Thoughts on early game

[donblas]

(Or why do I have a hard time forcing myself to get to the mid game).

I really love this mod, but I haven't played a "real" game in awhile. I'll start up a game, and then rage quit before I get to the "interesting" stuff. I think I have the reason pinned down:

The early game is amazingly unforgiving. (This is on Emperor level, I destroyed Monarch so I don't think I'm playing too high. This is on a RI generated map, not the world map).

- You have a hard limit of turn 40-45 to get some type of military unit if you want any land based improvement to survive. Archers show up then, have 3 strength and a first strike. They pillage much of the time (wasting 10-15 turns of work!) before suiciding on your capital.
- Even if you get archers, you need to get them on any hill with improvement. Since archers get a bonus for defending hills, you won't be able to dislodge a barbarian before it pops your mine\winery.
- Militia are worthless because they have less than a 50% win rate due to first strike. I'm not sure what they are for. They are worse than archers in pretty much every single way (except 1 tech earlier).
- If you let your worker not have a military unit on top, those "slinger" 2 move units will capture them before you can notice.
- Because scouts only have 1 str (2x against animals), tigers and boars have better than 50% against them on some terrain.
- Even if you get a scout out early, you have until turn 40 before barb archers eat them.
- You really want scouts though, as each village with gold lets you upgrade a warrior to an archer (60 something).
- You have to wait to the 4 strength scout before you can really scout.

This all points to one of the following:
- Pray for a start with coastal islands. No need to defend land improvements, and they are amazing early on.
- Beeline archery and try to spam 2-3 before turn 40. You have to skip all the other buildings until afterwards unless you don't want upgraded tiles.
- Pray for starts with tiles that are good without upgrades. Things like spice\lemons.

I rarely have trouble early on with the AI. But the early game is really punishing. It also pigeon holes you to rushing military tech too early. Here's how I would "fix" things.

- Make the scout 2 str (with 50% against animals). You'll still get owned when turn 40 rolls around, but an unlucky move won't have animals eat him (he's supposed to be strong vs them).
- Make the animal -> barb transition turn 50 instead of 40, and 60 instead of 50 on lower difficulties. Or, have the first barbs spawned be warriors instead of archers. This way, you aren't facing first strike + hill defense + 3 str archers on your wineries against militia.

I'm half tempted to poke around the xml\python to prototype those changes. Any idea how hard they'd be?

 

[donblas]

So I poked around and found where the unit definitions live. On second thought 2 + 50% is a bit much, maybe 2 + 25% or something.

Looks like the code is:

if (getElapsedGameTurns() < ((GC.getHandicapInfo(getHandicapType()).getBarbarianCreationTurnsElapsed() * GC.getGameSpeedInfo(getGameSpeedType()).getBarbPercent()) / 100))
{
return false;
}

On emp, iBarbarianCreationTurnsElapsed = 20 and <iBarbPercent>200</iBarbPercent> on realism speed.

20 * (200 / 100) = 40, which is what i'm seeing.

I can just increase iBarbarianCreationTurnsElapsed by 5 for my change...let's see if this builds...

 

[ringwraith18]

Do you play with Raging Barbarians on, by any chance?

 

[donblas]

I play with whatever the "Play it Now" RI_Planet_Generator default to.

Looking at what defaults in a custom game, it appears yes I do.

I'm happy with the early barb pressure, it keeps the early game interesting. Just not that much pressure you have to base your entire opening on surviving it.

 

[donblas]

So here's my patch (attached). I ended up with:

I extending barbarian timer by 10 turns for all difficulties. I really don't think lower difficulty need more than, and I really question who plays RI on deity. Maybe a deity player could tell me how they survive archers comes at them before they could even research an upgraded troop type. I more like:

Turn 80 for settler moving to 35 or 40 for the highest difficulty, increasing the density of barbarians if that's considered too much a difficulty lowering.

Bumped scout to 2 str, 25% animal. That gives it slightly more before against animals, but makes upgrades not useless for them (10% of 1 str is ~= nothing). This does kinda make it a warrior++, but warriors really do suck. I kinda think they might need adjusting, but I'm not convinced.

Other things I noticed from SVN:

The early governments got buffed. Being an early despot now makes more sense, and all of the early ones have really great trade offs:

- Early "wide" empire building due to -50% city cost
- Smaller "tall" empires due to +2 happiness
- Middle road (no bonus\penality for empire size, but still easy +1 happiness for cities).

