Warlords Balance Discussion

[Sirian]

In all the tests I have run not once there was a Unit hit twice. Not even in those cases where there were fewer Units in the targettile did a Unit suffer double damage.

Perhaps they changed it in Warlords. For sure, this is how it worked in Vanilla.


- Sirian

[Kylearan]

Hi Ozy,

Aww, come on now Kylearan... Surely you're not upset that you have to buy an expansion pack to get an upgrade that hopefully won't be included in the original via patch?

I have no problems with upgrades in an expansion pack. Some people argue that Great Generals (among other things) should have been in the original games in the first place, and thus do not regard these things as 'upgrades' and feel they should not have to pay money for it. I'm not one of them. I'm happily willing to pay money for the expansion pack to get these extra features.

As Pholkhero already said, what I'm talking about is fixing bugs. The fix for the whipping bug in the expansion pack for example is not a new feature; it's repairing a broken implemetation of a feature of the original game. I think I have a (moral) right that a feature in the original game works like advertised, and so I think I have right to get this fixed via a free patch.

To compare this with the discussion about how the second x-pack for Civ 3 included the first one way back when (you do seem to have a long memory about these things...) is comparing apples with oranges.

-Kylearan

[Rowain]

Perhaps they changed it in Warlords. For sure, this is how it worked in Vanilla.


- Sirian

Could well be the case. In fact I first expected some variance a Unit take and did run several cats against varying stacksizes of Axes.

I was quite surprised (and happy cause it made statistical procedures unnecessary) to find that every single Axe that got hit did get the same damage and that everytime there were enough Axes in the stack 6 Units did suffer coll damage.

The same did hold true with Arty vs Axes, Cats vs Inf, Arty vs Inf at which point I concluded that it was an universal feature and reduced the amount of stacks and run every combination of Units I did later with a samplesize of 2 stacks. Still no variance discovered.

If I find time the next tests will include Cities, Bombers and Shelters and perhaps some tests with Orig.Civ IV

[Ozymandous]

Hi Ozy,


I have no problems with upgrades in an expansion pack. Some people argue that Great Generals (among other things) should have been in the original games in the first place, and thus do not regard these things as 'upgrades' and feel they should not have to pay money for it. I'm not one of them. I'm happily willing to pay money for the expansion pack to get these extra features.

As Pholkhero already said, what I'm talking about is fixing bugs. The fix for the whipping bug in the expansion pack for example is not a new feature; it's repairing a broken implemetation of a feature of the original game. I think I have a (moral) right that a feature in the original game works like advertised, and so I think I have right to get this fixed via a free patch.

To compare this with the discussion about how the second x-pack for Civ 3 included the first one way back when (you do seem to have a long memory about these things...) is comparing apples with oranges.

-Kylearan

Hi Ky,

You may be surprised to find that I do agree with you that some things, like the whipping problem, "binary science", etc should be fixed in Civ4V(anlla) via a patch. However, I have no idea how integrated some of these 'fixes' are with the new code input for the GG's, new traits, etc. I would hope that nothing that came out as a bona fide improvement, new ability or whatbot, be put in a patch for Civ4V since that would defeat the purpose of having the X-pack and dillute the "goodies" that those of us who have paid for the X-pack bonuses, have received.

Yes I do have a long memory about some things (not always a good thing to have either unfortunately), but I was mainly just teasing. :D I do hope some of the things, like the true bugs mentioned above, are fixed for Civ4V, I just don't want to see the product I paid extra for once again given away for essentially free. Yes I am 'selfish' like that. :P

-Ozy.

[Majromax]

Coming from someone with programming experience, albeit not with Civ4 code, the bugfixes for at least the wipping and BSR overflow exploits wouldn't be intimately intertwined with the new features.

When the whipping bug first came to light, there was some discussion here about whether a solution could be crafted with merely the SDK. The consensus was "yes, but not with just a 1 or 2 line change." Amateur programmers here could craft a change, but there would be some real testing hurdles to pass -- something that Firaxis can do, but is harder for a small community like us.

Likewise with the BSR overflow research change -- the fix was to carry out the calculations to two digits, for fixed point rather than straight integer math. The fix in-code was probably rather simple (involving no algorithmic changes, only details), but would be an effort to test.

The AI changes, though, I'm willing to give to Firaxis.

[Iustus]

Currently, (in Warlords) custom games have a checkbox that lets you turn off vassel states.

I personally think a better solution would be for Warlords to have checkboxes to turn off some of the new Warlords features (perhaps all of them).

This would mean that people would still buy the upgrade, which would be good for Firaxis, and they would be able to still work with one codebase.

On the downside, it actually might be more work, since the real solution here is not just some more checkboxes, but allowing vanilla civ scenarios to work in some way, as well as vanilla civ games.

This to me would be the ideal solution, some way to choose vanilla civ or warlords while running the warlords executable. Then I would not have to keep switching CDs between the two when I want to play one or the other.

-Iustus

[Ozymandous]

Currently, (in Warlords) custom games have a checkbox that lets you turn off vassel states.

I personally think a better solution would be for Warlords to have checkboxes to turn off some of the new Warlords features (perhaps all of them).

This would mean that people would still buy the upgrade, which would be good for Firaxis, and they would be able to still work with one codebase.

On the downside, it actually might be more work, since the real solution here is not just some more checkboxes, but allowing vanilla civ scenarios to work in some way, as well as vanilla civ games.

This to me would be the ideal solution, some way to choose vanilla civ or warlords while running the warlords executable. Then I would not have to keep switching CDs between the two when I want to play one or the other.

