Suggestions and Requests

[Alpaya]

Just a few issues from my experience:
- USA is very weak and does not reach their real territory in North America being squeezed by usually more powerful France, England and Spain. Maybe consider increase with time their core area to flip Louisiana (or buy it somehow from France), Florida and with time California or increase USA strength and encourage them attack nations in their historical area;
- Argentina appears without any technology, so they use Ancient Militia which next to the Rifleman looks funny. Maybe consider to add tech and troops;
-Columbia appears without flipping cities, only with a lot of troops, but they made peace with Spain which occupy their core area, and just stand on the tile doing nothing, since all territory were already covered by Spain cities, and finally they just disappear; maybe consider to flip cities in their core area when they spawn;
-Napoleon clearly does not know what to so with slaves, he bought them from me by 200 per one, but they just locate in his city (capital?), and he never use them, maybe consider to teach AI how to use slaves better;
-There is a big jump between Frigate (PW8) and Destroyer (PW30), please consider to introduce something like Dreadnought with power 20 for example between them (or between Ironclad and Destroyer);
-Is it close to reality that Airship can move in any town in the world of AI with open borders? Maybe consider decrease its relocation distance.
Thank you!

 

[Shadow Warlord]

I agree that a Texan city should be viable, the US doesn't feel right without Texas. However, the way American colonization plays out with the common presence of New Orleans makes this hard to actually occur.

We could try moving New Orleans back down 1 SE so it's on the jut of land again, then you'd have room in Texas for a city like Houston or San Antonio (i remember seeing Spain settle San Antonio quite often in the past).

Right now the optimal placement there is Albuquerque on the river if New Orleans is in the 1700 AD spot.

 

[Big Heb]

I agree that a Texan city should be viable, the US doesn't feel right without Texas. However, the way American colonization plays out with the common presence of New Orleans makes this hard to actually occur.

In 1.12, I'll admit I often settle Austin as America. It does not interfere too much with Denver and New Orleans, and doesn't get wrecked in culture by Monterrey. Dallas is nearly worthless. Houston makes for a really awesome supercity if you raze New Orleans and Monterrey.

On a similar note, Phoenix usually only gets only 1 population sustainable, 2 tops, based on everything around it, yet Phoenix has a population of 1.5 million in real life. Is there anything that can be done to the map to make Phoenix viable?

 

[Shadow Warlord]

In 1.12, I'll admit I often settle Austin as America. It does not interfere too much with Denver and New Orleans, and doesn't get wrecked in culture by Monterrey. Dallas is nearly worthless. Houston makes for a really awesome supercity if you raze New Orleans and Monterrey.

On a similar note, Phoenix usually only gets only 1 population sustainable, 2 tops, based on everything around it, yet Phoenix has a population of 1.5 million in real life. Is there anything that can be done to the map to make Phoenix viable?

I think Phoenix could do with a floodplain tile or two, or plains tyles, just something for farms. IIRC they irrigated a lot of the land there to allow them to grow.

Alternatively i currently settle Las Vegas 1 N, i think they at least get access to Salt Lake that way.

 

[Leoreth]

On a similar note, Phoenix usually only gets only 1 population sustainable, 2 tops, based on everything around it, yet Phoenix has a population of 1.5 million in real life.

I know, but it shouldn't

 

[Fresol]

The same goes for Urumqi, where there's a polulation of 3.5 million(in game 3 pop). Compare that with Okinawa's 1.5 million(in game nearly 20 pop).

 

[Publicola]

The issue is mainly one of food mechanics, which is one of the few profoundly ahistorical aspects of this mod.

Before the modern age, food could not be easily transported, so populations were fairly small and cities were dependent on local agriculture. Later on, larger empires started developing the ability to move food from high-surplus areas to areas with greater need -- see for instance the Roman policy of treating Egypt as a breadbasket for much of the empire. Such policies continued into the modern age, but food production remained a major limiter for population until quite recently, with the prevalence of GMOs and notably with Norman Borlaug's development of semidwarf wheat.

