[WIP] Civilization V: Power and Consequence - active development

[Pouakai]

Images weren't working, here are the url links:

http://s9.postimage.org/mb7pmjh5p/great_people_deaths_tp.png
http://s9.postimage.org/m9xrt4fbx/great_people_deaths.png

How is happiness generated? You've said you're going to have less happiness from luxuries etc, and from this I'm thinking happiness overall is going to be very difficult to come by

 

[alexwebb2]

Images weren't working, here are the url links:

http://s9.postimage.org/mb7pmjh5p/great_people_deaths_tp.png
http://s9.postimage.org/m9xrt4fbx/great_people_deaths.png

Weird, they're working for me when I look at that post. Try shift-refreshing?

How is happiness generated? You've said you're going to have less happiness from luxuries etc, and from this I'm thinking happiness overall is going to be very difficult to come by

I think you might be confusing this mod with another one.

The only happiness hit is when a GP dies. I'm not reducing happiness from luxuries or anything like that.

 

[Drawmeus]

Are you thinking of my Epochs mod, Pouakai? If you are, the answer is that yes, happiness early on is hard to come by.

 

[Pouakai]

Ah, yes, I'm getting confused. Two large DLL mods coming within a few days of each other. It's good to know that the GP Death is the only main hit - though, does it stack? Like, if I had two GP die, would it be 50 Unhappiness, or still 25?

 

[alexwebb2]

Ah, yes, I'm getting confused. Two large DLL mods coming within a few days of each other. It's good to know that the GP Death is the only main hit - though, does it stack? Like, if I had two GP die, would it be 50 Unhappiness, or still 25?

It stacks. If Einstein and Patton both get run down by tanks, that's a really bad day for your empire.

My hope is that the happiness hit will primarily function as a deterrent towards callous or unguarded use of Great People - they're critically important and their deaths are devastating, so they should always have an escort. Careful use of them should be enough to avoid their deaths in most cases, and in the times where their death looks imminent - say, they're holed up in a city that's surrounded and about to fall - then it raises the stakes a bit so you're more likely to try to punch through for a rescue mission.

If I find that despite my best efforts, I'm still losing enough Great People to make the happiness hit a major burden and it's affecting the enjoyment of the game, then I'll scale it down to 20 or 15 or whatever works best.

 

[Drawmeus]

You may consider loosening up happiness by difficulty, if you've added things that reduce happiness overall. Players who will struggle to manage their Great People will also play on lower difficulties in general, and will also be the people who are less concerned with and have less fun with the more intense micromanagement elements of the game, so some increased free happiness from difficulty level should offset things nicely.

A more robust but also harder implementation would be to expose the happiness hit as a value in the game difficulties XML, and be able to tune it there. If I was running this mod, I would throw that on the "IDEAS!" pile as something I might pull out if I'm a little bored someday or if I got through the must-have backlog, but as something I could live without.

 

[alexwebb2]

A more robust but also harder implementation would be to expose the happiness hit as a value in the game difficulties XML, and be able to tune it there. If I was running this mod, I would throw that on the "IDEAS!" pile as something I might pull out if I'm a little bored someday or if I got through the must-have backlog, but as something I could live without.

Agreed. That's going in the backlog and will be a reasonable candidate for post-release improvements.

 

[alexwebb2]

Started adding in the passive effects, with Great Artists being the first. They boost culture per turn by 5%, and also by a static 10 points. The effect stacks with the number of artists, but with the principal culture amount only determined by non-GP factors.

The next few should be pretty darn easy - for Merchants, Prophets, and Scientists, it's just a matter of boosting gold/faith/science respectively. Generals and Admirals already have their passive effects built in (boosting combat odds), so no changes there. Engineers will be the only one that requires slightly more involved changes, since they boost production in cities, but judging from what I've seen in the code so far I don't anticipate any problems there.

Anyway, what do you guys think of the values that I have completely pulled out of thin air? I'll go back and make it difficulty-dependent at some point, but for now I'm curious if I'm in the same ballpark as what other people would expect - do you think it should be 10%, or 2%, or what?

EDIT: I'm not just asking about artists - I'm also asking about Merchants/Prophets/Scientists/Engineers. For example, +10 gold/turn probably isn't as valuable as, say, +10 faith/turn or +10 culture/turn.

 

[crawf0rd]

That seems reasonable, but I'm not sure. It all depends on how many great people you spawn. You might need the bonus to get smaller and smaller per same great person to prevent a civ from running away with it.

 

[alexwebb2]

That seems reasonable, but I'm not sure. It all depends on how many great people you spawn. You might need the bonus to get smaller and smaller per same great person to prevent a civ from running away with it.

