Tomatekh's Sumer for VP

I see; I didn't realize that. Guess I haven't run into Egypt too many times. Good to know, though, since I'll have to disable him until that's sorted.

Have you tried to talk @Gazebo into including your civs in a few of the many, many test games he runs? Could give you an easier idea of how much of an outlier they are/aren't. (I'm assuming you're not running a ton of test games yourself; if you are, then obviously ignore this.) I think you guys have enough respect from him at this point to be able to pull something like that.

 

I don't run test games, no.

I don't know what G's policy is concerning that. I would be elated if these custom civ VP ports were given that sort of treatment, it would be a sort of legitimization of what the modders here have been doing. I don't want to pressure him into something like that though, I know he's got enough on his plate without worrying about modmods. Perhaps when VP goes gold, he could be diverted to look at modmods more seriously, but for now I think he is right to focus his attention on the base product.

One other change I am considering is changing the capital city to Lagash (Currently Ur). Lagash is currently the 4th city on the city list.

 

I hear you 100%. I'm putting that out there under the assumption that doing it for a very small percentage of his test games and simply giving you the log (or whatever readout is available) wouldn't cause any great burden. Given that I have only the barest idea what any of that entails, that assumption could very easily be misguided.

I'm trying to learn to run test games myself for my own reasons, and I'll definitely be throwing the kitchen sink at them if I ever get anywhere. I'm about a thousand times less helpful than someone like G, but still, it's data!

EDIT: I personally like Ur for 'the first civilization.' Given that 'ur' is a prefix in English that literally means 'first,' I think it's entirely fitting for the ur-civilization to have it as their capitol.

 

update inbound.

lowered food and production on settle. text tweaks.

Khopesh skillful promotion has been disabled for now in 4UC, so no conflict with Onager wagon anymore

 

I have played 2 days ago as France on Emperor difficulty, standard speed, standard size communitas. By the time I got 2nd policy in Artistry (as my 2nd policy), Sumer have picked ideology and was 10 techs ahead of me, when I was 3rd in tech. Other civs were Aztec, Spain, Persia, Rome, Prussia and modded America. Modded civs were performing better than original, but Sumer is definitely an outlier. It was only one game though. Also I was using 4UC mod.

You said you don't run tests how AI performs. How do you balance it?

 

I've played 2 games vs Sumer myself over the past 2 days. They are indeed out of control (though it's pretty fun if you are playing as them). Generally speaking, VP makes religions much more valuable, which Ziggurats guarantee, and early science comes in much lower amounts, so having a base +2 on 2 buildings in ancient is much stronger in VP than it was in vanilla.

The culprit is not the yields on settle, as so many people have been insisting, it's the science on Ziggurat/Eduba. Eduba gives 2x the science at a critical point of the game, and ziggurat boosts that to 4x the science for 1 tech level. At libraries, other civs can ill-afford to fill the specialist slot, while Tradition Sumer can fill specialists with 0 food cost in the capital during classical/ancient. Eannatum can potentially be pumping 3x the science of contemporary civs for all of classical.

In the coming week I will rework both Eduba and Ziggurat:
Eduba:
1, 2
7 on citizen birth
1 for every 5 in city

Ziggurat:
3, 1
Unique bonus randomly selected

 

OK, so that may fix science. What about huge culture lead?

 

The civ has absolutely 0 culture. I can’t nerf their culture below 0. Any culture lead is due to either a tech or religion lead.

 

It might be a problem, because of this:
"The AI also gets half as much culture as other types of yields. (So if they get 50 science, they will get 25 culture.)" from http://civ-5-cbp.wikia.com/wiki/AI_and_Difficulty?action=edit&section=6
They have huge lead in culture, because they produce much science.

 

Make sure there isn't some bug. When I was playing as Sumer, I was loading game 3 times and every time I had new policy after load. I don't know if that was coincident or not. However, by turn 187 (standard) I have finished authority, artistry, industry, 3 rationalism, 2 freedom and had only 3 techs lead over korea and portugal (from another continent). I have had the biggest city and lead into every demographics possible before hitting this gamestopping bug.

 

@Enginseer, I am using the free policy as trait lua you created. Is it possible that the free policies people are getting from re-loading a game with Sumer could be because of that lua?

 

@pineappledan - its not free policy (so yellow background button), it's like a lot of culture from nowhere.

 

Can I see the code?

 

The lua in question:

Code:

-- Change specialist food

for iPlayerLoop = 0, GameDefines.MAX_MAJOR_CIVS-1, 1 do
    local pPlayer = Players[iPlayerLoop]
    if (pPlayer:GetCivilizationType() == GameInfoTypes.CIVILIZATION_AKKADIAN_MOD) then
        pPlayer:SetNumFreePolicies(1)
        pPlayer:SetNumFreePolicies(0)
        pPlayer:SetHasPolicy(GameInfoTypes.DUMMY_POLICY_SUMER, true)
    end
end

The SQL for the dummy policy:

Code:

<GameData>
    <Language_en_US>
        <Row Tag="TXT_KEY_DUMMY_POLICY_SUMER">
            <Text>Sumer Specialist Food</Text>
        </Row>
    </Language_en_US>
    <Policies>
        <Row>
            <Type>DUMMY_POLICY_SUMER</Type>
            <Description>TXT_KEY_DUMMY_POLICY_SUMER</Description>
            <SpecialistFoodChange>-1</SpecialistFoodChange>
        </Row>
    </Policies>
</GameData>

 

You're missing this part out in the code.

Code:

function InitialWowLads()
....
end

if (Modding.OpenSaveData().GetValue("GoodMemes") == nil) then
    InitialWowLads()
    Modding.OpenSaveData().SetValue("GoodMemes", 1)
end

This allows the code to only fire once. If people experienced JFD's mods, they should have noticed that this similar code is buggy and a workaround at best. It fires multiple times everytime you load the game. If this bug happens in the late game, it's because of this lack of this failsafe.

 

Ahh. thanks. Yes I seem to have missed that

EDIT: v 6.0 is live.

Fixes
Bug in lua prevented Sumer from being savegame compatible
Minor text tweak

Balance adjustments
- increased food and production on settle to 60/60
- boosted Ziggurat of Inanna (10 GAP and Faith on citizen birth)
- reduced base science on Ziggurat to +1
- reduced base science on Eduba to +1, and increased base food to +2
- reduced Science on birth on Eduba to +7
- reduced construction cost of Ziggurat to 150

 

Culture given to the AI is unrelated to the Science produced by the AI.

What this sentence mean is that
"Sometimes (new era, great people, new city,...), the AI will have a bonus in every yield. Bonus in culture is halved compared to others. For exemple, it will have 50 science + 50 gold + ... + 25 culture."

 

Oh, ok. So it was just a bug they they got free policy every time I've loaded the game.

 

bug fixes coming soon:

In my playthrough, I found that conquered cities that keep their temple only get the base ziggurat, and are not given any of the specific pantheons. I also found that the pantheon ziggurats are not considered valid as prerequisite buildings for the Grand Temple, but the base ziggurat is. I am guessing this has to do with the pantheon ziggurats not being on the tech tree, since that is the only real difference between them and the base zigg.

I managed to get around this by conquering a holy city of a neighbouring civ, which retained its temple, and built my grand temple there.

 

So it's fixed that Sumer don't get free policy when the game is loaded?