Super Massive Enhanced Gameplay Mod 1.0.1.3 - Beta

[Krill]

Basically yes: it still needs to be coded such that only IND can build 2 copies of a national wonder but a house rule to enforce that is enough for a test game.

[Tasunke]

Did u mean for collective Finance to only affect the Cottage, and not Hamlet/Village/Town (with the +1 food)

Why does Breakwater require Quay, yet Drydock doesn't require Shipyard? Seems like it should all be modular, or all be linear, imho. Either both are a building chain or neither are (imho). I'd lean towards neither ... but the role play side of me, partially inspired by the Total War series, doesn't mind a decent building chain or two. Speaking of which is there a Harbor equivalent for trade routes? Or is that just the customs house? And if so ... should it also be a building chain? (or could there be a different building that increases # of routes and the %, but just not at a full 100%)

I like a lot of the technology changes, but some of the civics changes are a bit bizzare. I'm wrapping my head around how u managed to get the Code done in the DLL ... and I like the concept, but it'll take awhile to wrap my head around it.

I SOOOOO *LIKE* the Police State bonus with Monuments!! ... personally it looks like an interesting Egyptian excercise, or rather, a Pyramids exercise, to choose early game between Hereditary Rule and Police State. Whether to get the small bonus in the Palace, or the larger empire-wide bonus with the Monuments. Ofc the former comes with military happiness as well (something that would make sense with Police State too, so

[Krill]

Did u mean for collective Finance to only affect the Cottage, and not Hamlet/Village/Town (with the +1 food)

Yes.

Why does Breakwater require Quay, yet Drydock doesn't require Shipyard? Seems like it should all be modular, or all be linear, imho. Either both are a building chain or neither are (imho). I'd lean towards neither ... but the role play side of me, partially inspired by the Total War series, doesn't mind a decent building chain or two. Speaking of which is there a Harbor equivalent for trade routes? Or is that just the customs house? And if so ... should it also be a building chain? (or could there be a different building that increases # of routes and the %, but just not at a full 100%)[/uote]

All should have chains. The drydock has simply been missed and I can change that quickly for 1.0.0.10.

The Customs house is in the chain for the harbour. The +100% does not double the trade route values from eg 6>12 comerce, it is merely +100% of the base value which is rarely greater than 2.2-ish commerce per route. So with 5 routes would be worth maybe 10 commerce per turn.

[quote]I like a lot of the technology changes, but some of the civics changes are a bit bizzare. I'm wrapping my head around how u managed to get the Code done in the DLL ... and I like the concept, but it'll take awhile to wrap my head around it.

Ask novice. I don't know. Which changes are bizare though?

I SOOOOO *LIKE* the Police State bonus with Monuments!! ... personally it looks like an interesting Egyptian excercise, or rather, a Pyramids exercise, to choose early game between Hereditary Rule and Police State. Whether to get the small bonus in the Palace, or the larger empire-wide bonus with the Monuments. Ofc the former comes with military happiness as well (something that would make sense with Police State too, so

Police state is not an early game civic, it comes at Military Science in the Ind era; I considered putting PS at Monarchy and to rebalance both civics to be around Rep in strength but this seems straight forward. As you say though, for the player that gets Mids Rep isn't a straight forward decision.For most players the decision may greatly affect when to research Astronomy which provides and easy way to screw up.

[Tasunke]

I'm not sure if its really necessary to make Meadow and Farm separate improvements ....

I'm really excited to try out Theocracy/ Vassalage ... seems like a very interesting alternative to Bureacracy/Organized (perhaps even OP?)

Paganism with OP monuments is amazing btw :3 ... Police State + Paganism with the 'mids is an interesting 'strat' I will say I DONT THINK ITS OP ... but it makes Monuments far more worthwhile to build. And by the time u have religious alternatives to paganism you've already gained something from that extra commerce. Tbh I think while some ppl might have a hard time switching out of Paganism, I noticed that even at the maxed strat, it only gives me about 13 more science per turn at 80% science rate. 250 -> 263 ... granted switching INTO vassalage boosted me from 223 into 250. So Feudalism, so far, gives me about twice the amount of science (and gold, easily) as Pagan Monuments gives me. And I think a Theocracy/ Vassalage combo has more synergy than say Paganism/Vassalage.

So I think Pagan Monuments is FUN, INTERESTING, and I think by the time you get alternatives you have enough of a reason to switch out of it ... once you have proper infrastructure of course.

