new mod announced!

[hexagonian]

Here are some opinions,

If you want to slow city growth, consider increasing the ration requirements in the global settings instead of eliminating/reducing terrrain values. Having a farm as a requirement to boost city growth will not work in the early going as players do not start out with anything in their PW fund. Your city would starve before it was able to produce a farm.

The building requirements sound very promising though. One of the better suggestions to come out for a mod. Make sure it is documented either in the Great Library or in a readme file.

Place a limit on how much damage a unit could take in inhopspitable terrain - and no damage if that unit is within a friendly city on that terrain.

[lozina]

Okay i'm gonna jump on the bandwagon and make a new mod. I JUST started testing some of my ideas so don't expect it to be done anytime soon =P I have my winter break coming up soon so I'll have plenty 'o time to work on it. Some of the new fundamental features will include:

1. Most units will have certain building requirments in the city you want to build that unit in.

For example- if you want to build a fighter- that city needs to have a factory and an airport. If you want to build a Corporate Franchise- it may only be built in cities with maybe Uiversity and Brokerage. I haven't come up with a requirement tree yet- I'll need everyones help with input. Pls reply with some good ideas on what you think some units should require in order to build them. Also- city size can be a factor.

2. City growth will be dramatically slowed. Firstly- tiles give no city bonuses, secondly- terrain food production will be severely decreased. Like plains and maybe grasslands will suppply NO food initially. You must have a farm in order to start producing food. I mean the only food logically available is grass- and last time I checked I wasn't a buffalo. (Also- I'll see if it's possible to make how many farmer specialists a city allocates allowble only be the number of farms in its radius. 1 farmer per farm type of deal.. by that same token- perhaps entertainers require at least some sort of theatre or movie palace)Ocean tiles will also produce 0 food until nets are installed- and hospitable terrain will produce negative food to simulate the hardships of living in a glacier or desert.

3. Infantry units- or any unit that isnt in a vehicle or craft of some sort- will suffer damage every turn they are in inhospitable terrain. This most likely includes glacier, polar mountains, polar hills, maybe desert tiles... etc...

4. Advances will also be slowed by increasing their costs. (Not by much though since your cities won't be so HUGE early in the game as usual) No more discovering one advance which made obsolete a unit you've just created for the first time! All civ games make discoveries too fast in MHO. Also it's obvious the tech tree needs work...

Right now I need to make this building requirement tree for units though- pls send in your suggestions for this or anything else. feel free to email.

[lozina]

oh one thing while i mentioned fighters and airports- ill see if i can make fighters only refeulable in cities with an airport... wow logic is nice.

[lozina]

hex- so far ive reduced terrain to 0 but forests and jungles give 5 food and rivers add a bonus. since you always start on a river your first city will always thrive. the second city you need to find a good position but with the way the maps are theres plenty of fruitful locations.
I will definately test out your idea of reducing rationing instead. do you mean to leave the terrain values at default? what about mountains and tundra and hostile terrain alike?

yeah i was planning on editting the great library to inform you if a unit requires a building.

and yes- a unit in a city in somethign like a glacier (which i hope to make impossible until very high tech civs)wouldnt get damaged.

im gonna work on a rough building requirement tree tomorrow and post it for suggestions on changes since ill probably make some stupid requirements =P (how bout settlers require fusion plant? hehe)also- one thing i just thought of is that all ships from longship on require a port tile improvement within the radius of the city? make those ports a little more useful and add a little rationality?

thanks for the reply and pease keep input coming@

[Alpha Wolf]

I'd disagree that grasslands only have grass. There will be lots of wild berries and grains, not to mention lots of game to hunt. Plus the I've seen many instances of either myself or an AI not starting near a river. Not to mention that the AI will probably keep building cities that die off right away and will continue to build on that spot as it thinks it is a good spot.

Love the idea about improvement requirements before a specific units can be built. After all, how do you build a tank without a factory? With need a new improvement STABLE for horse units.

Lastly, I say a fortress should also protect units from the elements.

------------------
History is written by the victor.

