Suggestions and Requests

[Reus]

I think the stability mechanic has got worse since last time. Mostly because of the bad relations mechanic. Here's a summary of my game as England:

* Control all of England pretty quickly.
* Switch to citizenship and republic quick to get markets built and great merchants produced.
* Have lots of food in my core area, plus a huge gold surplus.
* Send troops out to America, slowly start to take control of the entire East coast.
* Meet the Incas, get lots of free soldiers, decide to transport them to India.
* Slowly conquer India by playing the Tamils and the Mughals against each other.
* Start to send settlers to South America, South Africa, and Australasia.
* Collapse.

Now there are a few areas where stability was taking some hits. But the -10 that broke the camels back is the bad relations penalty. When -12 is enough for my empire to collapse, -10 is a huge hit. And yet it seems like that -10 comes from having a few civs annoyed at me... why does that even affect my stability? I mean all I was doing was fighting the Indian civs. I had no other wars going on.

I was probably just playing the best game I've ever played in civ. I had a big empire, it was growing at a nice rate. I had a lot of population in my core. It doesn't make sense that my empire would collapse when the game is going so well. It's not fun playing a game when how well you're actually doing is completely undercut by a stability mechanic that will just end your game for no real reason at all.

Again, I will say, because I want to stress this heavily. If nothing else make it so when it collapses into civil war, you just lose a few cities. You have to deal with rebellions. That would be fine. It just sort of sucks that I was really enjoying that game and now... I can't really keep playing it. Unless I go back and fiddle with some stuff in world builder... which is probably what I will do now.

Yeah, I think the stability threshold of -12 for collapse is too low. I had something similar, where my Polish Empire completely collapsed at because it have but a few bonuses yet get -10 malus from outdated civics/government, which I was in the progress of changing when the empire completely collapsed in the middle of the anarchy.

 

[McMickeroo1]

Yeah, I think the stability threshold of -12 for collapse is too low. I had something similar, where my Polish Empire completely collapsed at because it have but a few bonuses yet get -10 malus from outdated civics/government, which I was in the progress of changing when the empire completely collapsed in the middle of the anarchy.

I also don't really like how it's so definitive. It should be a lot lower, but also... it shouldn't be like, "Oooh you've hit the magic number now it will definitely collapse." There would be more fun if there was an element of risk to it. Like your empire might survive with bad stability, but you're risking collapse.

And also, while I'm here, since this is basically going to be my sign off at this rate, I'll just again reiterate that collapse should not translate to automatic loss. It should just mean that a lot of your cities rebel.

 

[Zaddy]

Thank you for taking the time to revise the foreign stability mechanic! I'll test it and provide some feedback soon.

One more thing I wanted to bring to your attention was some of the UN resolutions. Specifically the civic switches. In a Korean one city challenge game I was playing, the UN voted to make Public Welfare a universal civic. There's a few issues with this:

a) at best this is a utopian vision of how the UN works (I say that with healthy respect for the organization)
b) I was not given an option to defy the resolution, forcing me to adopt a civic I didn't want and completely locking me out of the one I did want
c) this resulted in civs that were still in the Renaissance era adopting modern era civics, which looked pretty silly.

 

[ThreeBlackSevens]

So while playing a Korea game and watching AI Canada remain tiny yet again, I’ve come up with a couple possible ideas. This is of course only if it’s a common problem, and not just my random chance that Canada always ends up being extremely small.

I find that AI Canada has two main problems: That it doesn’t care about settling its historical area, and that when it does settle, it often is weirdly focused on the nearly useless spots in northern ontario rather than the west coast and useful land like Edmonton, 1-2 prairie cities, etc.

That makes it so that America is usually even more of a superpower (Which it should be, but not quite so ridiculously far ahead), and is quite ahistorical, since a lot of Canada’s early history was about trying to stop America from expanding too much in the north. Canada’s founding can be summarised as “Oh **** they’re gettin’ big down south eh? That’s pretty scary bud.” I’m not saying AI Canada should always get their historical area, because variety is the spice of life, but I think there should at least be some contest between them and America to grab it.



I have 2 possible solutions, one that would probably be easier to implement and one that would be more historical.

1. If Canada is controlled by AI after the turn the player is prompted to switch, give them 2 (maybe 3?) extra settlers.

2. This is the hard one with a lot of varibles in the way it could be implemented. My idea is that somehow Britain is either incentivised or automatically founds Vancouver, and that if any city that is on the Pacific coast and in Canada’s historical area is held by a civ other than America, the area that would be BC flips to Canada. If the AI controlled Canada then I think it should also get 1 (maybe 2?) settlers.