In order to replicate this in-game... well, I'm not sure you can, but I'll throw a few ideas out there:

• Limit the number of available food-producing tiles to those immediately around a city, or perhaps only those tiles that are connected by river.
• Allow more tiles to become available with the 'salt' resource, and with the building of roads (perhaps borrow from a mod like Caveman2Cosmos and enable a 'route' tree with options between 'road' and 'railroad', so this bonus does not show up too soon)
• With the discovery of Currency and/or Optics, enable food to be moved from city to city within your own trade network. There should be some loss due to transportation costs, spoilage, etc., but this mechanism would enable fertile lands (like Egypt) to supply growth for arid or urbanized regions (like Italy)
• Drastically alter the schedule for how food costs interact with growth rate, so you can't get size 20 cities too early in the game. This could be done by modifying the health bar, or even by requiring three food per population (making agriculture-rich regions essential for growth, as in the real-world).
• Change how food relates to growth (part two...) by enabling food production to increase dramatically shortly before the Industrial Revolution (since it was preceded by an Agricultural Revolution that made it possible) and with the discovery of Biology in the modern age (Norman Borlaug, etc.) This would reflect the real-world population boom that occurred at those two points in history, while allowing population to remain fairly steady before that point.

The problem with all this, of course, would be the necessity of rebalancing pretty much every other aspect of the game, from production costs to tech costs. Hence, I doubt the full thing will be implemented, but at least there's a few ideas in there that might move things along.

The big one, in my opinion, would be enabling food transfers between cities in your own empire. Frankly, you could tie this to a new diplomatic option for trading food between different civs entirely, and that's a whole new mechanic on its own. That'd be enough to reflect everything from the politics of empire building, to diplomatic alliances of mutual necessity, to even the impetus during the Age of Exploration for European nations to conquer and colonize. Food, it turns out, is one of the great motivators of human history.

 

[merijn_v1]

On a similar note, Phoenix usually only gets only 1 population sustainable, 2 tops, based on everything around it, yet Phoenix has a population of 1.5 million in real life. Is there anything that can be done to the map to make Phoenix viable?

Proof that the real world just sucks at understanding proper food mechanics.

 

[Panopticon]

It's not that important to have Phoenix in the game.

 

[NerfCothons]

On the topic of Military Changes suggested above:

1. Raise the cost of military maintenance and add free unit buffs to certain civics such as Autocracy, industrialism, fanaticism, totalitarianism, and central planning. If you want a large standing army you had better pay for it with either a warlike civil society or have a model economy.

2. I would encourage you to create an additional tier in the musketman-infantry unit range. With the prevalence of archers in the earlier tiers and planes and tanks in the later tiers there's enough diversity to smooth the transitions between the primary units, but without that padding the research of rifling and assembly line creates enormous jumps in international power as the civilization upgrades its units. Rather than having a musketman(9) go to Rifleman(14) then Infantry(20), How about arquebusier(9)->Musketman(12)->Rifleman(16)->Infantry(20). Techwise shift arquebusiers to gunpowder, Musketman to Military Science, and have Rifling require military science.

3. If we want to break up stacks of doom lasting in perpetuity we should wipe all promotions on a unit upon upgrade. Experienced units will get three promotions on the next turn as all promotion reduce a unit's experience to 10, which is a heck of a lot better than a conscript, but it will prevent player civilizations from getting a military edge just because they have been fighting for two thousand years. This will also prevent carry over of promotions that would have been unavailable to the new unit such as city raider carrying over into rifleman and infantry from swordsman. It will also prevent certain unique units that have promotions on creation (such as aucacs, jaguar warriors, and African war elephants) from empowering that unit as it is upgraded well past whatever unique unit advantage that promotion was supposed to represent. Great Generals can even be affected by the change because they will still retain their accumulated experience but will not be able to preserve inappropriate promotions for their new unit.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

I still don't see why we couldn't just increase the Musketman's strength to 10.

 

[Leoreth]

NerfCothons, are you suggesting that upgrading wipes all promotions but leaves experience minus x, so that you have to select upgrades again? This could actually be an advantage in certain cases, but generally sounds elegant and balanced. Alternately, upgrades could become more expensive for high level units.

Actually that opens up some new possibilities for the German UP.

I plan to focus on the military aspect of the game after 1.13 so that sounds like a good time to address these things.

 

[NerfCothons]

Well, when you upgrade currently your experience drops to ten if the unit has accumulated greater than 10 experience. However, promotions granted and level achieved remain the same. For example a level 3 unit with 7 experience when upgraded keeps all 7 experience and remains level 3 with all promotions intact. A level 5 unit with 20 experience upgraded remains a level five unit (so it will take a total experience of somewhere in the 20's to attain a promotion) and retains its promotions but drops its experience accumulated to 10 leaving it at 10/27 (don't remember how much exactly it takes to reach level 6) to achieve it's fifth promotion.

What I am suggesting is that you not only drop the experience to 10 if greater than 10 as the game currently does, but also wipe the unit's promotions and drop it's level to one (so that it can be promoted again at 2, 5, and 10 experience on the next turn). So it's not that it leaves experience minus X, it's that it deletes experience surplus to X, which in the current version of the game X=10. Other than that yes, you have it. Veteran units when upgraded get a few promotions right off the bat just like if you built them in a city with several military instructors, but do not retain (and cannot reclaim) promotions that are either inappropriate for that new unit type or in excess of an arbitrary threshold. Essentially battle hardened heavy swordsmen will still be combat veterans, but not elites, upon being handed a rifle.