[hexagonian]

Alpha makes a good point about the AI - and this may put the kabosh on adjusting the terrain so radically. I believe (reading from an earlier thread) the AI searches out a place to settle based on a numerical formula of the surrounding terrain. What may happen is the AI will simply send out settlers, and they will never build cities because most of the terrain will not efficiently support a city based on that formula.

Check this by making the terrain adjustments and then observe what the AI does with settlers in a game via the cheat mode - and then see if they build a city, what the growth rate is. It will be no good if you adjust terrain to force a human to place cities more carefully, and inadvertantly kill off the AI.

There are other ways to control population too. You can place a higher happiness penalty based on size, which will force a player to have more entertainers (and thus cut population growth). I do not know what the hard numbers are for happiness, but city size seems to be less of an issue in CTP2 than in CTP1. In a current game, in mid Rennasaince, my cities are up to size 20+ and none of them need entertainers. Not good, IMO. I wouldn't mind having to use more entertainers, or have to radically adjust the global settings to balance happiness issues.

And since the AI also grows at a fast rate too, and seems to know how to maximise growth, it becomes a non-issue for me. As long as the AI can do what I can do as a player, I'm happy. I think one of the reasons why a lot of people are thrown off by the pop. growth issue is because it is a lot faster than in CTP1. Actually, the population issue is not such a big issue in my eyes.

Of more concern for me is the gold issue, because a player can do this better that the AI. I can get a lot of caravans out and get a lot of gold - the AI does not seem to put a high priority on trade routes as much. And there already is a documented flaw in the wage structure.

[Alpha Wolf]

What I've noticed is that AI settlers will continually build on the same tile no matter have many times it starves. I think Wes is right to be modifying the value given to each tile, so that should alleviate some of the poor choices in AI city placement. But this might take same playing to tweak the numbers just right.

Its also a shame that cities grow purely by abundance of food. I'm looking at whether a food/prod combination should be used to increase a city. After all, if there is no production, what will the people live in? At least in the later ages.

------------------
History is written by the victor.

[lozina]

Yes I've tested it only a little- havent had much time yet- but have noticed tha ai will place cities where it will starve and die out within a few rounds. But like you said- it is because of a terrain score system they have... each tile has a certain score (can be negative) and upon searching for places to build a city it sums of the scores of all possible locations within a certain radius to find the best spot- generally. (it dosent always pick the best possible spot in terms of food/production/gold - other factors are included, like goods placement and sea access... im not quite sure exactly of the system though. this will require some studying) but if i editted the terrain values enough i'd edit the scores also so that the ai wont build on such harsh locations.

But so far not many people like reducing the terrain so much. The problem I have is that without any farms or even any farmers allocated I can have a city grow up to size 20 which i find ridiculous. This and the fact you can build thriving cities in glaciers and deserts simply because of the ocean tiles is why I brought up reducing the food production of tiles. One thing I think I definately have to do is eliminate the food bonus simply because you have a tile with a city on it. This will cut the growth by a good amount... also restrict farmers to farms like i said earlier (if i can do that)

Also you mention gold being a problem. I've found that also to be unbalanced- i always get an excessive amount of gold. The goods don't seem to have a variety either- it seems cotton and diamonds can be sold at same rate for same distance? I'll look into the AI to see what kind of trade goals the ai sets- have you looked into this? let me know if u found anything interesting. Also perhaps by raising the maintenance costs of all buildings by a certain percent will make it more reasonable... You mention something on wages- explain what you mean- i havent seena nything on that...