This is pretty awesome. +1

I feel like Nobility is still underpowered. So you trade the easy happiness culture loss (who cares about early culture once your borders pop one time) for one where you have to build a new building to get rid of your 15% military bonus. You get more free troops and 10% gold in capital. If you are amassing an army, maybe the extra troops are worth it. Civil service isn't good at all until you unlock local bureaucracy. I'd rather stick to rule of fear unless I'm spiritual and get a free switch.

 

[Manco Capac]

So here's my patch (attached). I ended up with:

I extending barbarian timer by 10 turns for all difficulties. I really don't think lower difficulty need more than, and I really question who plays RI on deity. Maybe a deity player could tell me how they survive archers comes at them before they could even research an upgraded troop type. I more like:

Turn 80 for settler moving to 35 or 40 for the highest difficulty, increasing the density of barbarians if that's considered too much a difficulty lowering.

I'm not playing deity yet, but unraveled the way of winning Titan difficulty. I think I may be able to pull deity off, but I expect much I won't be able to do my guilty pleasure of the combo Stonehenge+Mids, which are the most risky wonders, but also the most critical to make higher levels viable. Raging Barbarians option was put on for my two last games on Titan and it did turned out very well in the wonder department. I had the hunch it will help me and it did. Basically by keeping the AI more busy on units for defenses...

Anyways, in short, the trick for survival (harder if having an african civilization for the nerfed warriors) is to have your capital settled on a hill and train either 2 or 3 warriors. The later being the almost safe case.
The point is to create a super unit having Guerilla I & II + City Defenses promos.
Once Archery is in, the GG points gathered should have given an early GG. Best use ever I have found is to attach it to one warrior (the best promoted) alone to avoid repartition of XP given and then upgrade into an archer for free. Then, your other warriors leave and only one archer protects your capital. It seems risky, but that have strong advantages like all barbs will immediately attack compared to a garnison of more units.

Ideally, combined to this survival tactic, one hopes to fogbust some part outside the capital from where barbs could come, leaving a dead zone for them to improve some resource.

And the superman archer tactic is doubled when getting your second highly promoted archer, allowing to even scatter early AI invasions.
My first attempt ever was an 8 units against my two supermen archers and the stack died for the prize of one. And this was the only risky moment of the game.

In the end, people criticized me for playing without raging barbs and I discovered (obviously if the map layout around the capital isn't terrible) that option makes the game actually easier, leaving me time to build my precious wonders and giving me early super archers to dupe a strong K-mod AI stack into suicide (instead of pillage mode) with high chance to win .
Of course, that depends of the game. A tectonics game with a huge icy part would be infinitely more difficult to deal long term than a game where you can fogbust well at some point.

Hope it helps.

 

[Manco Capac]

- Militia are worthless because they have less than a 50% win rate due to first strike. I'm not sure what they are for. They are worse than archers in pretty much every single way (except 1 tech earlier).

Nope. They're awesome...when the AI decides to build them instead of archers for their first invasion.

If you let your worker not have a military unit on top, those "slinger" 2 move units will capture them before you can notice.

IIRC, they are scout barbarian counterpart. Indeed, it is always important to fogbust fogged tiles that are two tiles away. The other problematic is the "danger sensor" doesn't work well here. If the barb unit is next to the busy worker, the worker will stop, but won't for 2 movers or those damn mounted barbarians that pass through forests and hills like nothing. When one forgets to cancel the task, the worker is simply doomed.

Even if you get a scout out early, you have until turn 40 before barb archers eat them.

In fact, they can be quite useful for some tasks.

1) Move one tile at a time to fogbust plain regions without any defensive features. Only enemy will be barbarian scouts for a 50% battle. Not awesome, but it's not as it's 100% barb scout spawning. Usually, it works well to me.

2) Worker stealing and transportation to capital.

You really want scouts though, as each village with gold lets you upgrade a warrior to an archer (60 something).

I don't really play with huts anymore. It gives to AIs more than it gives to us. And the GG tactic simply offset this problem by making the warrior free for upgrade.

Pray for a start with coastal islands. No need to defend land improvements, and they are amazing early on.

To me it's always a disappointment to have my food on coast. But, if I have my land foods and an easily unfogged piece of land for my capital being near to waters, that's a great situation. Coast starts beg for sucky food sources (and costly in hammers) plus possibility to be boxed by some AI.

The early governments got buffed. Being an early despot now makes more sense, and all of the early ones have really great trade offs:

- Early "wide" empire building due to -50% city cost
- Smaller "tall" empires due to +2 happiness
- Middle road (no bonus\penality for empire size, but still easy +1 happiness for cities).

