(March 13th, 2014, 15:03)SevenSpirits Wrote: What would you guys think of the following change to the tech cost calculation? The goal here is threefold: 1) Increase later-game tech costs, and do it smoothly. 2) Decrease ancient tech costs a little bit to lessen importance of starting techs 3) Make different world sizes have a more useful effect on tech cost - currently, large world sizes increase the cost of all techs with the justification that players will have more land and thus cap out at a higher tech rate, but having more land doesn't help you with ancient and classical techs.
X is a percent bonus based on world size: 0% for duel up to 50% for huge. Current tech cost modification according to world size is simple: Cost gets multiplied by 1 + X. My proposal is to multiply cost by (1 + the following) instead:
What does that do? The quick summary is it means the map size multiplier doesn't apply at all to the cheapest techs, applies about as usual to medium-cost techs like paper, and applies by a greater factor to expensive techs.
The first term, ((log(cost of tech) / log (40) - 1), is a number between 0 and 1.5 depending on how far down the tech tree we are. 40-cost techs are 0. Future tech is 1.5 (well, a tiny bit less, but close enough). Paper is approximately in the middle with 0.73. (We are caring about the geometric/multiplicative mean here, not the arithmetic mean. I don't consider advanced flight to be an average-cost tech because it costs half as much as future tech.) The second term, (1.2X + 0.3), is a number between 0.3 and 0.9 depending on the map size.
Multiply these two terms together and you get 0 for a super cheap tech, a number like 20-60% for a tech like paper (depending on map size), and a number like 45-135% for the top end stuff (future tech), depending on map size. Remember this is replacing a number that ranged from 0-50%.
Here's a link to a spreadsheet showing tech costs for variable world size / handicap / etc, compared to how they would look under this formula. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?...sp=sharing
You should be able to make a copy of it so you can try out different variables.
Looking at this in more detail, it seems that the cross over point is at Maths on Standard size map, and around about Alphabet on Huge, in other words at the start of the classical era. Stuff like Construction, Calendar, CoL will always be more expensive. Looking at the cost of the Ancient era techs I don't think that the savings on the entire era cover the increased cost of a single late Classical tech.
Is this intentional? Basically, I'm trying to understand the reasoning for the slope of the increase in tech costs and why the "crossover" is where it is.
Noble asked me about this too. Specifically he was interested in whether it was cheaper to get to currency with this or without it. Doing some estimations we concluded that if you get currency pretty early in the classical era, it's a little bit faster with these changes. My general claim is that tech costs become the same in the classical era, while total tech costs probably equalize in the medieval era, on a standard (i.e. large pbemish) map. If you look at the difference in costs, the entire ancient era costs 249 on standard/prince, while the entire classical era costs a total of 352 more. But you generally skip quite a few classical techs before advancing to the medieval era - I don't think you typically get to the point where your total beakers spent are higher before you do so. Even after you reach the point where the total spent on techs is greater, it's not bigger by much for a while. The total percentage increase in the costs of the ancient/classical/medieval eras is just about 10% of the total cost of those techs.
On a large or huge map, the point of equal cost is pushed further up the tech tree. For example, on prince/huge, the ancient era is 478 cheaper, and the classical era is just 42 more expensive. You have to research several medieval techs before the total costs are the same.
Throughout all this, keep in mind that the cheaper earlier techs give a small but snowballing advantage which can help you get to the later ones faster. And also, that the intent is to allow the more size-appropriate Small to be used for some PBEMs where it otherwise wouldn't be used.
Ultimately, a major goal here is to make the final techs of the game about 50% more expensive, and have a smooth transition from the ancient era up to that point. So of course there will be a point pretty early on when techs start getting more expensive. I don't believe in keeping early eras exempt from tech cost increases because peoples' tech rates are too low then. Having a (relatively) low tech rate in the classical and medieval eras is a choice.
Makes sense. Another question about the spreadsheet though, is that you've listed the tech costs for Agri and others as the base BtS tech costs, not for the altered costs in the 1.1 version. Obviously this would not change the costs for the era much, but if this change were implemented, are you saying that the starting tech costs would return to base BtS values, or keep the current values? The spreadsheet is showing that Agri>AH is 60 beakers less on Monarch/Huge (18 beakers less on Prince/Small) with this change, which obviously has a pretty large effect on starting tech balance.
(March 20th, 2014, 17:59)Krill Wrote: Makes sense. Another question about the spreadsheet though, is that you've listed the tech costs for Agri and others as the base BtS tech costs, not for the altered costs in the 1.1 version. Obviously this would not change the costs for the era much, but if this change were implemented, are you saying that the starting tech costs would return to base BtS values, or keep the current values? The spreadsheet is showing that Agri>AH is 60 beakers less on Monarch/Huge (18 beakers less on Prince/Small) with this change, which obviously has a pretty large effect on starting tech balance.
