The Quest for Deeper Strategy....

[Gen.Dragolen]

Greetings Everyone,

Well the first draft of the mod I've been working on is finished and ready for action. I have yet to play test it since it took a lot longer to document the changes than I estimated. No point to making a mod without recording a baseline for comparison...

The changes I made include most of the ideas posted here, except for making units have a population cost, so this should make for an interesting trial. There are changes to most of the medieval, industrial and modern units, the terrain values for terraforming and defense, and reductions in the espionage costs.

Ancient Age combat will be much tougher and I have made it so that units like the Legionary are the toughest unit of it's age. I suspect that there will be some rather bloody conflicts when CC's start to get their unique units into the field. And many of the units have different upgrades (or none at all) and technology pre-requisites that are more in keeping with what history has recorded. This especially holds true for the naval units, where Navigation marks the start of the Man O'War, and Galleon. Frigates do not appear until Military Tradition to reflect the developement of Britain's Royal Navy and the Admiralty.

Good hunting.


D.

[Blake]

Nice, playing it for a short while I do have a couple of comments.
Specialists:
The production of taxmen/scientists is too high, 3 is MUCH too high, 2 is slighty too high, 1 is too low. I put it to 2, which is just a tad too good, but not terribly unbalancing.
Note that specialists aren't effected by corruption, which means you could create heaps of specialists in distant cities and rake in the cash/science. OTOH they are not boosted by facilities, so are not useful in interior cities if there are available tiles with 2+ commerce.
A specialist also removes one unhappy citizen, which is a further strength.
From playtesting I am fairly happy with a specialist output of 2. Altough this is with standard terrain improvements and corruption effects, very low corruption and boosted improvements would tend to allow conditions where 3 production specialists are balanced.

3 luxuries for enterntainer is obscene. 1 is actually just fine, as it gives the same amount of pacifying power as in SMAC/Civ2. 1.5 would be around right (but impossible, unfortunately). Altough 2 is too high, it probably wouldn't break the game.

I find the boosted irrigation interesting, it would seem to make Despotion a much better goverment choice, as much more rapid population growth is possible on grassland, desert and food bonuses, allowing more pop-rushing, especially with enhanced entertainers to keep the population happier. Under higher goverments you end up with food coming out your ears and assorted orifices. But I'm not sure if the bonus should be reduced or not... prehaps mines should be boosted to +2 to make them competitive. (+3 on hills/mountains)

As the mod stands if you have a source of water, and especially with grassland, you would want to pack in cities ultra close and use heaps of specialists, either rushbuying a lot of stuff, or pop-rushing. No other strategy would compete in terms of sheer resource output.

[Austin]

In an attempt to resurrect the "military units cost one pop" idea, is it possible ala Civ2 to tweak the sizes of the food boxes so that populations grow faster?

Austin

[Gen.Dragolen]

Blake,

I was thinking that 3 would be a little much for the specialists, but that's why I wanted other peoples opinions about the changes. I'll lower them to 1 Happy Face/2 beakers/2 coins for the next version.

And I thought that the standard production penalty for Despotism would limit the amount of food (and shields) a tile could produce ? If that isn't the case, then we may need to lower the effect of irrigation. The thing about it is that a cousin who grew up on a farm in the '30's said that most of the land was giving about 5 bushels of wheat per acre and where there was moisture, they could get over 40 bushels per acre. Irrigation has allowed deserts to bloom: take a look at Isreal, Saudi Arabia, or even California. A little water goes a long way... so I will leave the irrigation effect alone for now until I can verify that it is superceding the production penalty for Despotism.

And as for the strategic use of the speacialists in ICS type setups, well that was in mind when I setup the terrain improvements. I think adding a population cost to units will be needed to balance things out again. I think it should apply only to foot units, and not to mounted, support or Air units. Those units usually relied on a relatively small group of specialists. So we add Bread and Butter to the strategic planning.

So for the next version:
1. Reduced specialist effects: Entertainers 1, Scientist 2, Taxman 2
2. Add population cost to most military units that would need large numbers of bodies.

