Suggestions and Requests

[Imperator Knoedel]

It is already implemented, albeit there are many conditions you need to meet and I think new civ becomes independent (decolonization) and not your vassal.

So basically:

Radio Yerevan was asked: "Is it correct that Grigori Grigorievich Grigoriev won a luxury car at the All-Union Championship in Moscow?"

Radio Yerevan answered: "In principle, yes. But first of all it was not Grigori Grigorievich Grigoriev, but Vassili Vassilievich Vassiliev; second, it was not at the All-Union Championship in Moscow, but at a Collective Farm Sports Festival in Smolensk; third, it was not a car, but a bicycle; and fourth he didn't win it, but rather it was stolen from him."

 

[Leoreth]

Are you really asking me to change the UHVs so they are easier on hardest difficulty?

 

[DanLT3]

Yes, atleast possible

 

[Leoreth]

Why not ... lower the difficulty?

 

[DanLT3]

Playing on monarch is generally no challenge. You easily get tech leader and dominate the world anyway you want. Even civs supposed to rely on catching up in tech can easily become tech leaders.

 

[Leoreth]

I'm confused, do you want a challenge or not?

 

[Enyavar]

Sure you can snatch a few first discoveries if you are lucky.

I'm preferably playing on Imperator difficulty myself, and have to agree with Dan: With 1/2 the tech rate as when you play normally, the goals become impossible to reach unless you have an advantage.

I'm getting the necessary advantage from civ switching in my games: start as an earlier civ, prebuild some cities and infrastructure that will help you when you switch.
That is gruesome groundwork though.

A more simple way is to manually adjust the tech modifiers in the world builder, to a level that challenges you but doesn't make you tech leader too easily. In some cases, I do that for my groundwork civs.

If you go that way, Dan, could you post your tech rate adjustments in a gameplay guide thread?
I have played on 1.17, Imperator with Greece and China, while adjusting the tech rate modifier from 120% to 80%.
While that seemed to make it be a bit too easy, it enabled my precursor-civ to reasonably compete with the surrounding civs in the ancient/medieval times. Maybe 90% would have still been okay. Later on, I switched to England and Tibet respectively, and played with the infrastructure that Greece/China prepared, while leaving the tech modifiers as they were for my new civs.

 

[Oblivionyx]

Perhaps "Most Serene Republic of (capital)" can be added as a dynamic name for Italy when running Republic? Might be a dumb suggestion since we already have Italian Maritime Republics which covers it better...

 

[DanLT3]

Sure I want a challenge. But this is not mere a challenge, its impossible.

As to open world builder and modify stuff. Well that way you can cheat and win any game. Not much fun there.

In general historical goal should be set so they can be accomplished. They should be a challenge on monarch and extremely hard on paragon, yet possible.

 

[Leoreth]

Then it seems the problem is more with the tech rate on paragon I would say? Is the 50% that was mentioned here accurate or hyperbole?

 

[Edmund Ironside]

If we're talking about UHV difficulty then Harappa might need toning down. Even on the easiest setting I couldn't get any of the goals. Now this is probably because I suck at this game, but I still normally manage to get 1 or 2 goals for most civs on the easiest setting!

 

[Enyavar]

"Half the tech rate" is not really a hyperbole.

I just checked with Babylon: Starting the 3000 BCE scenario, normal speed, these are the initial research durations for Mining, owning just one city and having the slider on 100% research:
Heir: 8 turns
Regent (standard difficulty for DoC): 10 turns
Monarch: 11 turns
Imperator: 13 turns
Paragon: 14 turns

It's just the first tech, and already 40% longer research duration. On higher difficulty, maintenance is higher, too, so the tech slider is going down even sooner.

Not a problem with Babylon (unless you want to reach their tech-based UHVs), but a severe problem with larger empires.
I experienced that recently with China (1.16 develop): You need to expand that civ, and fast, cover your resources with plantations for happiness, and then grow and whip your cities, churn out wonders, soldiers and temples. For all that, you need techs, but with the respective longer research times, you have quickly built all available buildings in your first cities... so, go for the building-techs? Build another dozen workers and pave every tile in your proto-empire with roads? Produce archers to immediately destroy them, so you don't have to pay unit maintenance? Definitely not build settlers, because more cities will bog you down even more. Well, now I'm talking strategy here, and on higher difficulty, you need to completely rethink that strategy.

And what Dan mentioned, is specifically the tech UHVs: While your tech rate goes down and your maintenance up, the AI has just the reverse going for them, allowing them higher teching sliders. Without exploiting (and yes, I'd call some of my civ switching exploits) the UHVs are beyond "challenge".

