Suggestions and Requests

[Leoreth]

Well, certainly Polynesians did not impact the rest of the world the way China or India did. And for European explorers they were not compelling opponents. So all is good. This mod is successful in depicting it. On the other hand it is not very cool to see Australian and Oceanian population represented by tribal villages only. I always enable them and Harappa when I play 3000 BC starts and it is so good that people can easily include and exclude optional civs. That way we don't have to argue with each other about the merits of our favorite minor civs. In my humble option Tibet deserves to be swapped with Polynesia it terms of being included/excluded by default, but why spend energy on this. Civ4 has taught me to pick my fights -- I have enough on my wish list already. My real wish is for Leoreth to somehow nerf inflation for 3000 BC start. It feels so unfair when the same civ is "taxed" at different rate in different starting scenarios.

What I will do instead is "backdate" everyone's starting year in the later scenarios.

 

[ales_]

What do you mean by "backdate"?

 

[Leoreth]

Inflation kicks in after a civ spawns, for China this is 3000 BC in the 3000 BC scenario currently but 600 AD in the 600 AD. I'll change things so that it'll be calculated from 3000 BC (the actual start date) for all scenarios.

 

[alexey795]

Do ancient nations doomed to have cosmic inflation?
why the inflation is necessary in the game?
does player have any tools to slow down the inflation or reduce the damage to the economy?

 

[cmakk1012]

Do ancient nations doomed to have cosmic inflation?
why the inflation is necessary in the game?
does player have any tools to slow down the inflation or reduce the damage to the economy?

Hah, just imagine if there was an EU3–style “modernization” where you had to fight off rebels to lower inflation...

 

[Tigranes]

Do ancient nations doomed to have cosmic inflation?
why the inflation is necessary in the game?
does player have any tools to slow down the inflation or reduce the damage to the economy?

It is my understanding: inflation was introduced by the developers of civ4 to balance late game growth and have an easy way to scale the game for different difficulties. It is easy to give human player hard time and AI easy time with one modifier, that's why developers came up with this idea.

Inflation %=(Game Turn-Offset) x Difficulty Factor

Empire growth in DoC is less linear than in vanila BTS, and there are tons of different individual modifiers for each civ, therefore I am not sure how organic is it to use this vanila one-size-fits-all mechanic for our highly modified game.

 

[Leoreth]

Yes, with chipotle you can use Alt+Z to cycle through civs.

 

[merijn_v1]

please excuse my..well..ignorance^^..but what is chipotle? i tried to find it here, but i don't get it.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/cheat-code-help-with-the-world-builder.134287/

 

[Tigranes]

AI Roman Legions need somehow learn their priorities: my Atlas Elephants were literally besieging Rome from all sides with 2 Archers left in it and nearby Roman Legionnaire was stoically building Roman Road on that 1NE Iron. Never attacked me, never regrouped walking inside Rome to protect it.

 

[Leoreth]

Yeah, seems like the road building AI should only kick in if no war is going on.

 

[Tigranes]

Current mechanics encourages human Phoenixian player to do a simple exploit: delay founding your capital in Phoenicia on turn one, sail to Carthage, get free Palace and ready to go Workers there and then settle your Core in the Middle East. All kind of weird things will be possible for "Phoenixian People", like walking into Indy Jerusalem as if you have an open borders with them. You can disregard other national borders too as long as you have no city on the map. For many civs this exploit is not possible/no beneficial -- because most civs flip something on the turn 3. So I recommend to check for human cities on turn 3 and if none found -- You are defeated!

 

[Fresol]

This exploit suits Egypt the best. You can send your starting militia to Babylonia to harass them. This way you're guaranteed the great wonders.

 

[Tigranes]

I think that is really overpowered, especially if you don't play for the UHV. It basically means free food on every land tile.

I do like the idea of sacrificing slaves to build the temple.

It probably needs more constraints, like road + cottage improvement + core.

I don't think this UP will make any difference. It's like what, three removed rainforests? Also worse than the Congolese UP.

What about food bonus for each city in BFC? Is it technically viable?

After listening to brilliant and famous Guns, Germs and Steel audiobook by Jared Diamond (did his parent name him Jared because of the North AMerican Jewelry Chain?) I kept thinking about Mayans and our discussion here. According to GGS -- Writing was independently invented only in 3 places: Sumeria, Southern Mexico/Mayaland and possibly China. Even Egyptian most likely came up with their unique system through idea diffusion, having trade contacts with ANcient Mesopotamia. Mesoamerican achievement is pretty striking given the fact that compared to Eurasia American food production was in much more disadvantaged state, with dog being the only domesticated mammal (by the way we should really erase that lonely Sheep in Andes in 3000 BC map!). Mayan UP needs to be something that allows them to succeed against all odds, if played smart. It cannot be too strong or too weak -- just right.

