Super Massive Enhanced Gameplay mod 1.0.2.1 Discussion

[Krill]

The double national wonder thing is really cool.

I would say:

1.) rebalance the crazier stuff (the fixed output bonuses on various buildings, especially from civics, the crazy german/portuguese UBs, and tone down the super-lumbermills)

2.) don't cut up too much beyond that?

basically, I feel like a lot of the changes, especially in the medieval and ren era, didn't really get a fair evaluation because of how overpowering the fixed bonuses were once they started stacking up on top of each other. and I still remember how really excellent I your changes to the early game were, so I'd hate to see more cool stuff discarded just cause it cant compete with size 2 cities pulling in like 50hpt.

1. Civics: revert to 3.X and rebuild from there. Rebuild of Emancipation necessary. Merc is still the 2 spec variety but the whole Ren era tech tree is altered, so the Merc at Nat problem doesn't exist
   
   
2. Ancient era tech tree can stick as in SMEG 1.0.1.3, minus the new "Meadow" part, that can just fuck right off. Waste of time, not worth the effort to recode.
   
   
3. I think the forest preserve as cottage on forests can actually stay, but probably should go from IW to Compass? IW with that is a damned good tech, probably too good.
   
   
4. Lumber mills either need removing, or something very different put in place. This is what I figured:
   
   Lumber Mill: Available at Metal Casting. 5 worker turns, requires forest. +2 commerce, +1 commerce from river (so the river adjacent forests effectively get the river commerce).
   
   Then:
   
   +1 hammer, -1 commerce from Fuedalism
   +1 hammer, -1 commerce from Chemistry
   +1 hammer from Rails

[GermanJoey]

The early game stuff, the tech changes and tile improvements, I can pretty much keep. I do want to remove the pier, I don't think it's going to be necessary.

I wish there was a way to customize the civs and leaders though: I like leaders as trait/trait and civs as trait/UB/UU, but for more variety I'd have wanted to implement a system where each game, depending on the leader you picked, you could choose from a small number of additional UU, and the same concept for choosing an extra UB depending on hte civ you chose.

The static bonuses on the civics basically needs to go. Lumber mills, I can't see how to implement them in a viable way other than +commerce on the base tile, and then treat them like workshops in getting hammers based on tech (with no civic involvement so they give you flexibility for not chopping the forest). Similar sort of thing for the forest-cottage replacement.

Because it will be based off 3.X, the tech cost scaling from ToW is present. That means all tech costs need re-evaluating. This is good, because I'd want to remove all starting techs from teh civs, remove the extra hammer from the capital, remove the extra commerce from the palace and try to rescale all of those costs.

Oh yeah, the pier, that was one thing I didn't like too much.

I agree with scaling back the civics... I think it's ok to make them real strong and different from each other, and I think maybe having one column give tile or building bonuses might be ok, but it can get pretty outta control when you combine them with each other

For lumbermills, I think it's ok if they're kinda a hybrid between a commerce tile and a hammer tile? Like, a pre-printing press grassriver town is 2/0/5, 2/0/6 with Fin or PP. Using RtR as a baseline in my head, I think that an eventual 2/2/4 lumbermill (on a straight, so that 2/2/3 non-straight LMs will still get a Fin bonus), actually seems quite good enough that you'd want them, even though you have to give up the chop bonus, can't start the improvement until MC, and the improvement taking 8 freaking turns to build. Food-neutral tiles that give hammers are really powerful, and the LM will give a lot more hammers over time compared to chopping without slowing down the growth of the city. Big commerce centers want production almost as much as they want population because all those research/gold multipliers will add up to a lot of hammers. The tile will also give bonus hammers during a GA, which shouldn't be discounted.

So, like, let's say the improvement starts at 2/1/2 on a straight. Lumbermill 2 becomes 2/2/2, then L3 is 2/2/3, and finally L4 2/2/4. L4 (but not L3) could get +1c from PP, like villages and towns, to help keep its edge over towns, and then maybe another +1c (or even +1h??) from Electricity or something, just so they can keep up with windmills. Towns would become better with FS, but then I think that's ok.

edit: hold on, I just saw your new post on this page...

