What do you want to see from a large scale mod post-Rising Tide?

I've been experimenting with a new Health system. Currently in Rising Tide you only have Health pressure in the early game. As city populations grow it becomes easier and easier for the local health to offset the one time 4 unhealth of the city. Access to global health also increases as the game goes on as you get more traits and Virtues online.

What I'm experimenting with is having citizens cost 1.2 unhealth but cities cost only 1 unhealth. Water cities would also lose their health difference with land cities. The result of this is that local health will never be enough alone to keep an empire healthy. As the aggregate population grows more and more global health will be required. This change will be coupled with more local health sources in the early game to help players stretch their initial 9 global health.

As a result of these changes players should be able to expand rapidly throughout the early and mid game without inherently crashing their Health so long as they keep their populations relatively small. However, in the mid game (especially if going tall) players will need to find more and more sources of global health (likely from their affinity) to remain afloat.

Flavor wise this system is trying to capture one of the story aspect I could only hint at in the "Affinity Rising" upgrade for New Horizons. Something the colonists discover over the generations of living on the new planet is that their genes are degrading more and more with each generation due to exposure to the ecosystem. The effects include genetic disease, blindness and most worrying -- accelerating levels of infertility that threaten to end humanity.

Each of the Affinity pose a different solution to this problem. Purity seeks to revert the evolutionary effects and restore the body to what it was like on Old Earth, before it was corrupted by the new planet. Harmony seeks to engineer the body to fit in with the new planet instead of being corrupted by it. Supremacy seeks to replace failed biological parts with tech.

 

Health is definitely problematic with how it is extremely limiting early and practically a non-factor later, but at the same time tall doesn't seem very strong right now.

I'm worried that such a change would require extreme expansion early for remotely optimal play and overly punish other investments.

Particularly with Trade Routes already encouraging wide empires.

Population is also weaker than it was in Civ 5 due to no library-esq buildings: which is perfectly fine, but makes me worry that this would make trying to grow a city quickly feel like a liability.

Health would also become more valuable in virtue trees, which would need to be balanced accordingly.

Though I feel like requiring some infrastructure like road connections or a harbor like building would be a good way to promote wide play.

All in all, wide play already seems greatly dominant over tall play and I fear that this would worsen that.

I would not want to feel as if I always need to be expanding and minimizing population growth by avoiding food improvements.
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On the other topic, I'm curious as to what these affinity bonuses would be and in what form would they come.

Would they manage health in different ways - like tall vs wide?

Would any affinity be particularly strong at managing health as part of its theme?

Would these come in the current affinity points system, or as other bonuses locked behind affinity level?

How would Hybrid affinities play into this?

How would you keep them from gaining two affinity's health bonuses relatively easily, giving them a major advantage on health?

 

Right now the set up that each affinity has two buildings that are locked to being level 6-9 in that affinity. The techs that unlock Purity's Health buildings are also far from the techs that unlock Harmony's.

The role of hybrids is something I'm still working on. Currently I'm focusing on making the three affinities distinct and unique and worrying about hybrids later (a choice that may come back and bite me).

Internal Trade Routes are a big concern of mine right now. They provide so much more yield than buildings that I'm looking at what ways they can be greatly toned down.
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The new health system goes hand in hand with a new energy system. The energy economy I'm experimenting with replaces New Horizons' Production-verse-Energy trade off with one where every tile improvement costs maintenance and energy income is much rarer (city connection may provide zero energy for example).

Very generally, Health will be a limit to going tall but Energy will be a limit to going wide. Expanding early will put a player into negative energy generation, which will be ok in the short run because they likely will have a stockpile of energy from resource pods. But if they aren't careful and over expand they can collapse their economy which tanks their science and costs them units.

 

Making it inconvenient to get hybrid levels on the tech web may help, but I'm still worried that the hybrids would end up accessing what was intended for core affinities.

Though it's a problem the developer's made with the heavy overlap in core and hybrid affinities.

I think that you should at least have a plan for how hybrids fit into this beforehand for a Rising Tide mod, since that seems like it would become a headache later.

Perhaps certain health buildings could be exclusive to others between affinities to prevent this overlap problem, and potentially allow hybrid requirement buildings if you wanted them.

Does the <MutuallyExclusiveGroup>#</MutuallyExclusiveGroup> code from Civ 5 still work?

I recall a mod that used it to make two buildings exclusive to one another in the same city.
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Beyond the power of Internal Trade Routes the way they work is extremely strange, where increasing the production of a city might not actually increase production because it changes the production difference between cities.
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Tile improvements costing maintenance seems like it would hit tall and wide both as a limit.

The most intuitive way to make that trade-off would seem to be raising the energy cost on health sources, so that it is harder for wide colonies to stabilize health while tall ones need less of it.

 

In general terms, when you go wide to the extreme, game-breaking extent that you need to worry about, you won't have many improvements. So improvements that cost upkeep won't have the desired effect unless improvements become essential for a city to survive, not for it to grow.

