Suggestions and Requests

[Dracosolon]

When I tried to come up with ideas for a second UU and UB for everyone I eventually settled on reusing the concept of a faster Worker UU for Harappa (since military units would be useless except for ). Only instead of 3 moves it would just ignore terrain penalties.

 

[Derdan]

The Spanish never conquered America because the army disappeared- alternative history

The natives only fall for the whole conqueror trick once. After that, you've gotta send an army that you actually built yourself.

 

[Just an idea]

My few latest attempts with Greece made me think about Republic civic. While +1 per specialist is strong in right situation it takes a while to get going. Civic is also probably too strong after Industrial era for what is meant to be obsoleting civic.

So I thought how Republic could be made more useful in early game while weakening its late game potential. Solution I came up with: Keep the specialist slots and food penalties, but replace +1/specialist with 1 free specialist per core city. (Isolationism's old effect)

That would make republic useful right away for classical era civilizations, while also avoiding late game supercities that get 15+ food from settled Great People.

 

[1SDANi]

My few latest attempts with Greece made me think about Republic civic. While +1 per specialist is strong in right situation it takes a while to get going. Civic is also probably too strong after Industrial era for what is meant to be obsoleting civic.

So I thought how Republic could be made more useful in early game while weakening its late game potential. Solution I came up with: Keep the specialist slots and food penalties, but replace +1/specialist with 1 free specialist per core city. (Isolationism's old effect)

That would make republic useful right away for classical era civilizations, while also avoiding late game supercities that get 15+ food from settled Great People.

I've done some testing in the past and personally like replacing the whole effect with "+1 free specialist in the capital per culture level".

Historically, a lot of civs that ran it in-game have one city cores like the Netherlands, Carthage (as large as their core is in-game, historically the only major city in that region was Carthage, all of their other major cities were in Iberia, Italy, and Sardinia), the Maya if you're counting Republic as also including Oligarchic council rule, etc. In-game, it means that it will maintain its niche as the best civic when you don't need Despotism's production, Monarchy's happiness, or Elective's commerce, which means it'll only ever really be used by civs like Rome, Greece, Carthage, the Netherlands, the Maya, etc, whose capital has an abundance of production and commerce but a scarcity of food. It also mimics how, historically, most civs switched away from Republic as they grew, most notably Greece for Monarchy, which would occur to keep their cities happy, and Rome for Despotism, which would occur to improve their cities' infrastructure. Most notably, once Democracy is unlocked with its +100% Great Person rate, Republic will be reduced to nigh-irrelevance, only really existing in one city states or civs whose capital has a high culture level and is the main contributor to their economy.

I also just generally like one line civic effects.

 

[Rafaelito]

Been trying to figure out how to beat babylonian uhvs on Paragon and turns out to be impossible. The only way out is if you cheese China, otherwise, you will never make calendar/arithmetic/writing/construction in time (considering the Greeks and India will spawn with 3 of these). The only solution is if we get 6 free techs or any sort of boost to help us out.

I also think the UU is rather weak. The ability to cause collateral damage is not very useful if the unit has no withdrawal chance.

 

[Rafaelito]

Ok so I managed to beat Babylon UHV on paragon/epic but heavily relying on cheese/reload system in which I killed China on an improbable victory (0.9% chance) and killed the harappans as well in the early game, in addition to reloading till I get the best outcome out of combats and goody huts.

Other than that, I tried for at least 3 days to no avail, this civ is virtually impossible on the highest difficulty on epic speed.

To fix that, I would suggest I couple of things:

Make the eddiba (UB) to provide a free great scientist rather than +2 science. That means more science and would help generating GP which can be the key to victory. Currently, popping a GP before the deadlines is extremely unlikely.

Reduce the UU cost by 25% so it could incentivize some early aggressions around Babylon like Jerusalem and your neighbors city Susha. Like I said above, the collateral damage helps you with nothing in the current game and by the time Persia and everyone else spawns your unit is super outdated and obsolete.

Reduce the first tier tech costs a bit so you can research a bit faster and hopefully be able to beat the race with the other civs without having to travel 100 tiles to kill a far away country.

 

[Derdan]

Don't think the UHVs are necessarily meant to be beaten on Paragon/Epic (they are balanced for Monarch/Normal). Good job though : )

 

[Rafaelito]

Didn't cross my mind that Paragon was meant to be impossible

 

[Matara]

Don't think the UHVs are necessarily meant to be beaten on Paragon/Epic (they are balanced for Monarch/Normal). Good job though : )

I was thinking that they are balanced for Regent, and I hardly play other levels.

