Reply With QuoteHi Colwyn,
To be honest I have no idea what you're talking about (what do you mean by "popping advances"?), but we'll likely look into this.
Some additional information on this disseminate thingy would be helpful though.
Cheers,
Solar
Can you provide the additional files and changes to have it work with the disseminate slc, ie the one that pops advances..
I tired adding it in but found it crashed out in the game so there must be more than just adding it into script.slc and strings.txt
or if someone else can post the files needed to replace for it to work correctly it would be appreciated
Hi Colwyn,
To be honest I have no idea what you're talking about (what do you mean by "popping advances"?), but we'll likely look into this.
Some additional information on this disseminate thingy would be helpful though.
Cheers,
Solar
It was a part of the very popular medieval mod 4 thats still available for ctp
Chris Whitaker (Gedrin) (no relation)made the slc script that disseminates advances (the lightbulb pop-ups that you occasionally get).
http://apolyton.net/local_links/jump/c-mods-182/1780
the files i seem to think are relevant are dissceminate.slc, scripts.slc and strings.txt as they form part of it
i think i have missed one entry though mby have a look as your more familiar with all the fields needed, ie
messagebox '117DisseminationDiscovery' {
Text(ID_DISSEMINATION_DISCOVERY) ;
MessageType("KNOWLEDGE");
I added the text type above to string.txt but perhaps the messagetype "Knowledge" needs to be added somewhere thats my feeling.
I think you might want the game to include your slic in the load list. I'm not sure how to do it, we haven't done that much slic coding (just pretty much included the PowerSLICs mod and made a few changes here and there).
PS if you're interested in coding slic stuff, we might be interested in including your work in the next installment of Forever Future.
What exactly is the feature you want to add? The original advance dissemination idea or something else?
Ive added disseminate.slc into the scripts.slc thats ok i think parts of disseminate.slc need to be valid in other areas ie add fields to them.
Ive attached the files here so you all can look at them.
In my opinion this is the best script you can ever run as it keeps all civs from lagging too far behind with science which means they will be somewhat competitive all game.
I have seen the problem the disseminate.slc needs to be changed to include the advances as per the advances.txt in the ff 1.7 as atm the slc has those from the Med 4 mod.
Anyone want to get this working for FF1.7 take the files i posted and make the changes, test then post back.
Last edited by Colwyn; March 2, 2013 at 05:17.
So, Im back and thinking of giving the 1.7 a try. I still need the old one on my computer since I have 2 email games depending on that one. The first time I played forever future I was sold but the 1.7 didnt really worked for me in the beginning (I hope it will work better this time) so I stayd with the old FF mod.
A question, that really doesnt have anything to do with Forever Future. How do you make scenarios in CTP. I try to create a good map for a PBEM game but I really dont get it? Ive tried several times but every time I try to load a scenario it says that it is missing the scenario. Is there any walkthrough in the scenario department?
Posted wrong area but i have updated files but need someone who knows a bit about slic to check
@Fonzo: Unfortunately, I have no idea how to make working scenarios. I heard there was an unofficial patch for this, but I don't know any details; hopefully someone around here would be of more help.
@Colwyn: We'll have a look at the slic files once we find some time to do so (and time has been extremely scarce recently due to job and family issues). We're intrigued about the idea though, it has potential.
Thanks for answering anyway. Im not really after a scenario, I just want all players for example start at industrial age, without having to correct everhing in the editor at the same time (once I tried to make it all in the editor before starting the game, after 1,5 h work, I accidently closed the Cheat screen and one player ended up with stone age tech against everyone with industry tech). So, if anyone knows how to start the game with a balanced PBEM industrial age map, I would be grateful.Originally Posted by Solarius Scorch
Well for once, there is a way to add the tech itself; just a matter of modifying the DiffDB.txt file, where the data for advances given at the start to the players is stored. That way, you can start at any tech level you want.
However, I don't know (yet) how to change the starting units, beyond 1 settler/2 settlers, or give players starting cities (without making a custom map, that is).
If you ever find out how (on a DUMMY lvl of competence, since Im really not into modding and writing code) to do this, I would be grateful for the info.
You are talking about making a custom map. Ive tried oh so many times, put the problem is I have never been able to use one. I start with cheating and try to save it as a scenario. The problem is that I never been able to actually reload the map and use it in game. What am I doing wrong?