Yeah, I thought about doing that, or otherwise putting some sort of cap on it. I'm particularly concerned about civs that start out with a great person (Bablyon starts with a scientist, if I recall correctly) being able to blast through the early game.

EDIT: Whoops, forgot Babylon doesn't get their Great Scientist until writing. Same idea applies, though.

At any rate, the code itself is very simple right now and could be changed very easily:

// Each unit increases the base science by a certain factor (5% / turn)
iGreatScientistSciencePerTurn += iOtherSciencePerTurn * 0.05 * iNumUnits;

// In addition, each of them adds a static bonus (10 / turn)
iGreatScientistSciencePerTurn += (10 * iNumUnits);

 

[Drawmeus]

Is it an empire-wide or a single city bonus?

I think the numbers have to be high enough for the player to care. 10% is right at the lower boundary of what I'd consider doing, but is probably a fine starting point. If it's a single city, the 10 base is actually more important than the 10%. Players simply don't pay attention to 2%s and 5%s.

I'd go ahead with those kinds of numbers and see what happens. It's very likely you will have to increase culture costs, science costs, gold maintenance etc to compensate.

 

[alexwebb2]

Is it an empire-wide or a single city bonus?

Empire-wide.

 

[alexwebb2]

Scientist passive effects are in place.

 

[Drawmeus]

Empire-wide.

I wouldn't do the flat +10 then, because you won't be able to do anything similar for Engineers (which city would get it?), and because it's a non-scaling bonus (FAR more valuable early than late).

 

[alexwebb2]

I wouldn't do the flat +10 then, because you won't be able to do anything similar for Engineers (which city would get it?), and because it's a non-scaling bonus (FAR more valuable early than late).

Yeah, that's part of what I'm trying to work out from a balance standpoint. Having a flat bonus is much better in the early game, while having a percentage bonus is much better towards midgame and beyond. The decision to go with both was to try and cover all the bases.

Of course, +10/turn of gold/research/faith/science is pretty darn good in the early game, but that's kind of what I'm going for - I want the player to be legitimately psyched about getting a GP, as if it's truly a great day for your empire, and I want them to be jealous (and concerned) if their neighbors are getting them. I expect I'll probably have to play with the actual numbers a bit and try to find a good balance, but no matter what, the final version will see early GPs as a big deal for fledgling empires.

As for engineers, I was planning on doing basically the same thing city by city, with a smaller flat-rate bonus (say, +2 or +4) and a larger percentage bonus (10%).

 

[alexwebb2]

More progress on passive effects:

I'll also have to update the religion and economy popups, so expect that and the engineer passive effects as the next update.

 

[Irkalla]

I think you should reconsider the federations deal. I'd much rather see Civil War. That is, plop a player in the game that takes the split off cities, but is a variant of the mother civ. The two civs start out at war with each other, and what comes next is fairly obvious. Either a two state deal, or one takes over the whole country.

What's that? Englands's Great speaker wanted Autocracy and didn't get it?

Bam Fascist England forms and tries to take over England.

Sorry about the logo, I just threw it together for the purposes of this post. how i maek circle guise

An even tougher issue. If the revolution wins... Should the player be allowed to continue the game? Should he lose? After all, his civilization didn't die, just his rulership. Perhaps two options "Continue Playing as Fascist England" or "Return to the Main Menu in Shame"

And then there's the issue of if the revolution wins, should it become a successor state to the old state? That is, inherit all of its AI relationships and all?

But yeah, I'm just kinda brainfarting here. What do you think of all this alex?

EDIT: I just thought of a method for determining how strong revolutionary sides of Civil Wars should be. Is your Civ happy? 25% of cities or less support the revolution. Is your Civ unhappy? 25%-33% support the revolution. Is your Civ angry? 33%-50% support the revolution.

Still brainfarting. I don't think you'll go with this, but I still think my idea was at least worth putting out there I know it would be fun as hell having to put down revolutions and such.

 

[xaka]

Hi there, one issue I see with the immortal GPs (and high death penalty) is that a civilization with a small number of cities would be penalized as it becomes hard for them to just house à significant number of GPs (as their territory is limited in size compared to a larger civ and GPs cannot be stacked with other civilian units, GPs included).

Another suggestion would be to make the Happiness penalty fade over time: since they get a new perma bonus (which looks pretty strong), losing a GP is already painful in the long run.

I like the general idea of the mod though. Congrats.

 

[jlkosuke141]

Awesome mod! where's the DL link?

 

[Drawmeus]

There isn't one, because alexwebb disappeared with the mod unfinished in November.

Would love to see him come back and finish it, though. We can always use more competent modders working on good ideas.