Ahriman
Tyrant
I would remove the no-plains requirement. I don't see any reason for it, and it could be confusing and irritating for the player.
The new patch
- Thread starter Txurce
- Start date
Txurce
Deity
And there are so many of those niggles. My heart sank a little with your update on the SDK.
Thalassicus
Bytes and Nibblers
I'm thrilled with stone, it's a solution to a year-old problem in terrain balance! 
Remember how plains were considered much more valuable over grassland at Civ's vanilla release? Everyone loved riverside hill or plains tiles with farms on them. Areas with very little production (like tundra and grassland) needed a boost.
Changing the terrain like adding forests or hills creates balance issues since it affects combat, some leader traits, resource placement and so on. Firaxis added lots of cows to low-production areas as a temporary solution, but cows are problematic because they also increase food and are on the Stable. Stone is the perfect answer. It's a bonus resource that is placed specifically to improve the production of low-yield areas and doesn't have any negative side effects. It also gave a way to reduce "automatic" happiness (like from luxuries) and move it to "developed" happiness (on the stone works), which nerfs ICS, yet keeps developed wide empires viable.
What they did with stone is simply replace all references to cows with stone in the production-balancing algorithm within AssignStartingPlots.lua. Cows are still placed to improve the yield of some low-yield areas but aren't as ubiquitous now. I did a lot of work trying to balance out each region's strategic resources, fertility and so on, and stone makes it so much easier.
I did not know Stoneworks had a no-plains restriction and agree that can be non-intuitively annoying. I suspect they did it because the purpose is grassland-plains balance, similar to the Windmill/Workshop non-hill restriction for hills-flat balance.
I think a better solution for the Stoneworks would be no restriction, and change "AttemptToPlaceStoneAtGrassPlot" to avoid plains more. I have put it on my todo list. Thanks for bringing up the topic!
Remember how plains were considered much more valuable over grassland at Civ's vanilla release? Everyone loved riverside hill or plains tiles with farms on them. Areas with very little production (like tundra and grassland) needed a boost.
Changing the terrain like adding forests or hills creates balance issues since it affects combat, some leader traits, resource placement and so on. Firaxis added lots of cows to low-production areas as a temporary solution, but cows are problematic because they also increase food and are on the Stable. Stone is the perfect answer. It's a bonus resource that is placed specifically to improve the production of low-yield areas and doesn't have any negative side effects. It also gave a way to reduce "automatic" happiness (like from luxuries) and move it to "developed" happiness (on the stone works), which nerfs ICS, yet keeps developed wide empires viable.
What they did with stone is simply replace all references to cows with stone in the production-balancing algorithm within AssignStartingPlots.lua. Cows are still placed to improve the yield of some low-yield areas but aren't as ubiquitous now. I did a lot of work trying to balance out each region's strategic resources, fertility and so on, and stone makes it so much easier.
I did not know Stoneworks had a no-plains restriction and agree that can be non-intuitively annoying. I suspect they did it because the purpose is grassland-plains balance, similar to the Windmill/Workshop non-hill restriction for hills-flat balance.
I think a better solution for the Stoneworks would be no restriction, and change "AttemptToPlaceStoneAtGrassPlot" to avoid plains more. I have put it on my todo list. Thanks for bringing up the topic!
Txurce
Deity
I'm thrilled with stone and think it was a brilliant idea. The reason is terrain balance!
I did a lot of work trying to balance out each region's strategic resources, fertility and so on, and stone makes it so much easier.
I knew the impetus was terrain balance, but wasn't sure why they didn't just change a given grassland to plains instead. Looking at it more closely, this is not only better, but more interesting. I was hoping there would be more use for it than a couple of hammers - some kind of new unit in particular. I can see how it's of much more value to you!
Thalassicus
Bytes and Nibblers
Changing the terrain is problematic because certain resources require specific terrain. Incense can appear on plains for example, but not grassland. It makes it harder to distribute resources evenly. 
Ahriman
Tyrant
It is true that in release-day vanilla Civ5 plains were much more powerful than grasslands.