No, I'm talking about modifying the game files, so you can start a random map on a desired tech level.
The code in DiffDB.txt goes like this:
MAX_HUMAN_ADVANCES 12
MAX_AI_ADVANCES 4
ADVANCE_CHANCES {
ADVANCE_ARTS 100 100
ADVANCE_AGRICULTURE 100 100
ADVANCE_TOOLMAKING 100 100
ADVANCE_FIRE 100 100
ADVANCE_RELIGION 75 75
ADVANCE_DOMESTICATION 50 50
ADVANCE_IRRIGATION 50 50
ADVANCE_MINING 25 25
ADVANCE_SHIP_BUILDING 25 25
ADVANCE_STONE_WORKING 25 25
ADVANCE_WRITING 10 10
ADVANCE_ANATOMY 10 10
ADVANCE_GEOMETRY 5 5
ADVANCE_ASTRONOMY 5 5
ADVANCE_WHEEL 5 5
ADVANCE_CARTOGRAPHY 5 5
ADVANCE_BRONZE_WORKING 5 5
}
Just expand this list to cover all the advances you want. The proper aliases for advances can be found in Advance.txt and advanceicon.txt. The numbers are % chances of getting advances for human and AI. Above that, you need to change the max_human_advances and/or max_ai_advances to a sufficiently higher number, for example, if there are 40 advances on your list, make this number like, 30-40 depending if you want the players to get some or all of them.
Custom maps didn't work for me either, I can make a custom map for a single play, but not for multiplay, as the cheat menu is disabled in MP games. Afaik that's an old problem, the feature is simply bugged... :/
Hello everyone. Newbie here.
Max_Smirnov, Solarius Scorch, I would like to give some feedback on FF1.7.
I have a little experience with vanilla CTP (vCTP) and not that much experience with FF as well. I've finished one or two playthroughs of vCTP on Prince or King some years ago. I've played two games on Deity with FF1.7 and dropped both. So, all my experience is based on solo-play, but I guess it still might be useful to the authors of the mod.
Map settings. I’ve played both games with the goods’ scale at 8 (I like making monopolies and fight for specific objectives, not some generic “land”), 4 ocean and nothing too extreme otherwise, regular map size, raging barbarians.
In my first game with FF1.7 I went with Monarchy-Imperium-Absolutism, ICS like hell, got some slaves, stagnated in tech, but caught up by espionage, trading and war spoils. When I got democracy, I was about 10 techs behind the leading AI, had double his population and researched a tech per turn. Then I quit. It was approximately 1400-1500AD.
My second game I went with Monarchy-Theocracy and got about 35 cities. I’ve been in a state of constant naval warfare with two AIs that tried to land on my island. I’ve landed some clerics on them and forced some cities to revolt by unhappiness from conversion. There was one AI 3 or 4 techs ahead of me and 3 AIs on the same tech-level. I had 1.5 times more population than the strongest AI. Again, I’ve reached Democracy and quit 5 turns after that. It was 1460AD.
Both games I’ve built 6-8 production cities (I would have liked more, but alas, not enough mountains), 3-6 specialised “scientific” cities (too many rivers, goods and seashores around to justify making more of them). Other cities were gold-based. Basically, production cities were the most valuable, their production was limited only by a lack of mountains on the map. Gold-based cities were “default” ones. And scientific cities were based in backyards in the middle of the grassland and/or forest, where gold and production were too sparse.
I've never built any wonders to make a game harder for me.
Now, a feedback.
1. FF tremendously improves vCTP. It's really a different game, much better balanced and exciting than original one. Great job, guys.
However, it still has some irritating balance issues that made my game experience disappointing.
2. Based on my cost approximations, population is the most profitable resource in the game. Return on investment (ROI) on worked terrain improvements equals about 30 turns (less for sea improvements, much more for (rail)roads). At the same time ROI on early buildings remains to be longer even with some pretty optimistic estimations about city quality. For example Mill ROI reaches 36 turns for a city with 100 “natural” production, or, in other words, for a city with 4 mountain mines – a case not that common in my experience.
