Thoughts/suggestions about game options

[Actuarian]

Here are some quotes from another thread, where someone requested some technology tweaking so they could start play in the ancient era with the technologies they wanted.

Well I have said this before, if you don't want to play a mod with a Prehistoric Era and a Galactic Era why the heck would you play a game called "Caveman 2 Cosmos"? Its in the name! Its like a vegetarian going to a steak house. What did you expect?

Options are a big deal in civilization.
Everybody is going to want to play C2C their own way.
I still think that having the option being able to play from a specific era, or stopping the progression at a certain era, will give people the ability to play as they wish.

My 2 cents. I basically agree with both of you, but I don't think there is any way this mod can be all things to all people. Is a crappy option really an option? In the above example, I wonder how balanced the play would be with starting from the ancient era, and how an ancient era start would work with other options on, like the divine prophets or nomadic start. I'm guessing you mod developers would rather spend your modding time in other ways than truly making an ancient era start option fully inegrated with C2C.

I think you should take a look at all options, both current and proposed, to see if they really make sense as an option. For example, you shouldn't add the option of an alternate history unless you are willing to commit the time to make the game work smoothly and in balance either way, and be willing to spend the time to maintain the balance as you continue development. If it isn't really workable to have something as an option, just choose one way and go with it - yeah I know you will probably make Joseph and a few others mad . Alternatively you could have an option available but not support it for play balance on an ongoing basis.

Another issue I see is that some of the options really affect game balance because the AI currently doesn't know how to take advantage of them, like surround and conquer, and divine prophets. I think these either need to be flagged or removed until fixed.

In my opinion the main focus of the mod should be a set of with recommended/suported options, but some other options should be available to choose. A potential problem I see is if you guys have to spend a lot of time trying to balance/tweak/optimize seldom chosen options (like starting from a point other than prehistoric). There are two reasons for this. First, you are still adding a lot of content. If you try to make all the options are play balanced every time you add content, that will really bog content development down, and if you don't play balance the options you'll end up with a mess where it would be impossible to know if you are starting a somewhat balanced game or not. Secondly, there are already so many options that is basically impossible to make them all work really well, especially in combination with each other - so why try?

Here's what I would do.
1. Decide on a base game setup
2. Poll people and see what options they are using. I'm guessing that some of the options are almost never selected (usable mountains off) or most people don't really care about the option (when a city can work a three tile radius) and could be eliminated. Some of the others might be eliminated if you can get them working correctly for the AI (like no divine prophets).
3. For the remaining options decide on which options will be "supported". These would be the ones that you want to fully integrate into the mod. The others would be available, but not play balanced unless very easy for you to do.
4. In the advance startup options menu, have the popup state which options are not "supported" and which one's don't currently work for the AI.

Great mod! Thanks! Keep up the good work!

 

[GiuseppeIII]

Dont we already have a forum about this

 

[Actuarian]

Dont we already have a forum about this

I don't think so - I only saw specific option requests, not a generic option thread. I'm trying to take a step back and look at the big picture. I think that by trying to be too much for to too many people this mod may end up being diminished for everyone.

But let me know of there is already a thread talking about this and I'll move it.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

This is a very important discussion that should be in a separate thread. I agree that the way we are putting tings in makes balance hard and that balancing for every option is nigh on impossible.

There are two issues here that I think need to be discussed:-
1) Do we support standard Civ IV options like the start in era option
2) What extra options we, including RoM and RoM:AND have added can be removed.

I think that usable mountains could be removed as an option but if divine prophets were made mandatory I would stop playing C2C.

 

[Actuarian]

This is a very important discussion that should be in a separate thread. I agree that the way we are putting tings in makes balance hard and that balancing for every option is nigh on impossible.

There are two issues here that I think need to be discussed:-
1) Do we support standard Civ IV options like the start in era option
2) What extra options we, including RoM and RoM:AND have added can be removed.

I think that usable mountains could be removed as an option but if divine prophets were made mandatory I would stop playing C2C.

