Retep's name goes first because he'll be doing most of the work, while I just watch and point out mistakes.
Table of contents:
1. We want startign screenshot!!! ..................................................... See this post
2. Enthusiastic spam with no gameplay discussion...................................... Ongoing
3. "Holy shit, our start is bad" ................................................................. To come
4. Promises about making a sandbox to sim ............................................. To come
5. Sparse updates of a terrible opening and failed attempt at a wonder ...... To come
6. Six months of no updates ................................................................... To come
7. Ichabod's promise that this is his last civ 4 game .................................. To come
8. Depressing posts after the game ended about our lack of reports ........... To come
Hey, I realize that, with constant delays, interest may or may not be flagging, as it is hard to tell.
Therefore, please report here, to give notification on your continued interest in this game.
We have Qgqqq and Dreylin as possible alternates, should people wish to take a break from the game, or otherwise give over turn-player capacity.
As far as I know, only Saruman has gone AWOL, but with over 170 hours past ... it is hard to know fully who all is still on board.
I would like to get the turns started again as early as the 14th, if possible, so over the next three days, if you could state your interest in continuing the game, it would be most appreciated.
Ladies (do we have any?) and gentlemen, please, see below the link to, for a lack of a better name, New Balance Mod (NBM). This mod was designed by yours truly as an alternative to RtR mod.
The main distinguishing feature of this mod is that it embodies a different approach to balancing the game than RtR mod. RtR’s answer to imbalances is, basically, nerfing stuff and removing features. Espionage, corporations and nukes are the most obvious examples here but most changes introduced in RtR is some kind of nerf of the OP stuff. And those changes which don’t fall under this description is usually the most controversial ones (of course, there are exceptions like buffing workshops - a very good change as experience shows).
I wanted to approach balancing differently: instead of nerfing or removing stuff I tried to buff competing features or to nerf things in an indirect way without damaging their unique flavor. A good example is contrasting treatment of The Great Lighthouse in RtR and NBM mods. In RtR mod TGL is straightforwardly nerfed from 2 additional trade routes to one. In NBM mod it still gives 2 trade routes but has increased cost (300 hammers) and obsoletes at Economics. Of course, as an RtR mod, there are exceptions: sometimes there is simply no alternative to nerf/remove, like the Statue of Zeus effect.
Now, I understand the dangers of such approach. Asymmetrical balance is very hard to achieve and it requires a lot of fine-tuning. That constitutes the understandable appeal of RtR. I don’t claim that my mod is as balanced as RtR or will ever be as balanced. But it has more features, features themselves more diverse and for some people it may make this mod more fun to play.
While designing the mod I adopted what I consider to be the best features of RtR mod. In fact you may notice that some parts of the change log are directly copy-pasted from RtR changelog. So, I’m not ignoring the earlier effort made by this community. On the other hand, I reverted many changes which I consider unnecessary or even harmful. On balance, I think, my mod is closer to base BTS than RtR mod.
Another important note before we move to the changelog. My purpose was to make this mod also playable in single player as I still occasionally enjoy it. That made pretty much inevitable using K-Mod as its base. Controversial decision, I understand, but I think that it is a right thing to do even disregarding single player. K-Mod has a lot of bug fixes, a lot of subtle improvements in mechanics, a lot of performance improvements. It has some mechanics which I find really fun (and some which I don’t like but those I removed). All XML changes made in K-Mod were reverted, if my own changelog doesn’t explicitly state otherwise.
And that, I think, sums up the introduction. Detailed changelog is below.
Game:
The biggest changes introduced in K-mod are listed here. Some of them I kept, some - removed.
1) BUG-mod introduced. Technically, as I understand, it’s not just a BUG-mod but the whole bunch of mods providing additional information to a player without altering gameplay. I know that there is an understandable animosity to this stuff because a) it reveals information the player shouldn’t have, b) it may have introduced new and additional instabilities and bugs into the game. However, K-mod did a nice job with removing all instances of a) and I never encountered any cases of b) while playing with baseline K-mod. Also, K-mod includes a lot of bug fixes and performance improvements which, in my mind, balances out any adverse effects of b).