@Leoreth, I don't blame you on that, it is my decision whenever I'm not playing on Regent; and balancing 50 civilizations on every difficulty and game speed level doesn't need to be done by you, yourself. You developed the game for Regent/Normal, I assume, and that's fair enough.

If there are more guys like @DanLT3 and me, we could playtest various difficulty levels and speeds. (I could even try to not civ-switch for that, *gasp*)

 

[Leoreth]

If we're talking about UHV difficulty then Harappa might need toning down. Even on the easiest setting I couldn't get any of the goals. Now this is probably because I suck at this game, but I still normally manage to get 1 or 2 goals for most civs on the easiest setting!

Early civ UHVs are inherently tighter than others, because there aren't as many moving parts to demonstrate skill at the game. So they have to be a bit more challenging to be of any challenge for mid level players at all.

 

[DanLT3]

Early age civs usually depend on doing research with great people (atleast if you want to reach some of the tougher goals), thus the science modifier does not hurt them as bad as later civs.
But in later ages great people does no longer give a full tech, rather just a small part of it. Making using great people for research less usefull.

 

[Tigranes]

So basically:

Radio Yerevan was asked: "Is it correct that Grigori Grigorievich Grigoriev won a luxury car at the All-Union Championship in Moscow?"

Radio Yerevan answered: "In principle, yes. But first of all it was not Grigori Grigorievich Grigoriev, but Vassili Vassilievich Vassiliev; second, it was not at the All-Union Championship in Moscow, but at a Collective Farm Sports Festival in Smolensk; third, it was not a car, but a bicycle; and fourth he didn't win it, but rather it was stolen from him."

The diversity of your knowledge frighten me. There is no way I can come up with Austrian joke. All I can think of is Jaroslav Hasek and he was not even Austrian...

 

[Leoreth]

The greatest Austrian accomplishment was to convince the world that Hitler was German and Beethoven was Austrian.

Knoedel is always good for international(e) jokes as long as they relate to communism.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Heh.

On a more on-topical note, the following two features I added just now to my modmod might be of interest to the wider community:

First I changed the icon of Light Cavalry Units to that of the Skirmish promotion to make it more consistent with the other unit categories and so it doesn't have to awkwardly share the same icon with Heavy Cavalry Units.

Secondly I stole a tiny snippet of code from Fall From Heaven II to display the unitcombat icon of each unit on a tile when hovering over it like so:



This means you can now see on a glance whether a given unit is e.g. heavy or light cavalry and don't have to look it up on the Pedia to figure out whether to send spears or archers against it, which I often found myself doing due to the large number of mounted UUs.

Shall I make a pull request with this small interface improvement?

 

[Leoreth]

Good idea, I take both changes.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Done.

 

[Tigranes]

I know it may be a lost cause to talk about 1700 AD map improvements when we are testing new map, but the disparity between Northern India's 1700 economy in this mod and the reality is striking. By 1700, the GDP of Mughal India had risen to 24% of the world economy, the largest in the world, larger than both Qing China and Western Europe. Mughal India was the world leader in manufacturing, producing about 25% of the world's industrial output up until the 18th century. India's GDP growth increased under the Mughal Empire, with India's GDP having a faster growth rate during the Mughal era than in the 1,500 years prior to the Mughal era.

We also need Dhaka. 1NE off Calcutta if we move Calcutta 1W from it's current location.
Bengal Subah was the Mughal's wealthiest province, generating 50% of the empire's GDP and 12% of the world's GDP. It was globally prominent in industries such as textile manufacturing and shipbuilding. Bengal's capital city Dhaka was the empire's financial capital, with a population exceeding one million. It was an exporter of silk and cotton textiles, steel, saltpeter and agricultural and industrial products. Domestically, much of India depended on Bengali products such as rice, silks and cotton textiles.

Now I get it that 1700 AD northern India map should reflect gradual decline of Mughals, but this can already be reflected by inferior army and lack of Iron (as it is now). But every single Mughal tile needs to have an improvements and towns and road. With one extra city in Bengal. Northern India needs to reflect SOMETHING about being 24% of world's economy. Map needs to depict not only political and geographical realities but also economic realities to some extent. It is particularly annoying not to see roads, not even Delhi's elephant is connected by road when in fact Mughals were responsible for building an extensive road system, creating a uniform currency, and the unification of the country. The empire had an extensive road network, which was vital to the economic infrastructure, built by a public works department set up by the Mughals which designed, constructed and maintained roads linking towns and cities across the empire, making trade easier to conduct. Please improve Northern India.