[WTP] Quick questions

[raystuttgart]

Is buying land from natives just broken? It doesn't seem to reduce the relations hit much, if at all.

It is not broken, but it is also not a "miracle weapon".
(When you buy the land the relations impact for "stealing land" is reduced by 2. Actually it gives a minor +2 on the "recent good actions".)

It does not prevent that you do not get any negative impact for "stealing land" at all.
(As I tried to explain, it just reduces it.)

The feature also prevents that the Natives directly start a war. Or if it happens, it is directly ended again.
(In original Vanilla that was actually the case sometimes.)

I took over some settlements from another European colony, was asked to buy the land, and said yes.
Immediately I get a -12 penalty for "You have stolen our land".

That can easily happen if you e.g. play 2-Plot-City-Radius and the land you acquire around the conquered city includes lots of plots originally stolen.

Meanwhile, another European had founded a settlement ...

The "Attitude reactions" (e.g. for stealing land) depend massively on the difficulty setting you play at.
Also, standard difficulty setting for European AIs playing at themselves is "Explorer". (Thus Natives are more forgiving to them.)

... Omagua and Shuar in particular.

Every tribe has different "base balancing" for attitudes (also e.g. for "stealing land).

Do not expect all of them to benave the same.
Some are more forgiving others are very easily angered.

Omagua and Shuar are actually 2 of the most aggressive tribes in the game when it comes to stealing their land.

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Yes, the Natives reacts differently to European AIs - mostly because the play at a low difficulty setting.
If you yourself play at a high difficulty setting, the AIs will get further bonusses for Native Attitudes.

Try to settle near "peaceful" tribes first.

Be careful about conquering Settlements of AIs that have settled near aggressive Tribes.
(They have become generally very angry - and if you conquer the City and keep it, they may direct their anger against you.)

Still, paying the "Fee to buy land", reduces their anger a bit - it will not completely prevent aggressiveness though.
(If you do not pay it, they will become angry a lot faster though.)

---------

Summary:
From what I read, everything seems to be working as designed.

 

[Schmiddie]

I agree. RaR and now WTP require a more different style than the Arcade style of the unmodded original game. The player who analysis the traits / behaviour of the different tribes, his leader and other Europeans and alignes his style for the game with these will succeed.

Take some time and study the situation, traits etc. of the tribes and Europeans around you.

 

[Nightinggale]

There is one issue with natives and land. If a European player (like AI Spain) kills a bunch of natives, then the land will become unowned. If another European settles there, then the natives will go "you have stolen our land" and declare war. There is no indication that the natives view the land as their land if their settlements are gone.

 

[Link Gaetz]

It is not broken, but it is also not a "miracle weapon".
Also, standard difficulty setting for European AIs playing at themselves is "Explorer". (Thus Natives are more forgiving to them.)

Urgh... I can see some of the logic behind this but is there any way to change this, and/or has it been tried?

It is not broken, but it is also not a "miracle weapon".
Omagua and Shuar are actually 2 of the most aggressive tribes in the game when it comes to stealing their land

---------

Yes, the Natives reacts differently to European AIs - mostly because the play at a low difficulty setting.
If you yourself play at a high difficulty setting, the AIs will get further bonusses for Native Attitudes..

It's pretty clear that they're more aggressive since they start off annoyed whereas others start cautious or even pleased, but they still roll over for other Europeans and that's what I'd like to avoid. I don't want to have an easier time against other Europeans - I want the natives to stand a better chance against other Europeans.

I've played exclusively on Patriot + Revolutionary and other Europeans don't always do well, but they do spam crappy settlements everywhere, often right next to native settlements. The more aggressive Europeans (Cortes, sometimes Portuguese) can get away with leaving these mostly undefended and just steamroll natives with fat stacks of line infantry. I suppose that's not ahistorical for Cortes but North America's history went a lot differently.

Is it possible/has it been tried to implement a two-tile minimum distance for founding next to native settlements? I know it would make the initial start harder for the AI but there are usually enough places for every European to found their first coastal settlement... although they really seem to like sailing right next to yours if they can.

 

[JohnDay]

A question about the Indians.

The Indian villages start small at the beginning of the game, like the Europeans, but shouldn't they have large populations and then slowly shrink? After all, they had been living in the country for a long time and only because of the diseases brought in by the Europeans, against which the Indians had no defenses, their numbers in all of America were significantly reduced. At the moment they start small like the Europeans and should grow in the course of the game until they are reduced again by missionaries. But wasn't it different in reality and can't you try to depict it? In my opinion, the Indian villages should start with high populations and then decrease, that would be more realistic, wouldn't it?

 

[ConjurerDragon]

Yes, it would be more realistic and historical.
Without the diseases of the columbian exchange european settlers or conquistadores would have a much harder time establishing and expanding their colonies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_disease_and_epidemics

However except for a few small inoffical cases where blankets of colonists who died from smallpox were given intentionally to indians as a primitive form of biowarfare, all of that would be completely out of control of the player.