[GermanJoey]

The double national wonder thing is really cool.

I would say:

1.) rebalance the crazier stuff (the fixed output bonuses on various buildings, especially from civics, the crazy german/portuguese UBs, and tone down the super-lumbermills)

2.) don't cut up too much beyond that?

basically, I feel like a lot of the changes, especially in the medieval and ren era, didn't really get a fair evaluation because of how overpowering the fixed bonuses were once they started stacking up on top of each other. and I still remember how really excellent I your changes to the early game were, so I'd hate to see more cool stuff discarded just cause it cant compete with size 2 cities pulling in like 50hpt.

1. Civics: revert to 3.X and rebuild from there. Rebuild of Emancipation necessary. Merc is still the 2 spec variety but the whole Ren era tech tree is altered, so the Merc at Nat problem doesn't exist
   
   
2. Ancient era tech tree can stick as in SMEG 1.0.1.3, minus the new "Meadow" part, that can just fuck right off. Waste of time, not worth the effort to recode.
   
   
3. I think the forest preserve as cottage on forests can actually stay, but probably should go from IW to Compass? IW with that is a damned good tech, probably too good.
   
   
4. Lumber mills either need removing, or something very different put in place. This is what I figured:
   
   Lumber Mill: Available at Metal Casting. 5 worker turns, requires forest. +2 commerce, +1 commerce from river (so the river adjacent forests effectively get the river commerce).
   
   Then:
   
   +1 hammer, -1 commerce from Fuedalism
   +1 hammer, -1 commerce from Chemistry
   +1 hammer from Rails

Hmmm, so at feud you're lookin at 2/2/2 grass lumbermills, and Chem at 2/3/1? dunno if they'd be worth using then, cause they'd be weaker than a watermill on flatland and about the same as a windmill on a hill i think? so might as well chop the forest. Fin would hate it I think, cause they'd get the bonus at first but then lose it at Feud. You could just kinda combine forest preserves (which I had forgotten about the existance of) and LM together as a single improvement type.

[Krill]

Something I think is often ignored is that forest tiles vary between 0/3/0, 1/2/0 and 2/1/0 varieties. I don't know how that affects things, but along with faorests on hills it means that some tiels can get lumber mills which cant get workshops or watermills.

I don't really know how that affects things, only it does.

Only thing I'm sure of is that forest preserve as cottage on forests works for the reason you gave, of commerce centres wanting hammers. Lumber mills have to fit in between mines, workshops and water mills and it's hard to design them such that they don't overpower all of them. I don't think I know of a definite way of making them viable without either lowering the worker investment cost (fewer worker turns) and making them entirely civic independent. A workshop that gives +3 hammers makes the tile match a workshop that has both SP and Caste backing it up, after all (given the base tile, anyway).

[Cheater Hater]

Maybe the answer isn't to make lumbermills super-strong, but make forest chops weaker? Obviously that's a much-more systemic change (you'd probably need to lower the cost of most early-game things a bit to compensate), but making it so there's a better choice between chopping something for the early-game boost and saving the forests for health/lumbermill/forest preserve purposes feels like a good idea.

[GermanJoey]

Something I think is often ignored is that forest tiles vary between 0/3/0, 1/2/0 and 2/1/0 varieties. I don't know how that affects things, but along with faorests on hills it means that some tiels can get lumber mills which cant get workshops or watermills.

I don't really know how that affects things, only it does.

Only thing I'm sure of is that forest preserve as cottage on forests works for the reason you gave, of commerce centres wanting hammers. Lumber mills have to fit in between mines, workshops and water mills and it's hard to design them such that they don't overpower all of them. I don't think I know of a definite way of making them viable without either lowering the worker investment cost (fewer worker turns) and making them entirely civic independent. A workshop that gives +3 hammers makes the tile match a workshop that has both SP and Caste backing it up, after all (given the base tile, anyway).

I was thinking the flatland grass forest is the one to really worry about, as adding too many bonuses to food-neutral (or food-positive!) is where things can get really crazy.

