Considering equalizing ores was voted against (or was it? I think we didn't actually get that many opinions to consider it conclusive but the majority disliked the idea so far), I don't think we have any reason to equalize the less impactful production or forest tiles even if we can. I'm only keeping population because it was already part of the game to begin with, and some sort of a minimal standard is necessary there - for obvious reasons, pop 0 desert and tundra areas are not acceptable.
Also I already rejected changing what various tiles produce twice so let's leave that out of this discussion.
Minor good news, I checked and joining configurations are applied after capital generation so if absolutely necessary we probably can swap tiles or count production by checking for raw terrain types only...but I'm still against considering production because "flat" maps don't have enough and to add tiles you actually need land so on Tiny even that is not trivial.. (Also, 30% is very high, it's 10 tiles out of 16 with a production bonus of some sort, unless mountains are also involved. So if we want that kind of amount it's same as saying mountains have to be nearby 90% of the cases.)
btw note that transforming the tile will change the type of ore that can appear on it. More forests mean more wild games and less other ores. More deserts mean gems and crystals instead of others. More hills or mountains mean more silver/gold/mithril/adamantium/coal/iron. More swamps mean more Nightshade. So any sort of predetermined terrain swapping will influence the chances for various ores in one particular direction. That is unless we also do an ore overriding system.
(in either case anything that works with terrain or ores will need lots of free space which we might or might not have. So I can't guaranteed it even we do change our mind and decide we want something like it.)
I'm aware that 30% prod means most likely at least 1 mountain. The problem is the difference between someone with 5 mountains, and someone with none, is just enormous in the early game. And mountains often beget mountains, so if you get one, odds are good you'll have multiple. No mountains vs several mountains is not unusual, and results in vastly different early games. (Look at that red draconian AI you were so worried about in your first or second draconian game - you had a terrible start, he had mountains, rivers,and plains. He had at least 7 or 8 mountains. That's huge.)
I'd be OK accepting a max of 45% but I generally dislike maxes as that is the reason several of us voted agianst normalizing ores - the early game is the most played part of the game, so having more (good) options at the start adds to replayability in a very noticeable way.
The other way to avoid this is to balance terrain a lot more, but you've repeatedly rejected that with Arnuz. Which means either you have several mountains, or you're in a bad start location. Unfortunately, I'd say 1/2 food is worth at most 2% production (probably lower, possibly as low as 1%) on your starting capital - on later cities, food is more important (probably 1/2 food is worth 2.5-3% production), but on your capital, production is king.
Well, we actually did nerf Mountains, albeit at 7% they are still pretty good that's as low as I want to go.
More importantly, assuming we go with your suggestion we'd require each map to have
5 locations that have at least 30% production (4-5 mountains) with acceptable food, at least 2 tiles from every node and tower, at least 2 tiles from every lair in a reasonable number of lair rerolls (2-3 is ok, 25 is not), and at least 6 tiles from each other, on a nonsea tile.
That's an awful lot of restrictions and honestly I'd rather avoid the distance of 6 than the low production. Having another wizard start half a screen distance from you is something that shouldn't ever happen in my opinion.
If a map fails to have all of it, generating a new game on that map will freeze, which I find unacceptable.
Which means the only way to actually have the production without freezing is the "oh and add 3 mountains next to the city when done if it doesn't have them." is to add new mountains when post-processing the already picked site the same way I could do with the ores.
I think it's about time I open a new thread for this discussion right now.
5.04
-Fixed bug : Saints were placed in draconian neutral cities without a Parthenon at the start of the game.
-Fixed bug : Casting Apocalypse might corrupt memory and turn Black Prayer on for the defender, if the result is confusion with instant side switching.
-Draconian bowmen have 8 ammo again, but stay at 5 figures.
-Fixed AI bug : AI can target the same unit with Stasis more than once in combat.
-Fixed a bug in starting city generation.
-When rolling capital locations, the “neutral player” will no longer get one, as they don't need it and placing 1 more than needed reduces the chance of success.
-When rolling capital locations, the requirement of “at least 3 tiles from lairs” on the first try is removed and the normal “at least 2 tiles from lairs” is used.
-When rolling capital locations, the minimal required distance from other wizards is 16 (unchanged) but the minimal food is 12. If placement completely fails, both numbers are lowered simultanously, until they hit 8 tiles and 8 food. (Food is reduced by 1/2s, distance by 1s) However, for each level of landmass size above Tiny, the lowest amount is one step higher. Picking “Dry” reduces the food needed by 2.
-Swamps now correctly count as 0.5 food for starting capital placement.