In addition most of it would be out of vision of the player too. That is because after first contact is made the new diseases spread not only from contact with european explorers, but from being exposed to indians who before were exposed to europeans and so on, spreading across all trading networks that existed before the colonization and speeding ahead of the expansion of the settlers. So that settlers or conquistadors never met the huge number of people that could have resisted them but only witnessed already half empty villages, or cities with an infected population unable to resist and dying off and a sparsely populated land.

The numbers are enourmous, e.g. for Mexico
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoliztli_epidemics

Spoiler :

That the decline is so sharp and immense is due to having a large population and densely populated cities in Mexico (e.g. Aztecs and their neighbours) which helped spread diseases around. Areas with semi-nomadic tribes like the Great Plains of the USA were less populated to begin with and lost less population.

IMHO while realistic and historical it would be no fun. At least for me, because I, as the player would neither spread the diseases nor even see all of the difference as the large villages before the disease might have lost all that population before I even first see them.

 

[raystuttgart]

... but shouldn't they have large populations and then slowly shrink?

Actually we need to differentiate here.

1. Natives of North America:
They were gatherers and hunters and were mostly nomadic.
There population was quite small. Most european villages of that age with a few hundred citizens could easily beat their villages in size.
They way WTP depicts them is perfecty realistic.

2. Specific Natives of Central or South America (e.g. Inca, Aztecs, Maya)

They had become farmers and settled permanently to good places.
Yes, they had a few cities that were really big and could easily be compared to large european cities in size.
But it was also not the vast majority of the Central and South American Tribes, several of them were still gatherers and hunters.
Inca, Aztecs and Maya already have specail buildings that boost their population a bit. But it is also not cheating.

---------

Also, we need to think about gameplay and performance.

---------

Summary:
I think we found a good compromise.
It is quite realistic and immersive and serves its purpose in gameplay.

 

[ConjurerDragon]

Actually we need to differentiate here.

1. Natives of North America:
They were gatherers and hunters and were mostly nomadic.
There population was quite small. Most european villages of that age with a few hundred citizens could easily beat their villages in size.
They way WTP depicts them is perfecty realistic.

2. Specific Natives of Central or South America (e.g. Inca, Aztecs, Maya)

They had become farmers and settled permanently to good places.
Yes, they had a few cities that were really big and could easily be compared to large european cities in size.
But it was also not the vast majority of the Central and South American Tribes, several of them were still gatherers and hunters.
Inca, Aztecs and Maya already have specail buildings that boost their population a bit. But it is also not cheating.

...

We would need to differentiate even more. North America did not only have the hunter-gathereres who were nomadic or semi-nomadic with the bisons. So not everyone is like the guys from "Dancing with a wolf" in leather tents hunting bison. That would be true for the Great Plains where little farming was possible with the tools of the time, but east of the Mississipi a lot of tribes practiced agriculture and had permanent settlements, e.g. the Creek or Cherokee
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Civilized_Tribes

https://www.encyclopedia.com/histor...wers, goosefoot, and sump weed or marsh elder.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippian_culture#South_Appalachian_Mississippian

 

[raystuttgart]

But what for?

What is the purpose for gameplay?
How would it affect the player itself?

All we would do is implement something 90% of players would not care about.
Most players would not even notice the difference unless of course he is at war with Natives.

Also, tribes are not fixed to specific regions.
They are "semi-randomly" spawned even with "Geographically correct Placement of Natives".

More units of Natives just means:

• More impact on performance
• More Natives that would devastate AIs (or unexperienced players) in a case of War.

Have you ever played on Gigantic Maps and seen how many Native Units there already are?

Also please do not forget:

Native Villages still generate other Natives after they are generated. (Also by Food, but technically they also build them.)
So the more starting Units we give them, the more food and production they will have to create even more ...

Summary:

I see no reason to mess with the balancing of Native Population for gameplay at all.
Most likely we would get just more complaints about "Natives being unbalanced" (e.g. when at war with them) ...

Edit:

By the way, we had such a situation already in the starting days of RaR.
Massive complaints of players about Natives being too strong (and also too aggressive in these days).

 

[ConjurerDragon]

But what for?

I did not argue that we should do that. On the contrary, in my first post in this thread I am not in favour of implementing a native disease wave at the start of the game. What I meant was to point out that your simple "North America"/nomadic - South of that/permanent settlements of native empires division was too simple and that an implemention would have to differentiate even more, making it more complex and less feasible.

 

[HiFiPanda]

Am I the only one who thinks that these two(well, three) FFs are a bit.. useless? They are not available early and what they offer seems to be rather disappointing.

Lewis&Clark - you require 50% less tools to equip Pioneer, that's about 600 gold saved on a single unit, very nice, but only in early game. This FF is realistically obtainable in early mid-game/mid-game when you already should have at least 10 Pioneers(assuming we are playing wide), how many more do you need. Let's say 5, that's 3000 gold saved. Negligible.

And then it gets worse. +1 movement for land transports. I always play RaR&WtP on Gigantic map and Marathon speed and yet I never find this being useful. With basic road network you cut travel time for transports to 5-6 turns between the two most distant cities. And there is no need to reduce it even futher as it's sufficient enough.

