Which Mods?

[Paddy]

Ok, Sengoku - Sword of the Shogun was the final choice.

and it was agreed that we modify the scenario for a better game

This poll is to choose which mods we use

This is a multi-poll, so you can choose more than one

-------------------------------------

Accel Production: Well, strictly speaking actually a rules and not a mod, but listed here.
Affect: Halves the cost of every structure & science costs.
Reason: Would cut down the turns needed to win.

AU Army Mod: Incoropate as much of the AU Army mod that applies in this conquest.
Affect: At a minimum, this is Army's capacity is 1 but has 4 extra HP. I don't remember if this conquest includes equalivents to HE / MA / Pentagon or not.
Reason: AI doesn't use armies properly, giving humans an unfair advantage.

Regicide off: Leave the King units in, but remove "King" ability + "AI King" flag if exist + set the AI offense / AI defense flags approatively.
Affect: This will cause the AI to use the King and not just keept hem parked.
Reason: AI King units are ridiciously easy to find and kill because they never move.

Remove ability of Monks to pillage:
Reason: AI can't stop fast moving defensive units from pillaging (either humans or other AI), this results in inferstucture reverting to the stone age.

Set all world map levels to have the same corruption and tech rate factors; probably to current huge:
Affect: Removes the affects of the bug where the person's previous map size immedately prior to them starting this game is used.
Note that if I've overestimated Japan map size and it is closer to the normal "large" than "huge", I mean large instead.
In addition check what numbers are currently in Japan's world map parms and compare against standard. It might reveal an intended map setting.
The difference between tiny & huge normally is:
3/4X to 2X standard tech costs, increasing as map size increases
3/4X to 2X standard corruption, decreasing as map size increases

Fix the placement of AI starting locations
Affect: See the Japan civ discussion thread for the full list.
Reason: A handfull of civs are clearly in positions where a human would move the location one or two tiles for a much better start, but the AI would never do that on its own.

Allow us to pick the AI only playable civs
Affect: Allows us to choose any of the 18 civs instead of just 8.
Reason: The most challenging positions are marked as computer only, so doing so would allow for a greater challenge in six or seven cases. (The others starts are comparable to the existing human playable ones)

The Mod
Affect: Assure that the is happy.
Reason: Apolyton Tradition to include a option.

- Many Thanks to Joncnunn

-------------------------------------


further questions (which will be adjusted as we go as required)

• which civ in the nominated scenario?
  Discussion on the Japan civs is underway in preperation of that poll
  
• which format of government do we take?
  ie. succession style we have used in Rome, or other formats...
  
• what time frame do the governments have to achieve their goals?

other questions to be added as required

-------------------------------------

[Daddy-O]

Accel Production
No.
AU Army Mod
No.
X Regicide off
Sounds fair.
Remove ability of Monks to pillage
No & and tough luck.
X Set all world map levels to have the same corruption and tech rate factors; probably to current huge
Sounds like a bug fix. Do it.
Fix the placement of AI starting locations
No.
X Allow us to pick the AI only playable civs
Sure, now we can have even more discussions and polls.
X
Why not ?

[Ljube]

Accel Prod : Yes
AU Army Mod : Yes
Regicide Off : Mandatory
Remove ability of Monks to pillage : Yes
Set all world map levels to have the same corruption and tech rate factors; probably to current huge : I don't know what you're talking about
Fix the placement of AI starting locations : Yes
Allow us to pick the AI only playable civs : Yes. By the way, I'd like to do that in a single game. How can I do that?

[Addled Platypus]

AP - Yes
Army Mod - Yes
Pillage - Always
Map levels,Corruption - Yes

all others: does not matter

[Paddy]

Accel Production

Regicide off

Fix the placement of AI starting locations

[joncnunn]

I voted for all the above except AP.

-
There's a bit more to the Regicide off than listed for whoever makes the actual edits:

1. Type 1s will need to be manually placed for each civ.

2. King unit flag and any AI-King flags removed.

3. AI offense and AI defense flags set apporatively. Maybe something like types 1-3 Defense On / Offense off, 4 - 6 both defense and offense on, 7 - 10 Offense on, defense off.

4. A short test run to ensure that this one king unit can still be upgraded with a baracks and tech while multiple kings don't get created. [Especally type 1 that have a cost of 0 ]

[Beta]

Originally posted by joncnunn
I voted for all the above except AP.

-

Me too because jon knows what he is talking about.

I am looking forward to this one.

Hai!

[ormuzd]

yes to everything except AP and Monks pillage removed

Everything seems like a more than reasonable and no need even to think about. It is always better to make the AI more challenging without unfair advantages

[Paddy]

15 votes done

approx 9 - 11 to go...

looks like will not get over the 50% tidal mark sorry Con

[ormuzd]

but the pillage option is behind the banana, this is quite good

[Ljube]

Hmm, I'm not so sure. AI can't defend against pillaging monks.

[Paddy]

Well those that want the "Remove ability of Monks to pillage" added to the selected mods best get onto with some heavy campaigning before the rest of the forum votes then

[Modo44]

The Banana needs some campaigning as well.

[Micha]

I don´t care for the pillaging ability. Also I´d like to take one of the more promising civs (with higher difficulty instead?), so I´m fine with the 8 standard civs...

All other things

[planet]

ap, no reg, and the banana thing

[Daddy-O]

re: "Allow us to pick the AI only playable civs : Yes. By the way, I'd like to do that in a single game. How can I do that?"