2) Bug fixes and performance improvements. Lots of them. K-Mod has vastly more efficient code than baseline BTS and the game runs a lot faster on old machines despite the fact that AI uses more complex algorithms.
3) Improved AI. No need for any further comments here, especially given that we are mostly focused on multiplayer. Still, worth mentioning.
4) New Global Warming system (REMOVED). K-Mod introduced new GW system which gradually changes tiles to more arid instead of turning them into a desert right away and also adds unhappiness proportional to GW contribution. I don’t like this system any better than an old one. All versions of GW which I saw were bad in a sense that they didn’t really force a player to make different choices and just seemed like an unneeded annoyance (and this is surprisingly realistic if you think of it)
For all practical purposes I removed GW completely by setting GW threshold in XML to an absurdly high value.
5) Lead from Behind Mod (REMOVED). K-Mod includes “lead from behind” mod which modifies the algorithm which chooses a defender to take into account the value of units instead of just automatically choosing the unit with the highest odds (so that experienced veteran troops won’t defend ahead of greens if their odds only a tiny bit better). Interesting idea on paper but the algorithm is rather unpredictable and makes it next to impossible to plan complex stack versus stack battles. So, I disabled this mod in XML.
6) New culture system. K-mod changes the way the culture is calculated to the effect that borders are now much more sensitive to the amount of culture generated in cities. Also, culture is now added to plots beyond the city influence range, even though these plots aren’t added to civ’s territory. This effect allows core cities to “support” border cities in culture wars.
Additionally, culture now can spread via trade routes, dependant on the amount of culture generated in the city which provides the trade rout. Most of time this effect is negligible (like, 1-2% of alien culture added) but can grow really big if the difference of culture production is massive. At last, K-Mod made changes to culture bombs and revolt mechanics: power of culture bombs is now not fixed but scales with the era (800*era instead of flat 4000; keep in mind that due to changes in base culture mechanics borders are now much more sensitive to culture bombs); chance of revolt is now a logarithmic function of the garrison strength, not linear (so that it is generally easier to prevent revolts but at some point adding new units to a garrison cease to matter). There are also some smaller balance changes which concern culture and which I won’t bother to mention here.
Overall, these changes did an excellent to job in giving culture a more important role without any sweeping changes to game design. This is one of my most favorite features of K-mod and I kept it.
7) "Number of cities" maintenance cost is no longer capped (no “conqueror’s plato” anymore, your maintenance for the number of cities will now keep growing with each added city). Another excellent change which weakens the power of snowball and the power of large empires without actually breaking anything (it is still good to be big, you just won’t have an immediate profit from every new city you settle like you used to have in base BTS post Corporation). To balance it out the size of number of cities maintenance will now initially grow slightly slower.
8) Religious spread system was altered. Early religions now spread significantly slower than before but later religions spread faster. Also, religion now can automatically spread to a city which already has a religion (though the chance for spread is lower). If these happens there is also a chance that an older religion is removed.
Now, this is a change I’m not really sure about. It was designed with high-level SP in mind where early religions were pretty much always dominant and for SP it worked beautifully: I even saw decently sized Islamic AI empires. However, I don’t think we ever had this kind of problem in MP. On the other hand, early religion is already a dubious investment and this weakens this choice further. Of course, this logic doesn’t work for huge games like PB18 which, I think, can benefit from this change.
Anyway, I decided not to tinker with K-mod religion mechanics and left it intact. At least, worth a try.
Questions to discuss:
1) So - do you guys like these changes? And - does their presence make it more difficult to introduce below XML changes of our own? Because the alternative will be to make a vanilla BTS-based mod with the same XML files.
Civics:
Reverted back massive changes which were made in Rtr, introduced some of my own instead. I tried to make Emancipation and Serfdom useful and rebalanced late-game economic civics. Also, moved Theocracy to Divine Right.
1) Serfdom: +1h per mine, +1h per watermill, +1h per windmill, +1 h per Quarry, +50% worker speed, high upkeep.