I will try and post the revised version tonight.


D.

[Austin]

I just had a horrible thought; adding population costs to military units will probably result in the AI cities self destructing.

Austin

[alva]

Originally posted by Austin
I just had a horrible thought; adding population costs to military units will probably result in the AI cities self destructing.

Austin

to difficult fot the AI, he doesn't know how to cope with it, the same happens when a settler costs 3pop points. He will have all the shields, be needs to wait 7-8 more turns for the city to grow to size 4.
I never mod beyond the basics, things like adding an extra hp are no problem, but anything beyond that may have strnge side-affects

[Gen.Dragolen]

Austin,

I don't think a population cost will be a problemfor the AI Civ's if the irrigation tile improvement supercedes the despotism production restriction. Granted, I haven't had a chance to playtest this mod yet. (That's on the to do list for tonight)

Food production will be a little better than it is now, so growth should not be a problem. If they build a granary to boot, then they will be at size 6 in no time and pumping out units like any human player would. The first arms race will be to see who builds the Pyramids first.

Part of the reason for wanting to have the pop cost is to prevent the ridiculous stacks of units that the AI Civ's have by the early Industrial Age: if it is costing them population in addition to increases unit maintenance, it will be harder to have 167 Rifleman units crossing your border. It hopefully will make it a little more reasonable, like 10-15 crossing and you will have the same to meet them in the field.

Having increased food production by irrigation is a two edged sword though: a size 12 city on a river will starve down to size 3-4 if most of the improved tiles are pillaged... just another reason to try and take out the enemy before he gets to your city.


D.

[Gen.Dragolen]

Greetings All,

I managed to find the time after I got home from work to change the settings mentioned in the previous posts:

1. Entertainers are reduced to 1 luxury per, scientists and taxmen changed to 2 beakers/coins per
2. Added population cost to most of the units with a few exceptions: scout and armies.

My rationale for adding a pop cost to almost all of the units is that the logistics tail has never been accounted for in the game design, and there are usually many technicians/specialists who allow that a crew to operate a weapon on the battlefield.

If you do find that one or some of the changes have "broken" the AI, let me know the situation and what happened. Screenshots would be useful.


D.

[Gen.Dragolen]

Report from the Egyptian Norther Frontier near El-Amarna:

My beloved Pharaoh,

The war goes quite well, after some inital losses, and we have destroyed the last of the Persian invaders. It was a very different feel to the campaign...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IMO, with adding the population cost to the units, it makes it much harder at the very start as you feel rather naked without some sort of unit guarding you capital while the AI Civ's warriors are wondering about.

The AI does not self-destruct, but still pumps out settlers at an alarming rate. At one point I had 8 different settlers and spearman groups from nearby civs criss-crossing the empire.

And they did not suffer in the least for combat. I was in two small skirmishes with the Iroquois and Persians. Persian Immortals are very powerful now and with the terrain defensive bonuses added in, they can pose a problem. A modified swordsman could not destroy one in a jungle tile, only inflict a hit or two.

However, longbowmen kill them off quite nicely, as do pikemen garrisons. I had serveral longbowmen down to 1 hp by the time they kill the Immortal, but this makes me think the combat balance isn't too bad.

The only downside I noticed is that it was taking forever and a day to build any improvements. I think I will take a look at the relative costs for the improvements over the ages and see if they are linear or exponential. Even with increased production from mines, it still could take 30+ turns to build a library.


D.

[Blake]

I do have to wonder if the pop cost and irrigation strength would make life excessively difficult for civs without a source of fresh water, and as pop is required to build military units, taking the source of water would be much easier said than done.

[Catt]

In watching the replay, my obsession with Killer AIs has increased... why the hell didn't England expand??!! The size and tech leader, good GWs, weak as crap neighbors...

