this is my thoughts on techs

[rocklikeafool]

i dont honestly think this setup is going to be hard for the AI to grasp. if its looking defensive it gets archers and decided for city or field based. if its going aggressive it goes for foot troops. if it has the coins it upgrades them.

the trick is in trying it since it solves sooo many issues , even if its only in a mod mod

Well, it should be, especially since the AI were updated in .032. But it might require some tweaks. Like maybe a line or two.

 

[rocklikeafool]

Well, I'm willing to try modding it if no one more qualified volunteers, but I do need my earlier questions answered if I'm going to attempt this.

I'm willin to help you, if you want me to. I don't feel comfortable doin it all on my own. But am perfectly willin to help someone else.

Anyway, wat are your questions, man?

 

[hegemonkhan]

i haven't been playing much recently so i don't know if this has alredy been fixed or adressed by others already.

but the problem i had with tech is that u needed bw for the archery long bow tech. u shouldn't have to get BOTH the melee-metal tech path and archery path for archery units when for melee units u only needed the melee-metal tech path.

i also think that the hunters (recon) shouldn't be with archery and the archery tech paths.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
basically this is what i would like:

each tech path is separate from another to make them equal

a melee path (axemen, SPEARMEN, champions, etc)
a ranged path (archers, xbows, etc)
a recon path (hunters, rangers, etc)
a mounted path (horses, elephants, camels, boar, wolves, etc)
a metal path (for metal upgrades for whatever units: ranged, mounted, melee)
a magic path (magic units)

than there should be an offensive and defense unit for each unit path.

(i really would like spearmen back. horses are strong. need to be a unit with bonus vs horse. make hunters maybe weaker and they stick only to being good vs animals. hunters should NOT be able to garrison a city as well as they do. hunters should NOT be a good unit for city defending. the hunter can and should be good at defending in the field but not in a city. but as it is now the hunter is a better unit than the archer especially with horses getting bonus vs archer why would u use archer over a hunter.)

for example: for melee make axemen the offensive melee unit and a spearmen a defensive melee unit. have an offensive type archer along with the defensive archer. an offensive and defensive xbow. etc..

as for horse archers by very name they are a combo of using horses (mounted) and bows (archery). so i'm not sure how to aply this and keep it balanced.

anyways some of my thoughts on the matter.

i liked the ideas i've read by u guys. i not sure how my ideas could be fit in if u guys liked them to what set-up daladin and others have got.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
i still really like my idea of having buildings give bonuses against units:

stakes building: 25% vs mounted
boiling liquid building: 25% vs melee
palisade (wooden wall): 25% defense
city walls (stone wall): 50% defense
castle (heavy fortified stone walls, towers, citadel, and such): 75% defense

historically:

what i mean by "stakes" would be setting up angled wooden stakes in the ground outside to stop mounted units. done numerous times in real history.

boiling liquid should be self explanatory and people should be aware of seige warfare defense. people in city would drop rocks or boiling soup or liquid on attackers trying to scale the walls or going through the narrow entrance trap. forgot what its called.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
non-game related discussion on ancient warfare:

sharpened wood (spears: held or thrown) were the very first-oldest weapons (and than as tools)humans used.

blow darts were also the first-oldest weapons humans used (if they had a source of poison/toxin from either a plant or animal. amazon tribes in the amazon rain forest still use toxin from a poison dart frog which is actually one of the fastest killing toxins in the world. it nearly kills as fast as if it was a bullet. 30 seconds to 1 minute to kill a human. kills a small monkey instantly. thats fast.)

of course rocks were also the first-oldest weapons. easiest is to just hold or throw them. then they learned to make "string" so they could tie the rock to a stick to make a crude hammer or spear to kill with or used the "string" to make a sling, like the isrealites used though this is much later in history. i dont know if sling go back even further.

archery (bow-arrow making=fletchery) and metal weapons (metalurgy) are BOTH much more sophisticated and came much later.

 

[rocklikeafool]

Hmm...that all sounds cool. Might all be doable too.