2) Emancipation: +1c from hamlet, village, town, low upkeep, double feature growth speed, unhappiness penalty for civilizations which don’t run this civic.
3) Environmentalism: renamed into Welfare State; moved to Assembly Line; gives +15% food in all cities, +3 base health, +1 happy from Factory, +1 happy from Hospital, +1 happy from University, +2 gold per specialist, +25% corporation costs. High upkeep.
4) Mercantilism: moved to Guilds, medium upkeep, 2 additional specialists in all cities.
5) Free Market: +15% commerce in all cities, +1 unhappy from Factory, +1 unhappy from Bank, +25% WW, +1TR per city, -25% corporation maintenance cost, medium upkeep, moved to Corporation.
6) State Property: +15% hammers in all cities, +1 food per workshop, watermill, no distance city maintenance, no upkeep.
7) Theocracy: moved to Divine Right.
8) Vassalage: medium upkeep.
9) Free Speech: +50% culture instead of +100%, high upkeep.
10) Free Religion: can build Missionaries without Monasteries.
11) Pacifism: additional support cost of military units reduced to 0,5 gold.
Questions to discuss:
1) Basically we have new balance between three last economic civics and three last labor civics. Of those State Property, Free Market and Welfare State are supposed to be equal in strength and Emancipation is supposed to be slightly stronger than Serfdom and Caste System (though those too should still have some niche late-game use). Does it work? Is something too weak? Something too strong? I’m especially worried about WW penalty for Free Market, it can go out of control easily. Thinking about changing it to an additional unhappy face from Factory.
Traits:
Mostly copy-pasted from Rtr with some minor deviations. Of particular note: Creative is given back +2 free culture, Aggressive lost number of cities maintenance bonus but gained free flanking1 for naval units (as it turned out, this change can’t be done from XML) and double production bonus for Jails and Intelligence Agencies (to give it easier access to Espionage).
1) Financial: +1 commerce on all tiles that have 3+ commerce. +100% production of Market, Quay.
2) Expansive: +2 health per city. +35% production of Worker, Work Boat. +100% production of Aqueduct, Grocer, Harbor, Hospital.
3) Creative: +2 culture per city. +100% production of Library, Theatre.
4) Charismatic: +2 happiness. +1 happiness from Broadcast Tower. -20% XP needed for promotions. +100% production of Colosseum. No happiness from Monument.
5) Protective: Free City Garrison 1, Drill 1 promo for archery and gunpowder units. +100 production of Granary, Walls, Castle, Security Bureau.
6) Imperialistic: +100% Great General emergence. +60% production of Settler. +100% production of Custom House, Bank.
7) Aggressive: Free C1 promo for melee and gunpowder units. +100% production of Barracks, Stable, Drydock, Jail, Intelligence Agency.
8) Philosophical: +100% Great Person production, +100% production of University, Observatory, Monastery.
9) Industrious, Spiritual, Organized: No change from BtS.
Questions to discuss:
1) So - is creative too strong? I was really thinking hard, whether I should reduce 2 free culture to 1. This question is especially important given that culture is much more powerful now. Limited SP-testing which I made showed that creative neighbor is a nasty bitch. But nerfing creative in this way would go against the overall philosophy of the mod, diminish the unique flavor of the trait. So I decided to leave it as is.
2) Aggressive - what do you think of it? Really dislike the way it is treated in Rtr but in NBM it remains kind of weak.
Civs:
Once again, mostly copy-pasted from Rtr. Important difference is that I have chosen an alternative way to buff Germany and America: instead of giving them newly made UBs/UUs, I moved their uniques earlier in the tech tree. Also, I reverted starting techs back to base BTS and scrapped most changes which Rtr introduced to nerf UUs.
1) America: Navy Seal is moved to Assembly Line. Mall is now a Grocer replacement that gives +35% gold, +1 happy from Deer, Sugar, Hit Musicals, Hit Movies, Hit Singles.