The above quote is from another thread -- a thread about a shared game that many played, and in which many games England (yes, England ) was a powerful AI civ. A lot of great mod makers seem to be posting in this thread, and since we're all looking for a more challenging AI, I throw the question to all of you -- does a radical change (increase) in the OCN stimulate the AI civs to expand more aggressively, even at the cost of war? In our shared game, there was a sense that England didn't press her advantage in a manner at all similar to what a human player would have done, and therefore did not become a supreme empire over which the sun would never set . . . .

Catt

[Theseus]

Not to make trouble...

But can we start with a really minimal mod?

I hope to meld this thread with the AU concept... and that means combining two concepts, 1) better gameplay and 2) training, and getting ready for MP.

The latter, MP, will at least initially probably be played closer to "stock," and I am hesitant to get used to a mod that is too different.

I sorta think we need 2 standard mods:
1) The Apolyton "preferred"
2) Damn close to "stock"

I also wish Firaxis would chime in here, as they have obviously tested a lot of this stuff.

(Threadjackers that they are!)

[Franses]

Originally posted by Theseus
Not to make trouble...

But can we start with a really minimal mod?

I fully agree. By doing that we can much better investigate the influence of the changes we make.

[Gen.Dragolen]

Theseus,

A really minimal mod you say. It would be no trouble at all.

I'm getting better at finding things in the editor, so if you can help prepare the list of changes, I'll do the busy work. You know how it is, part-time military genius, part-time mad scientist... but not enough brain damage yet to go full time in either career choice.

I'll make a zip of all the default settings spreadsheets I have so far and post it. The only tab I haven't documented yet is the Advances tab. That will be several evenings of reading and typing. I wish there was a way to dump the tabs using VBA in or something to flat text file.

(And Soren, I know, I know: no decompiling the executables. EULA's and all...)

Anyways, we could use that as a reference so we change only the settings we want. I noticed during the testing last evening that the ancient age was painfully slow by about 1000 years. So I figure the next step will be to reduce the number of civs from 16 to 8, and try it again. The next step after that would be looking at the costs for improvements and make it easier to produce buildings. (lower building costs, higher maintenance)

And about the AI Civ's building habits: it would be nice to have some indication from Soren about what some of the choices do for the AI Civ's in that Build Often section on the Civilizations tab. I turned on Growth for all of the Civs and I was up to my gorget in settlers from every other civ on the continent. One down, many to go.

I know I may have gone overboard on the changes, but after almost a year of tinkering and playing with CtP2 and many months of CivIII, I hoped some drastic changes would combine the best traits from both into CivIII. I even made graphs of the unit stats in Excel just to see how they compared. Those graphs alone drove most of the changes I made, especially to the naval and air units.

(just put the brain in the jar on the table, Igor. Now please go see if the storm is picking up yet)

So in keeping with the Scientific Method just how simple did we want to start and which area do we address first ?


D.

[Blake]

These are the changes I would like in a minimal mod:
(in no particular order)
+1 unit HP per age.
Scienists/Taxmen produce 2
Improve weak UU's, especially english (bring forward in tech tree). Prehaps other (weak) mid-modern era UU's should get +2 rather than +1, ie France, Russia.
Add upgrade paths.
Make non-useful units useful, Musket, marines, paratroopers. I'm thinking boosts to attack and/or defense.
Prehaps add one attack to the 'infantry' type foot units or reduce cost by 1 row (that is musket, rifle, infantry)
Increase speed of ships. (Tho thats just personal preference, I added 1 to all ship movements and found it thoroughly enjoyable)
hmmm. That's all I can immediately think of.

[Franses]

Coming back to the subject of Helicopters and in addition to Blake's list:
Why not alter the nr of units a helicopter can transport to 5?

This may be a change we could investigate in parallel with the other changes, I guess.

[Zachriel]

Make paratroopers invisible for one turn, so they have a chance to accomplish their mission before their inevitable destruction.

Make tanks cost more so that players will build infantry, if only to defend the tanks.