OMG! Walter and his crew made it! Yes!!!!11! I can't wait for 3.2.1. Yeah, since I played with 3.2, I'm spoiled by the almost insignificant loading time. I did try 6 times to pack into FPK in the latest SVN before 3.2, but it never worked. Even at the latest attempt when it finally loaded correctly to give me a pink screen starting a game. Bummer, but that's life.

Civil service isn't good at all until you unlock local bureaucracy. I'd rather stick to rule of fear unless I'm spiritual and get a free switch.

Indeed, until local bureaucracy and the Colosseum, bureaucracy doesn't give much. But the Colosseum is the tricky part of Bureaucracy. Without considering the latest changes because I haven't seen them, civil service proved to me to be a strong ally in some cases. Combined with Solar Cult -10% city maintenance, one can get up to -90% (or -95% for some civs) maintenance cut. It's huge. And the Great Temple no longer cost that multiplied -1 (yeah, that is one ridiculous bug) because of that another -10%.
Civil Service is interestingly strong for the Colosseum if marble and stone are gotten. Given the AI almost never chooses it, it gives possibility to do the fail gold strategy, allowing to have 4 times better than making "Wealth" in cities. Some games won't allow that wonder to be built at all, leaving huge room to start and stop that wonder as many cities you have. My latest game, I got over 5000 out of it. Huge boost for the economy through hammers used efficiently.
And the wonder itself is nicely tied to Slavery for +1 for those cheap slave markets (the competing factor to Rule of Fear). And another one for the city receiving that wonder. There is also the culture slider effect, but that is mostly irrelevant until renaissance or industrial era, being caught in waves of units in war. And even so, Tyranny civic is better than allowing the slider into culture, except the case of a cultural game.

 

[Manco Capac]

Anyways, nice discussion here. On real issues that everyone seems to miss (again, Walter Walkwood and his crew aren't targeted at all but the RI community). But I guess that has to do more to the fact few wants to play outside Prince difficulty. If the AI was a threat on Prince, I would have played that difficulty, but the AI is a joke, even with K-mod. I don't really understand the fun to create artificially difficulty by giving the AI chances like stunting our own empire to stand against strong civilizations later. Just the idea I could potentially raise an army and destroy everything easily puts me off. Anyways, to each its own.
My latest game on Titan is so weird that it feels like two levels down because I am running away grotesquely starting mid Medieval period. At least, the AI pumps a lot of units to confront correctly....enough for me to tip-toe even with a military tech edge (gunpowder units vs enemy medieval units!) and number.

The game before that one is even more spectacular. Stacks of over 100 units by a civ of 21 cities that are regenerated in short time. It was so fearsome I had to reload at some point. That is a game I call frustrating, but also greatly gratifying! And the war weariness is extreme. Like over 10 ...with civics that have no war weariness multiplers.

I wonder if war weariness should be redesigned to return to zero once a peace is signed, because ever growing WWeariness can lead to extreme levels of unhappiness in later stages of the game, meaning Tyranny is the only option left...

 

[donblas]

It's really good to hear from a higher skill player. That was a great serious of responses. Here's my thoughts:

Yeah, the hill + 3 warrior start sounds to be the only way to survive above my difficulty. I personally hate that, because I love "bushy" decisions trees, and being forced to start with a given opening turns me off of a game (as a side note, this is why I stopped playing Civ 5). Super archers sounds fun, is there even a counter to a walled city defender 3 archer?

Sounds like you agree that Militia are worthless if they are only good when the AI incorrectly builds them. Maybe we could rebalance warriors\archers\militia to be more rock paper scissors like farther along in the tech tree?

Yeah, I wish the damage sensor worked better for 2 movement units. Or, one thing I loved about Civ 5 was that barbs captured workers instead of popping them, giving you a chance to recover them.

Yeah, worker stealing is good for scouts. I do think they need a buff. Archers OP until str 4 unit come out.

I have mixed feelings about huts. I turned them off on Civ 5 because they were were in some cases (like natural wonders) game breakingly OP. The early tech\map\cash isn't bad.

Coastal starts are only good with shore islands and a food source.

I have a serious dislike of game with "gamey" mechanics, so thinks like "fail" gold abuse are things I'd rather fix than use myself.

 

[donblas]

So let's look at the "tier 2" units from Rome for example. Those are the units right after bronze working, one of each type.

Archer
3 Str, 1 first strike, +40% city defense, 75% against recon, 110% against horsemen

Spearmean
4 Str, +75% against horsemen

Swordsmen
4 str, +10% against melee, +10% against archer, +10% against recon

Axemen (Bronze or Iron)
5 str, +10% against city, +40% against against spearmen, +10% against melee

Huntsmen
4 str, -25% against city, +60% against melee,

Horse Archer (Horse)
6 str, -25% against city, -35% against spearmen, +35% against recon.