This means several things:
- Population maximization is a winning strategy;
- Most goods are very valuable, as they “double” your worker efficiency. Some goods are unbalanced, as they should be. Some goods might be game-breaking, especially if you get an access to them in early game (desert hills oil is 0-20-25 (food-prod-gold) – possibly too much, compare to common beach pearls 10-5-20, forest honey 15-15-10 or very valuable mountain ruby 0-15-25; just remove oil from desert hills, give them exotica or something instead).
- All techs that give new terrain improvements are vastly superior to the ones that give new buildings (with exceptions, but...). Same goes for food-improving buildings. If you’re feeling safe you beeline to them and forget about everything else. For example, in my last game I’ve saved up infrastructure for several turns to upgrade all mines to advanced mines as soon as the tech became available - when I did so, my gold income increased 25%, production - about 15%. This is huge. I could have built 15 factories instead - then my production would have grown a little bit less, there wouldn't be any growth in gold income but I would have gained 15 unhappy faces;
- Some buildings are comparatively useless until late in the game, when player grows large cities and doesn’t have any more tiles to improve. Among those are Academy, Publishing House and University, also Workshop and Town Hall. Former three could be useful if you’re building a science city (as I’ve said, I do this only if there’s no gold source nearby), the latter two can’t be realistically justified if citysize doesn’t exceed 20 pops and/or it has Market and a Bank.
- Some governments and buildings loose their “story”. More on that later.
Finally, to soften my criticisms a bit, I really like how you’ve added negative happiness modifiers for university, bank, factory, etc. Really nice touch. And negative modifier for capitol during anarchy is very fluffy.
3. Governments’ balance.
Government-specific units and buildings are great. You’ve improved and expanded existing model very well.
But I still have three main issues about governments.
First, a city limit. It tries to remove blobbing and I appreciate it. However, it also makes conquest useless in most cases. I may be wrong here, as I haven’t played in multiplayer, but let me explain my POW. Let’s say you have 1000 production you can spend on anything. You can get 2 settlers or 4 legions/phalanxes and 2 archers.
If you get settlers, you’ll immediately start getting income from 4 squares. If all those squares are forest, you’ll get about 70 production per turn and production ROI about 15 turns.
If you get military units, you can attack. However, defender gets significant bonuses, so I’d say, that you’ll be able to capture only one city with this army. You also need to wait for six units to be built, not two. You still need to move your army to your opponent and without (rail)roads it may take you 5-10 turns, unless you directly border an enemy.
It means that buildup and tech development is much more profitable than warfare... unless attacker has an overwhelming force. Builder can replenish his losses faster and with more efficiency and he can outtech an attacker.
With this in mind, when I get a new government, my strategy centers around getting to its city limit as fast as possible. Cities with 8 pop can build settlers nonstop every 3-6 turns. Settlers don’t cost any upkeep so they can be built “in advance” and mass settled the moment you switch your government. Then my expansion is on hold again as I don’t want to lose a productive worker in 20+ cities just to get another city with 10-15 workers – so if I win a war all captured cities are disbanded as soon as possible.
The city limit looks like a too rigid and “unrealistic” antiblobbing measure in early game as it makes conquest unprofitable. I suggest trying to rebalance early governments in such a way that the limiting factor to expansion is based on the distance from the capitol, not on the number of cities. This way the player can capture everything he wants in an area around his capitol, he can ICS if he wants, but he won’t be limited that rigidly. I guess such a limit can be balanced in a way that the player would be able to "work" approximately the same number of squares as in limited-cities approach.
In more advanced governments capitol distance can stop being the main limiting factor so that colonial empires could become possible, and the city limit should become the limiting factor again (after all, we don’t see many permanent conquests today).
My suggestion could be bad, but right now I don't see any other way to prevent blobbing and, at the same time, make local wars profitable and desirable.
Secondly, IMO governments are not balanced. Even the ancient ones. My impressions about them are as follows.
- Tyranny. No-brainer for early game. Great research and production are must-have.
- Cultism. Great for war and production but it makes you lag in tech so much, that it’s useful only if you can reliably capture tech or as a panic button with a label “I’m gonna get raped soon”.
- Monarchy – good all-rounder.
- Theocracy – low crime, high limit for expansion, clerics, economic bonuses, 100% science... No slaves? So what, I still have no time to capture them, I’m too busy building up. This government still is a game-winner.
