V37

[Pepo]

@Pepo,

Regarding checking each city for crime, check out the screen you get with the F1 key, you can make a new custom-made page that shows the properties (scroll down all the way to the bottom in the table on the right).
If you have Revolutions on, you also have CTRL+SHIFT+G, where you get a screen that looks almost identical to the F1 screen, but this screen allows you to make a custom screen to monitor city stability (but not crime).

It took me half a year to figure out that those two screens were different :-/

Also, you can check out the crime on the map itself, hover your mouse over the city, and if crime is negative there, its probably negative in the city too.

Now if only there was a screen that says which new cultures can be built in which city, then I can stop having to check every city systematically every few turns.

Thanks a lot, i didn't notice that you could edit the tabs, that's quite helpfull. As for hovering around, i knew about that but it is faster to go to city screen an cycle between cities but thanks anyways Pepper. What would be awesome would be seeting custom notifications to alert the player.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Interesting feedback Pepo. In some cases you are suggesting things that already exist. In others, things that are in development already. In others, we have dramatic disagreements and in other comments there are some very solid idea proposals that could eventually see the light of day. If they were to come as one topic at a time for discussion, I'd be more direct as to which idea falls into which category Anyhow, all feedback is good feedback, even if we disagree on points.

 

[Pepo]

Interesting feedback Pepo. In some cases you are suggesting things that already exist..

I intend to create a new topic to discuss the last four points(Disease, education, crime and player choices & balance) so which are the things on this four points that already exists? Documentation of the mod is rather barebones ( the guide you are making was very helpful for game options) for people outside the project , so what did I miss as to not make a completely irrelevant suggestion in the future?

PS: About systems that I don't know how they work - tourism. What does it do?

 

[Noriad2]

About tourism - certain wonders and certain buildings add tourism, crime and/or disease lowers it (not sure) and there is the usual 4% decay towards zero every turn.

As tourism goes higher, you build autobuildings. These autobuildings produce a decent amount of money but also crime.

However, during v35/v36 there was no anti-crime unit in the prehistory, so building several prehistoric wonders leads to high tourism which leads to high crime with no possible fix, which in combination with REV mod leads to cities revolting away. For this reason, the tourism autobuildings have been disabled for the early game, and tourism does nothing in the early game.

However now that the prehistory has proper anti-crime units, the early tourism buildings could be turned on again.

 

[JosEPh_II]

I still feel that Tourism is a big mess. And needs a complete overhaul or a complete dismantling. While it can be a cash cow it is also a wild wild card in the Crime giving area. And as such is generally forgotten about when crime runs amok and cities collapse. Thus the "complaints" about not being able to handle crime. You have to reduce Tourism, especially it's higher levels, to keep crime under control.

JosEPh

 

[Thunderbrd]

I intend to create a new topic to discuss the last four points(Disease, education, crime and player choices & balance) so which are the things on this four points that already exists? Documentation of the mod is rather barebones ( the guide you are making was very helpful for game options) for people outside the project , so what did I miss as to not make a completely irrelevant suggestion in the future?

PS: About systems that I don't know how they work - tourism. What does it do?

I didn't have a lot of time to address this when I posted earlier. Sorry. I suppose if we narrow in on one subject at a time I can give more poignant statements RE: your feedback.

New I still feel that Tourism is a big mess. And needs a complete overhaul or a complete dismantling. While it can be a cash cow it is also a wild wild card in the Crime giving area. And as such is generally forgotten about when crime runs amok and cities collapse. Thus the "complaints" about not being able to handle crime. You have to reduce Tourism, especially it's higher levels, to keep crime under control.

hmm... is not the point of tourism to be a natural balance factor against overbuilding too many wonders in one city? I haven't looked closely at tourism but it seems to me that it makes sense that it would be tough to manage crime where there's a lot of it. Just thinking Real World here. Tourists are very easy crime targets and are common crime perpetrators given how they can often not know the laws or have a general feeling of being somewhere where the law is less likely to get a bead on them as a suspect. Look at what happened with the Olympic team swimmers in Brazil this year right? People do things when away from home that they'd never do at home, and they can be baited into things they'd never fall for in their local communities. Wherever I've had a wallet stolen it was in a high tourism center. It's quite a factor in RL.