 

[Leoreth]

Makes sense, wasn't even really aware of how it actually works. Will think about it some.

 

[LatestGuy]

Just played a German SVN game, Monarch and Marathon. It's too much easy. Maybe in Maraton the conquest of Rome and Jerusalem is not so hard, but after that, just keeping these ones + Frankfurt-Hamburg-Wien-Budapest-Dresden, Printing Press and three Great Artists come easily even before XVII century.

 

[Fresol]

Hey man, you were playing under marathon speed after all. Any conquest goal becomes much easier under marathon speed.

 

[Drag0wn]

Hey man, you were playing under marathon speed after all. Any conquest goal becomes much easier under marathon speed.

Yeah there's a reason I play on Marathon. It takes longer to build up large unit stockpiles (unless your city is good enough to build a unit in 1 turn ) and you have far more time for military operations.

If you want a trick as the Prussians, before you get railroad, don't build riflemen. Build Pikemen, promote them with city raider, then turn them into riflemen for free. You can easily conquer continental Europe earlier this way, especially if nobody else has rifling. Pikemen build so much faster and get city raider, a promotion riflemen destroy with.

Is it possible to add 1 more civic of each catagory? I had some ideas for mid-late game civics.

 

[Leoreth]

Is it possible to add 1 more civic of each catagory? I had some ideas for mid-late game civics.

Possible in principle, although the possible effects are stretched quite thin already. Still interested in your ideas.

 

[Drag0wn]

Possible in principle, although the possible effects are stretched quite thin already. Still interested in your ideas.

He's what I've been thinking about:

Government: Confederation (EU-style), High Upkeep, unlocked with Mass Media
1) All cities on the same continent as your capitol are treated as historical
2) All trade routes are considered foreign
3) +1 gold upkeep per military unit (like pacifism in the base game)

This civic might need a little more to make it viable, but the idea is to make a large late game state that has serious trouble being a dominant military power. Supposed to work with egalitarianism, not totalitarianism, as far as stability goes. Not meant to prop up colonial powers, either. This civic would require Mass Media, and imo Public Welfare should require either Medicine or Computers, depending on what you think it represents (Socialized medicine? High-tech economy?)

Labor: Corporatism (Patrimonialism), High Upkeep, unlocked with Railroad
1) +6 commerce on oil rig, offshore platform
2) +4 commerce on improved gold, improved coffee, improved gems
3) +2 commerce on improved banana, improved sugar, improved copper

This needs a little more work, but the idea is to give a civic that allows for somewhat realistic modern export economies. Countries like Indonesia or many South American countries are dependent on exports, not high-tech or domestic demand economics (how I see Public Welfare and Capitalism). Civs like the Congo could get a good boost with this civic. Would get +2 stability with mercantilism (Import substitution) and not conflict with any economy civic (not even central planning).

Economy: Mixed Economy (Name needs work), Medium Upkeep, unlocked with Assembly Line
1) +1 commerce on mine, lumbermill
2) +20% Inflation Rate

Trying to give voice to British-style "commanding heights" socialism. Extractive industries are sponsored by the state, with a noticeable drawback. Not much else I can say, this just needs a little more to it.

Religious: Split secularism into two civics. Currently secularism tries to represent too many different modern interactions between the state and religion, at least as far as stability goes. "Preferentialism" and "Secularism" would be better. Many modern states are "secular" on paper only, and a couple totalitarian states have a strong give and take relationship with a particular faith, without having a state religion. I don't have ideas currently on what the research rate or whatever difference is, but I've felt secularism's bonus was too bland anyway.

Military: Missile Supremacy, High Upkeep, Rocketry
1) +25% build speed for missile units
2) unhappiness penalty for all civs without missile supremacy (I want to make having fission + uranium a requirement to instill fear, but I don't know if that can be done)

Here's your cold war nightmare civic. Would get +2 stability with central planning, and be neutral to everything else but environmentalism (-5, imo). The Fear happiness penalty would be undone by having bomb shelters in that city.

Those are my ideas so far, and I know I don't have an organization civic. I might think of one later, possible a classical one - I play a lot of classical games and it's boring running direct rule every time, as only the medieval era unlocks new ones.

Anyone else have any thoughts on these?

 

[Leoreth]

Oh, these are interesting and seem viable. And I'd like some lategame variety.