- Imperium – too niche (high corruption, tech penalty).
Mercantilism and Republic are rather useless (they're either too late in the tech-tree or require you to postpone getting important techs for too long if you beeline to them; to little bonuses in comparison to monarchy to justify a beeline).
- Absolutism – good for imperiums, who just can’t break away from those 5 “extra” cities, bad for everyone else, because theocracy rules.
- Noble Republic – didn’t try it. Crime and rations seem to be too high, so seems lame.
- Democracy – goddamnit, I’m winning again! [/ragequit]
My second issue is... well, yeah, democracy sucks.
Firstly, it’s science value is too high. When you switch to it from imperium, absolutism or theocracy, your national science output triples or quadruples (possibly increases even more if you have heavy-gold economy and lots of crime). In my last game, when I’ve switched to democracy from gold-based theocracy, my research time decreased from 6 turns to 1 or 2 turns. It’s too much, no matter what Voice of America would make you believe. Increase in wages in Democracy won’t help as in my last game I’ve got 6.6k income (+3.3k from democracy) of which 1.7k went to wages, 1.4k to crime and 2k for maintenance. This left me with 4.8k gold, of which 2.4k went into science and doubled into 4.8k. At the same time, my cities provided about 1k science output. So gold economy rules, gold AND science (as in democracy) – owns.
Secondly, democracy is too low in a techtree. It’s two levels before communism and three levels before fascism – governments with similar bonuses and overall “strength”. And even then, communism gets high crime, fascism has low city limit, they both get a ton of pollution... Why would I ever switch to them, when in democracy I can beeline to the Corporate State while buying every building I ever need?
(BTW, lategame governments seem to be unbalanced in favor of virtual democracy too. Though their production output seems to be approximately equal, the values for crime and science are too different. I may be wrong here of course, as I’ve never played so far).
So, basically, democracy is too good. It makes other contemporary governments useless and brings out my last issue.
4. Tech costs.
First. They seem to be too low. Both games I got industrial revolution around 1300-1400AD. Not cool.
Second. They seem to be too low. Even if you’ll make turns longer “yearwise”, it won’t remove immersion problem. As in “FF doesn’t have any renaissance”. Or dark ages for that matter. Renaissance lasted for 4 centuries, with dozens of wars, long colonial history and slow development of modern institutes. Ingame it rushes around in, like, 30 turns. Last game I’ve got Gunpowder tech in 875AD, I’ve got Rifled guns in 1200 or 1250AD. At the time I got like 6 manufacturing cities able to produce a musketeer every turn or two. But I didin’t – half the time they were building themselves factories or infrastructure or ships to protect the shoreline... I’ve built like ten musketeers that game. I’ve built 6 or 8 ships of the line. And then came Riflemen and Ironclads and I’ve switched to them. I’m afraid, I wouldn’t have built many of them either, as I’ve already been seeing machine gunners and conscripts on the horizon. See what I’m trying to say? There’s no “sense of epoch” from the industrial revolution onwards. I’ve built like 10 units of each type in a nation with 40 cities. My cities were garrisoned with pikemen and galleys. I’ve never built caravels because I was busy improving slots for workers and then building banks and then frigates were two turns ahead and caravels lost any meaning. Military units are too expensive in comparison to city improvements. Tech is too cheap. Scientific buildings are not necessary as science gets done by money. The costs of some things are disproportional and that effectively removes them from the game. This is what I’ve meant when I wrote about buildings “loosing their story”. Of course player will build a workshop or a townhall some day. But he’ll do so not in the “middle ages” or during early stages of city development as he’s logically supposed to. He’ll build them after universities and banks and whatnot, when he has nothing better to build.
And even more, governments from democracy onwards only increase this techrush gamestyle with their ridiculous 200%+ science.
To sum it all up, here are my suggestions.
1. Make expansion slower. Double or triple the cost of settlers, give them 10-20 support cost. Increase colonist-engineer-etc costs accordingly.
2. Make expansion limit of early governments based on the distance to the capitol, not on the number of cities.
3. Make Town Hall and Workshop more cost-effective for cities with 10-15 population.
4. Seriously increase tech-costs.
5. At the same time make science buildings have much greater science modifiers so that scientific infrastructure, not generic government bonuses determine the rate of tech progress.