Consider the current broken strategy of one monster city (your capital) and many ocean cities packed in as close as possible with no improved tiles in their radius so as to forcibly limit their size to maximize the return from internal trade-route to epic proportions. This would be even more effective if cities couldn't grow without tile improvements so there isn't much way to help anything with tile improvement maintenance.

As long as internal trade routes are based on city differences this will be a problem that can't be addressed with tile improvement maintenance.

Civ 5's trade route mechanic would all but eliminate this issue

 

Internal trade routes have been something I've been working on. I've got a design for them that is so radically different it has been tricky thinking about how to use them. So I spun off the changes into a separate mod (Balance of Trade) people can play. This design, if it works, could provide some perspective to how New Horizons in Rising Tide could work.

 

That seems like a better system, though I'm not sure why the cities get more Production if they lack a Depot.

 

Its a catch up mechanic. To help newly placed cities develop faster and catch up to older, more established cities. It also lets me make Trade Routes provide a chunk of yields without making Depots the automatic first build that they currently are.

 

It does seem good to break up Depots being an automatic first build.

 

I've been working out a scope and schedule for the mod that I wanted to share with everyone. Currently I see four big sections of the mod:

1. Buildings(+ building quests) & Techs
2. Virtues & Affinity Level Perks
3. Affinity Quests & Victory Quests
4. Military units

But the first release is not going to contain all of them. I need to prioritize which ones will be in the first release and which can wait to be added later. The order I have put them above is my current thinking, but I could see swapping 2 and 3.

Out of all of them I have little hesitation leaving Military Units for last. As the strength of military units isn't greatly relevant to the economic aspects of the game. One concern I have with leaving Affinity Quests and Victory Quests for so late is that that is where much of the story of the signal from Old Earth will be conveyed. The signal is what I feel gives the mod much of its unique identity and I'm concerned about under supporting that aspect.

 

It probably doesn't make much difference which order you do them in, but I might do the quests sooner.

Aside being an important part of your mod, there aren't really many quest mods out right now, so a extensive one would stand out greatly.

 

Priority is imho good.
Buldings quests and Virtues lvl are next things that should be balanced. Affinity quests are preety good right now, and also the Victory Conditions can wait.

 

I've completed a first draft of almost all the new tech web and buildings. What I would like to do is put this version in front of volunteers and get some feedback and perspective on it as I'm refining it. If you're interested reply here or send me a PM. While the mod runs in game it isn't playable yet as building costs, tech costs and affinity from techs are all currently placeholder amounts. What can be seen is the organization of the tech web, where approximately units, improvements, resources and buildings are unlocked.

Something I'm experimenting with is a "flattening" of the tech web. Less techs are on leafs, more are on branches. The two inner rings are for the "pre-affinity" stage of the game while the outer two rings are associated with each affinity (Harmony in the top, Purity in the lower right, Supremacy in the lower left). The only way to go from ring 2 to ring 3 is through one of the three techs that hook up an affinity resource.

 

Would Human Conservation still be in Purity's sphere of influence?

The placement of techs can be a bit weird, but I think the path to the Terra Vault and Deep Memory should definitely be on Purity's way.

I could try to appraise it, though I'm also busy with my own mod.

 

Getting the genetics related techs placed in a way that feels right has been a bit tricky. I've generally been placing it between purity and harmony so that Human Conservation can be on the purity side while Alien Genetics is on the harmony side.

TerraVault has been changed to provide a boost to TerraScapes and it in the Terraforming related techs. Due to its different effect it has been slightly rethemed as more of a seed and plant storage that is used to enhance TerraScapes rather than a bunker with a museum in it.

 

I've mentally struggled with the viability of moving BE techs around while maintaining sensibility, since Techs are organized in a way that attempts to tie associated fields of science together. So I'm eager to see how you've managed to handle that situation.

 

If you want DefiantMars I can send you the current pre-release version so you can take a look.

 

Sure, I'm very curious as to how you've changed the web. If you don't mind, I'd happy to take a look.

 

I played 2 times and what can i say about this mod .. it's very early version. There are some things that is irrtitaing me during game like can't build on water(coast) farms or generators, half of unique resources cannot be improve(no worker option) like algas, coral etc.
I like idea that mines cost unhealth (is possible to show unhealt icon on resource map ?) but the petroleum well cost energy instead unhealth ?
I would like to see instead of 2 specialist for first builidings another solution: 1 to stat and 1 slot for specialist (example Labolatory +1 science +1 slot)
Generally tech web are quite nice. I like fact that techs were moved into denser separated blocks but the cost of techs need to be more balanced, beggining of the game is little to slow ihmo.

Cant wait until most of essential functions will be working (affinities, all builds of worker, wonders) then I will finish any game and say more.

 

Since the last update, the new horizons (v15) mod has been all sorts of broken for me. Can't open the artifact screen, the game asks me to pick a upgrade for the patrol boat on turn 0 (even with zero affinity), so i have to click ignore since there's no bonus to pick, and on turn 10 i get a CTD during an unknow AI turn. 3 crashes in a row, and im using minimal other mods (like UI and stuff).