If option 2 was to be a thing, then I think a few things would have to be changed.
- The Railway UHV would have to have an earlier deadline to balance out having that extra city earlier, perhaps setting it back to 1900 or 1910.
- If Canada is player controlled and UHV 1 is failed, any Canadian cities in BC should go independent.
- If Canada is AI controlled and America has all 4 Edmonton tiles and either Prince Rupert, Whitehorse. or Old Crow, then any Canadian cities in BC should go independent.



Anyway, that suggestion got pretty long, sorry lol. Also part of the way through writing this I remembered there’s gonna be a new map, but these could maybe be some ideas for that map then. c:

 

[Enyavar]

Late Game detail suggestions.

The Recycling Center is really not great for having such a high price. My idea to improve on it would be: Halving all unhealth from corporations (as is) AND halving the "bonus unhealth" (from the Industrial Park and the Railway Station). Also, the Oil unhealth of the Railway Station should be moved over to the Airport (so that both of these buildings have +1 Basic Unhealth and +1 Resource Bonus Unhealth).

Also, I'm really annoyed by the "Interception" command. In my opinion, that command should result in a 4-tile sight for the plane in every direction. A normal carrier has +2 sight over water, like any other water unit. A carrier with planes flying patrol and interception should get better vision.

Finally, there should be a national project for a surveillance satellite that permanently uncovers the map and shows positions of all cities and all units (exceptions: submarines and stealth units).

 

[Leoreth]

Hmm good points, but the intent of the satellite unit is that you can use them for reconnaissance on arbitrary areas of the map. Having the entire map permanently uncovered would be too powerful, but with 3-4 satellite units ready you should be able to scout large parts of the world (and they cannot be intercepted).

 

[Enyavar]

Hmm good points, but the intent of the satellite unit is that you can use them for reconnaissance on arbitrary areas of the map. Having the entire map permanently uncovered would be too powerful, but with 3-4 satellite units ready you should be able to scout large parts of the world (and they cannot be intercepted).

Good counterpoint, but that is my issue. I am bored from "having to" fly recon manually all the time. Whenever a civilization goes down or re-emerges, I basically have to go scouting with my carriers and have that area remapped, if I want to stay up-to-date. Scouting is actually the main purpose of carriers in peace-time. I use the satellites to do that too, but to cover larger zones of the map, I need several (costly!) satellites which I have to precisely steer manually. Each round. That's great for the first few times that I have them available, but at some point I would hope for automated satellite systems to track global unit movement.

Like, a project "Global Surveillance" that is available on reaching the "Automation" tech.
Or, an achievement like the "circumsail the world". That means, either a player has to have covered every (land?) tile in the world at least once with a satellite (that needs some time!) or the player has to have every land tile (including the ice areas) visible in the same turn (I think that's only possible with enough espionage, plus units in friendly territories, and many more satellites and/or carriers). Having done that once, a player gets this achievement and doen't need to bother afterwards.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

One of the few things where Civ5 made things more convenient instead of less was replacing the recon mission of planes with a flat bonus that was always active and gave planes vision six tiles or so in every direction around the tile they are stationed in.

Also, Recon Missions in Civ4 can already not be intercepted, unless this was changed at some point in this mod's history.

 

[1SDANi]

What about adding a Recon (automated) option that's similar to Explore (Automated), but stays close to the where the automation was activated and tries to maximize visible terrain?

That way players can use Scouts, Explorers, and Satellites as Recon units without having to constantly give them orders.

 

[DarkLunaPhantom]

You can already do Explore (Automated) with air units and then they do Recon every turn, but the area they recon then is probably random.

EDIT: I was wrong about this, this is not available in DoC.

 

[1SDANi]

You can already do Explore (Automated) with air units and then they do Recon every turn, but the area they recon then is probably random.

Woah. that's cool.

 

[DarkLunaPhantom]

Woah. that's cool.

I was wrong, this is not available in DoC (or BTS). It is available in K-Mod and since I rarely get to use air units in DoC I just assumed it's a BTS feature.

 

[Leoreth]

I would prefer such a solution, looks like we'll get it when I can merge AdvCiv.

 

[JDPElGrillo]

Is there a way to check which civics are considered contemporary and outdated in-game? I had a nasty collapse as China in the Industrial Age due to -10 from outdated civics combined with some bad relations from fighting off European colonists. At the time I couldn't figure out which of my civics were the outdated ones from the Civics adviser screen or Stability screen, and it felt pretty frustrating in an otherwise quite fun game. I know there's a guide here in the forums, and I looked through Stability.py lines 889 onward, but it would be really nice to have in the Civpedia as a bullet point, or ideally on the Civic adviser screen in combination to the red/green highlighting for (in)compatible civics. The most proactive solution might be in the Tech adviser, so that along with what wonders are made obsolete, it could say which civics are made outdated. Another option would be in the pop-up after researching a new civic tech, where it could say something like "You can now adopt <civic>. Your current civic has become outdated!"