Im not too terribly crazy with the 25 turn!!! time limit between Civic Switches (at Quick Speed!!) is it even longer on Normal et al? Maybe a 6 turn golden age is a bit too fast ... 8 turn GA? 9 turn? Just an idea. Tbh with all the powerful changes (preserves/lumbermills/+1 gold per religious city) I'm not sure if the Religious Shrines are all that worth it any more. Granted, maybe they were never worth it, but now its just completely obvious. Either make shrines a bit stronger, or rethink some of the approaches, or just leave as is ... and have shrines NEVER be built by humans

I see no reason to build a Mine when I could build a Lumbermill. Especially with Standardization + Paper. Maybe late-game its worth it? But really and truly, Forests are just epic EPIC goldmines in this mod. Which, well I guess that is part of the point, making forest chops more of an actual net loss. ??

Forest preserves are fun(!) ... but the help text is wrong, when it says Forest Preserve +1 commerce and Cottage +2 commerce. For some reason the help text is assuming chopping the forest improves commerce by 1 ... maybe, assuming (old BTS) EVERY forest is on a river. But that doesn't really make sense. I call hax (bug found).

But yea, Forest Preserve and Lumbermills really makes having forests a lot more fun. And Vassalage is a very fun civic to play through ... I can't wait to see how it mixes with Theocracy, especially now that I'm about to start building Statue of Zeus and Heroic Epic. I still need dat Cathedral do ... Theocracy just won't be that good without at least one of those. (granted, its already at least twice as good as the old Theocracy ... meanwhile Bureacracy is still as nerfed as ever. Seriously, WHY have Beuro at +25% still?

As good as Vassalage is now ... Beurocracy could EASILY be returned to +50% (imho)

[Krill]

Ugh, I'm exhausted atm, so I'll try to answer these thoroughly but I'll likely fail.

I'm not sure if its really necessary to make Meadow and Farm separate improvements ....

The reason is that all of hte food improvements come in two sections; they are first enabled by a first row tech, and then they get "bonus" from a second row tech. So Fishing boats require Fishing to be built, and then they get +1 food from Sailing. Pastures work the same way with Hunting and Animal Husbandry. Farms would work that way with Agriculture and Pottery, except that farms don't give +1 food. They give 0 food, and +1 food if irrigated. So Farms needed to be split in two, into Farms for resources and Meadows (or whatever name people think fits better) for ordinary tiles so that normal tiles could still be improved using just Agriculture.

I'm really excited to try out Theocracy/ Vassalage ... seems like a very interesting alternative to Bureacracy/Organized (perhaps even OP?)

It seems that a lot of people are saying that Feud is quite strong now, so I think I will return Bureaucracy to 50% (but remember it can work in up to 4 cities!) and then also buff Environmentalism slightly with city improvement effects.

Paganism with OP monuments is amazing btw :3 ... Police State + Paganism with the 'mids is an interesting 'strat' I will say I DONT THINK ITS OP ... but it makes Monuments far more worthwhile to build. And by the time u have religious alternatives to paganism you've already gained something from that extra commerce. Tbh I think while some ppl might have a hard time switching out of Paganism, I noticed that even at the maxed strat, it only gives me about 13 more science per turn at 80% science rate.

I'll split this answer into two.

The paganism effect is there to help mitigate the cost of researching Mysticism to pop borders, as Myst is now the most expensive first row tech, and the intent is that it is not a long term option. I think that's how it is currently working, because it's not going to give more than that 2 commerce per turn, the effect on your science rate is determined purely by the beaker multiplier.

The Police State effect was intended to act as an economic benefit of running to Steel because that bypasses Rep and US. You've raised an excellent point that it's probably broken as fuck for the Mids player, because 4hpt and 4cpt is an insane amount of output for a 30 hammer city improvement.

Im not too terribly crazy with the 25 turn!!! time limit between Civic Switches (at Quick Speed!!) is it even longer on Normal et al?

It's 24 turns regardless of game speed (just like in base BtS, it's 5 turns regardless of game speed). The reasoning for this is by removing anarchy from civic and religion swaps, this removes the necessity for scheduling golden ages to enable said civic swaps and increases options for how to use civics. however, if civic swaps are free, then there would also be fewer reasons to not stay in economic civics and benefit form the reactive swaps into Nationhood and Slavery to deal with invasions etc. So increasing the time between civic swaps enable windows of opportunity to take advantage of opponents leaving Slaving, not using Nationhood etc. 24 turns is a long time, but it's the sort of distance into the future that players can plan anyway.