-When the map is being generated, if all attempts to place capitals fail and all options are exhausted, the game will now re-roll all lairs to reposition them. The limit of not allowing cities adjacent to lairs and nodes is the cause for Tiny size maps where placing them is impossible and the game freezes, however, this limit is necessary otherwise AI wizards might find themselves walled in behind a lair with no tile for units to leave the city. With this change, map generation will always be successful, but if multiple lair rerolls are needed, it can be very slow, as each failed attempt takes about 10-20 seconds.
-When the AI picked an inappropriate race for their personality they will reroll the race only, instead of jumping back to position selection. (I wonder why this was set up so inefficiently, I guess it's because “repick race if elves not in forest jumped here as well in the original?)
-Easy lair amount is now 15+3*Land Size instead of 19+2*Land Size.
-Hard lair amount is now 8+6*Land Size instead of 12+5*Land Size.
This reduces the total amount of lairs on Tiny by 8, making it much more likely to successfully generate the map in a reasonable amount of time even with the worst possible parameters (Dry and 5 players on Arcanus), without affecting Huge and minimally affecting Fair landmasses. Even with this “low” amount, the density of lairs per land tile on Tiny is by far the highest. (65 on 300 tiles vs 101 on 1400 tiles)
-Fixed AI bug : knowing common summons delays the research of Giant Spiders and Gargoyles when it isn't supposed to do that.
-The trade gold bonus cap is now 5%/population but a maximal 75% instead of 3%/population.
-High Men buildings cost 15% less.
-All players now start the game with 1 (tiny, small) or 2 (fair, large, huge) settlers.
-AI starting gold for each difficulty level has been changed to 0,100,250,500,700,900.
-Fixed bug : the AI was able to pick production of a Marketplace when a Fighter's Guild wasn't built instead of when a Marketplace wasn't built, in case of gold shortage.
-Fixed bug : Gnoll wizards building Stables as mandatory military building did not work.
-Change AI forced military building trigger timing - Now restorted to only activate when 2 settlers are on the move, not when one of them is still being produced. Furthermore, the timing and building type varies quite a lot more by race.
-Minor adjustment to some AI unit production priorities.
-Dark Elf basic units no longer have a raised cost.
-High Elf basic units no longer have a raised cost.
-Successfully Threathening an AI wizard now resets the “repeated warnings counter” to zero instead of increasing it by 1. Failed attempts still increase it.
-Settler maintenance cost is now 1 gold.
-There is now a “generic Settler” unit that stores the race it belongs to as data. This replaces the Barbarian Settler. Beastmen, Lizardmen, Draconian, Troll settlers are unchanged, due to their special abilities or stats, but other races will always produce the Generic Settler. This frees up all the unit slots of the now unused settler units for future use.
-Settler units lose the following racial traits and abilities : Lucky, Forester, Mountaineer, Pathfinding, Scouting, extra attack power, defense or resistance. (result of above internal change)
-Dwarf settlers now have 20 health.
-Beastmen now have +1 growth rate.
-Orc Spearmen has been re-added.
-Orc Swordsmen cost has been restored to 30.
-Catapults now cost 50.
-Catapults now have 10 attack strength but +2 To Hit. This means damage is identical if they have magical weapons, but the ranged penalty has less effect.
-Golems now have Resist Elements.
-Griffons now cost 180.
-Paladins now cost 210.
-Doom Drakes now cost 210.
-Swordsmen now cost 25 (or the appropriate value for races that have nonstandard costs)
-Phantom Warriors now cost 14.
-New High Men unit : Crusader, requires Fighter's Guild and Shrine, 5 melee, 4 armor, 5 resistance, 2 health, 6 figures, Healing Spell, Large Shield, 2 moves.
-New High Men unit : Knight, requires Fighter's Guild and Stables, 6 melee, 5 armor, 5 resistance, 3 health, 4 figures, First Strike, 4 moves.
-New Dark Elf unit : Apprentice, requires Smithy and Library, 2 melee, 3 ranged, 6 resistance, 1 health, 6 figures, Caster 14, Large Shield, 2 moves.
-Displayed amount of Scouting on production screen is now correct
-Unit production screen now correctly shows no food icon on units that do not require food (ships, catapults).
-Unit production screen now shows the “Caster” ability on units. Note that the amount cannot be shown due to space limitations.
It didn't get nearly as much testing as I would have preferred for such a major update, so report any problems.
As there are new units, save files are not compatible with previous versions!
I just overwrote all files from the zip, game says 5.04. Didn't do anything unusual. I'll start a few new, identical games to check out their settlers.
Wait. It says 5.04 on the intro screen, but 5.03 in the save menu.