[Austin]

Originally posted by Gen.Dragolen
Austin,

I don't think a population cost will be a problemfor the AI Civ's if the irrigation tile improvement supercedes the despotism production restriction. Granted, I haven't had a chance to playtest this mod yet. (That's on the to do list for tonight)

I'd be VERY interested in seeing the results. I think this is a really good idea, I'm just afraid that the AI will self destruct.

It will dramatically show why a "mature" society like the later Roman Empire had so many, many problems finding manpower for it's armies.

One question, if you make a military unit cost population, can you then add the population back to the city?

Food production will be a little better than it is now, so growth should not be a problem. If they build a granary to boot, then they will be at size 6 in no time and pumping out units like any human player would. The first arms race will be to see who builds the Pyramids first.

Gulp! Are you screwed if you don't build it?

Part of the reason for wanting to have the pop cost is to prevent the ridiculous stacks of units that the AI Civ's have by the early Industrial Age: if it is costing them population in addition to increases unit maintenance, it will be harder to have 167 Rifleman units crossing your border. It hopefully will make it a little more reasonable, like 10-15 crossing and you will have the same to meet them in the field.

This would be nice. What would be even nicer is some way to shift the military paradigm in Civ III from "big stacks wandering about" to having to form actual lines like in real warfare. Currently with no ZOC restrictions and no supply rules the incentive is to go with a giant stack, which is grossly ahistorical.

One workaround would be if ZOC actually did serious damage when you moved past units. Give all the "gunpowder" units the ZOC ability.

Currently, does anybody know how the free ZOC shots work? Do you get one possible shot per unit in the stack, or one shot per stack?

Having increased food production by irrigation is a two edged sword though: a size 12 city on a river will starve down to size 3-4 if most of the improved tiles are pillaged... just another reason to try and take out the enemy before he gets to your city.


D.

This would be very nice as well. Is the AI smart enought to realize this, or will it sit haplessly inside it's cities and be starved?

Austin

[punkbass2000]

I think the pyramids would be overpowered if units cost pop points. You'd have to change what it does, or just remove it altogether.

[Gen.Dragolen]

Greetings All,

Well after some hard fought battles, the Egyptian Confederation has fought it's last battle on it's own soil for a while:

I've been testing the latest mod I posted last week, and have found that aside from some initial insecurity, the game still works alright, with no broken AI Civ's, just their usual belligerence and trechery. Improvements still seem to build too slowly, but that is likely because I wasn't constantly at war, and was building up the infrastructure.

And I did not get to build the Pyramids in this game: I think the American's beat me to it. It would help, but with increased food production, it's not as big an issue. I have food production on the list of things to change to a lower level. Another issue it the availability of strategic resources. Many of the civ's didn't have access to iron which lead to a shortage of modern units, and what's worse, they wouldn't trade for it.

I did notice a couple of glaring errors on my part though:
1. musketmen upgrading to cavalry ?!?
- this was the result of not changing the upgrade path from Musketeers to Rifleman.
2. espionage was a little too cheap - only 21 gold to get an agent in another civ's capital was a steal. Going to have to increase that a bit - to about 210 gold or so. Wages for treason are usually expensive, though idealistic sorts will still work for free...
3. blitz units. Despite my respect and admiration of Nathaniel Forrest's strategic genius in using cavalry, they should not get a blitz ability. In the early industrial age, when other civ's might have a few dozen pikemen holding their cities, cavalry becomes over powering.

As for some of the other issues like a population cost for most units hasn't slowed down the AI Civ's from producing lots of units. They continue to be hamstrung by their refusal to upgrade units, though that could in part be from a lack of resources, or in part from loosing most of their newer units in combat.

The shorter range on the galleys did make for one interesting effect: when I finally contacted an AI Civ's from the other continent, I was shocked to find that despite having over 30 cities, (about double the next largest AI Civ, the Americans) I was still behind in research, and had lost many of Wonder races, always by a only a turn or two.

But in inevitible fashion, the Egyptians have started out producing everyone else, and have gained the lead in the technological war at last. I have my first battleship steaming towards one of the AI Civ's that objected to my espionage activities and declared war on me.