So what you're saying about it makes it sound like we have it right on the money at the moment...

 

[JosEPh_II]

I didn't have a lot of time to address this when I posted earlier. Sorry. I suppose if we narrow in on one subject at a time I can give more poignant statements RE: your feedback.


hmm... is not the point of tourism to be a natural balance factor against overbuilding too many wonders in one city? I haven't looked closely at tourism but it seems to me that it makes sense that it would be tough to manage crime where there's a lot of it. Just thinking Real World here. Tourists are very easy crime targets and are common crime perpetrators given how they can often not know the laws or have a general feeling of being somewhere where the law is less likely to get a bead on them as a suspect. Look at what happened with the Olympic team swimmers in Brazil this year right? People do things when away from home that they'd never do at home, and they can be baited into things they'd never fall for in their local communities. Wherever I've had a wallet stolen it was in a high tourism center. It's quite a factor in RL.

So what you're saying about it makes it sound like we have it right on the money at the moment...

JosEPh

 

[Thunderbrd]

JosEPh

Not sure I get what you're trying to say here. I'm honestly suggesting that what you said as an argument to dismantle or redesign tourism was a great argument that it's working perfectly as is. If you don't feel that way, I'm curious why.

I know you often feel like I'm countering you just for the sake of argument or debate but I'm really not meaning to do that here. If you have a different vision or set of priorities or goals for tourism to accomplish then I'm open to hearing what you would suggest that be.

But somehow your explanation of why tourism is flawed landed on my ears as a perfect argument that it's satisfying all the goals it has as a feature. Guess I'm confused as to how you saw those arguments as bad things.

 

[JosEPh_II]

ALL it's levels in both Gold and Crime are too strong. Unless you've reduced the Crime they give since I last looked it does not take much for the upper levels to shoot your Crime level to the point that the worst Individual Crime Levels are reached and the roof caves in on you. I toned most of the upper level Ind Crimes down a notch from what Hydro had them set at. But even so they are still Bad things to have.

Remember Sparth getting upset with me about Crime? He said it was broken. That's because if you hit 800 the Crime it opens up is devastatingly vicious. To player and AI alike. And if your Crime level cycles around that 800 level the swings in crime it simulates is a full blown rev type disaster. But your crime levels will swing wildly up and then down as you fight to keep it below 800. Hit 800 because Pop is always generating crime and it shoots thru the roof again. Build a dozen LE units and it comes down and when it gets below 800 it can plummet to a -Crime level for a little while. But when it comes back....the roller coaster ride of doom is back on.

Now add in that the levels of Tourism are running in the back ground. Tourism makes Gold, therefore to player and AI Tourism is Good. Aaaaggggnt Wrong! Upper tourism above level 5 is Bad! The player nor AI is aware of this. Especially the player that ignores crime early and has let it slide. Catching up may be impossible as some AI have shown evidence of. Especially the AI that have negative traits that pour more Crime Fuel on this fire hidden behind the shack it lives in.

And while you are having Fun with your LE and Criminal project (taking out the unsuspecting AI and capturing cities with it) this unchecked monster lies in wait for the uninitiated player and the blind AI. So you think this is balanced? And a good thing?

Is that a better explanation than my smilies?

JosEPh

 

[Thunderbrd]

ALL it's levels in both Gold and Crime are too strong. Unless you've reduced the Crime they give since I last looked it does not take much for the upper levels to shoot your Crime level to the point that the worst Individual Crime Levels are reached and the roof caves in on you. I toned most of the upper level Ind Crimes down a notch from what Hydro had them set at. But even so they are still Bad things to have.

