v3.1 plans

[Thalassicus]

The Aztecs have a jungle bonus, but they're not tropical?

The developers made jungles livable and I agree with their decision. Extreme terrain makes our success depend more on lucky start locations instead of our personal skill. I want terrain to encourage us to play differently instead of punishing us randomly.

 

[mitsho]

Because the developers aren't the most well versed in history either. To a degree it's a stereotype. The Aztecs are on the edge between the tropics and subtropics. But it doesn't matter as it works well for gameplay. It's good.

 

[Thalassicus]

I figure they know a lot about history, but they're also showing we imagine things.

I'm reminded of the movie Apollo 13. The director tried showing actual footage from spaceship launches to test audiences, even astronauts, and everyone said it looked fake! When they changed the footage to make the camera move around and other effects that did not happen in real life, everyone said it looked more accurate, and liked it more.

Reality is unrealistic.

 

[Ahriman]

Because the developers aren't the most well versed in history either. To a degree it's a stereotype.

They know some history, they just don't know any geography

[More to the point, they were really originally using Aztec to represent pre-Colombian Central America in general, and so I think they had a lot of Maya flavor in their head.]

I can see that it might well be best for gameplay for jungle areas to be decent settlement sites. They take up too much of the map otherwise. But I just don't like that they can be *better* than grasslands.

With the science bonus, a jungle trading post or jungle farm gives more yield than a grassland does. Jungle areas are already more flexible, in that you can build in the jungle for food tiles, or chop the jungle and get production from the plains. IIRC, building plantation on banana-jungle and not chopping the jungle means you get more yield than from almost any other tile (because the -1 production penalty doesn't kick in).

And of course with the jungle pantheon beliefs, they can be insane. [Pantheon beliefs on a tile type IMO only work if that tile type is undesirable, like desert or tundra; if jungle is not undesirable, then the pantheon beliefs should be limited to bananas or similar, not functioning on every tile.]

Slightly slower improvement construction time doesn't feel like enough of a downside to compensate for higher yields.

 

[mystikx21]

I think this is why they got chopped to 1 food in GEM with more frequent bananas and such. Which was pretty crippling if you started there, but they're at least a more marginal choice early on, without beliefs factored in.

I'd prefer they stay pretty high on improvement times as well, as it's at least a speed bump for the tile. Moving the science bonus back further also should help.

 

[Ahriman]

I think this is why they got chopped to 1 food in GEM with more frequent bananas and such. Which was pretty crippling if you started there

Right, I am ok with this kind of thing *only* if they are reduced in scale and if players never start there.
But this is probably infeasible.

Why not just cut the science bonus down? So rather than 2 science, all you get is 1 science with research labs? So it's just a fairly minor flavor bonus rather than a large yield increase?

Universities are a medieval era tech, it doesn't make much historic sense to be getting science bonuses from jungles back then.

 

[Senteliks]

Do you plan on reducing spawn rate of barbarians and making them stronger instead,because as it stand right now they don't present challenge but urge to break stuff around you ?

 

[Thalassicus]

Barbarians spawn at the same rate in the mod as vanilla right now. I'd be okay with making them less common.

 

[jacktannery]

They know some history, they just don't know any geography

.....

I think it is too easy to have a civ in a jungle. Other than the Mayans and potentially Amazonians (we don't know too much about them AFAIK?), this never really happened historically.

Ahriman I've studied tropical civilisations, and though this view (that the tropics are natural inhibitors to the development of culture and urbanisation) is prevalent today, it is based on colonial-era factors and is not archaeologically demonstrated. Recent studies on the Amazon region have suggested that not a single part of this jungle is pristine, and overall there is a strong chance that there is little or no jungle in central and south america that is pristine (ie has not grown back after human intervention). Although the tropics have some disadvantages, lack of productive land or difficulty in providing enough food (the ones cited by early western colonists) is not one of them.

As well as being crucibles of early civilisation in central america, tropical regions in southern and southeast asia and africa are also associated with early civilisational 'advances'. The vigorous growth of jungle can sometime obscure settlement evidence, for example in Gautemala and along the Amazon.