The removal of the divine prophet option was just to illustrate a concept, not a specific proposal. It would work equally well with forcing dynamic experience or surround and conquer.

In general, I would hope that any suggestion that gets rid of an option that would result in a main C2C modder quitting is a non-starter.

 

[Hydromancerx]

I think that usable mountains could be removed as an option but if divine prophets were made mandatory I would stop playing C2C.

I have to agree.

The options I think should be mandatory are ...

- Usable Mountains
- Advanced Economy (for the techs to be mandatory)

Basically the stuff that has become intertwined with the other features so much which includes buildings (Usable Mountains) and techs (Advanced Economy).

We already merged other AND ones like Castles and Weather which use to be options.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Unfortunately I would veto Advanced Economy being made mandatory.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

One thing I would like would be a single option Advanced C2C which would replace a number of the options in the list.

Basic C2C (IE Advanced C2C off) would have something like

Great Commanders off
Basic Civics - a simpler version of what we have
Fewer animals
Crime off
Flamibility on
Expansion to 3rd tier by culture only
​

Advanced C2C

Great Commanders on
Advanced Civics - ie what we have or V2 by CIVPlayer8
All the animals
Crime on
Flamibility on
Expansion to 3rd tier by Admin building only
​

Edit as mentioned elsewhere we either need to remove the Choose Religion option or make all religions the same. I could adjust all religions to be the same if the Choose Religions option is selected, I think.

 

[Hydromancerx]

No offense to CIVPlayer8 but I dislike his civics and prefer it stay a modmod.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

No offense to CIVPlayer8 but I dislike his civics and prefer it stay a modmod.

I have not played with it at all yet. I like some bits just from reading it. Anyway that was not the (main) point of my post. It was to continue the discussion on what options we should get rid of by extending the how.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Thanks for the great feedback on DP guys. Honestly... what makes it a bad thing? (I offer you to discuss your outlook on the negative aspects of it in the Divine Prophets AI thread...) But all joking aside, I did make it an option because I don't feel it should be an imposed play function.

IRT Choose Religions, I don't think they should all be made equal. In general, all should instead be given more game benefit focus so that none are better or worse than the other but not equal. Yes, they should be a bit more balanced but balanced by preferences rather than some kind of universalism approach such as was utilized in Vanilla.

With DP considered, every religion should have defined 'flavors' which compares to the leaderheads to determine what religion, after their historical favorite, they attempt to found. I think the trick is to isolate these 'flavors' and determine what each religion should really excel at. I love how different Asatru is from the standard norm, how the early religions do so well with food but not so great at gold, how Voodoo is the strongest for offering production. The original religions suffer a little from being somewhat undifferentiated by default still.

The solution begins with isolating what game benefit feature each religion should bring to the table as their primary 'gift'. Then we adjust the religion's buildings benefits to harmonize with the established intention and make sure that all in all, each is roughly equivalent to the other.


I'm also a little curious what Advanced Economy really does aside from finally giving some much needed visibility on inflation rates. Otherwise, I can't see any cause whatsoever to not just make it a basic default.

I don't think that Multiple Research and Multiple Production can even be off for C2C to really run properly so those should just be defaulted. Everybody likes and uses Useable Mountains, so why not just make it a default. (besides, the tech tree plays into it so integrally now that it would be lacking without it.)

Surround and Destroy is something we know we have to improve the ai for but I find it just too good an option in general to want to disable it. And besides, not trying to use it is actually a fairly functional strategy as it CAN easily backfire by causing you to spread your troop placement into vulnerability.

I'm a bit curious... have we repaired the Revolutions mod? Its really something I wish I had a better understanding of to be honest. I'd like to start trying to play it for that purpose if nothing else.

What I'm hearing in this discussion even being brought up... are we getting a degree of annoyance developing by the overwhelming list of options our mod presents? Perhaps some of them could be ported into the Bug pages and would be more appropriate there... But then again, those pages are fairly overwhelming too...

Nevertheless, as modders, options are great tools because we can include pretty much whatever we like, knowing many others out there will agree, even if many others do not, and it allows us to keep all happy with the game they want to play.