Obviously, the units requiring resources are the "best" here. Axemen and horse archers have the highest str of anything in this class.

The obvious counters:
Horse beats Recon which beats Melee
Spearmen (weakest melee) beats horse.
Archers > recon and horsemen. You need melee to take cities.

This is a healthy IMO.

Let's compare tier 1.

Warrior
2 Str, +25% city defense

Archer
3 Str, 1 first strike, +40% city defense, 75% against recon, 110% against horsemen

Chariot (Horse)
4 Str, -25% against city. +50 against huntsmen (T2 recond), 25% against recon

Scout
1 Str

Militia
3 Str, 75% against mounted


Obviously the chariot is the best early offensive unit. They can't take cities well, but they beat everything except militia in the field.

The obvious counters:

Chariot > everything except archer in city and milita

The problem is that getting horses hooked up takes:
22ish turns to build a worker
12ish turns to improve horses
4-8ish turns to build a cart path

assuming you literally settled within 2 squares of them.

Once you do that, you could almost have research a T2 unit.

Ignoring chariots, you have:

archers > militia and warriors and scouts.

And thus the archers are amazing, everything else is fail problem.

 

[donblas]

Assuming we want something similar to T2 units:

Horse beats Recon which beats Melee
Spearmen (weakest melee) beats horse.
Archers > recon and horsemen. You need melee to take cities.

And keeping archers constant, and they need to be for T2 to work out:

Archer (stays constant)
3 Str, 1 first strike, +40% city defense, 75% against recon, 110% against horsemen, 20% hill defense

Warrior(stays constant)
2 Str, +25% city defense,

Chariot (Horse) (stays constant)
4 Str, -25% against city. +50 against huntsmen (T2 recond), 25% against recon

Scout
2 Str, 75% against melee,

Militia
3 Str, 75% against mounted, 25% against archers, 20% hill attack

That gives us:
Chariot beats recon beats warrior\militia.
Archer beats recon
Militia beats chariot
Militia beats archer (even on a hill), but only outside of a city.

Everything now has a counter. Warriors are still worthless outside early city defense, but they require 0 tech, so I'm ok with that.

Thoughts?

 

[Manco Capac]

I have a serious dislike of game with "gamey" mechanics, so thinks like "fail" gold abuse are things I'd rather fix than use myself.

Well, when I do that, I like to justify I am a terrible despot starting the project in many cities capriciously for the dark hidden goal to sell the dismantled parts of the wonder to shady merchants for moneeeey.

But, I prefer to let this alone. First, this very concept was to make fair the loss of a wonder. Remember how CivIII worked? You lost the wonders and had no other wonders to put the shields into==>all hammers into a small building while losing most as waste. Now, in CIV, there is no transfert hammers system, meaning all invested hammers will disappear into thin air. This, I dislike even more than barring fail gold.

Now, sometimes, for playing higher levels, one has to agree to concede some gamey concepts because if people keeps putting thwarting rules to the human player without experiencing Titan+ can be a hell, it'll make those levels even more difficult.

For example, building wealth in vanilla BTS is already considered bad there, but in RI with this 50% of processed hammers into , that I suspect being a remnant of vanilla CIV back there in 2005, is utterly bad. Then is almost no way to convert hammers into gold efficiently. There is none except wonders. Even wonders without stone/marble multipliers are better for fail gold than wealth.

I disapprove to fix that strongly. If someone doesn't like it, thenit's really easily avoidable by not doing it. Start the wonder in the receiving city and finish it. As simple as that. It doesn't need a fix. Cancelling that trick will make higher levels more injust.

 

[Manco Capac]

Will comment on the two other posts later. I have to go for now.

 

[donblas]

Now, sometimes, for playing higher levels, one has to agree to concede some gamey concepts because if people keeps putting thwarting rules to the human player without experiencing Titan+ can be a hell, it'll make those levels even more difficult.

For example, building wealth in vanilla BTS is already considered bad there, but in RI with this 50% of processed hammers into , that I suspect being a remnant of vanilla CIV back there in 2005, is utterly bad. Then is almost no way to convert hammers into gold efficiently. There is none except wonders. Even wonders without stone/marble multipliers are better for fail gold than wealth.

I disapprove to fix that strongly. If someone doesn't like it, thenit's really easily avoidable by not doing it. Start the wonder in the receiving city and finish it. As simple as that. It doesn't need a fix. Cancelling that trick will make higher levels more injust.

When I say fix, it doesn't necessary mean loosing a wonder = zero benefit. Maybe something closer to use wealth's exchange rate instead (and possibly boosting wealth if it really is worthless to use).