That war has consisted of the AI Civ trying to land some cavalry units on my shore, but they ran into a couple of artillery batteries and some infantry. It wasn't a pretty site when the horses run into machineguns and artillery. But that's what happens when you face superior technology. And my response was to dispatch my first battleship to pay a visit to their major coastal cities.

Considering the time needed to play a game to conclusion, has anyone tried the mod with any other civ's yet ?

Theseus, below are most of the spreadsheets I had promised. I still want to cleanup the rest of them, and will post one with all of the units, not just the land units.

I will start working on a minimalist mod later this week using the suggestions you have posted earlier. My weekends have been entirely too busy to get any gaming done so bear with me.

D.

[Austin]

I tried out the following concept over the weekend:

- Military units cost one pop (except for air, sea and artillery type units)
- Irrigating desert, plain, and grassland gives one extra food.

This slowed the pace of the game down a LOT. It also cut down a lot on "hordes o units". The AI did not self destruct even when hard pressed in a war.

The early period for the human player is very tough.

Austin

[Gen.Dragolen]

Austin,

I am finding it very tough going now with having to wait for popluation growth to produce troops too.

And with the barbarians coming out with better units, it makes it much more difficult to pick up some spare change from their camps. In the latest round of testing, I had my capital sacked by 16 barbarian knights, when the best I could offer was a War Chariot and 2 spearmen. I really should have already built walls, but was going for maximum expansion and got nailed for it. I managed to kill 5 of them on their way in, and had just traded for a tech so the cash loss wasn't bad, but losing the 3 pop points really hurt.

I think to make the ancient age a little faster paced, I will try lowering the costs for some of the improvements and units a little less expensive. Barracks seem a little over priced and walls a little under priced considering the reources needed to build and maintain both...

As an alternative to the pop cost, I was going to try boosting the unit maintenance cost to 4 or 5 coins per turn. But that will be a major pain for the AI Civ's and their spendthrift ways...

D.

[lockstep]

Originally posted by Austin
One question, if you make a military unit cost population, can you then add the population back to the city?

I ran a quick test. The answer is: yes, but only if the 'join city' flag is selected in the editor for this military unit. Note that this is a worker/engineer action flag, so I don't have a clue if the AI could handle it.

Some other things that IMO need to be tested before the 'pop cost for military units' concept can be applied (although I find it interesting):

• I suspect that the AI would instantly try to build warriors and spearmen in the beginning - no matter what their pop cost is - and therefore waste shields because of insufficient city size.
• Possible sollution if this feature cripples the AI in the early game: pop cost only for industrial/modern military units (to be specific: non-bombardment land units). Problem: Upgrading from pre-industrial to industrial units may cost money, but not pop points.
• What happens if I draft a unit that already would cost a pop point if I'd build it? Either the answer is two pop points are lost or drafting needs to be seriously rebalanced.

[punkbass2000]

I think 'units require pop-points' rule would greatly benefit expansionist. One, you get to start with a unit and two, I would be inclined to build a granary first off, as I can't build any units for a while anyway and the granary will help immensely in unit production now.

[Spaced Cowboy]

Expansionist: To make things worse, you could settle your first city. Scout around it a bit to find a good second city location, and build settler in the first location, then when your pop is nearing 2 in the first city, bring back the scout and add him and get an instant settler....Hmm the scout gambit.

[Blake]

With the drafting thing, you could make all units cheaper. The benefit is then the +2 health from building in a city with a barracks (altough this benefit would be quite minimal with +1 per age )

With the importance of irrigation, I think it would be wise to make the 'irrigate anywhere' tech come much earlier, prehaps as early as aquaduct tech.

I have found it very frustrating getting an early city going with the pop-cost, prehaps warriors could cost no pop, but not be upgradable? The cost might have to be increased to 2 to offset the no pop required....

Another idea is with the new SE, make a new 'Scout' unit for all non-expansionists, which has stats 0-0-1 and costs 1 row but no pop (the expansionist scout would also cost no pop). Tho the AI might still build warriors . But thats the AI's problem .