2) Arabia: Madrassa cost decreased to 70 hammers from 90.
3) Byzantium: Cataphracts are 11 strength instead of 12, and are first strike immune (like normal knights). Byzantine hippodromes now allow two artists specialists.
4) Carthage: Cothon cost decreased to 80 hammers from 100 (now costs same as Harbor). Numidian Cavalry changed to a HA replacement with free C1.
5) Celts: Dun now gives G2, not G1. Gallic Warrior now additionally gains Drill I, Drill II.
6) France: Salon now gives 2 free artists.
7) Germany: Panzer now requires Assembly Line AND Artillery, gets +25% against armored units. German assembly plants now give +2 production (in addition to previous effects).
8) Inca: Terraces now give +1 culture instead of +2. Quechua now has +50% against archery units instead of +100%.
9) India: The Fast Worker now has Mobility (-1 Terrain Movement Costs), but does not get an extra movement point compared to normal workers.
10) Russia: UB is now Research Institute, a university replacement with +1 scientist specialist, 180 hammers cost.
11) Vikings: Trading Post: Lighthouse replacement, +25% production of naval units, cost 60 hammers, requires Sailing.
12) Greece: Odeon: +1XP to land units, +2 happy, +1 happy per 20% culture slider, +20% culture. Cost 100 hammers, requires Construction. +100% production with Charismatic.
13) Maya: Ball Court: +1XP to Melee, Archery, Mounted, Siege units, +3 happy, +1 happy per 20% culture slider. Cost 100 hammers, requires Construction. +100% production with Charismatic.
14) Babylonia: Garden: +2 health, +1XP to Melee, Archery, Mounted, Siege units, +1 happy, +1 happy per 20% culture slider. Cost 100 hammers, requires Construction. +100% production with Charismatic.
15) Korea: Seowan now costs 180 hammers.
16) Aztec: Jaguar is strength 6, 40 hammers.
17) Zulu: Ikhanda now gives +1 culture and maintenance bonus in line with other Barracks. 60 hammers.
18) HRE: Rathaus now gives -60% maintenance bonus.
1) Germany, America - what do you think? Especially Germany. My initial idea was making Assembly Line the only Panzer prereq but I decided that it would be absurdly OP. Or not? My approach to balance of late-game uniques really goes along the fine line between leaving them useless and making them game-breakers, so any feedback would be appreciated here.
Wonders, Projects:
I took most of the changes from Rtr and added some of my own. Of particular note: Chichen Itza has a new effect (HAK would be heartbroken but whatever), Christo Redentor restored to original effect but moved to Mass media, Space Elevator is now cheaper and gives more powerful boost, cost of space ship components is doubled.
1) Wonder Resource Doublers: All wonders that had +100% production with a specific resource now only have +50% production with that resource.
2) Red Cross: 400h, free March for units built in this city.
3) West Point: 550h, +5XP. Now requires a lvl 5 unit (17XP/14XP for Charismatic).
4) Angkor Wat: 300h,
5) Chichen Itza: +1 food on all river tiles in this city, obsoletes at Biology. Loses defense bonus. (Also, doesn’t give additional points to power and has “growth” flavor).
6) Temple of Artemis: 250h.
7) Versailles: 500h.
8) Colossus +2c water tiles this city only. Obsoletes at the Corporation.
9) Great Lighthouse: Now 300 cost and gets obsolete at Economics.
10) SoZ: no WW effect. Now +3XP. Still requires Monuments and builds faster with Ivory.
11) The Internet: Now a wonder. 2k cost, +15% beakers in every city, +2 scientist gpp, double production speed with copper. No longer a project.
12) Cristo Redentor: moved to Mass Media.
13) Eiffel Tower: moved to Mass Media.
14) The Pentagon: moved to Democracy.
15) Space Elevator: +150% SS production. 1200 hammers, no Aluminum bonus, no equatorial requirement.
16) Cost of all SS parts is doubled.
17) Stonehenge no longer goes obsolete.