So it's mostly just that it has too strong an effect? I don't know, experience-wise, if I'd agree or not since I haven't had a game go past classical in some time. But I do know that I have some concern that LE units may get too strong at combatting crime for the rate that crime increases and that there may become, as a result, some margin to work with there that a system such as tourism could solve for to keep some cities challenged once the LE units start getting truly powerful.

But I can certainly see the point in toning down or up to help with balance. Nothing wrong with that.

Remember Sparth getting upset with me about Crime? He said it was broken. That's because if you hit 800 the Crime it opens up is devastatingly vicious. To player and AI alike. And if your Crime level cycles around that 800 level the swings in crime it simulates is a full blown rev type disaster. But your crime levels will swing wildly up and then down as you fight to keep it below 800. Hit 800 because Pop is always generating crime and it shoots thru the roof again. Build a dozen LE units and it comes down and when it gets below 800 it can plummet to a -Crime level for a little while. But when it comes back....the roller coaster ride of doom is back on.

Have we considered maybe spreading out the crime trigger points to a longer width of values (so that what horrific thing triggers at 800 now triggers at say, 2000 instead?) Perhaps we should make the impact of crime smoother as it grows rather than offering spots of huge jolts of impact.

I think this version that's something we need to seriously consider. I'm not going to tamper directly but I'd like you to pay close attention to how I'm going to work with DH on the disease stuff and how that kind of thinking should probably apply to crimes as well. It will have to do with levels of disease intensity being varied. Rather than just having a Common Cold, you'll have 5% of the population having a Common Cold, 10% of the population having the Common Cold, in steps all the way up to potentially, though incredibly unlikely to ever reach, 100% of the population having a Common Cold. Crime should have 'levels' for each crime in much the same way, and I was kinda thinking it should be based on the % of population that the population has been victimized by, either directly or indirectly, on an annual basis.

Now add in that the levels of Tourism are running in the back ground. Tourism makes Gold, therefore to player and AI Tourism is Good. Aaaaggggnt Wrong! Upper tourism above level 5 is Bad! The player nor AI is aware of this.

Tourism is a neutral property which is just as bad as it is good and is more of a 'penalty of success' kind of affair. You can't do anything to build to counter it but you can enhance it and as it's meant to be both good and bad, the AI is not given to care about it. But it's penalty... crime enhancement... is something the AI can and does react to at a very high level of priority if it can economically manage to do so, which tourism is helping to provide, thus the solution is contained within the 'disease'. So why have it at all? It pushes the player to have different challenges in different cities and it models RL. Of course, things haven't been measured out to perfection, nor would we want to. I suspect that it is cheaper to hire the LE units to control the crime than the added income is bringing in so it's probably a bit better than worse for the city overall. Of course, how damaging crime is a matter of how poorly it is handled and from what I can see in pushing the AI with my own criminals, they are far superior to a human player at measuring out response needs down to perfection. If they fail to manage crime, it's got to be a failure to manage the economy and since tourism brings the economic power to manage it, I'd have a hard time suspecting the AI would struggle with it.

But the player probably would. Which would be good if we could smooth out the impact of crime a bit so that it doesn't cripple so fast and hard, as it can surge.

This surging effect is something I've been observing. Yes it comes from emergent criminals and the challenges they produce that cannot be immediately responded to like a whack-a-mole game but rather control must be wrestled back in the city from the criminal element. This is a great experience and you get benefits for having been through it - captives and XP and so on that can be tough to get during times of peace so war is not quite as necessary to engage in since it's taking place at an internal level at times. These surges have a limit because the more criminals in the city the less chance they have to spawn, to the point that each one there divides the chance by 10. If we spread out some of the crime effects thinner and smoother across a wider scale of crime, we could probably do the system a lot of good so that it's not quite so nationally economically crippling if a few cities get out of hand. Historically this has happened and it didn't stop the nation from marching on strong. Look at Gangsterland Chicago during prohibition for the most extreme example. Sure it had a tremendous impact but it also ran completely amok, and I'm sure as a nation we still haven't seen just how bad crime can become because we're fairly responsible as a country (generally speaking). Somalia may be the best example of a complete crime based economic collapse in RL. Total runaway without any effort to control it and yeah the gov there pretty much doesn't exist and is requiring international assistance to get pulled out of the fire because it led to such desperation that it was dragging down even more prosperous nations with piracy. But this is what happens when there is NO effort to control crime at all and it seems to me that the point of 800 crime is far before that.