 

[donblas]

Here's a patch with my idea implemented (or at least the civ pedia thinks so). I'm going to take it for a spin and see how it goes.

I removed decreasing the time until barbarians invade part, since militia are no longer worthless.

 

[donblas]

Alright, played about 2-3 "50-60 turn" games and here's my thoughts:

It's nice to have something to counter archers, but this makes scouts (recon) way too powerful. It makes me really fear barbarian primitives as they will eat starting warriors\militia for breakfast.

I still want a rock\paper scissors like the later techs, but the problem now is that the counter for recon (the earliest unit unlocked) is the archer (the latest unit unlocked of my made up "tier") and horse (but we've seen how long it takes to unlock that starting out).

I'm going to think about it overnight. I'd love feedback. I can post a build from SVN with my changes somewhere if somebody wants to try without syncing\packing.

 

[Manco Capac]

I am not bought by the idea of making the militia worthwhile against archers. Since people around here made me lessons about "Realism" before all, here is my suggestion and explanation:

Militia looks like some form of armed peasants and are melee units. Now, how militia running towards archers can be efficient in killing them while the archer had time to kill them before? It doesn't make sense.

In fact, I think we are missing another type of unit that makes more sense regarding fighting against an archer in a realistic manner and Pie's Ancient Europe mod did implement such unit that has (perhaps a bit too much) a strong 100% modifier against archers.
The said unit is the stone slinger. Realistically, it makes sense a strongly trained ancient slinger can outmatch an archer. At least, that one has time to attack before or at the same time as the archer while the militia will receive lots of damage before reaching the archer unless that one is newbie. Regarding the realistic aspect, those two first posts in that forum about slinging shows the pro/con of a slinger against an archer.

Now, their effects would be having a small advantage against archers for being more versatile (as the explanation in that forum proposed) and the ammunition can be up to infinite. Rocks can be found almost everywhere.

Now, regarding a counter, why not the militia!? Nevertheless, I think blunt damages can lead to serious trauma (I think mail coat armors were invented (much later) for that very reason to dissipate the kinetic energy of blunt attacks), so in the realistic department, it may fail. And I don't think simple militia were adorned by shields... What I think would be a cat/dog fight slinger vs archer. The attacker has the bonus for surprising the other. And of course, the slinger has a strong disadvantage when it comes to attack cities. I'm not talking about a strength modifier, but an attack modifier. When defending, of course, they can be strong defenders! But the twist is the archer still retain all its strength against the city when attacking, meaning if slingers are enabled by tool-making (hey, it's just a leather strap), thus it makes sense for being earlier that they should have a malus against cities.

There are plenty of unit textures for the slinger, so Walter Walkwood won't have much problem in this department.



Now, I'm gonna wash myself with holy water. Never liked historical/realism discussion/argumentation, but I do that to please this community whose purpose is realism in its purest form. If they saw all the hidden abuses I encounter by every new game, they'll cringe, but seeing your reaction to something as inoffensive as fail gold, I'll keep my mouth well sewn.

 

[donblas]

I am not bought by the idea of making the militia worthwhile against archers. Since people around here made me lessons about "Realism" before all, here is my suggestion and explanation:

Militia looks like some form of armed peasants and are melee units. Now, how militia running towards archers can be efficient in killing them while the archer had time to kill them before? It doesn't make sense.

I actually think armed peasants would be the first group of people who would be using slings.

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sling_(weapon)#Biblical_accounts

for an example. Slings were common weapons for shepherds as self defense against animals.

However, I'd not interested in arguing historical weapon choices that much, just re-balancing the early game so there is more than "choose archers or choose poorly".

Other options I can think of include:
- Reduce archer's base strength and\or increase militia (or some other unit) but give them better city defense?
- Maybe make scout attacking archers the counter (attack only benefit, like sneaking up on them). That way we have scout > archer > melee > scout.

And to touch of fail gold, since it has apparently struck a cord. I don't have a problem turning gold into hammers. We have wealth for that. I don't have a problem with getting something back for failing at a wonder. However, I think having the mechanic of "try to fail at this thing as much as possible, because it does better than building wealth explicitly" is a hidden one and bad one (kind of like some of the do this stupid thing because if you know the mechanics it's actually better in nethack). If re-balancing that screwed the higher difficulties, I'd suggest buffing wealth until they are equivalent, because right now you are just doing a convoluted "work around" to get that effect. But, I'm not going to die on a hill for it, I personally don't use it.

Also, it looks like militia (at least Rome's model) does have a shield: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8791050/Civ4ScreenShot0003.JPG