18) Sistine chapel state religion culture bonus changed from +5 to +3. The Sistine Chapel's bonus culture on religious buildings is no longer doubled for 1000 year old buildings. (For example, previous a 1000 year old temple with the Sistine Chapel would give (1+3)*2 = 8 culture. Now it will only give 1*2+3 = 5 culture.)
19) Reduced the culture from most of the great wonders but added 4 culture to the Kremlin.
Questions to discuss:
1) Christo Redentor. In Rtr it was nerfed to uselessness. I moved it away from Space Race sequence but it may still be OP. I initially wanted to keep no anarchy effect and to remove the reduced delay between civic switches but it appears that both these effects are controlled by the same XML value.
2) Space Elevator. A fine balance is required here. On one hand, I wanted to make Space Elevator useful, on the other hand, I didn’t want to turn Space Race into Elevator race. Does it work this way now?
3) WW effect which SoZ had shouldn’t exist in the game but I still want to make use of related XML value. What do you, guys, think about a world wonder which REDUCES war weariness for your enemies? It may be a way to creatively nerf some OP late-game wonder, like aforementioned Christo Redentor (though with Kremlin it would be more thematic).
Base units:
I scrapped Rtr Swords/Archers dynamics and instead gave Swords Drill I, Drill II. Also, I have made Trebuchet equal in strength with a normal Catapult (as Treb still costs 80 hammers, it doesn’t make Catapult useless). Otherwise, I think, I kept most of the stuff from Rtr in place. I brought back nukes but made them more expansive and moved ICBMs to Advanced Flight (and away from space race sequence). Also, doubled the cost of a spy and made a new unit: Bombard.
1) Free commando promotion for great spy.
2) Work boat: requires no tech (you will still need Fishing to work water tiles), no longer a military unit.
3) Swordsman: gains Drill I, Drill II.
4) War Elephants: Now 7 str, +50% vs. Mounted units (Ballista Elephant is still strength 8 but 70 cost).
5) Trebuchet: Strength 5, 20% city attack bonus.
6) Destroyer: Now enabled at Artillery (not Combustion) (requires Oil OR Uranium)
7) Battleship: Now also requires Artillery.
8) Mobile Artillery: Can now load guided Missiles and Tac Nukes (as Submarines and Missile Cruisers do).
9) ICBM: 750h, now also requires Advanced Flight instead of Rocketry.
13) Stealth Destroyer: requires Robotics, now has strength 36.
14) Gunships now start with the Amphibious promotion.
15) New unit: Bombard: Str. 8, 90 cost, requires Gunpowder, Copper, upgrades from Treb, Catapult, upgrades to Cannon. Flanked by Knights.
16) Cavalry (and Cossack): now also flanks Bombard, +25% against Bombard.
17) Cuirassier (and Conquistador): now also flanks Bombard.
18) Gunship: now also flanks Bombard.
Questions to discuss:
1) Nukes. Is it enough to bring them into any kind of balance? There is still room to nerf them, like moving Tacticals further along the tech tree, increasing cost, etc.
2) Swords. Is Drill I, II ok or OP? How do you think they will be balanced against Axes now?
Base Buildings:
Mostly took changes which are already implemented in Rtr. Innovations of my own were changes to espionage buildings, moving Coal Plant to Electricity and some other minor tweaks. Also of note: Courthouses now only give 40% maintenance reduction but Barracks give 15% maintenance reduction and cost 60 hammers. Small boost to Aggressive, small nerf to Organized. Also, keep in mind that number of cities maintenance is no longer capped, so maintenance itself will be much higher and any kind of reduction to it - more important.
1) Cathedral culture multiplier is down from 50% to 40%. Decreased production cost of cathedrals from 300 to 240.
2) Courthouse (and replacements except Rathaus): -40% city maintenance.
5) Colosseum: +1XP to Melee, Archery, Mounted, Siege units, +1 happy, +1 happy per 20% culture slider, +20% culture. Cost 100 hammers, requires Construction. +100% production with Charismatic.
6) Security Bureau: now 150 cost, gives 12 Espionage points, allows to turn 3 specialists into spies.