I think this has been mitigated by a number of changes:
a) TBC's shift for golden ages to give flat production bonus rather than +hammers on tiles that had hammer bonuses. The main reason why plains were so good was golden ages.
b) TBC's nerfing of MCS. One of the main reasons why grassland was so weak was that food was so easily available from Maritimes.
c) Addition of aqueduct, tweaking of food requirements for large cities in TBC. One of the main reasons that food was weak is that excess food lost a lot of its value because it there were no multipliers and so it was too hard to grow beyond size ~12.
d) Addition of engineer slots to buildings like the waterwheel. Now it is much easier to convert food into production.
e) Addition of lots of cows.
f) TBC boost to pastures with fertilizer tech. Plains used to be better because wheat farms would be boosted by tech but grassland pastures would not.
Given all these changes, I think plains are no longer significantly better than grassland.
I can understand that you want to not increase the hammer yields of plains areas. But that can be done simply by not having stone spawn in plains. That is not what we have. We have a situation where you cannot take proper advantage of stone (ie: stone is a weak bonus) if you happen to build your city on a plains tile, even if the stone and most of the surrounding area is grassland. So you aren't really weakening plains zones here, you are just making the exact tile the city is on more confusing. A city founded on a grassland tile is identical to a city founded on a plains tile in terms of yields - but now the plains city is very slightly weaker, in a way that feels rather arbitrary.
So I would balance plains vs grassland by what bonuses can appear on those tiles and so what the yields are from those tiles, not by restricting what buildings can be constructed in a city built on those tiles.
I think this has been mitigated by a number of changes:
a) TBC's shift for golden ages to give flat production bonus rather than +hammers on tiles that had hammer bonuses. The main reason why plains were so good was golden ages.
b) TBC's nerfing of MCS. One of the main reasons why grassland was so weak was that food was so easily available from Maritimes.
c) Addition of aqueduct, tweaking of food requirements for large cities in TBC. One of the main reasons that food was weak is that excess food lost a lot of its value because it there were no multipliers and so it was too hard to grow beyond size ~12.
d) Addition of engineer slots to buildings like the waterwheel. Now it is much easier to convert food into production.
e) Addition of lots of cows.
f) TBC boost to pastures with fertilizer tech. Plains used to be better because wheat farms would be boosted by tech but grassland pastures would not.
Given all these changes, I think plains are no longer significantly better than grassland.
I can understand that you want to not increase the hammer yields of plains areas. But that can be done simply by not having stone spawn in plains. That is not what we have. We have a situation where you cannot take proper advantage of stone (ie: stone is a weak bonus) if you happen to build your city on a plains tile, even if the stone and most of the surrounding area is grassland. So you aren't really weakening plains zones here, you are just making the exact tile the city is on more confusing. A city founded on a grassland tile is identical to a city founded on a plains tile in terms of yields - but now the plains city is very slightly weaker, in a way that feels rather arbitrary.
So I would balance plains vs grassland by what bonuses can appear on those tiles and so what the yields are from those tiles, not by restricting what buildings can be constructed in a city built on those tiles.
Thalassicus
Bytes and Nibblers
I don't want to get too much into the details of how map generation works internally, but here's an overview.
A no-plains restriction for stone isn't enough because there can be a few grassland tiles surrounded by plains or hills. There's also factors like pathing (mountains/water), player density, features, and other things to consider. Sirian's methods generally analyze only 1 plot at a time. It's a simple and easy approach but does have its limitations. (Sirian is the Civ community member who did all the map generation code for Civ 5.)
I created an algorithm that sweeps over the map and determines weights for how much resources should favor particular areas. I used this algorithm to place strategic resources more intelligently. I also created an algorithm that analyzes plots in a circular radius. I use this circular analysis for resource placement, some natural wonders, barbarian promotions, and other things.
In an ideal world I'd have the time to replace all of Sirian's "absolute 1-tile" code with this "flexible weights" method, but the file is over 10,000 lines long so it'd be infeasible to do it for everything. I do it for specific parts of map generation when it seems important. Stone placement seems like a good use for it. It's conceptually simple to figure an averaged "production value" of plots across the map, and drop stone into low-production areas. I can also use the circular analysis for deciding if start locations need extra production. Coding these things will probably take four or five hours, however, so I'm focusing on more immediate priorities first (policy balance).