I suggest the Power of Food Production: cottage improvement yields 1 food for every one commerce it would generate as it matures. Meaning upon construction Cottage will yield 1 food and 1 commerce, Village will deliver to the principle city 3 foods and 3 extra comerces, and so on. Very realistic, cool, and not terribly overpowered, and allows for interesting historical strategies. Like instead of farming the plains 1W off Mayan Corn it is better to build a Cottage there. As time goes it will yield more and more food and commerce. Those Jungles cottages never grow right now, because you always need food and prefer to work water tiles instead. But now you can invest in growth of your Jungle towns and see your capital profiting from it both ways. According to GSS rising food production allows to support multiple specialists, scribes, bureaucracy which contributes to advancement of food producing societies compared to hunter-gatherers.

Obviously current Mayan UP should be kept as default Mayan modifier to have chance against Europeans, who, like POrtuguese and Dutch already spawn with ready to go (to ocean) techs...

 

[need my speed]

AI Roman Legions need somehow learn their priorities: my Atlas Elephants were literally besieging Rome from all sides with 2 Archers left in it and nearby Roman Legionnaire was stoically building Roman Road on that 1NE Iron. Never attacked me, never regrouped walking inside Rome to protect it.

That's simply Fabian strategy applied to Civilization IV.

 

[Tigranes]

I suggest the Power of Food Production: cottage improvement yields 1 food for every one commerce it would generate as it matures.

I am surprised nobody commented on this so far. And also -- if people are saying that Mayan UP means like having no UP at all -- what about other tech bonus based UPs? Like Japanese and CHinese. At least Japanese UP shows "Modernization" in tooltip help, while playing CHina I don't see any "Nobody discovered this tech" tooltip in my science advisor, so I can't even see or feel my UP at all. And for a country like China current UP is even more unexciting than Maya's.

Current gameplay discourages building many cities for Chinese, because research rates go down and one cannot do anything. But look at these maps:

Spoiler World Population Maps :

You can see that China always looks pretty brownish. Chinese people were remarkably low maintenance people, working hard while eating little and running effective administration early. They UP should simply halve all the maintenance, unhappiness and unhealthiness compared to other civs. In theory, CHina is the only DoC civ that can experience 5000 years of civilization.

 

[Caesar Augustus]

I am surprised nobody commented on this so far. And also -- if people are saying that Mayan UP means like having no UP at all -- what about other tech bonus based UPs? Like Japanese and CHinese. At least Japanese UP shows "Modernization" in tooltip help, while playing CHina I don't see any "Nobody discovered this tech" tooltip in my science advisor, so I can't even see or feel my UP at all. And for a country like China current UP is even more unexciting than Maya's.

Current gameplay discourages building many cities for Chinese, because research rates go down and one cannot do anything. But look at these maps:

Spoiler World Population Maps :

You can see that China always looks pretty brownish. Chinese people were remarkably low maintenance people, working hard while eating little and running effective administration early. They UP should simply halve all the maintenance, unhappiness and unhealthiness compared to other civs. In theory, CHina is the only DoC civ that can experience 5000 years of civilization.

I think Maya is especially noticeable because it doesn't have a particular gameplay response. Like the Chinese one at least encourages making certain decisions (going HARD into research from the very start to get your lead, researching in particular directions that other AIs might avoid) in order to get the most use out of it. With the Maya it's just like, MAYBE I delay moving into the next age but honestly your tech needs are so specific by that point that even that doesn't come much into play... and would still be the case if they just had a good bonus in that particular age without calling it their UP. All of those should probably be looked at but Maya is just the most egregious.

I think 1 extra food from cottages would be pretty cool even if it didn't improve as the cottage upgraded. Or maybe just went up by 1 with some later tech or just when it fully upgraded into a town?

Somewhat unrelated but the OP you quoted mentioned the sheep in the Andes; I believe those are meant to represent llamas and alpacas which serve a pretty similar economic role as sheep/goats as a source of wool, milk, and as a lighter pack animal.

 

[Tigranes]

Somewhat unrelated but the OP you quoted mentioned the sheep in the Andes; I believe those are meant to represent llamas and alpacas which serve a pretty similar economic role as sheep/goats as a source of wool, milk, and as a lighter pack animal.

Oh, I did not realize that! Then it is pretty cool and maybe they need 1 more in that region?

 

[Caesar Augustus]

Oh, I did not realize that! Then it is pretty cool and maybe they need 1 more in that region?

Ehhh maybe when the map gets bigger? Even then I'm not sure you want the Incas to have enough that they can export them. To this day llamas and alpacas are still mostly localized to the Andes region. Though oddly enough growing up in Ohio there were 2 llama farms just down the road from my house, and a few other people owned 1 or 2. But now I've wandered WAY off topic haven't I?

 

[hnrysml]

We have so many alpaca farms in australia and many flocks of sheep have one or two alpacas which are aggressive and protect the flock

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Random thought: The national/cultural makeup of a city could have some additional effects besides unhappiness, revolts and stablity based on your civics.
A multi-ethnic empire like e.g. Habsburg-Austria or the Ottomans could maybe even derive some sort of benefit from having many different cultures in a city, similar to how the Ottoman UP allows drafting units in cities with a non state religion. Perhaps extra commerce or trade could work, similar to what has been suggested often times regarding minor religions and Judaism. A totalitarian nation state meanwhile could gain some tangible benefit from cultural unity, like decreased maintenance.
Similar to religious civics it might make sense to have a civic category about how your civ deals with cultural/ethnic differences.