7) Coal Plant (but not Shale Plant): moved to Electricity.
8) Hospital: free medic1 for units built in this city.
9) Intelligence Agency: 220 cost, 12 EPs, +75% to Espionage, allows to turn 3 specialists into spies.
10) Industrial Park: now costs 250 hammers and gives 3 free engineers.
11) Monastery: +1 culture.
12) Academy: +2 culture.
13) Barracks: cost 60 hammers, additionally -15% city maintenance.
14) Aqueduct: 80 hammers.
15) University: +3 culture.
16) Public transport, removed health bonuses, replaced with -15% unhealthiness from population. Increased cost of public transport to 200 (from 150).
17) Scotland Yard: +150% Espionage.
18) New Building: Quay: +1 commerce on sea tiles. Cost 100 hammers. Requires Optics. +100% production with Financial.
Questions to discuss:
1) I had a fun idea to buff Aqueduct by giving it +10% food bonus (or just base food like Baray gives). My only problem with this is that I really don’t want to tinker with food much, it is too fundamental for everything else in the game. What do you think? Aqueducts are now mostly useless until Industrialization.
2) I actually had a better idea to buff Industrial Parks: to make it give 0,5 free Engineers per mine, in the spirit of National Park (may be in addition to one or two base Engineers). Sadly, can’t be done from XML.
Technology:
Mostly restored original tech tree reverting back all changes made in Rtr. Also, swapped back camps and pastures. Instead I made AH cheaper and made Hunting its only possible prerequisite. Also note that I kept OBs at Alphabet but moved map trading back to Paper.
1) Mysticism: base cost increased from 50 to 70.
2) Extra trade rout moved from Corporation to Economics.
3) Hunting: Cost increased by 50% from 40 to 60.
4) Animal Husbandry: Cost decreased from 100 to 60, no longer can be derived from Agriculture.
5) Archery: Base tech cost decreased from 60 to 40.
6) Divine Right: Base cost reduced from 1200 to 800.
7) Metal Casting: Base cost reduced from 450 to 300.
8) Alphabet: allows Open Borders, no longer enables tech trading.
9) Writing: no longer enables OB.
10) Stealth: removed from the game.
11) Refrigeration: no longer gives movement bonus to ships.
12) Tech Trading is now available with Paper.
Questions to discuss:
1) Don’t really know what to do with map trading, Writing seems like way too early. Kept it at Paper for now.
Tech cost increase:
Mostly taken from an older version of Rtr with some minor deviations. Also note that my mod currently doesn’t include tech bonus from Rtr: I would like to introduce it but don’t have necessary programming skills.
Cost of all subsequent techs increased by 100%. Cost of Advanced Flight increased by 150%.
Cost of techs in more advanced eras (starting from medieval) is further increased (insignificantly) by a hidden modifier in CIV4EraInfos.xml
Improvement changes:
Once again, reverted back some of Rtr changes, made some of my own.
1) Workshop: -1 food, +2 hammers; no longer receives +1 hammer at Chemistry.
2) Windmill: +1 food, +2 commerce.
3) Lumbermill: +1 hammer, +1 commerce.
4) Forest Preserve: +2 commerce.
Promotions changes:
I buffed drill promotion but in a little different way from Rtr.
1) All promotions which require combat line promotions as a prerequisite can be alternatively derived from respective Drill promotions except amphibious and Commando.
2) Collateral damage resistance is now evenly distributed along the Drill line (now 15-15-15-15 instead of 0-20-20-20).
3) Leadership promotion now gives 50% protection vs revolt (in addition to +100% experience gained).
Espionage:
I removed Espionage slider from the game and made specialists and buildings its only possible source. It will give Espionage a truly unique flavor; currently it is just another way to convert commerce into research which makes it feel dull and redundant.
One annoying side-effect of this is that there is no possible way to immediately see a total Espionage produced by the city except on the F1 screen. Also, total number of EPs produced is no longer shown on the main screen (you can still have access to this information on Espionage screen). Sadly, it seems unfixable from XML.