 

[Dracosolon]

Don't think it's meant to be impossible, just not designed for it. Some UHVs are presumably doable.

That'd be a long but interesting exercise: logging what's the highest difficulty anyone has completed a particular UHV.

 

[Leoreth]

It is not meant to be impossible, but I do not balance every single UHV specifically to be possible in Paragon. The main balancing goal is for a UHV to be nontrivial, interesting and challenging on Normal/Regent. Ideally it is still possible but very difficult to accomplish on Paragon. But it is not out of the question for certain UHVs to become functionally impossible on that difficulty.

Part of the reason is time (checking every difficulty would multiply the balancing time) but also the fact that I do not consider myself to be good enough to win on Paragon. Or in other words Paragon should be difficult enough that it requires a better player than me to beat it. However if I am not good enough to beat Paragon how am I supposed to check that it's doable

 

[Logoncal]

There is someone who has been doing Paragon UHV games and probably the most insane one he did was with Thailand. Spamming elephants and muskets against machine guns on the colonies was hilarious.

THERE is one UHV i know that is indeed impossible. You simply cant do Babylon UHV on paragon.

 

[Logoncal]

Is it possible to add UI showing the progress of your country Stability and possible independences or rebirths? Being in the dark feels anxious sometimes, especially when youre a warmonger.

I mean, its mainly a QoL suggestion. I guess as a nation ruler it does makes sense having no idea if your country will explode the next turn.

 

[Leoreth]

Can you be more explicit about what you would expect?

The current stability is shown in the civilization list, you get additional expansion information in the main interface, and detailed breakdowns in the financial advisor. The stability rules are simple as well: if you are collapsing and your stability score does not improve by the next stability check, you collapse.

I guess the only thing that isn't clear are the respawn rules - unfortunately with how the code works currently that would be difficult to track and display ahead of time. It's a bunch of situational conditions that need to be all met at the same time for a resurrection to occur. I wouldn't know how to display that.

Maybe it would be helpful to show which cities are currently at risk of being part of a resurrection and the minimum stability level to prevent it? That seems like it could be shown in the city screen somewhere. Do you have an idea where?

 

[Logoncal]

Can you be more explicit about what you would expect?

The current stability is shown in the civilization list, you get additional expansion information in the main interface, and detailed breakdowns in the financial advisor. The stability rules are simple as well: if you are collapsing and your stability score does not improve by the next stability check, you collapse.

I guess the only thing that isn't clear are the respawn rules - unfortunately with how the code works currently that would be difficult to track and display ahead of time. It's a bunch of situational conditions that need to be all met at the same time for a resurrection to occur. I wouldn't know how to display that.

Maybe it would be helpful to show which cities are currently at risk of being part of a resurrection and the minimum stability level to prevent it? That seems like it could be shown in the city screen somewhere. Do you have an idea where?

More the latter, related to knowing respawns/rebirths. I havent found that sort of info on those cities tho, the most i can see is the cities showing how much they cost in peripheral pop and how hard is their cultural penalty to the population score.

 

[Leoreth]

I'll think about it - part of the problem is that the stability part is implemented in Python while the display would come from the DLL, so it requires some changes to make work.

Would it be a good idea to show it in the tooltip of the culture bar? Something like "China - respawn possible at Unstable" on a city that might flip to China?

 

[Logoncal]

I'll think about it - part of the problem is that the stability part is implemented in Python while the display would come from the DLL, so it requires some changes to make work.

Would it be a good idea to show it in the tooltip of the culture bar? Something like "China - respawn possible at Unstable" on a city that might flip to China?

Possibly, any tooltip works. Tho sometimes ive lost cities at shaky and from what ive heard, its because once nationalism kicks in, shaky is enough for rebirths to happen, which makes imperialism much more dangerous.

 

[Logoncal]

A new suggestion that i just remembered: When possible, Inca/Peru's rebirth needs to be improved. They respawn at mid-late industrial with medieval teching, so they just get rolled on.

 

[Matara]

I love the idea! It is mostly disturbing to face a respawn right before your UHV checking, because you can do nothing but date back early to find what's going wrong. If you know the accurate condition, you could react ex ante.

 

[BigSchwartzzz]

If I don't build my first city on the first turn I can't build improvements with starting cash. Can that be changed?