A further important factor is how lands that modern people perceive as marginal have incubated major civilisational advances. Notably the development of writing, major religions, urbanisation, agriculture, and so forth in lands that are partially tropical or partially desert; as opposed to developing in places that westeners consider 'optimal' climate conditions like washington or berlin. Perhaps this is because during times of climate stress, people who live in less optimal conditions (on the edge of desert; on the edge of tropics) have to be more inventive and deal with more extreme natural variations.

Apologies for the lecture.

 

[Thalassicus]

Thank you jacktannery, you understand me! When we look at South America or Sub-Saharan Africa in the current era, how much was influenced by luck and history, and how much actually results from climate? It's a complicated question. It would be strange to make make areas of the world "worse" in Civ just because of the modern situation. The past century is only a fraction of human history.

 

[xInVicTuSx]

Well I think it comes down to whether said civilizations were building cities (almost the very definition of civilization) IN the jungles or AROUND the jungles which they had chopped down. That I think is the key point to our discussion here.

 

[albie_123]

We're getting just a little off-topic here.

I agree with you Thal for the most part. But at the same time, in the base game it's certainly not viable to found a city, say, iin tundra and snow, or in a desert surrounded by mountains. But in the mod, with the exception of the extreme poles and extremely mountainous regions, a city can be placed anywhere with almost no problem. There should at least be parts of the map that are not suitable for cities. Take my home country of Australia, for example. There are certainly a few towns out there in the center of Australia - and more than a couple of mines - but there simply isn't an environment conducive to large (or even medium sized) cities.

We should aim to make most of the map inhabitable, requiring different strategies (I'm in a forest, how will I deal with this? Or, I'm on a small tropical island, how should I chose to expand?), but a small portion of the map should be harsh and unforgiving. That's how vanilla did it, even if we do have the same percentage of features present.

 

[Ahriman]

Although the tropics have some disadvantages, lack of productive land or difficulty in providing enough food (the ones cited by early western colonists) is not one of them.

But diseases are, which was the main barrier to tropical colonization.

But as above, I'm ok from a gameplay perspective with being able to build cities in jungle, but they need to not be better than grasslands (because of science bonus and pantheon beliefs).

 

[albie_123]

Let's try to keep the map discussion in the map thread, people.

 

[Senteliks]

Barbarians:
-Reduced the chance for camps to spawn by half.
-Increased the AI combat bonus against barbarians.
(in upcoming 3.1.18 update ).

You really do listen what people say don't you

 

[Thalassicus]

@Senteliks

Always

 

[mystikx21]

Camp spawn was definitely ridiculous. It was very easy to run a deficit with honor and hammer the barb farms early on. I suspect barb healing would also help slow down the rate of camping on its own.

One other AI point to look into is that hand-axe barbs leave the camp like chariots used to, but they're much stronger on defence than chariots and not as fast.

 

[Ahriman]

@Senteliks

Always

Even when we're annoying

 

[Senteliks]

Yea even when we're annoying,like me now This is what was on my mind for days now but always forget to ask.Do you plan on bringing back (this was on instead back ) random events,i liked that feature in GEM and i would like to see it in CEP Advanced (the one that will come sometime in august ) maybe ?

Edit:I didn't notice grammar mistake first time

 

[Thalassicus]

I plan to bring that back in. I'm going to rename them to "stories." We enjoy narratives as human beings, and the core Civilization series lacks this. My brother came up with some ideas to make events feel more like a story. I'm going to make the decisions more interesting instead of just a small +1food or something on a tile. I'm also going to make past decisions affect future events. I will show a "story so far" box when new events come up, so we can see the history of our empire.

In addition to the narrative flavor, events give us unique ways to do things. I plan to add an event for Natural Wonders so we can improve them later in the game. I feel choosing how to improve those wonders will be more fun than getting a passive bonus in the tech tree.

One example of an event I think I did well is the scout. A scout's adventures gain popularity with the people back home, and we get the choice of retiring the scout to write tales of their adventures (culture bonus), or send the scout new supplies to continue its rise to fame and glory (upgrade). I like this and want to do more like it.