1) Espionage slider: removed from the game.
2) Sabotage production mission now doesn’t reveal info about specifics of rivals’ production (K-Mod change).
3) K-mod also introduces some insignificant behind-the-scenes changes into the way the cost of Espionage missions is calculated.
Questions to discuss:
1) Removing Espionage slider is a massive change. I decided not to remove any missions for now and see how it will work. Though I feel a strong urge to remove at least sabotage project and change civics missions.
Corporations:
I tried to make corps more balanced between each other and against State Property by changing resource values and moving them around the tech tree. I removed Civilized Jewelers and made a completely new corporation to replace it. I had an idea to reduce fixed income from corporate headquarters to 3 gold or even 2 but for now decided to leave it as it is. Corporations are supposed to be used for additional yields by larger civs and for profit by smaller civs and I didn’t want to mess with this effect.
Keep in mind that all numbers are for Standard size maps. For Huge maps they will be halved, for small maps - doubled.
Mining Inc: +1 hammer per resource consumed, no longer consumes silver and gold.
Cereal Mills: +0,8 food per resource consumed, moved to Biology.
Sid’s Sushi: moved to Refrigeration, gives +0,4 food, +0,8 culture per resource consumed.
Creative Construction: moved to Steel, gives +0,5 hammers, +0,5 culture per resource consumed, now additionally consumes Uranium, Gold, Silver, Gems.
Aluminium Co gives +4 beakers per resource consumed.
Standard Ethanol, No change
Civilized Jewelers: removed from the game.
Added new corporation: United Energy. Available at Electricity, can be founded by Great Merchant OR Great Engineer, consumes Oil, Coal, Uranium, gives 0,6 food, 0,8 hammers, 0,8 commerce per resource consumed. Competes with Mining Inc, Aluminium Co., Creative Constructions.
Questions to discuss:
1) So - is it balanced? The good way to answer this question is to log into PB22 or PB18 and calculate the potential yield of a given corporation for your empire. Of course, not all of us has this priviledge. Here are the numbers I had for PB22 but, I think, I additionally tinkered with resource values since then.
Gavagai (T287):
Mining Inc: 8H
Cereal Meals: 8F
Creative Constructions: 5 hammers, 5 culture; with Aluminium Co: 6 hammers, 6 culture.
Sid’s Sushi: 8 food, 16 culture.
Aluminium Co: 5 Aluminium, 10 beakers.
Standard Ethanol: 14 Oil, 21 beakers.
United Energy: 3F, 4H, 4C; with Standard Ethanol: 7F. 10H, 10C.
Joey (T287):
Mining Inc: 8H
Cereal Meals: 3F
Creative Constructions: 6H, 6 culture; with Aluminium Co: 7 Hammers, 7 culture.
Sid’s Sushi: 8F, 16 culture.
Aluminium Co: 4 Aluminium, 8 beakers,
Standard Ethanol: 7 Oil, 10 beakers.
United Energy: 3F, 4H, 4C; with Standard Ethanol: 5F 6H, 6C.
TBS (T287):
Mining Inc: 7H
Cereal Meals: 3F
Creative Constructions: 6 hammers, 6 culture; with Aluminium Co: 6 hammers, 6 culture.
Sid’s Sushi: 10 Food, 20 Culture.
Aluminium Co: 2 Aluminium, 4 beakers.
Standard Ethanol: 7 Oil, 10 beakers.
United Energy: 3F, 4H, 4C; with Standard Ethanol: 5F, 7H, 7C.
Miscellaneous:
1) Nuclear meltdowns: no longer destroy other buildings or population. Can still create fallout.
2) It is now possible to pillage ones own roads.
3) Spontaneously spawned barbarian ships will now start with the disorganized promotion (-10% strength).
4) The immediate experience boost from Great Generals (when used as a 'warlord') is now increased by 10% for each affected unit, up to a maximum of +100% (ie. 40 xp shared across 11 units).