For example, an extra line of text here would have been really helpful (mocked up with a <Help> tag in CIV4TechInfos.xml):

For reference, it turns out that I was getting -5 from having Nationalism but still being in Tributaries, and having Economics but still being in Merchant Trade. I think these -5 stability penalties are serious enough for the player to consider putting off certain technologies until they can afford the hit and anarchy, or at the very least avoid what I was doing, which was seeing that Economics had the first-to Great Merchant bonus and focusing on that

Also, while looking at Stability.py, I noticed that there are State Religion-specific bonuses for specific Civics, which was a surprise to me. Perhaps this is all hidden from the player for the sake of realism, but I'm the kind of person who likes knowing all the rules up front before I decide on a gameplan. I'm still having a lot of fun with the mod.

 

[Leoreth]

Is this not mentioned in the stability civilopedia entry?

 

[JDPElGrillo]

You're right, somehow I missed the article for "Stability Influence Factors" right below "Stability". Thanks! I do still think a more direct representation could be helpful, at least in the Tech adviser screen:

Admittedly, it would be trickier to place the ones that become outdated by Era instead of by tech.

 

[Leoreth]

I don't want to clutter that tooltip too much, and generally surface too much stability information.

 

[JDPElGrillo]

Sounds good, I'll just make those changes on a local copy for personal reference. Definitely agree that the tech tooltips can grow a bit clunky.

 

[Mxzs]

So I was thinking about Conqueror Events recently—daydreaming, basically—and wound up with an idea for a new way of handling them.

Is this a serious suggestion? I don't know. It would be a big change. Pretend I'm just fantasizing out loud.

The idea I had was to replace the current Conqueror Events with a new category of events: Unique Conqueror Events (UCEs). What are these?

They would be like the Unique Historical Victories (UHVs) in the sense that each civilization would have one. Like UHVs, they would have triggering conditions and victory conditions to be met within a deadline. Like Conqueror Events, they would create a stack of units. They would also bestow on the triggering civilization a short-duration Unique Power.

They would differ mainly from the current Conqueror events in two ways. First, they would be conditional rather than scripted. (A corollary difference: a canny human player would know how to forestall an AI civilization from triggering its UCE, unlike in the current game, where the AI civilization has to be destroyed to prevent its conqueror stack from spawning.) Second, they would apply to both player- and AI-managed civilizations.

Basically, they would be challenges, like the Quests, that would grant a reward (a Triumph) if completed but no penalty if failed. And if pursued, they would replicate real-world historical events, at least in part.

Here's an example:

Babylonian UCE: The Assyrian Empire
Trigger
(1) Build the Hanging Gardens, Ishtar Gate, and Great Ziggurat** by 1300 BC.
(2) Be the first to discover Bloomery.
(3) Build Ninua by turn 910 BC.

** New Wonder: 120 hammers. Prerequisite: Construction. Confers a free ziggurat in every city; +8 culture points; +3 Great Prophet points.

Stack
On completing the above, the Babylonian player (human or AI) receives 4 Swordsmen and 2 Siege Towers***.

*** New unit: 97 hammers. Strength: 4. City Attack: +50%. Bombard: -8%.

Unique Conquest Power
Existing Swordsmen receive City Raider I and II promotions.

Victory Conditions
(1) Raze Susa.
(2) Conquer Syria (Sur and Urushalim).
(3) Control Egypt (have more cities in Egyptian Core than Egypt does).

All goals must be achieved by 595 BC.

Triumph
(1) An 8-turn Golden Age; (2) a Great Person of choice; (3) the ability to build Siege Towers.

Discussion
The trigger would in each case be a three-fold set, similar to the UHVs, and for each civilization it would be relatively easy to achieve it. That's desirable because each UCE would be modeled on some analogue in the history of the civilization in question, and there should be a bias toward its happening. That being said, there would in most cases be a strong likelihood against the AI triggering the UCE; so where a high likelihood of an AI trigger is wanted, the trigger would be defined in a way that makes it very likely the AI would stumble into it.

The victory conditions would basically be the real world victory conditions, or slightly harder versions of them. In most cases, the Triumph would consist of a Golden Age plus a Great Person of choice, plus a third reward that would be civ-specific.

 

[JHLee]

I also had some thoughts about civilization-specific 'sub-quests' in the game,
but I'm afraid that would be actually helpful for the players only,
making it harder to balance civs (so that UHV isn't too easy for the players and AI civs are not too weak).