-Iustus

I like this idea, to have more options is always better. Players could toggle a variety of features and mix and match any or all of them. Firaxis would still get paid since the expansion would be bought by those who might only really want one or two things, with the ability to have it all if they want, etc.

Regarding the CD issue, it would be nice if the software companies realized that this is a dead-end proposition. I can probably get a ISO version of practically any game out now, and have that image burned to a DVD and be able to play anytime I want without even needing an original CD. With the technology out today, requiring the CD to be in the drive is fairly archaic and stupid, IMHO. Maybe one day the distributors will realize this and end this practice.

[cynyck]

Hi Ky,

You may be surprised to find that I do agree with you that some things, like the whipping problem, "binary science", etc should be fixed in Civ4V(anlla) via a patch. However, I have no idea how integrated some of these 'fixes' are with the new code input for the GG's, new traits, etc. I would hope that nothing that came out as a bona fide improvement, new ability or whatbot, be put in a patch for Civ4V since that would defeat the purpose of having the X-pack and dillute the "goodies" that those of us who have paid for the X-pack bonuses, have received.

Yes I do have a long memory about some things (not always a good thing to have either unfortunately), but I was mainly just teasing. :D I do hope some of the things, like the true bugs mentioned above, are fixed for Civ4V, I just don't want to see the product I paid extra for once again given away for essentially free. Yes I am 'selfish' like that. :P

-Ozy.

Pardon me for jumping in here, but I have to agree with Kylearan. Your point that some of the fixes may be integrated with new code does not convince me. If that is the case, then the code should be rewritten. When I pay for something I expect it to work as advertised and be free from defects. When it comes to software, to my mind a bug is a defect. Just as you would be disappointed if the product you paid for were given away for free, so would I be disappointed - no, downright angry - if the only way a fix were available were if I made another purchase. For crying out loud, isn't it bad enough when Microsoft does this?

Having said that, I do not know enough about Warlords to comment on whether or not this is the case, but I am sure Firaxis will be fair and just as always.

[Blake]

I've already written the whip fix and it's not hard - nor hard to verify that it's working as intended since it's basically just a copy-paste job - taking the code which calculates the cost of the whip and modifying it slightly to get the hammers generated. The way I coded the fix isn't the most elegant since there is redudant code but I didn't want to add a new function to the class - my fix is restricted to changing only existing functions (so really, it's quite simple). It's functionally identical to the Warlords implementation (actually it might differ by 1 hammer at times, especially with national wonders, I havn't checked) and it can also just be dropped into the custom assets folder at any time without breaking save game compatibility (it's actually stealthy that way, pretty much impossible to tell whether the fix has been used or not).

Note I'm actually not happy with the warlords (and by extension, my) fixed implementation of whipping - it fixes the bug, but whipping remains gamey with the overflows (ie whipping 2 pop is much, much better than whipping 1 pop), what I'd like to do is figure out an ideal algorithm which always gives exactly the hammers needed to complete the build and have it fudge the food bar to account for fractional amounts of pop killed. The problem is it's exceedingly tricky to figure out some way which wont by gamey - especially when you consider the granary and stuff, it seems probable that depending on the implementation it'll be best either to whip when damage to the foodbar is minimal, or when damage to the food bar is maximum (minimal pop lost) and it's hard to say what to do when the foodbar is empty - these problems are rooted mainly in the inaneness of the CIV growth system (another example of this being that cities can only starve 1 pop per turn regardless of food deficit, which results in the exploit of working no food when a city is going to starve anyway - the Warlords city governor embraces this and puts zero value on food if the city will starve regardless - I think governors should try to play optimally but this embrace of flawed game mechanics does not amuse me).

The fact that I'm not happy with whipping overflow is the main reason I've been unmotivated to try and get my whip fix supported for RBCiv events - it's just the lesser of two evils and not really good.



Moving on to other fixes in Warlords. The BSR "fix" would be a lot more complex, since it would seem to involve many seperate subsystems - like the display has to be updated to handle the fractional amounts as well as many internal changes like converting the fractional amounts to whole numbers for gold/science. This probably justifies an expansion rather than a patch.

There are other bugs like gpt exploit and gifting unit on transport exploit (and also switch-chop-switch to chop-build stuff without any "real" turns of production) which I don't know how hard would be to fix, but they are easy to abstain from so I don't really care. Worker poaching should be trivial to "fix" as per warlords, but worker poaching is more an AI problem than game mechanics problem so again it's something I'd rather abstain from rather than half-fix it and declare it just fine.

[Sirian]

The fact that I'm not happy with whipping overflow is the main reason I've been unmotivated to try and get my whip fix supported for RBCiv events - it's just the lesser of two evils and not really good.

Not getting whip overflow is worse. There is still a "perfect" turn on which to whip, which means nothing is fixed, but the casual player who isn't interested in min/maxing the yield would be penalized. At least this way, the casual player gets (or was supposed to get) a flat-rate shield yield per pop point expended.

I'm chiefly responsible for the way Slavery ended up. There's simply no way to have any device that translates X into Y, when X and Y are both such moving targets, that does not give a "best" yield under some but not all conditions. From the point at which one accepts this, it's a matter of either scrapping the whole concept or choosing an implementation that has many more positives than negatives.


I realize that you are looking at it from your own perspective, a purist one, and that's fair. However, the designer(s) were often aiming at a more casual audience first. That bug shouldn't have been there, but bugs sometimes slip through.

I'm a thorough advocate for erring on the side of "too strong" in this case, for a host of reasons I'm not allowed to divulge.


My two bits on that topic.


- Sirian