5) "Lost production" for units is now assigned to another unit of the same type (previously, it was converted into gold). With this change, it is possible to build more than one unit per turn. (Note: this does not affect normal production overflow. It only affects the production beyond the overflow limit.)
6) Anarchy duration modifiers and golden age modifiers will now apply their respective adjustments to the existing anarchy / golden age at the time the modifier is applied. (eg. When the Mausoleum of Maussollos is built, it will now increase the remaining length of the current golden age by 50%.)
Questions to discuss:
1) I expect number 5 to be most controversial. I may even want to remove it but it can’t be done from XML.
2) I really think if anything should be done with War Weariness. It can really go out of control in the late game due to enormous scale of battles fought. Rtr characteristically, made it trivial to reduce WW to zero; I would prefer to try a different approach but can’t think of one. Sure, it should be possible to make WW scale with the size of empires and armies but it will be a true bitch to balance. Ideas?
3) I didn’t do anything with events. Rtr, characteristically, nerfed them into the ground by removing a lot of them; as a person who always play with events off I don’t complain but, I think, people who leave them on want them more interesting and varied. Also, even in its nerfing spree Rtr mod hasn’t been consistent and some absurdly OP events (like, you know, shock for all axes) are still there. So, BTS events are obviously unplayable but Rtr version isn’t satisfactory either.
Wanted changes:
In this section I list changes which are NOT implemented in the mod but which I would like to make. The reason I haven’t made them is that they can’t be done through XML. So, if anyone with respective skills is interested in the mod, I would really appreciate this person’s help here.
High priority changes are those without which I don’t consider mod fully playable. Medium priority are highly desirable changes which still can be posponed. Low priority are more cosmetic ones.
High priority:
1) Add information about a total produced Espionage on the city screen and main screen.
2) Aggressive trait: free Flanking1 for Naval units
3) Tech bonus mechanics from Rtr mod.
4) Spies receive “secretive” promotion.
5) Coastal Blockade range reduced to 1 tile.
Medium priority:
1) Cities with size larger than 10: can’t be razed.
2) Circumnavigation bonus: removed from the game.
3) Fractional trade routes (trade routes values are not rounded down if fractional).
4) Everyone starts with Scout.
5) Hut techs: Can only gain techs from the first three rows of the tech screen:
Fishing, Sailing, Wheel, Pottery, Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, Hunting, Archery, Mysticism, Masonry, Priesthood, Mining, Bronze Working, Writing.
6) Toroidal maps: Now return city maintenance as if the map were Cylindrical.
Low priority:
1) Global Warming: truly removed from the game (currently it is set to never actually happen but the game still gives the player redundant information about parameters related to it).
2) Lead from behind mod: removed from the game (currently just disabled in XML; not sure if actually removing the code helps anything but may be it does).
3) Capital city tile always has 2 food, 2 hammers.
4) Observer Mode from Rtr.
5) Maximum number of players: increased to 40.
6) Autosaves: Autosaves are generated at login and log out; log out saves are saved to a folder specified within the global defines XML file.
Following bug fixes:
List of bug fixes from Rtr which would also be relevant for this mod (not implemented as I have no skills). I think, some of them were already done in K-Mod.
1) Fail-gold: You never get fail-gold if you also completed the wonder somewhere else (so no National Wonder fail-gold, or doubling up on a wonder to guarantee yourself a paycheck. The game still informs you that you received "0 gold" from your hammers).
2) Trade route turn order bug (don’t even really know what it is).
3) Build culture double production (most probably fixed in K-Mod; sorry, too lazy to check).
4) Build wealth/research/culture + production automation double production (I don’t know what this bug is about).
5) Proposed trades including cities, where the cities no longer exist to be trades, are not cancelled (note: I consider this a bug because proposed trades are already cancelled if a player lacks the requisite e.g. resources/gold. could be considered not a bug).
6) Feature growth/disappearance rates, and bonus discovery (mine pop) rates, do not scale with game speed.
7) Diplomacy Pausing: Diplomacy windows do not occur on game login whilst the game is paused (YES, PLEASE!)
(Some of these may already be implemented in K-mod).
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