6. Leave costs of military and special units the same or cheaper. Then more cities would be able to build them in the reasonable time and hopefully it will make historical ages more defined.
7. Nerf science bonuses for governments, bring them closer to 100%. Definitely don't mix high gold and science bonuses for one government.
Again, I must say my impressions and suggestions could be wrong. It's possible that I’m just playing the game the wrong way. Then, if you would be so kind, I’d like to hear your thoughts about game balance - especially on how to make middle-ages warfare longer without lagging in tech behind Deity AIs.
Last edited by Bereg; March 20, 2013 at 16:26.
First of all, thank you for detailed, scientific analysis. Such feedback is very valuable to us.
Secondly - while we wanted to improve the single player experience, we simply couldn't overcome the inherent AI problems. Therefore, the single player game will be always a "just for fun" experience, or a "simulation".
Now, to the meat.
While the issues you mentioned are (usually) nothing new to me, it was really helpful that you stressed serious problems; and it seems some of the countermeasures I have employed, failed after all (like hiking the science costs or decreasing the power of the Democracy).
1. Buildings vs. Tile Improvements
Aye, your ROI estimates are correct. Mines have better ROI time than mills, on average, because a) they're limited to certain terrains, b) they have fixed upper limit, while a mill (or an aqueduct) produces more the more the city grows. Sorry for being obvious.
2. Goods
The reason for Oil and certain other goods to be so good is, well, for a player that ends up on a bad terrain to have a fighting chance. Sure it's neat to have all that gold from Oil, but you're likely struggling just to survive on that desert/glacier.
3. Workshop/Town Hall
True, I have similar feelings. A bit more gold is neat, but the returns are very limited; your post persuaded me that they need to provide something beyond that 1 gold/pop to be attractive. We're thinking about nerfing Bank and Market to +35% each, giving the missing +15% to the Workshop and Town Hall.
Scientific buildings, otoh, are specialized, as intended; you're really not supposed to build them in every city until mid- to late-game, representing a switch from science centers to universal education. It worths mentioning, though, that by the time Corporate State rolls around, I'm usually getting at least 2/3-3/4 science from buildings (with 1-3 scientists per city) despite gold surpluses reaching 20k.
Food buildings indeed provide great bonuses and are the milestones of a civilization. We've tried to balance it by making other advancement options attrative or simply unavoidable. For example, Domestication rolls so early that the food bonus is yet too small to outweigh other contemporary advances; while Engineering is supposed to be a prize for scientific progress (we're considering hiking the cost of this and the next tech tier, to make something of a "middle-ages" sub-epoch).
4.City Limit and ICS
We've been thinking about tailoring the capitol distance penalty. However, there are some issues that prevent doing as you said:
- if the distance, not the city limit is a limiter, the tactic of building a city every other tile is encouraged. It provides so much of an early boost that we cannot afford to encourage it and reinforce Zerg-rushes so popular in the vanilla game.
- game enjoyment factor. There is no in-game tool to tell you what distance unhappiness your city is going to suffer before you have built it and waited 1 turn (when it's already too late). Loosing cities due to distance unhappiness causing first-turn riots is really uncool and too punishing for an unexperienced player (or anyone who doesn't want to manually calculate the distance). Therefore, we've decided to limit the distance unhappiness to (2+max. Martial Law), making it a bit of a secondary concern but well...
- roads. Assuming you're living in a forest, building roads would increase your available area 6 times, squared. 36x more cities is hardly balanced.
5.Conquest issues.
Your estimates are correct... under the condition you have unlimited terrain to settle and docile neighbours. The flow of the game should be moving along the settling -> conquest axis when the game progresses, and I feel it's working very well. Remember that you're playing on a land-heavy map, therefore with boundless space to settle (the suggested setting is 10-30% land). In a MP game there are too many pressures to settle that much. Settler's cost / upkeep cannot be changed due to early game issues (like force-disband of your 2nd settler if you settle the 1st city on a bad terrain).