I hope this clarifies some of the confusion on the subject.
A no-plains restriction for stone isn't enough because there can be a few grassland tiles surrounded by plains or hills. There's also factors like pathing (mountains/water), player density, features, and other things to consider. Sirian's methods generally analyze only 1 plot at a time. It's a simple and easy approach but does have its limitations. (Sirian is the Civ community member who did all the map generation code for Civ 5.)
I created an algorithm that sweeps over the map and determines weights for how much resources should favor particular areas. I used this algorithm to place strategic resources more intelligently. I also created an algorithm that analyzes plots in a circular radius. I use this circular analysis for resource placement, some natural wonders, barbarian promotions, and other things.
In an ideal world I'd have the time to replace all of Sirian's "absolute 1-tile" code with this "flexible weights" method, but the file is over 10,000 lines long so it'd be infeasible to do it for everything. I do it for specific parts of map generation when it seems important. Stone placement seems like a good use for it. It's conceptually simple to figure an averaged "production value" of plots across the map, and drop stone into low-production areas. I can also use the circular analysis for deciding if start locations need extra production. Coding these things will probably take four or five hours, however, so I'm focusing on more immediate priorities first (policy balance).
I hope this clarifies some of the confusion on the subject.
Ahriman
Tyrant
This sounds fine to me.
I don't think anyone was advocating removing stone entirely.
Txurce
Deity
Thal, consider it your duty to let us know where you wind up working in the game industry!
Txurce
Deity
Yes it is.
Thalassicus
Bytes and Nibblers
I looked in the game files and do not see any restriction on which cities the Stoneworks can be built in. I also tested this by placing a city on plains, which was able to build the Stoneworks. I'm not sure what gave the impression it had such a restriction but it doesn't exist.
It does require an improved marble or stone nearby, however.
It does require an improved marble or stone nearby, however.
Txurce
Deity
I looked in the game files and do not see any restriction on which cities the Stoneworks can be built in. I also tested this by placing a city on plains, which was able to build the Stoneworks. I'm not sure what gave the impression it had such a restriction but it doesn't exist.
It does require an improved marble or stone nearby, however.
I built a SW on plains in my first vanilla game. The "no plains" rule is cited on the tech tree.
Thalassicus
Bytes and Nibblers
Was this in vanilla?
The vanilla tooltips are painstakingly written by hand so there's often mistakes. Tooltips in CiVUP are always accurate because they're automatically created from reading the game data. I'm still puzzled why Firaxis doesn't do this, it would save time writing and updating tooltips in 8 languages.
The vanilla tooltips are painstakingly written by hand so there's often mistakes. Tooltips in CiVUP are always accurate because they're automatically created from reading the game data. I'm still puzzled why Firaxis doesn't do this, it would save time writing and updating tooltips in 8 languages.
Txurce
Deity
Was this in vanilla?
The vanilla tooltips are painstakingly written by hand so there's often mistakes. Tooltips in CiVUP are always accurate because they're automatically created from reading the game data. I'm still puzzled why Firaxis doesn't do this, it would save time writing and updating tooltips in 8 languages.
That is hard to believe. Man.
Yes, in vanilla. I never look at that stuff, but did in this case because I wanted to see where the SW was.
Hi just wondering if your latest combined balance/patch mods are available via the mod browser? I did a search for "Thal" and came up with version 7.(can't remember the last digit). I noticed on this forum that several members are talking about version 8.x
Thanks for your help.
Thanks for your help.
Thalassicus
Bytes and Nibblers
You can download the mod from here: civmodding.wordpress.com
I've been unable to upload to the mod browser since July 5th. Modbuddy crashes when I try to log on. Seckman of firaxis said:
I've been unable to upload to the mod browser since July 5th. Modbuddy crashes when I try to log on. Seckman of firaxis said:
Seckman said:
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