I don't mod games but I have been looking into the editor to look at some of the other civ settings. That setting is on one of the screens in the editor.

The editor is not an option on the main start up menu. You will need to go here:
Start -> All Programs -> Atari -> Civilization III Complete Edition -> Conquests Editor -> Civ3ConquestsEdit

I think that is a setting on the given civilization.

Good Luck & Vote !

[conmcb25]

I voted

[Micha]

Originally posted by skrobism
The editor is not an option on the main start up menu. You will need to go here:
Start -> All Programs -> Atari -> Civilization III Complete Edition -> Conquests Editor -> Civ3ConquestsEdit

You can´t say that in general. For me, there is neither a folder called "atari" nor any "complete edition" nor can I access the conqests editor from the start menue.
In general the editor can be accessed by clicking the exe file in the civ3/conquests folder on the hard disk. This works for all languages and all editions of the game.

[joncnunn]

I'm not sure if PTW or Vanilla even had such a feature as non-human playable civs.

But in Conquests, if you want to make a civ unplayable for that scenerio, you indeed need to go into the civ 3 editor, and go into the scenerio properties screen.

edit: translated first sentenice from Jon-speak into English.

[Micha]

Originally posted by joncnunn
I'm not if it PTW or Vanilla even had some a feature as non-human playable civs.

I am sorry, but I have not the slightest clue what that sentence should mean...

[joncnunn]

I've done some looking around, we have an implemention issue with the no-regicide option.

Basically, the way the Ancient Calvary and Crusader units work in the epic is that they are unbuildable by all civs, but get spawned by the SoZ and KoT wonders.

The upgrades skip over the case where the upgrade would be unbuildable by the civ.

So, to turn regicide off, we need to also decide the following:

1. Do we want every civ to be able to build multiple Shoguns?
In this case, check the stats against comparable units and decide which types to allow and which to disallow. (In no event do we want Shogun-1s built which are free to build.)

2. A varation is that we have certain unique to each civ structures spawning a different level of Shoguns every X turns. [We add 9 Small Wonders, each that spawn types 2-10, having the cost of these small wonders increase as the tech goes up.]

3. Or alternatively which level do we want to lock the starting shoguns to. In this case, we might even consider giving a different level of shoguns to different oppoents. Say giving oppoents far from us the best shogun types and those closer weaker types, with us getting the worst of all.

4. Another case, is we could mod the Shogun 10, to a unit with no movement nor attack [defense only] and grant every AI civ that unit. (We'd get a weaker Shogun.) This would make taking an AI capital difficult for everybody.

[Paddy]

Jon, that seems to change the Regicide issue quite a bit...
I thought we could have just turned that option off.
Just off back into editor to have a look at this.

Which of your variants do you like?

[Paddy]

I thought that turning Regicide off was as easy as unclicking this option here

am I missing something in this?

[joncnunn]

Paddy, I think it's more complex than that becuase of the king units that regicide relay upon. (Shogun 1 thru 10)

But I'll run tests tonight to see if king units appear if marked as kings even with regcide off and report back. There may be something that prevents there being kings at all when neither regicide button is on.
It would be great if kings could function as kings without (either form) of regicide on. I do note that king behavior isn't really seperable from AI king. Any king unit disables all non-King AI tactics, so the AI will just park them.

Based on some of the unit capiabilites, there's a possibility that the AI would never upgrade King units as well in conquests. (Basically Shoguns 7-10 have their stealth attack ability on for Shogun 2-10 but off of Shogun 1 [and armys])

[Paddy]

thanks Jon, looking forward to your results

[joncnunn]

Ran the tests last night.
To keep the kings as kings with upgrades, but no new ones, plus no regicide, we just need to:

1. On that screen, turn recide off, and also remove the auto-place king units.

2. Tab over to players screen. Add Shogun-1 to all 18 players.

That's it.

Successfully updated my Shogun-1 to Shogun-2. And then after several attacks of barbs with my Shogun-2, finally got him killed and the game continued. (There is no disband button for king units.) Note that you can not replace the king you lost though.
I suspect the AI is just going to park it's king in the starting city and stack lots of units there.

[Paddy]

thanks Jon

glad that worked easily

[joncnunn]

Since I'm the first Shogun, I guess I'm in charge of the moding. [And already have the very popular no regicide implemented.]

Those with opions on the AP & AU army mod that haven't voted now should probably vote soon. (I'd like to have this poll closed by Friday at Noon US CDT (-05:00) so I can implement the voted upon mod over the weekend.)

Oh, and the great banana is not pleased with only getting 9 votes.

[Daddy-O]

Looks like jon already did a bunch of work on this and we already voted to turn off regicide BUT

What if we leave regicide on and just limit ourselves from using it? This means much less actual modifying.

Just an idea and maybe the work is already done.

[joncnunn]

Skorbism, the AI tending to form far sprung cities makes that dificult. And the work is indeed done.

Plus I can tell you that in other games that sometimes I thought I was attacking an AI's last city, but in reality they had another one I couldn't see way off my map. (Another landmass)

There are actually quite a few seperate landmasses in this conquest, not that any of them are worth settling.

I am proposing if Emperor level is adopted us acting like Regicide was still on in one respect, keeping our Shogun unit alive.

Originally posted by skrobism
Looks like jon already did a bunch of work on this and we already voted to turn off regicide BUT

What if we leave regicide on and just limit ourselves from using it? This means much less actual modifying.

Just an idea and maybe the work is already done.