Oh yeah, about docile neighbours. 1.8 will introduce a new unit, Shinobi, able to easily kill off even guarded settlers in right circumstances... Which should add some more challenge to settling
6. Govts
This is a big talk, and I don't want to get into immediate detail now. But the Tyranny is going to be nerfed a bit, tech-wise, and Democracy needs a major overhaul, it seems. A really major overhaul. At least the Fascism is no more the best govt possible, but it seems I've overdid it. Virtual Democracy suffers from 60% unit HP, so you're more of a farm than a powerhouse. Crime is a no-issue in the late game, maybe only in the Corporate State which has so high crime it might overcome all the improvements you have by this point (courthouse+prison cut crime more than in half, then the Population Monitor rolls in...). The high gold problem is going to be adressed, but for now, we're waiting for more data to work on (like finishing the PBEM we're currently playing). I might get into more detail later, but while I disagree on minor details (like Republic vs Teocracy), you're absolutely right with the major issues.
7. Tech costs
Yup. It seems the increase is inevitable, at least from just after Cannonmaking onwards... Renaissance should indeed last much longer, turn-wise. It takes 100-150 turns to get into it, it should last for at least 50. And then it's rush towards the nukes, I'm glad you haven't touched on that difficult issue yet
So all in all, thank you for the input, it was really helpful. I could go on, but the post is getting really long and I'm starting to get confused. If some issue haven't been adressed enough yet, please ask.
Last edited by Max_Smirnov; March 20, 2013 at 18:54.
More on Democracy.
We're intending to keep it gold-based, so it's the science that has to go. But we can't cut it below 150% to keep with the ambience.
So we've decided on following changes:
Science 200%->150%
Science Budget 50%->40%
Temple, Circus, Cathedral: 1 less Happiness bonus each
Capitol: -1 Happiness penalty (civil unrest) in place of a +3 bonus.
Military Support Cost (on alert/at war): +1/3
While we're at the governments...
I've also decided to boost Absolutism's Science to 150%. With less gold, it should have inferior research speed to Democracy, offering a more robust country in exchange.
About Noble Republic - it seems we forgot to document a certain feature in the Encyclopedia. Monarchy, Noble Republic and Ecotopia have reduced Military Support costs. The Noble Republic is basically about that, plus its assault unit - the Hussar. It's meant for war.
Last edited by Max_Smirnov; March 21, 2013 at 01:39.
Max, thanks for your reply. Let me assess some of your arguments.
3. Re: Workshop/Town Hall. This decision might be suboptimal as it would make these buildings too similar to Bank/Market. "Oh look, they all are just the same! Only with different pictures! How novel!" Maybe you should instead increase Town Hall and Workshop bonuses to 3 gold per pop or something similar and give Town Hall 2 happiness in democracy. Maybe. I'm not quite sure.
4. I didn't know that roads decrease distance from capitol modifier. I thought it's based on the physical distance - i.e. in game-squares. If you're right, then yeah, my suggestion sucks.
Re: towns on any other tile. Maybe you should just increase a settler cost, then. Right now settler, basically, allows player to "build" pop for 540 prod. It makes getting settlers through production more profitable than through natural growth in all cities with 4-6 pops and encourages extensive expansion. Increase settler cost to 1000-1500 prod and you'll move this number up to 7-12 pops. Settler would be an equivalent of 3-4 mines, for example. It would make me seriously consider whether I want to build settlers or tile improvements, not simply rush settlers up to a city limit.
5. Land and expansion. I was playing on "4 ocean", meaning 2 ticks from the center to the left on the land-sea slider. Water covered about 70% of the maps I've played on. Last game I've built only 35 cities because I was on an island and run out of space to build on while building cities at the distance about 2 tiles from each other. Sorry if I wasn't clear enough.
Re: settler upkeep. OK, I hear you.
Re: Shinobi. Cool. I look forward to it.
6. Democracy. I still think the changes you've suggested won't be enough. 150% tech would suddenly double research output in comparison to, e.g. theocracy (btw, I think theocracy's research should be lowered to 75%, it should be more "realistic" that way). Maybe make it 125% and 40% (science and budget) - that way research output would be more dependent on buildings, not just "right ideology", just like it was in a real life (e.g. modern-day India and Portugal lag in tech though they're democracies, while USA rushes because it has lots of universities and labs; 19 century France lagged in tech behind Great Britain, though the latter was absolutist in game terms). Democracies would still be able to become research power-houses in right circumstances as they would be able to convert all their extra gold in upkeep-heavy research buildings while e.g. absolutism won't be able to do so at the same scale.