I'm not sure I like the bundling of features like that DH... I personally like a mix that wouldn't be represented there. Though you've made a few good points about some additional options that would be nice. A way to easily toggle between a LOT of animals, SOME animals, and perhaps even NO animals would probably help to smooth over some disagreements. ( I personally like a LOT of animals but relatively few barbs.)

Crime or Flammability on or off could really throw off game balance factors too much to keep on/off both in balance. I think in this we need to just assume on and let players adapt. What would be helpful there is to make sure that big adjustments like these are well documented in the civilopedia for newer players.

The one thing I think that we should've done as an option and perhaps should still go back and DO as an option, was the manner in which we changed the civilization's culture. I LOVE the new way, don't get me wrong. But I know this has lost some of our players and has been one of the biggest areas of irritation for some 'classicalist' players.

 

[Hydromancerx]

I'm also a little curious what Advanced Economy really does aside from finally giving some much needed visibility on inflation rates. Otherwise, I can't see any cause whatsoever to not just make it a basic default.

I would not be opposed to keeping the Advanced Economy stuff optional as long as the techs linked to the setting were not made optional.

 

[GiuseppeIII]

IRT Choose Religions, I don't think they should all be made equal. In general, all should instead be given more game benefit focus so that none are better or worse than the other but not equal. Yes, they should be a bit more balanced but balanced by preferences rather than some kind of universalism approach such as was utilized in Vanilla.

With DP considered, every religion should have defined 'flavors' which compares to the leaderheads to determine what religion, after their historical favorite, they attempt to found. I think the trick is to isolate these 'flavors' and determine what each religion should really excel at. I love how different Asatru is from the standard norm, how the early religions do so well with food but not so great at gold, how Voodoo is the strongest for offering production. The original religions suffer a little from being somewhat undifferentiated by default still.
By Thunderbird

I completely agree with the flavor idea thunderbird

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

The problem is that the religions are geared towards the tech tree progress and as such choosing a religion from latter in the tree means that you can get benefits that you should not be able to get yet.

Choose Religions should be removed.

I would not be opposed to keeping the Advanced Economy stuff optional as long as the techs linked to the setting were not made optional.

I disagree and would like more techs to be optional for example some of the nomad related ones.

 

[Hydromancerx]

In my opinion the only techs that should be optional are dead end techs like the "punk" techs.

 

[Azurian]

This should be included standard, and deleted as an option.

- Usable Mountains
- Advanced Economy (for the techs to be mandatory)
-Multiple Research
-Multiple Production
-Era Specific Colors

 

[JosEPh_II]

I'll put my head in the noose again.

City Limits Should be Turned Off by Default. In fact it can be deleted. Not just deleted as an Option but totally removed from the mod. Of course there is going to be opposition, But.....

Other players are finally starting to see that the AI does Much better with this Option turned off.

sgtslick wrote:Oh and one more important option I think is No City Limits, I never would chose this option but I then tried it out and the AI does way better when the number of city limitation is lifted. You will also find the AI civs are more consistently even in score as opposed to just a couple of huge scores and lots of little ones.

JosEPh

 

[Hydromancerx]

@JosEPh_II

I think at slower speeds it has much more of an effect. For instance during a game last version I expanded way too fast and went 3 cities over the limit which gave all my cities unhappiness. Along with revolutions I almost lost my newly conquered cities.

Without that mechanic I probably could have kept expanding without consequence (well except for the revolutions part).

 

[Sgtslick]

This should be included standard, and deleted as an option.

- Usable Mountains
- Advanced Economy (for the techs to be mandatory)
-Multiple Research
-Multiple Production
-Era Specific Colors

Assimilation is kinda important so you can build other cultures, but i guess some people might not want this actually and choose to to have it off.. so ignore me

 

[AIAndy]

Assimilation is kinda important so you can build other cultures, but i guess some people might not want this actually and choose to to have it off.. so ignore me

Actually I agree that Assimilation is kind of natural to have on now.