Juan de Bermudez - 1 movement speed for merchant ships. I tried to think of scenario in which this may be relevant and got nothing. It won't save your ship from privateers as they just hide in FoW and then all comes to a single battle. It won't reduce a time needed for a short voyage by more than one turn. And for a long expedition it's better to just sail through Europe.

What are your thoughts?

 

[ConjurerDragon]

Lewis&Clark happened in the early 19th century, 1803-1806 and got their orders from the independant US.

The game is supposed to run 300 years from 1492 to 1792 until Independence.
So - yes, they come late in the game, but that is intended and should be like that because historically they should not appear until after the end of the game.

Almost all FF bonuses are situational.
In my current game for example I took none of the spanish FF who give bonuses to Mounted Conquistadors or Conqustadors, simply because I play Netherlands and do not have any of those units so they would be useless to me.

Instead of giving a bonus to land transports (they mostly followed rivers and used boats) they could give a small bonus to trading with natives or a bonus in expanding cultural borders which would somwhat fit their realworld objectives:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_and_Clark_Expedition#Accomplishments

 

[Vaeringjar]

I'm having trouble getting any founding fathers. I'm bottlenecked on political points, and the AIs have a ridiculous amount of FFs compared to me... is the AI just ******ed and spending all its hammers on politics or am I missing something?

 

[Vaeringjar]

Another question, when bargaining native mercs for half the cost, what's the tradeoff? Relations impact?

 

[ConjurerDragon]

A xml question:

In my folder
E:\User1\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization IV Colonization\MODS\WethePeople\Assets\XML\Terrain
in file CIV4TerrainInfos.xml
the value in the line "movement" for Peaks / Montains is only 1 just like for all other terrains. Do I look at the wrong value here? Because I would have expected all terrains to have different movement costs, with flatland < hills < peaks?

Spoiler :

- <TerrainInfo>
<Type>TERRAIN_PEAK</Type>
<Description>TXT_KEY_TERRAIN_PEAK</Description>
<Civilopedia>TXT_KEY_TERRAIN_PEAK_PEDIA</Civilopedia>
<ArtDefineTag>ART_DEF_TERRAIN_PEAK</ArtDefineTag>
<Yields />
<RiverYieldIncreases />
<bWater>1</bWater>
<bImpassable>0</bImpassable>
<bFound>0</bFound>
<bFoundCoast>0</bFoundCoast>
<iMovement>1</iMovement>
<iSeeFrom>0</iSeeFrom>
<iSeeThrough>0</iSeeThrough>
<iBuildModifier>0</iBuildModifier>
<iDefense>0</iDefense>
<Button>Art/Interface\Buttons\WorldBuilder\Terrain_Peak.dds</Button>

 

[raystuttgart]

That is really extremely personal taste.
I personally consider all of these bonuses to be extremely valuable.

When you continue expanding e.g. on Gigantic Maps, movement increase is always really valuable.
Also the 50% reduction of tools is extremely powerful.

From my perspective:
It is working as designed and I like it.
Feel free to change to whatever you like in your personal version though.

 

[HiFiPanda]

Almost all FF bonuses are situational.

From my perspective

In both cases, you mean from the players perspective and you forget about one factor here, the AI.

FF bonuses must be balanced and have some impact in almost any given situation, because AI doesn't care about those, it has available FF, it takes it. As the result AI players become even less challenging.

 

[raystuttgart]

@HiFiPanda
I am a player as well.
That is actually my main motivation for modding.

How valuable a bonus is really depend on your playstyle and on the current situation (and the generated map).
And also from AI perspective, these bonusses are really quite valuable.

Both of the Founding Fathers are just in the middle of the Exploration FFs. (They are really not late game. They are "midgame" or even "early midgame" FFs.)
And Exploration Founding Fathers are almost the easiest one to get on Gigantic Maps. (Because you gather massive amounts of exploration points.)

So I really see absolutely no problem.

---------

You might consider them "worthless", but others - including myself do not.
I consider them extremely valuable and also appropriately placed in the order. (Midgame FFs)

There is no "balancing issue", we are just discussing about "personal taste".
And as aI said, feel free to change the FFs to whatever you like in your private version.

 

[lethiel]

I don't have an opinion on the overall balance. Both FF are probably fine imo. My main reason for rarely taking Lewis & Clark however even though the movement bonus can be really strong is that you lose 25 tools on all your active pioneers (that you can no longer drop off in settlements to complete buildings)

 

[Olekman]

Hello, I've had that Colonization itch once again and decided that instead of scratching it with my go-to TAC to instead try We The People. Is there some manual, similar to the one included with TAC, that describes all the systems and features included in the mod? The TAC's manual really helped me get into the swing of things in the beginning, so it would be great to have a file like that for WtP. I remember trying to play with RaR a couple of years ago, but it was far too much for me to digest. Considering that WtP builds upon RaR, I'll definitely need some sort of aid.