7. Buildings. Not quite sure why you've decided to nerf happiness buildings. I was quite okay with them. PBEM experience?
I don't like unhappiness malus for the capitol as I like it being the largest and most important city in my civ.
8. When will you release FF1.8?
Regarding your input, Bereg -
@Democracy
I've tried to avoid taking too drastic measures. I've tried to protect the "fluff" of the game, and going below 150/150 could spoil that. Lowering the science budget below 40% is, similarly, something I'd like to avoid. I'm fully aware how vast the difference between 125 and 150% gold is. I was even thinking to overhaul all the govt bonuses to conform to 60-80-100-120-140-160 scale, instead of 50-75-100-125-150. Just because of that vast disparity.
So, the ploy is like this - OK, you (still) have a scientific powerhouse, now have fun trying to keep your happiness above the water. Especially in your capitol. You'll be hopefully busy building Hospitals and quite allergic to War Discontent. A non-direct approach to nerfing the Democracy, if you will.
The research will indeed be doubled - that's an incentive to switch governments, to be able to cope with steeply rising tech prices.
The data gathered from the current PBEM should show if I'm right. The same goes for the Theocracy; if it's indeed too strong (which I'm not so sure of), I might just roll with your idea and decrease Science to 75% (but then, I want it to be competitive with the Tyranny-Republic-Democracy combo).
@Workshop/Town Hall
Right. Your concern is valid; too many too similar buildings. So perhaps I'll go with the idea just for the Workshop (+1 gold/pop AND +20% gold), while keeping the Market and the Bank at +40%; that way, the workshop is still going to be somewhat different. Duplicating the idea for the Town Hall would, indeed, be too much. Otoh, including too many +gold/pop bonuses is not something I'm too happy with, as it tips the scales towards the population size (as opposed to the terrain) for gold generation, something I wanted to postpone till the Nuclear Age. Increasing the Happiness bonus for the Democracy to +2 might indeed work (offsetting the -3 penalty I've introduced). A smaller, +1 bonus might be introduced for the most of the more advanced goverments, to make it a more lasting investment.
@Buildings' prices
Indeed. As the game progresses, the relation between the prices of buildings and units drops from 200-500% to 50-100%. This is, in part, because the epochs beyond Renaissance fly past so quickly, giving less time to invest and reap the benefits. Some of the buildings were already made much more expensive (like the Fusion Plant), but the ratio is still within the 200% range.
- by the way, if we're going to make the epochs last longer, the problem of Nukes can be further alleviated, by making them even more expensive, as there still will be time to stockpile them.
@Settler prices
That'd be a really, really drastic change, rendering the initial expansion extremely slow and basically squashing a player who loses one of his first settlers, or builds the capitol on weak terrain. Your argument makes sense, but still...
As of now, the ROI of a settler is within 15-25 turn range; this is indeed lower than with either buildings or tile improvements. I'd like to keep it that way. A slight price increase (up to 25%) might be contemplated, but this, in turn, squanders those players who lag behind in technology... The FF took several measures to lessen the God status of technology of the vCtP, such as making spying easier, science costs higher etc.
Moving the Colonist lower on the tech tree is another option, but, like you've said, one can just simply stockpile settlers.
This gives me an idea... what if Settlers/Colonists/Engineers were not Tech, but Govt dependant? That way, 1) primitive govts could settle faster than advanced ones, 2) unlimited stockpiling would be rendered harder, as all your settlers would be disbanded if you changed the govt 3) Colonist prices can be safely hiked without making any technology a "toxic" one (a tech which you don't want to discover too quickly).
That and I'm more for the idea of limiting settling by external pressures, not prices.
Another drastic measure would be lessening/eliminating the bonus resources a city generates (+10 food, +5 production), thus increasing the ROI of a settler but, sadly, making the game more unforgiving and more, if might use the word, anal. I would like to refrain from it, if possible).
@Capitol distance
Yes, it is calculated by the movement distance, not overland flight distance. While we're at it, Caravans are calculated by "freight" distance, which differs from the normal movement distance in that sea squares cost only 1/3 movement point.