 

[A_Hamster]

I'm willin to help you, if you want me to. I don't feel comfortable doin it all on my own. But am perfectly willin to help someone else.

Anyway, wat are your questions, man?

Is it difficult to change the tech tree? Can the editing be done in XML? And is there a tutorial available? (Did not see one in the Civ Academy). If it takes Python or editing the SDK, I can't do this. XML is possible, though it is all self-taught.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Editing the tech tree isn't that hard. The only python involved is for blocking agnostic civs from researching a religion-founding tech, or forcing certain AI civs to beeline for certain techs. o long as those techs aren't removed it shouldn't be a problem. Repositioning where techs are displayed on the tech screen to make it easier to understand could be a little tricky though.

 

[A_Hamster]

Editing the tech tree isn't that hard. The only python involved is for blocking agnostic civs from researching a religion-founding tech, or forcing certain AI civs to beeline for certain techs. o long as those techs aren't removed it shouldn't be a problem. Repositioning where techs are displayed on the tech screen to make it easier to understand could be a little tricky though.

So it is just XML? Then it's within my (limited) capabilities.

Not planning anything too ambitious. Reduce the cost of some of the Missle line techs, put some of the Lumbermill & Watermill benefits on that line to make it more of a "guns or butter" decision. Get rid of the steep requirements for Marksman (Mithril? Come on.)

There were a number of good ideas brought up in this thread, but most are more complex that I want to deal with. Just some simple changes to see if it makes the Missle line more worthwhile. (In any case, since in SP the AI likes Archery ranges and Archers, it should at least make it a trifle better on defense with the line is cheaper and Longbows come earlier.)

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Missile Line? What Missile line?

 

[A_Hamster]

Missile Line? What Missile line?

Exactly.

Technically:

Archer --> Longbow --> Marksman

Crossbow & Arquebus*

At the moment, it is a low return tech line to follow, with the techs overpriced (see Zenophobe's post on tech costs). The beakers are better invested elsewhere, like in Melee or Arcane. The missile line needs to be made cheaper, and perhaps given some economic side benefit to make it more of a choice. At the moment, even city garrisons are better off being melee troops or Rangers. (Or Harlequins, but that's a special case.)

*Can't get this chart to format correctly.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Oh, you mean the archer line.

In my version, these all have ranged attacks. No unit has a range greater than 1 and only Marksmen can actually kill at range, but it is still a big improvement. The AI seems to use it better than I do. It doesn't like moving units out of cities to attack, but it takes every opportunity to attack if it doesn't have to move. I often find cities defended by a dozen archers, which means my attacking units are knocked down to 50% strength every turn if I don't put some space between them and the city. (I should probably rebalanced the ranged damage cap for each unit, but I just set them all at 50% to test it out.) The AI isn't bad at counter attacking once your attacking stacks are weakened either.

 

[daladinn]

if you want to beef up the archer line without doing any major tech tree overhaul i would suggest this ...

move the city raider and city garrison promos over to the archer tree (this balances the metal side of things)

remove the metal working tech requirements

remove metal requirements from all archers. allow metal improvements the same way you would for melee

allow lumbermill and watermill and windmill to be accessed from BOTH thier current tree and the archer tree

provide a +2 gold bonus to each of the 3 mill listed above

if a forge is needed for metal promos , allow a bowyer to do the same thing


### waht that would accomplish ###

1- would balance the non-unit abilities ( metals are in melee , city attack and def are with archers)

2 - allow for economic growth

 

[A_Hamster]

Okay, I'll give this a try. I'll need some time to study the XML and then alpha test the mod for stability. However, please keep posting ideas. (Simple to implement ones, please. Not complex ones requiring messing with the game engine.)

Another reason to keep this simple is it is an experiment. One changes a few things, see how it works in practice, then you tinker some more. If too much is changed at once, it will confuse the issue.

if you want to beef up the archer line without doing any major tech tree overhaul i would suggest this ...

move the city raider and city garrison promos over to the archer tree (this balances the metal side of things)

remove the metal working tech requirements

Not sure about moving the CR promo from Warfare, but this is an experiment, so sure.