I personally find the happiness penalty for adjusting the values a little too lenient- i mean 12 hour work days while on rations PLUS low wages and you only get maybe -4 happiness--- while a basillica alone gives +3? i have to change this too... perhaps by making adjustments to the scrollbars not incremental but exponential... so if you increase workdays it dosent reduce happiness by 1 but by 2, next increment by 4, next by 8 (id like to also make the scrollbars carry more values)... and then on top of that you MULTIPLY negative happiness of the adjustments to get your grand total... so if u had lower rations with -2 happiness, longer workdays with -4 happiness and less wages with -2 happiness- you end up with -16 happiness! sure that sounds high but think about it- basillica+theatre+shrine+tv+arena is +9 happiness. VR amusement park a whopping +5 happiness. And now- those entertainers might finally be of use eh? if you still think this might be restrictive just think how pissed you might be if you received a smaller paycheck AND had to work longer AND ate less food... The only problem i see is that these are empire-wide... so when you want to build a new city and you are a tyrant- beating your people to work for less, you're going to need lots of martial law until that city gets enough production to build these improvements! but you shouldn't be treating your people so bad anyway!!! The only other alternative is to reduce the happiness gained by some of the improvements or simply give them a diffferent task... maybe instead of raising happiness- arenas produce veteran ancient units? there should probably be a lot of opinions on this so pls let me have 'em!

thanks guys for your input so far!

-Tony

[lozina]

i put up a part of the unit improvement requirement chart on my site at http://www.cyburban.com/~lozina
be sure to check out what i got done so far and lemme know what your thoughts are.

Anyone out there good at drawing sprites wanna draw icons for some new buildings? something like a stable, shipyard, maybe even barracks. email me if interested.

Alpha brought up a good poin about the ai recognizing that units may require buildings. but this cna be solved easily. i can make a new buildlist consisting of all the improvements that a unit would require. then i just insert this build list ahead of the buildlist which finds units to build. this should also work for emergency units because they are under a separate category i believe- GarrisonUnit type, and although im not entirely sure- i am led to believe it is actually the "UNIT_DEFENSE" list which mostly include units which do not have buildign preqs- with exception to fusion tank and leviathan. ill test it out this weekend.

[hexagonian]

In CTP1, you inflicted a happiness penalty of (-1) for every population unit over 5. This had the effect of penalizing your large cities, but not your newly built cities. Look into this aspect.

I definitely agree that cities on tundra/glaciers should not be a normal option - generally though it's the sea tiles that help those cities to grow - and sticking nets on them helps quite a bit.

Question - does the production/food/gold value of a tile have to be in increments of 5? Simply reducing the food value on sea/beach tiles will help - I do think that you can also reduce it somewhat on grassland tiles too - but I was a little concerned when you said to drop those settings on prime food tiles down to near zero.

Changing the global settings expodentially is a possible solution. Most of us push those settings to the max anyhow. Generally, as it stands in CTP2, I push wages to the max (taking advantage of the bundle of gold I can get through trade) and work my people to the bone and starve them to boot. So hitting me in that area might temper that strategy (and thus help reduce pop) I do feel that the solution to the growth issue is most easily addressed through these global settings though.

As for the wages issue, this is the fix that has been suggested for reducing gold - in const.txt

UNIT_WORKDAY 0.2 # slider to work
BASE_WORKDAY 0.8 # work per person when slider is zero
UNIT_WAGES 4.0 # what does 1 notch mean
BASE_WAGES 12.0 # gold per person when slider is zero
UNIT_RATIONS 2.0 # what does 1 notch mean
BASE_RATIONS 6.0 # food per person time POP_HUNGER when slider is zero

I do not know how much help I can be in terms of evaluating the code though, as I am just now starting to look into making basic changes myself. I usually wait until someone else has mucked through the code, as I generally do not have a clue how to do it myself.

But I'm always willing to add my $.02

[hexagonian]

Just looked at your improvement requirements - you are definitely on the right track on this concept. This is one of the better ideas to come out too. Are you going to be able to program the AI to work with this model???

[Locutus]

Lozina,
City improvements don't need sprites, just tga's. You can usually find very nice pictures for them by searching the Internet for graphics, here is one example I found when I searched Altavista for graphics (http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/que...q&stype=simage). (It happens to be from AoE). I'm sure there are better pictures and better search engines out there, but this is just one example.
When you have found suitable graphiscs you can use almost any graphics program (other then MS Paint) to convert these graphics to 16-bit tga's.
[This message has been edited by Locutus (edited December 16, 2000).]