Oh - yes, I guess the spreadsheet lists BTS costs instead of the slightly different ToW costs. So swap the first-row techs around mentally and reduce metal casting cost a bit too. I'm going to leave the spreadsheet unchanged, I think, even though that doesn't quite make sense.
* Civ changes: Egypt: War Chariot is a chariot replacement with 2 first strikes. (25% base strength bonus on a chariot is just too good.) Mali: Skirmisher is a 4 strength archer replacement with zero first strikes. (Archer has 1, old Skirmisher had 1-2. 33% base strength increase is still really strong, especially in duels.) Sumeria: Starting techs changed from Agriculture/Wheel to Agriculture/Mysticism. (Sumeria is simply one of the best civs due to combination of nice starting techs and very strong UB.) Zulu: Impi is a spear replacement with 50% withdraw chance. (2-move spear is just too hard to balance when combined with a good UB and decent, almost unique starting techs.)
America: UB is the Frontier Post, a Grocer replacement with 1 free merchant. (America sucked because its unique things both came too late.) Germany: UU is now the Riesengarde, a Grenadier replacement with 14 strength. (Germany sucked because its unique things both came too late.) Russia: UB is the Research Institute, now a university replacement with 1 free scientist. (Russia sucked because its unique things both came too late.)
* CHA change. This version is tentative and I'm still looking at alternate options. New version is only a small adjustment: CHA: +3 happy in all cities, -25% XP requirements
* Added game option "Tech Cost Scaling".
When checked, the cost of early techs is slightly decreased and is consistently low regardless of the Map Size setting, and costs of later techs are multiplied by up to a maximum 1.5. The increase is greater for more expensive techs: Future Tech's cost is increased by the greatest percentage, and medium-cost techs like Civil Service and Guilds are increased by half as much.
Specifically, the cost of a given tech is multiplied by 100% + ((log(cost of tech) / log (40) - 1) * (1.2X + 0.3)
instead of being multiplied by 100% + X. X is the map size tech cost multiplier; it ranges from 0 for Duel size to 50% for Huge size, in increments of 10%.
* Added game option "Medium Distance Maintenance".
When checked, distance maintenance is calculated as for a cylindrical map instead of whatever the actual map wrap is, and is thus more middle-of-the-road. This is intended as an additional option for mapmakers.
Background: Distance maintenance is inversely proportional to the longest distance possible on the map, with distance defined as max(xdistance, ydistance) + 1/2 * min(xdistance, ydistance). When a map wraps in a dimension, the longest possible distance in that dimension is N / 2; if it doesn't wrap, the longest possible distance is N - 1. Therefore, more wrapping => shorter longest distance => higher distance maintenance. And therefore, toroidal maps have high maintenance, flat maps have low maintenance, and cylindrical maps have medium maintenance.
This setting, when checked, makes the longest distance calculation assume that the map wraps in the X direction and does not map in the Y direction.
Any chance someone could help me get this mod to work? I've been trying to download it and I get it to show up on my list of mods, but when I turn the mod on it just loads base BTS (Even though the Version says it is Tides of War 1.2). I'm thinking it might be the fact I am running a Steam version, but I believe I am putting it in the right path (Steam/Steamapps/Common/Sid Meier's Civilization IV Beyond the Sword/Beyond the Sword/Mods). I've tried it in my other folders as well. Am I doing something wrong? I do know that mods work in this game, as I have gotten RBMod and Touhou mods to work (Loading them up confirms they still work as well). Any idea what could be causing this?
I gave the mod a try too, but couldn't get it to work for me either. I started a game as Tokugawa of Japan, who, despite being a total bum in BTS, seemed like he'd be a real powerhouse in ToW. I couldn't be more delighted with my initial start:
Seemed to me to be the exact type of start to showcase the power of Agg/Pro! However, you'll notice that no UI appears. I could access the menu by pressing escape, and settling the city with the hotkey B did work and bring up the buildlist popup, but examining the Menu gave me nothing but a blank city screen. I tried again with another random civ, with the same result.
My mod path was the same as Kuro's (Steam/Steamapps/Common/Sid Meier's Civilization IV Beyond the Sword/Beyond the Sword/Mods), which is the same mod path as I use for FFH2 and K-Mod, both of which work fine. Is there anything else I can try to get this to work? It looks very interesting and I'd like to take it on a test spin for a few games.
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