[Blake]

And hey, whats people thoughts on making all improvments give +2 instead of +1 (that is roads, irrigation and mines), and make forests give 3 production, and sea 3 commerce. It makes the ancient times speed by, but unfortunately almost completey negates the benefit of a early GA, in particular you get very little commerce from it.

I do think mines should be increased to +2 if irrigation is increased to +2, it would also solve the buildings taking too long to build thing....

[Austin]

I'm really liking the changes so far, certainly the easy early rush strategy is dead. Definetly brings some very hard production choices now.

Austin

[lockstep]

I did another quick test. Upgrading a unit without pop cost to a more advanced unit with pop cost will only cost money. Too bad.

Originally posted by Blake
With the drafting thing, you could make all units cheaper.

Not sure if this is sufficient to rebalance the game. Maybe the happiness penalty for drafting should be increased. (IIRC, in korn's blitz mod, which introduced pop costs for industrial/modern units, it was 30 turns instead of 20.)

The benefit is then the +2 health from building in a city with a barracks (altough this benefit would be quite minimal with +1 per age )

I'd say you have found a very good reason why a hitpoint bonus of +1 per age is a bad idea. 8 hitpoints for modern elite units vs. 5 for conscript units ... wouldn't make much of a difference in combat IMO. (That is, besides generating leaders.)

With the importance of irrigation, I think it would be wise to make the 'irrigate anywhere' tech come much earlier, prehaps as early as aquaduct tech.

While making unlimited irrigation available earlier in the game (e.g. with engineering) is a good idea in itself, it won't solve the problems of an 'irrigation yields +2 bushels' rule. Irrigating plains or desert would still be pointless in Despotism because of its tile penalty (the third food bushel, shield or commerce from a given tile is lost).

I have found it very frustrating getting an early city going with the pop-cost, prehaps warriors could cost no pop, but not be upgradable? The cost might have to be increased to 2 to offset the no pop required....

I also think that the upgrade chain should be broken between units without vs. units with pop cost (although I don't like the idea of a building menu that is even more cluttered with obsolete units), but don't see a reason for upping the cost of non-pop-units.

Another idea is with the new SE, make a new 'Scout' unit for all non-expansionists, which has stats 0-0-1 and costs 1 row but no pop (the expansionist scout would also cost no pop). Tho the AI might still build warriors . But thats the AI's problem .

And now you've really opened a can of worms.

[Gen.Dragolen]

It's good to see that my analysis is of the changes is the similar to all of yours.

With one exception: Austin, you can still manage an early age rush. I did a number on the always friendly German neighbours using 5 War Chariots around 500 BC. Lost two of them, but captured Berlin, and destroyed one vil. Loosing 40% of their villages and land, 2 settlers captured, and 2 workers given in exchange for a Peace Treaty, should make them a litte more managable.

I will have to see if I can turn that build option on for the units so they can add to the population when disbanded. It makes for an easier time with civil unrest when all you have to do it make a unit to get rid of an unhappy citizen, so you can imagine what adding all sorts of people when disbanding will do.

As an alternative to having a population cost for units, I was toying with taking away the free units and maybe increasing the unit and improvement upkeeps. Same effect, and it would greatly affect one's ability to field a large force, or even keep a large garrison. If you add in some cheaper improvements for the ancient age, it would make it an equally tough balancing act. Keep the troops and loose the improvements, and vice-versa.

Blake, I do like the idea of increasing the production from adding a mine to a tile, but I thought I had already made it a +2. I'll need to check. If production is too slow, I thing increasing the effect of a mine in a Hill or Mountain to +3 or +4 might be in order. And there are historical precidents for it: salt mines in Austria and Switzerland were mined by the Celts and the salt made it's way as far as Persia and Spain. Iron and copper mines were major concerns, too.

I've incorporated some of the other suggested changes into another .bic so I'll add in some more changes for the mines and the build option to the units and post it this afternoon.

D.