The more I think about it, I think that it's gonna be too awkward having both the forest preserve and lumbermill as cottagesque forest tiles. Like you say, this improvement has to be somehow better than both watermills, workshops, and cottages (on flatland), and also windmills and mines on hills, at least pre-industrial era, because there has to be a reason to get it instead of cashing in the forest for the instant hammers.

Right now the situation, pre-industrial era, is:

watermills: +0/2/0, +0/1/1 with apprenticeships (which is at machinery)
workshops: -1/+2/0, +0/1/0 at guilds, +0/1/1 with standardization (at CoL, competes with apprenticeships)
windmills: +1/0/1, +0/1/0 at RP, +0/1/1 with apprenticeships
mine: +0/2/0, +0/1/0 at chem, +0/0/2 with collective finance (at banking, competes with standardization and apprenticeships)
hamlet: +0/0/2, +0/0/1 with collective finance
village: +0/0/3, +0/0/1 at PP, +0/0/1 with collective finance, +0/0/1 with Free Speech (at liberalism, doesn't compete with any of these)

the civics bonuses make things more complicated... ignoring them for now means that its like this:

watermills: +0/2/0
workshops: -1/+2/0, +0/1/0 at guilds
windmills: +1/0/1, +0/1/0 at RP
mine: +0/2/0, +0/1/0 at chem
hamlet: +0/0/2
village: +0/0/3, +0/0/1 at PP

Using these numbers as a guideline for the forest improvement, I figure that a village-level improvement that's been worked for 30 turns should be straight-up better than the "instant" improvements, but a hamlet-level would be slightly worse. so, adding in that you need an additional bonus for saving the forest, then a level 3 forest-preserve-lumbermill that got +0/2/2 and +0/0/1 at PP would look pretty good compared to any of these improvements I think?

then you just gotta be careful with the civics. I think it'd be OK to give them some sort of big-deal bonus to the L4 with one of the industrial-era civics (like what workshops and watermills get with SP) considering you gotta sit there and work it for 60 turns first. you could even allow multiple columns to stack bonuses... the more mediocre the tile is in the early game, the better the late-game civics could boost it.

[GermanJoey]

Maybe the answer isn't to make lumbermills super-strong, but make forest chops weaker? Obviously that's a much-more systemic change (you'd probably need to lower the cost of most early-game things a bit to compensate), but making it so there's a better choice between chopping something for the early-game boost and saving the forests for health/lumbermill/forest preserve purposes feels like a good idea.

deciding when, where, and how to chop is one of the most interesting parts of civ4 micromanagment, why would you want to get rid of that? this new forest improvement should be something you use sparingly, for special cities.

[Krill]

I'd ignore all of the changes introduced in 1.0.1.3, the mod used for PB26, and just consider this an entirely new mod built form scratch.

I need to run now, but another thought I had was to change the lumber mill from a distinct tile improvement like where discussing and existed in PB26, to one that matures, like a cottage, into either a windmill (if placed on a hill) or into a workshop (if placed on flatland) or into a watermill (if placed river adjacent and flatland). Basically, split it into three new improvements in terms of UI, but it's simply a way to get the current set of tile improvements, onto tiles with a forest. So "Lumber mill (Hill)" turns into that windmill etc.

It solves the problem of creating a new design space, and makes it a more pure decision on whether you should chop or not. The growth time can be altered to basically anything, from 1 turn to 50. It works along with the cottage option (Forest Preserve>hamlet) so it should make it easier to read a map and much more understandable. In many respects it's actually a pretty sane proposal to deal with forest chopping.

[greenline]

I wonder if there's any merit to giving forest improvements + happy faces like BtS was going for?

[Krill]

It can get pretty ugly, going down that route. You only need the tiles improved but not worked to get the happy IIRC. In many respects, it can break alot of the happy system constraint which leads to altered growth patterns, and that changes a lot of the game in, frankly, unknown ways. And what's the benefit? You simply turn tiles into happy, and later on you just clear the forests with other tile improvements. It seems more trouble than it's worth.