Maybe a 6 turn golden age is a bit too fast ... 8 turn GA? 9 turn? Just an idea. Tbh with all the powerful changes (preserves/lumbermills/+1 gold per religious city) I'm not sure if the Religious Shrines are all that worth it any more. Granted, maybe they were never worth it, but now its just completely obvious. Either make shrines a bit stronger, or rethink some of the approaches, or just leave as is ... and have shrines NEVER be built by humans

Shrines vary too much on game size. For example, there are shrines in PB18 that are generating more than 100gpt base. That's not weak. In small 4 or 5 player PBEMs, sure, they are not necessarily going to be that worthwhile, but they can be. They don't need strengthening though.

I see no reason to build a Mine when I could build a Lumbermill. Especially with Standardization + Paper. Maybe late-game its worth it? But really and truly, Forests are just epic EPIC goldmines in this mod. Which, well I guess that is part of the point, making forest chops more of an actual net loss. ??

Grass hill mines are 1/3 base, 1/4 with Rep Parts, 1/5 with rail road, but you can get +30 hammers up front to speed city development.
Grass hill LM are 1/3 base, 1/3/1 after 10 turns, 1/4/1 after 30 turns and 2/4/1 after 70 turns, increasing to 2/5/1 with Paper.

The LM is better than the mine unless you consider the effect of the upfront 30 hammers from a forest chop, and they also cost 3 worker turns more to complete so they aren't free. Standardization is High cost, and only affects the first 3 LM stages so the end point is not affected. Serfdom/Apprenticeship affects alternate tile improvements that you may have more of and provides faster worker speed thus giving you a need to invest less into workers and thus have more resources to invest elsewhere, as compared to the additional flat output from the LM. On top of that, you have the tech path to both those civics, with Machinery now being a jack of all trades tech that meets just about every need a civ can have, but CoL comes after Monarchy or Currency (that no longer provides a trade route)

I don't think it's as straightforward as just saving every forest and building lumbermills on all of them; for example, the forest preserve may be more useful as in certain game states the extra commerce is more useful. In others there may be a need to chop a granary and culture building asap which eats up 3 forests per city.

Forest preserves are fun(!) ... but the help text is wrong, when it says Forest Preserve +1 commerce and Cottage +2 commerce. For some reason the help text is assuming chopping the forest improves commerce by 1 ... maybe, assuming (old BTS) EVERY forest is on a river. But that doesn't really make sense. I call hax (bug found).

What help text?

But yea, Forest Preserve and Lumbermills really makes having forests a lot more fun. And Vassalage is a very fun civic to play through ... I can't wait to see how it mixes with Theocracy, especially now that I'm about to start building Statue of Zeus and Heroic Epic. I still need dat Cathedral do ... Theocracy just won't be that good without at least one of those. (granted, its already at least twice as good as the old Theocracy ... meanwhile Bureacracy is still as nerfed as ever. Seriously, WHY have Beuro at +25% still?

Theo leads straight onto Education, so there are some interesting GS bulb routes to get OU online ASAP.

If you run Theo and Vassalage, then cities make up to 16XP. Boudica needs 13XP for Commando. Baseline need is 26XP for Commando.

[Tasunke]

Um, *how* many cities does bureaucracy affect exactly? I was under the assumption only capital was affected. I may try it next civic swap.

The help text is when u have a worker on a forest and u hover over potential improvements. Hovering over cottage while on a forest and it says +2 commerce. Just a bug

[Krill]

It affects any city that is a capital. A capital is defined by the presence of the Palace, the Forbidden Palace, and Versailles. So every player can have Burewau in 2 cities minimum, IND in 3 and then Versailles means one player gets one additional city with the potential Bureaucracy bonus.

[Krill]

The help text is when u have a worker on a forest and u hover over potential improvements. Hovering over cottage while on a forest and it says +2 commerce. Just a bug

I have absolutely no idea why it would do that...

[AdrienIer]

Forest preserves are fun(!) ... but the help text is wrong, when it says Forest Preserve +1 commerce and Cottage +2 commerce. For some reason the help text is assuming chopping the forest improves commerce by 1 ... maybe, assuming (old BTS) EVERY forest is on a river. But that doesn't really make sense. I call hax (bug found).

What help text?

When your worker is on a forest but not on a river, when you click on chopping a forest or building an improvement that chops the forest it tells you you'll get +1commerce.

[Tasunke]

Does it do this in regular BTS as well? I hadn't noticed it as prevalent before trying this mod.