As for metal working tech requirements, hear hear!

remove metal requirements from all archers. allow metal improvements the same way you would for melee

Agreed to the first (Mithril for Marksman?!), not so sure about the second. (See below.)

allow lumbermill and watermill and windmill to be accessed from BOTH thier current tree and the archer tree

provide a +2 gold bonus to each of the 3 mill listed above

Actually, what I was thinking that most of the mill economic boosts would come from the Archer tree side, not the current tree. So while one would have to forego the raw combat power of the melee line, one would have an economic benefit the melee line lacked. You could still get mills either way.

I'm also thinking about moving Lumbermills up earlier: they aren't that exciting an improvement and it doesn't seem like getting them a little earlier would break the game.

 

[Mailbox]

Why not give Warfare an OR requirement for Bronze Working and Archery? That way either "war" tech can access it.

 

[Mithrus]

I'm also thinking about moving Lumbermills up earlier: they aren't that exciting an improvement and it doesn't seem like getting them a little earlier would break the game.

Honestly, putting lumber mills available at construction (any maybe require bronze working as well) would at least make some people actually build them. At present, I don't know if anyone bothers (sure, by a river is nice, but thats not exactly common, and by the time you have iron working, you've already chopped down most of the trees near your city).

 

[A_Hamster]

Why not give Warfare an OR requirement for Bronze Working and Archery? That way either "war" tech can access it.

Good thought. While I like that and I think I'll use it, CG will move to Archery for now, since it needs the help.

Honestly, putting lumber mills available at construction (any maybe require bronze working as well) would at least make some people actually build them. At present, I don't know if anyone bothers (sure, by a river is nice, but thats not exactly common, and by the time you have iron working, you've already chopped down most of the trees near your city).

Actually, I do, but that may be due to a dislike of Workshops until the late game (FfH and standard civ), and a carryover of standard civ habits. Still, earlier is better. The idea is to make the Archery line a real choice. Right now I only get Archery when I need it for Horse Archers. Reading this thread suggests other players are also ignoring the Archery line in favor of other lines.

 

[Zechnophobe]

I've never even built a Marksman unit. I mean, they're like really expensive hard to aqcuire assassins...

 

[Uberness]

My ideas for the tech tree.

What if you allowed forests to be chopped at the start of the game, no tech requirement, takes 4 or 6 turns to do and no production bonus, and at bronzeworking or even masonry or mining you can chop in 2 turns with production bonus. (cuts down on players or AI set back massively because of forests)

For archery let it not require hunting, lead into warfare and also make bowylers cheaper and lead into machinery.
And making the bowyler archery building give a production bonus to archers made might be a good idea.

Switch war chariots around with knights or make knights stronger then chariots, seems odd you need a more advanced tech for a slightly weaker unit.

give Stirrups or warhorses a bonus to horse pastures.

 

[Ekolite]

I think Knights should get a bonus against melee units to differenciate them from war chariots' bonus against archers.

 

[daladinn]

here is my logic for the city warfare promos.

so far we have units in both trees ranging from T2 to T4 (kinda balanced)

the melee line has all of your metal promo's , so moving the city warfare promo's to archery balances those.

the melee line has things like forges and weaponsmiths and such, as well as access to the lumbermill for infrastructure. moving the other improvements to archery (keep em also where they are since it makes sense) will balance that aspect.

as for your bit about giving marksmen mithril weapons. why not? you spent the beakers to learn the tech down and entire seperate tech line. AND you have no problems with T4 melee having both mithril weapons and city attack promos. why limit the marksmen?

as far as having warefare be accessed by either archery or bronzeworking , sure , but atm its almost a useless tech line that needs to be nuetered anyway. that is , unless you agree to give units like the phalanx the same tech requirements that marksmen would face from the warfare tree

 

[hbar]

I built a bunch of lumbermills in a recent game, and I was really disappointed to find out that they no longer get a commerce boost down the line. It really takes away any motivation to build 'em when you know that in 100 turns or so, you'll have to tear them down to build something better.

Would it be possible to have each lumber mill in the BFC give something like +5% to archery units? (and wood golems too!)