@Factory ROI
A Factory is roughly equivalent to 2.5 advanced mines in price; 2.5 advanced mines, even if built on a "virgin" terrain, provide just about 70 extra production. A Factory built in a comparatively poor city (by that time, size 8-9 or so) with 150 base production grants +75 production. Of course, mines grant a lot of gold, while a factory costs a lot of it. Still, the balance, in my oppinon, is heavy on the Factory's side.
@Military unit prices
So far, the prices are kept in general relation to their stats; roughly, I'm assuming +1 attack should "cost" 50 prod, +1 ranged the same, and +1 defense - 25. Each extra point of movement increases this by about 25%. Ex. Musketeer: 3x50+3x50+4x25 = 400. Of course, each point of attack/defense is less effective than the previous. Therefore, the model is slightly punishing: the only definite advantage better units get is the ability to cram more power onto a single tile. We could change that into a neutral system, where the lessened efficiency of each attack/defense point is taken into consideration. If we keep the numbers for the first 2 points, then halve them for values 3-4, then halve again for values 5-8, our musketeer would cost just 75+75+75= 225 points. The gains would be even greater for advanced units, dropping the price of a Rifleman from 600 to 112+100+88 = 300 points. Of course, that'd make advanced nations virtually invincible.
@1.8
Regretfully, not before summer or fall. The PBEM games take a long time to finish, and making unit sprites or overhauling Encyclopedia requires a lot of free time.
Regards,
Max
PS. Another possibility. To avoid the city limit being too rigid, we could tighten it, while lessening the penalties for extra cities to 0.2-0.4 Happiness/City (higher for smaller civs). This way, an "average" size would remain the same, while the maximum size would be much more soft.
Last edited by Max_Smirnov; March 21, 2013 at 17:17.
Sorry for delay, I was busy at work.
Democracy.
There's also a problem with research cost disparity. I've did some maths yesterday (made a model to compute a complete research cost for techtrees, taking all prerequisites into account and removing duplicates) and it seems that democracy is much cheaper than I thought. If my calculations are correct, "advance_democracy" (democracy) tech needs 41 prerequisite techs to research and 16125 RP total. "Advance_nationalism" (nationalism) - 46 and 28995, "advance_communism" (sociology) - 58 and 68345, "advance_fascism" (propaganda) - 61 and 95845. So right now democracy is not only better, player can reach it 4-6 times faster than other government techs, if he would beeline to it. And then reap a ton of benefits from doubled (tripled, etc.) research.
Of course, I've computed only "raw" research requirements without taking into account benefits from prerequisite techs (i.e. right now I'm not sure would you need to get philosophy and agricultural revolution to beeline to democracy and how many (and which!) military techs you would get on the way), so beeline may not be feasible in competitive play. But still, the disparity is high.
Settlers
Government-dependent settlers is exactly the idea that I came up with some time after finishing my post. It's cool, fluffy and may differentiate governments even more. Glad we're thinking in the same direction.
City limit and happiness
It won't work, I think. I, personally, would just calculate "optimal" number of cities considering unhappiness and possible profit and maximize city number till it's reached. No, city limit should be either situation specific (i.e. distance or upkeep cost from civ4) or completely rigid (as it is now), so no one was able to "game" the system.
Other stuff.
Ok, I see your points. I don't completely agree about factory, but whatever - again, I possibly don't have enough experience with the game.
I have a question for the creators of Forever Future:
Can older versions also be downloaded somewhere, or only the latest version? Besides version 1.7, I have one other, older version of FF, probably 1.6; however, I am not sure which one it is. How can I check? Is there a changelog?
Also, in my first game with FF 1.7, thus far the game crashed twice, the year is about 1000 AD. Is version 1.6 more "stable" than 1.7, or does it not make a difference? I am asking because I want to play multiplayer with a friend and we wouldn't want to have the game crash too often.
Ivan - ivanbuto2@yahoo.com
No, the 1.7 version isn't less stable. And it's significantly more stable in MP games than in single games (where occasional crashes do occur, depending on the machine it's being ran on).
In our Play-be-Email testing, that goes on for over half a year now, it hadn't crashed even once.
As for the changelog... well, half of the documentation and resources were lost due to an accident, and 1.6 doesn't even exist anymore. 1.5 might be still availabe on this site, if not, it's gone as well. Apart from major balancing, new units etc. only 1.7 features the new, improved & expanded goods system.
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