Anyhow, just a suggestion to consider enhancing the range.

As a point of response to what I quoted, the AI doesn't see tourism as good or bad. It ignores it and responds to its less direct impacts. Which is probably fine because it should be a tiny bit profitable on average. However if you're saying it's not generally more profitable than less, which is going to be a statement that probably depends on the quality of the LE units you can produce, then things could be rebalanced a bit to make it that it is again. Tourism is considered something to enhance in RL, despite knowing the added challenges it brings to an area. So it really should be more positive than negative.

Catching up may be impossible as some AI have shown evidence of. Especially the AI that have negative traits that pour more Crime Fuel on this fire hidden behind the shack it lives in.

Yeah, I don't like how the traits were designed to kick a player when they are down. My designs will differ as I highly prefer just basing property modifiers from traits on a per population basis, such as 1 crime per 4 population etc... I consider 1 crime or disease per population to be an extremely potent modifier. But one that is pretty regular so becomes an adjuster to your overall expectations of the challenge the property is presenting rather than a sudden shift that's designed to catch you off guard.

And while you are having Fun with your LE and Criminal project (taking out the unsuspecting AI and capturing cities with it) this unchecked monster lies in wait for the uninitiated player and the blind AI. So you think this is balanced? And a good thing?

I think that the game should present internal, not just external, challenges to the player and some of those challenges should be the result of success. If this is doing exactly that, then yes. But I'm not against retooling it a bit to get a different balance if it's too severe. It was just that the way you put it previously, you explained exactly how it's supposed to work... as a double edged sword that if a player embraces too powerfully it can burn. With current crime design, the ability to manage 'regular' crime (not caused as an attack by another player) gets much easier as time goes on. Less and less LE units become necessary to have the needed control effects, even though populations can soar - the skills of crime control outpaces growth in most cases. Tourism should make for special locations where the battle to maintain order continues to be a bit rough despite that fact. But again, the benefits of that tourism should usually outweigh the added need for crime responses. In smaller communities, tourism is nothing but a positive because the crime is already easily controlled by a wider margin.

Again though, I've not experienced it directly enough to say if I feel its in or out of the balances intended.

Is that a better explanation than my smilies?

Absolutely. And don't take this to be any kind of heated argument here. Just a sharing of perspectives. Ultimately I hope you take what I say into consideration but if you feel the tourism system needs some rebalancing then it's up to you.

 

[E.M. Lurker]

Do goody huts still give out tribes/settlers? I tried looking at the hut xml but it's grown complex beyond my ability to process.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Do goody huts still give out tribes/settlers? I tried looking at the hut xml but it's grown complex beyond my ability to process.

On easier settings, yes. As it was.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Do goody huts still give out tribes/settlers? I tried looking at the hut xml but it's grown complex beyond my ability to process.

Settler, Cheitain, yes, Warlord less but occasionally, Noble rarely. Above Noble No.

But you should be playing Noble and above anyway.

JosEPh

 

[Faustmouse]

I like the gameplay a lot so far! Just started a new Immortal game (marathon, standard size with 7 civs) game and it's fun!
However, I got 2 Hunters and a Stone Axeman from huts before I even had Persistance Hunting! Hunters at this stage are insane and allowed me to easily capture a bunch of animals. Probably huts need a little balancing?

 

[Faustmouse]

Another thing that catches my eye is that when you fight animals, I often read "... has snuck up on an unsuspecting the green man duck".
Maybe this could be changed to "wild" when the adjective is called for that civ? Or would this cause problems elsewhere?