[lozina]

Second half of the unit prerequsite chart is done. (see it at http://www.cyburban.com/~lozina)now i will begin putting it into code which should be pretty easy and start play testing it. If anyone wants to check it out before i see if everything works absolutely fine- ill put it up on my site as soon as im done writing the code. you can help me find any problems or make better suggestions for prerquisites on some units. If I don't have any problems I'll begin editting the great library and making a few necessary message boxes- then add stables/shipyard maybe some other new buildings to include to the mix.

[Alpha Wolf]

I really like your unit/improvement chart except for one thing. Too many dependecies on science buildings. I think the the discovering of the advance itself is sufficient to satisfy the knowledge requirement. Mills should be required for all wooden ships but shipyards are a necessity for any modern ships.

I'd like to see warriors and slingers (i know we dont have them ) as the only units that dont require a garrison for training. i personally think archers come way too early in the game. Or at least accurate archery.

------------------
History is written by the victor.

[lozina]

hey Alpha-

thanks for the input. I agree that m tree does depend alot on science- making it even more vluable then it already is. thats why i was considering replacing some of them with a new War Academy, Barracks, Trainging Grounds--- some new buildings like that. It would help the tree alot along with shipyard and stables which I already plan on. Yeah the game's advance tech tree is really bad... it takes a really long time to make a good one so im hoping someone else makes a good one they wouldn't mind me using. got any suggestions on that?

[Ioannes]

As far as playing with terrain values goes. I have tried to modify the terrain to what I percieve to be more realistic values. Unimproved tiles would have less food. Grasslands = 5, Plains = 3, Forrests/Jungles = 3, Dessert/Glacier = 0, Tundra = 1, Hills = 3, Mountains of course = 0, Ocean = 3, etc. I also add the mod to hills that they can be irrigated at twice the cost of Grasslands/Plains. To solve the money problem I have made all unimproved tiles except Mountains (one gold) and Oceans (one gold) produce no gold. Rivers increase gold by one and production by 5. Gold is obtained by building improvements which increase at a rate of 1/3/5 rate. Roads also increase gold by 1/3/5 (sure they are ugly but not all of man's work is art). These changes cause specialists to become essential. Strong trade routes allowed me to survive. I was last playing this with CTP using Med4 mod. I had to to divide the year increments by five to appoximate history in the years. The game was much harder and longer. The increased production to gold ratio was often sucked up by the increased need for public works. Please feel free to use these ideas if you wish and tell me what you think.

------------------

[lozina]

Thanks Io- those settings look pretty reasonable- I will plug them in and try a couple of games out. What about science though? I'm sure you are still researching very fast? It might only be me though- I've always had a problem with all civ research rates. ever since Civilization I've thought the tech was going too fast- you research one unit and by the time you build that unit you have discovered something to make that brand new unit obsolete. Or you are discovering things so fast you're cities simply cannoy keep up.

But I think the only thing I will do right now is make a mod with the building pre-requisites, a few new buildings to make the tree more interesting- and a slight change in the current building tree. This will be one mod which anyone can incorporate with other mods they like. It will make changes to Buildings.txt, BuildListSequences.txt, BuildingBuildLists.txt, & UnitBuildList.txt. So if you made changes to these files already you will need to copy my changes and paste em wherever they fit- i'll comment the txt files where I editted/added. Also of course I'll have some .slc file which you need to make reference to in script.slc or scenario.slc or whatever your main slc file is.

After this I hope to make an attempt at the extremely poor diplomacy AI and AI in general. For this of course I'd really need some help! If anyone is interested please email me (t.lozina@verizon.net- dont click the email link above- i changed isps recently [DSL!])


Thanks again!

[Ioannes]

I found that I also had to use Scientists and merchants to survive. I usually kept one merchant for every five population and as many scientists that I could manage and still have my cities grow. I also did a lot of slaving which kept my production reasonable. Science was slowed for everyone due to the decrease in global gold output.

[Ioannes]

I am currently playing a game with the modifications to the tiles above. However I had to give the cities a total bonus of 5 food/5production/5 gold to be able to survive. I also have the base contentment at 72 for Impossible level.
I also had to give each tile one gold because scientists are allowed so late in the game. I have the years per turn cut in half. I may have to divide by three. I'll keep you updated.