunicWar-218BC - Rome - Monarch

---
Another one for 12a, but this time it's just an observation and hopefully not a bug...

In all prior versions the AI generally wouldn't start wars until it was low on room to expand or had cities placed near eachother. In two starts on 12a every country I'm in contact with is in a perpetual war with at least one nearby country, all started when they had just 1-3 cities and plenty of room left to expand. In several cases they weren't even neighbours. Did anything change with the AI since 11b, or is this just the diplomacy rng being weird? Building huge armies of weak units that have little hope of capturing a city has crippled the already abysmal job the AI does of developing its economy.

Yeah, the Civ4 AI has issues.

---
While I'm thinking of the AI, would it be a good idea to place critical techs in bottlenecks, forcing the AI to take them in order to advance so there's no possibility of an essential unit/upgrade being skipped?
Currently it's possible to get to the Bronze Age and beyond without ever being able to produce Settlers or even getting the Palace.
Make Leadership a prerequisite for Priesthood and Metallurgy. (Metallurgy currently needs Pottery but this is superfluous since both the techs that lead to it require Pottery anyway.)
Make Internal Colonization a prerequisite for Astronomy.

Start all civs with a build item that gives 10-15% Research/Gold/Culture, depending on how the rounding works. I'm naming it Idle for now, but that's a terrible name and I'm sure someone else could do better.
Making it 20% Gold/Culture would also work.
Currently the AI is forced to overbuild Warriors if they go down the Fishing/Husbandry/Agriculture paths like they tend to do, and the maintenance costs from these excess units is one way they cripple their economy in the early game.
Having an early Gold/Culture build would also alleviate some of the issues with unit costs and not being able to connect resources or cities together until Fertility Rites, which is a major block in the early game.

If you don't want early Culture, perhaps add the ability to build Trails (cost 0-1 Gold, half the build time of a Camp) as a starting improvement, so that cities can be connected before Spoked Wheels?
Alternately, automatically build Trails to any cities within 5 spaces of a newly placed city on the same continent, the same way Trails are automatically placed from an improvement to the nearest city. This would connect cities without the AI wasting time building Trails in every single space they can reach, but it may make things too easy.
There would also need to be a way to connect resources just outside the city radius, since often the resources needed to expand Culture can't be connected until after Culture expands the city. Maybe a Trading Post type improvement that gives no bonuses but collects the resource, and could only be built on a discovered resource within 2-3 spaces of your cities, with automatic Trail placement?

Is there any way to make the AI emphasize building Settlers more when there's empty space to expand and the economy could support another city?

Yeah, this was a lot. I started out posting about one issue and just started adding more as I thought of them.

-) The AI gets their best techs by script until iron working. So leadership is one of the first. no worries. But I don't know why the AI switches to Research when it has enough units... I hope I'll find out why.

-) Trails: the AI gets the input to settle near coast or rivers. these are the main trails of human being until they built roads. This has to be so, it is historical accurate.

-) More settlers: they have this command in the sdk. settlers are first, then exploring, then military.

-) early money in times where money wasn't invented is a very bad idea. I am sorry, I can't remove the money symbols until coins get pressed...

I don't know the current state of natural disasters since I've played with that option off for a long time. What made me disable them was the too-frequent meteor event that could devastate an entire country early on with around 12 spaces turning to Burnt Forest, and staying that way permanently which damaged that civs economy. Realistically it should be just one space, since even major impacts like Tunguska affected an area smaller than a Civ4 map space. There should be also be a random event to turn Burnt Forest back to Forest, representing forests regenerating over time.

Storms at sea were balanced.

-) Burnt forests become forests again. You just have to wait. The chance is higher than forests plop on neighbor terrain.

-) For meteorits: I can decrease it and check the map size. For earthquakes too.

I play with the disasters on because I love finding orichalcum and obsidian, but I support making the disasters less disastrous and letting burnt forest grow back to forest. I suggest reducing the size of area affected by earthquakes, comet strikes, and volcanic eruptions.

-) vulcanic eruptions sometimes have global effects until solar eclipse for one year.
eg:
At the beginning of the year 536, a severe volcanic eruption in northern latitudes—in Iceland or North America—must have hurled large quantities of sulfur particles into the upper atmosphere, dramatically reducing solar radiation. Four years later, another volcano erupted in the tropics, causing a veritable temperature shock. Crop failures and famine ultimately paved the way for the plague.

Modern historians estimate that between 541 and 544 the population loss in the Mediterranean region was 25 percent.

 

[Ameranth]

-) The AI gets their best techs by script until iron working. So leadership is one of the first. no worries. But I don't know why the AI switches to Research when it has enough units... I hope I'll find out why.

That's smart. They're still way behind me on tech, almost a full age behind by the time I reach the Iron Age.
I always thought it was unit maintenance costs killing their research slider. Overbuilding units and then never deleting obsolete ones has been a problem with the base AI for 20 years. I don't think any mod has ever managed to fix that.
I have to enable tech trading just so I can gift them enough techs to mostly catch up, but that's been true in every mod I've played. Yes, I could just play with a handicap, but I hate when an AI uses different rules than the player.

I think the core issue is they never expand their territory or develop their cities fast enough in any mod, usually because they're spending all their production on military. In this mod I usually have 6 cities before the AI starts building Settlers.

 

[pie_at]

About the TECH for AI: I think, I can do something in the SDK for better tech costs for tech declining CIVs.... thx for the input.

AI units: this is an open issue to handle. with new settings and testing.... patch by patch.

 

[Ameranth]

About the TECH for AI: I think, I can do something in the SDK for better tech costs for tech declining CIVs.... thx for the input.

If you don't mind stealing from... er, I mean 'being inspired by' another mod...
Realism Invictus has a good catch up mechanic that gives a bonus to researching a tech for each civ you have open borders with that already has that tech. It's 40% for the first civ, and 20% for each additional one. This is highlighted in the tech screen by displaying techs in blue if you can research them at a discount.
This helps the AI keep tech parity until the end of the first age, though after that it falls increasingly behind since most of the AI are researching the same items at the same time and gaining no benefit other than through contact with the player, which just isn't enough.

Instead of open borders, I'd suggest making it based on just having contact with a civ. This would realistically represent the natural spread of knowledge.
While it would give an advantage to the more crowded Greek/eastern parts of the map which have more civs, historically this was where most advances occured.
This change would require civs to have more randomness in which techs they research, otherwise they're all researching the same ones at the same time and getting no benefit.
It might also require making the AI want to send Hunters on long distance exploring trips to make contact with more civs.

 

[Ameranth]

-) Trails: the AI gets the input to settle near coast or rivers. these are the main trails of human being until they built roads. This has to be so, it is historical accurate.

I understand, and a lot of the fun from playing this is because it's a historical mod. It's just that sometimes it's frustrating to have 2 cities with 1 space of neutral territory between them, and not be able to connect them. If I have trails in space A and space C, I want to put a trail in space B to connect them without waiting for Masonry or a Cult, especially when one of the cities can't even build a Tomb until it's connected. Caesar never had to work around this!

 

[Ameranth]

Yet another trade related suggestion:
When building the Silk Road, check if the city building it has any Desert within X spaces. If it doesn't, grant the civ 3 Trade Wagons instead of 3 Trade Caravans. It's a bit out of place for a European civ to get camel units, and they're also much less useful due to the Dense Forest restriction. On the XXL scenario, X=5 would mean that every African and Middle East civ except for Carthage would get camels. The distance would need to be adjusted based on map size instead of being a fixed value. Alternately, hard code which civs would get which units.