 

[Thunderbrd]

I like the gameplay a lot so far! Just started a new Immortal game (marathon, standard size with 7 civs) game and it's fun!
However, I got 2 Hunters and a Stone Axeman from huts before I even had Persistance Hunting! Hunters at this stage are insane and allowed me to easily capture a bunch of animals. Probably huts need a little balancing?

It would be easier to rebalance those once the prehistoric is split into more eras, assuming that someone is going to eventually do that.
We could add a tech prereq for a particular result I suppose.

Another thing that catches my eye is that when you fight animals, I often read "... has snuck up on an unsuspecting the green man duck".
Maybe this could be changed to "wild" when the adjective is called for that civ? Or would this cause problems elsewhere?

Green Man is the Player so I think when it's calling for the civ it's calling for the player... I'll have to look at the code to see if that's the issue or if, yes, it's a matter of the civ adjective. Hopefully it's just the latter and you're right that's all it would take.

 

[Sakura Matou]

Hey guys just a quick Question, will there ever be an update to allow Sparth's mega civ pack to use the dynamic names ((I.E. Kindom of Inca, Republic of Russia etc.)) and for the interface to display said Civ's Religion on the scoreboard as well? I was saddened when a couple of versions ago a bunch of civs and leaders were removed so this is kind of a must have Add on for me ((I have a very good computer so my performance isnt hit to badly)). If this won't happen I guess it is a compromise I will have to make. Thank you in advance!

 

[Faustmouse]

Cool!
Some more feedback:
- Criminals spawning in your cities are super annoying. They won't do that much if you have enough Law Enforcement units, but as I want to have everything perfect, they really getting on my nerves Probably Investigation is a bit low in the earlier game.
- Barbarians don't do too much against me (only 2 every came into my territory), but for some reason the AI doesn't expand very well. It's on deity now (no raging barbs), and my rivals have 8,6,4,4,3 cities, while I have 10. There is heaps of space and they have tons of units, but the last 3 don't like to expand appearently.
- and are almost no problem during PH and half of Ancient (where I am now), once you get over the problems at game start.

 

[E.M. Lurker]

Settler, Cheitain, yes, Warlord less but occasionally, Noble rarely. Above Noble No.

But you should be playing Noble and above anyway.

JosEPh

I am a total wuss and, in my entire Civ career since 1 onward, have hardly ever gone above Chieftain.

(That's also partly because I would much rather go up against a stupid but honest AI than face one that I know is cheating like a mofo, even when I am not exactly toeing the line myself.)

...anyway, I have now been liberating a single village over and over for five days. I've seen gold and research and maps, I've been given scouts and wise women and fighting folk of all types, but not one tribe in thousands of attempts.

Of course you can't actually help me debug this because in order to do that at all I had to re-enable New Random Seed. Save-scumming is its own punisment, on multiple levels.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I am a total wuss and, in my entire Civ career since 1 onward, have hardly ever gone above Chieftain.

(That's also partly because I would much rather go up against a stupid but honest AI than face one that I know is cheating like a mofo, even when I am not exactly toeing the line myself.)

...anyway, I have now been liberating a single village over and over for five days. I've seen gold and research and maps, I've been given scouts and wise women and fighting folk of all types, but not one tribe in thousands of attempts.

Of course you can't actually help me debug this because in order to do that at all I had to re-enable New Random Seed. Save-scumming is its own punisment, on multiple levels.

v37 stock appears to have trouble with the AI delaying the decisions to spread for a number of potential reasons. I've already addressed that in the current SVN. It's shaping up that we may want to eventually do a v37.5 (rules haven't changed but some things have been improved on the backend AI side) as there are some fairly severe AI issues I'm trying to address right now. Still struggling a bit with property control units in additional cities. Finding the contract broker system is going haywire with the commands I'm giving it... very strange behaviors. Anyhow, fairly soon I will want to push a very strong v37 patch version.