Suggestions and Requests

[Enyavar]

The spread of your state religion already converts existing Pagan Temples.

Which don't exist anymore because they have been abandoned... I'm arguing that vedic temples should not be abandoned when hinduism spreads. (Before I change from vedism to hinduism or buddhism.)

 

[Leoreth]

Just convert to Hinduism then.

 

[Enyavar]

Well, this is just a historical detail and not worth a huge debate, but I wanted to state what I think would be more correct.

Just convert to Hinduism then.

Um, how do I convert before it spreads to my lands? The first city never keeps the pagan temple.

With pagan cities in Gallia, Rome and so on, where Christianity spreads, pagan temples should be mostly abandoned and rarely find new uses as churches, imo. The pagan pantheons are just too different from Christianity. Currently, this doesn't happen: Baal temples of all places, are converted to orthodox churches, if orthodoxy is state religion. It may be convenient, but it's not correct.

Hinduism, on the other hand, is based on vedic and brahmanic texts, that were only subsumed under the name 'hindu' in modern times. Vedic and brahmanic temples (proto-hinduism in the sense of our game) should therefore rather convert to Hinduistic temples once the 'official' religion spreads there, regardless of state religion. And they should coexist with Buddhism, or be abandoned when any other religion spreads.
Just like Olympian (pagan) temples coexist with Judaism and you can even built new ones (!) if Judaism is present. Did that as Greece recently, and had an olympian temple in a jewish city, which I thought was weird. Especially when the temple became an orthodox church later.

On the other hand again, I have seen churches disappear in thin air when another christian confession spreads. In my opinion, christian churches should be kept under the new confession (repurposed churches are common enough).
I have to check about the inquisition unit, but I'm sure there is also no conversion happening. Example case: state catholicism doesn't have a church but is present in city, Inquisitor purges, say, orthodoxy, which has a church, monastery and cathedral. I would expect the monastery to be dissolved (destroyed for gold), but church and cathedral are repurposed as catholic. Of course, this mechanic wouldn't apply to non-christian faiths, where all places of worship would be destroyed for gold.

 

[DarkLunaPhantom]

I don't like taking Göbekli Tepe (sp.?) as a starting point for two reasons:

This was not a serious suggestion.

n East Asia states used the year of an emperor's start of reign to describe the years.
i.e.) Japan, 10 years after Meiji became emperor: Year Meiji 10.

This system was used pretty much everywhere before it was replaced by calendars with fixed year 1.

 

[Leoreth]

Well, this is just a historical detail and not worth a huge debate

Yeah.

 

[star15389]

In East Asia states used the year of an emperor's start of reign to describe the years.
i.e.) Japan, 10 years after Meiji became emperor: Year Meiji 10.

If we implement this mechanic it would be impossible even for East Asians to recognize the dates written on their own ancient/medival calendar.

Don't Japanese people learn the era names in school? They do in anime at least

 

[JHLee]

The current 1700 AD scenario could do with some balance tweaks.
The Old World nations out-tech New World nations by at least 1 tier by the 1860s.
Every single wonder from the Industrial Era and beyond is built by the Europeans with the possible exceptions of Guadalupe Cathedral and the Statute of Liberty.
It is 1864 in my American game and the Britain has Civil Rights, Consumerism, Film, and Pneumatics. France has Flight and Refining.

In my Argentine game there are only 4 Wonders in the entire American continent, and one of them was built by France.
Surely this was not what the new wonders were included for.

 

[Leoreth]

So you think it's mostly European tech speed that should be reduced? Do you know who the main culprits are, only England and France? Do New World civs need a boost too and if so which ones?

 

[JHLee]

English tech speed should definitely be reduced. Also Edinburgh production should probably be nerfed slightly.
France and Germany are quite fast as well but not sure how tey will be affected once England is nerfed.
The Netherlands are another crazy wonder hog, I cant guess how this is even possible.
Russia is also very powerful, because they have both competitive tech and high production.
The high production enables them to hog half of the industrial~digital era wonders.
There are a few cases when Iran becomes one of the tech leaders, oddly enough, both in 600 and 1700 scenarios.

Some points I want to make:

1.
The biggest problem IMO is that all the American civs are already quite much behind the Europeans on the moment of their birth. (Unless human players receive less starting techs than AIs) Like,you can easily see Europeans having 5 or so tradable techs on the trade window on the turn of your spawn.
Most of the American civs spawn with muskeets and hussars while the European colonies already have rifles and dragoons.

2.
USA needs a buff, as currently they lag behind England, France, and even Russia.
They never become anywhere close to the super powerhouse, tech leader and world best military they are IRL.

3.
Latin American tech speeds are OK I guess, perhaps Columbia needs a small boost.
They are not exactly the most developed nations IRL, so I dont think they need a huge buff. It would be strange to see Europeans be out-teched by say, Peru or Columbia.

The problem with Latin American civs not being able to build their own wonders should probably be fixed not by adjusting tech rates but making it hard for the Europeans to actually build them.
More requirements, more boosts from new world resources.

I am only one person, so I say we wait for other players to speak up their opinions as well.
But I dont think I will be playing as USA or Brazil aiming for UHV in the current version..

 

[JHLee]

Oh, and couple more things:

1. New World cities shouldnt go back to the Europeans when the colonial civ collapses. In the current version, when Mexico and Brazil collapses their cities are returned to Spain and Portugal.

2. Corporations should either have their yields buffed or have their tradeoff occur regarding to the total number of resources the civ has. I suspect the 'one resource dont benefit all cities' rule applies to corporarions as well, crippling corporation yields.

 

[Leoreth]

2. Corporations should either have their yields buffed or have their tradeoff occur regarding to the total number of resources the civ has. I suspect the 'one resource dont benefit all cities' rule applies to corporarions as well, crippling corporation yields.

It does not.

 

[Orbii]

I can corroborate JHLee's observations about the late game tech balance (based on the 1700 AD start only). Generally, it's Britain, France, and the Netherlands who really pull ahead. It's not uncommon to spawn as USA and see the Caribbean cities you need to conquer filled with Riflemen, and ten turns later, with Machine Guns. I can point to two things I've observed that might lead to this:

1. These three civs have huge colonial empires which do not flip away until the late 1800's, if at all, which when combined with their strong European capitals/cores leads to extremely strong tech engines. Compare them over several saves to Germany, who has no colonies, and they are consistently several techs ahead of Germany at all times. Further compare them to Portugal, and especially Spain, once they lose most of their colonies and I think it's clear that the colonial empires play a huge role in the tech advantages.
2. The AI really prioritizes the top end of the tech tree, which has all of the military units. For the conquest based New World civs (USA & Colombia), this means that even if you spawn 'ahead' of the Old World civs in total techs, you don't have the necessary military techs to accomplish the conquest UHV's (USA essentially always spawns with tech monopoly on Social Contract and Representation, but lacks Ballistics).

I do find though that AI USA and Russia roughly 60% of the time do blob up sufficiently by the 1900's to their relative historical strength and hog the top two AI spots on the scoreboard. This is primarily due to their territory and military strength though, as they consistently lag behind Britain, France, and the Netherlands as true tech leaders, coming to parity with the aforementioned Germany instead.

 

[Vectors]

Personal observation on tech speeds, on the 600 start, everyone is at or behind pace, at the 1700, the Euros are monsters, this is from several games playing Russia, Japan, Canada, & USA

 

[Leoreth]

So this is mostly a 1700 AD scenario problem, noted.

 

[Vectors]

So this is mostly a 1700 AD scenario problem, noted.

Example of how bad it is, in my Russia game, in 1942 I am the tech leader and halfway through researching the Infrastructure column, meanwhile, in a Canada start, shortly after spawn, England built Bletchley which requires Radio, in that same column.

 

[Leoreth]

That's really weird, it almost seems as if there is something else going wrong related to the scenario start date.

 

[freethink]

I have a New World Conquerors Idea (actually 2)

1. If the native faction (at least as human player) survives the initial war they should receive a sort of technology or gold bonus to help them along (this actually make sense because surely in the aftermath of the war the natives would observe the technology of their would be conquerors. The bonus would be received whenever the player makes peace or loses contact with the invading country

2. This might be hard to implement.
While a conqueror initiated war is progressing if a second nation who has a different religion from the conqueror nation encounters the natives the Second Nation should receive a choice event on whether to help the natives. Similar to trade company event for the price of 200-400 gold and some unhappiness the player can send an expedition to save the natives. The reward being a diplomatic bonus with the natives and the player's religion spreading to the native cities (maybe natives could become vassal). Of course the player will now be at war with the conquering nation.

I think the expedition should be somewhat smaller than the conquerors and should spawn in the native capital city.

I realize that these are not historical but at least hypothetically they would had certainly be possible. Competing Old World nations in a different universe may found opportunities to hurt their opponents by intervening in an otherwise 1 vs. 1 conflict in the New World.

The event text could read

Our explorers have discovered (Native Faction Name). These strange innocents have assaulted by our CONQUER NAME rivals. Some of our missionaries and merchants believe there are opportunities to be had by 'saving' the primitives. What should we do.

Option 1: We must send aid to our new friends.

Option 2: This is none of our affairs
(Gain 1+ relations boost with conqueror)

Option 3: Tell everyone of the brutality of the CONQUER NAME
(Diplomatic relations damaged between the conqueror and all factions for a certain amount of turns)
(Cost Espionage Points)

 

[hnrysml]

This may not be the best way to implement it, but it would be good to have a representation of different colonial powers fighting over trading posts and colonies, as this rarely happens in-game, currently

 

[Orbii]

That's really weird, it almost seems as if there is something else going wrong related to the scenario start date.

Cutting back to this, a while back I have a vague memory of a change to make inflation scale from the civ spawn date, no matter the scenario start. Is that an actual thing?

Second, there were also nerfs to the Ottomans at some point for the 1700 AD scenario. I've found those to be wildly successful, as before they were always a top tech leader and top of the scoreboard, and now they're third rate like they should be at that point. Maybe something similar but to a smaller magnitude for the three Western European outliers?

Third, although this is something I like a lot, all civs start the 1700 AD scenario as if they have never generated a Great Person yet, so it takes maybe 4 or 5 turns for the first ones to pop out of the GP Farms. However, a lot of cities have settled Great People in them already (Milan I think is the best example of this). Having fresh GP meters along with settled GP cities is a less obvious balance factor that has some effect.

 

[Leoreth]

I think the inflation rate has been scenario adjusted already, but I will check again. But the GP thresholds are a good point. Do you have a rough estimate of the number of GPs that these civs would have generated at this point? For 600 AD as well.

I think I slapped Turkey with even more severe inflation and upkeep modifiers. The problem with civs like France and England is that their modifiers need to accommodate both their initial tech speed before colonisation and after when they have a larger empire.