Updating the AU mod for C3C.

[lockstep]

Originally posted by alexman
I also prefer that each group of related changes gets its own thread for discussion (as opposed to one thread for all city improvement changes, for example).

While I like the idea very much, IMO this requires some in-advance drafting of possible sections. Once we have a dozen or so threads up, we can't undo them even if they turn out to be badly interwoven.

[alexman]

That's what this thread is for!

[Nor Me]

It's alright now but what about future suggestions.

There are always people wanting to suggest changes that we are unlikely to implement and now they'll all want their own thread!

[alexman]

I think we can have this thread for suggestions of thread titles. If the suggestion gets the OK from a panelist (or half the panelists, whatever), then we can open a thread. How does that sound?

[Rhothaerill]

I don't know that it would be a problem. People with ideas would post them anyway.

Don't know if this is really a good solution, but it's a possibility...perhaps have one thread specifically for proposing "new ideas", but have it stipulated that only one of the panelists or NM should start a new thread for discussion about the new idea.

[Rhothaerill]

Cross post with alexman. Great minds....

[lockstep]

Possible sections: I'll try to come up with some easy ones.

Space race
Early oversea contacts
AI build preferences
Miscellaneous

[alexman]

Good start!


Here is a list of more possible thread titles:

• AU mod: Attack of post-gunpowder defensive units
• AU mod: Which units to make airliftable?
• AU mod: The Gallic Swordsman
• AU mod: The Javelin Thrower
• AU mod: The Chasqui Scout
• AU mod: Ancient age ship movement
• AU mod: Post-sail ship movement
• AU mod: Balance of airpower
• AU mod: Cure for Cancer
• AU mod: Longevity
• AU mod: The Colosseum
• AU mod: The Coastal Fortress
• AU mod: Balance of Governments
• AU mod: How to help the AI with happiness
• AU mod: How to help the AI with research choices
• AU mod: AI use of dual offensive-defensive units
• AU mod: Amphibious units for all?
• AU mod: Balance of Ground bombardment

[Nor Me]

It's more that people won't feel that they're "listened to" unless they get their own thread if we start handing them out too liberally.

I'd be happy with 1 thread for all UUs. You've missed out the jaguar warrior as it is. Although that'd leave overlap with those that have dual-use AI flags.

[lockstep]

Hmm ... alexman, I don't know how many threads you envision, but this seems to me like an uneven classification. E.g., you could lump together everything about governments vs. deal with Republic and, say, Fascism, separately. Or you could create a 'Rebalancing UU's' thread vs. treat Gallc/Javelin/chasqui separately. (I'd even say I'd rather have separate government threads and a united UU thread than the other way round.)

'Balance of Ground bombardment' is perfect, though.

[alexman]

Sure, one thread for all UU seems much better, although just with the Gallic swordsman we went through a discussion in the main mod thread, a separate thread with a poll, and a whole AU game, IIRC.

Anyway, it was just a first go at it, just to get things started.

[lockstep]

Originally posted by Nor Me
It's more that people won't feel that they're "listened to" unless they get their own thread if we start handing them out too liberally.

I didn't even think of that, but you're quite right, Nor Me.

I'd say we don't have to design an all-embracing system of threads. Let's list the game areas that have been known for imbalances, re-arrange that list to about 15 topics that aren't completely uneven, add a section 'miscellaneous' (and a section 'city and leader names', if the AU mod philosophy allows fiddling with these ), and voila!

[ZargonX]

I think it will be more a matter of "official threads" vs. threads that the public starts on their own. We really can't monitor those, but we can reference them to put their ideas in the proper official thread. It will take a lot of thread monitoring, but we all read this stuff all day anyway, right

[nbarclay]

I seriously doubt that we'll want to tinker with the Conquests version of the Gallic Swordsman. There were three main reasons for rejecting the idea of reducing the Gallic Swordsman's cost to 40 in PtW, all of which have shifted with Conquests.

1) The Celts were Militaristic, and so could leverage an uber-attack UU better than the Iroquois could. The Celts are no longer Militaristic in Conquests.

2) Warriors can be built for upgrade cheaply and with no tech prerequisites, so using a few shields and a lot of cash to build a powerful army is easier with GSs than with MWs. But the higher upgrade costs in Conquests largely negate that advantage; upgrading a warrior to a 40-shield GS in Conquests actually costs 10 gold more than upgrading a warror to a 50-shield GS did in PtW. Thus, the upgrade-versus-build situation does not make 40-shield GSs nearly as powerful compared with MWs in Conquests as they would have been in PtW.

3) Since the AU mod is essentially conservative in nature, with a strong desire to avoid unnecessary changes, reducing the cost of the GS in PtW could have been justified only if, at cost 50, the GS were about the worst UU in the game. The idea of us taking it upon ourselves to make the GS quite possibly the most powerful UU in the game was completely unjustified given the goals of the mod. Now that Conquests has lowered the cost to 40 in the stock game, that same conservatism argues for keeping the cost there.

So my bet is that the GS will be a complete non-issue as far as the Conquests AU Mod is concerned. Even if the Celts end up as the most powerful warmongering civ in the game, which I'm a bit skeptical of with the higher upgrade costs, how many of us are going to complain about it?

It seems to me that the best approach is to have a general thread for all UUs and then, if a particular UU really gets us bogged down, branch it out into a separate thread. But the fact that Conquests allows unit cost increments in units of one rather than just ten probably makes that less likely (unless we go wild micro-tinkering). As I recall, we had a fairly quick and strong consensus that 45 would have been a good cost for the GS in PtW if the editor had just been willing to cooperate. The reason we needed so much discussion and testing was that we had to choose either 40 or 50.

[alexman]

I agree Nathan.

The only reason I suggested to discuss the GS in its own thread (I since admited that it was not a good idea, BTW) was the fact that we might want to make the GS to upgrade directly to Guerilla, but let's save this discussion for the related thread, OK?

[nbarclay]

Keep in mind that the more threads we have, the easier it is for threads to get lost (and for AU Mod threads to crowd out other threads). How about something like:

• AU mod: Regular Land Units
• AU mod: Sea, Air, and Bombardment Units and Issues
• AU mod: Unique Units
• AU mod: Special Operations (Amphibious, Paratroops, Airlift, etc.)
• AU mod: City Improvements
• AU mod: Governments
• AU mod: Wonders, Great and Small
• AU mod: Tech Tree and Costs
• AU mod: AI Tweaks

Note that this list is organized primarily around trying to make it easy to identify which issues belong where rather than around trying to make sure the amount of discussion in each thread is fairly equal. Nonetheless, the number of threads is large enough that the amount of traffic on any one of them should not be too terrible, especially if particular issues that start to get out of hand are spun off into separate threads.

[nbarclay]

By the way, whatever list we come up with, the first message in each thread should have an explanation of what that thread is for, a copy of the complete thread list (preferably with links), and a list of any subthreads that have been broken off from it (also preferably with links).

[alexman]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Keep in mind that the more threads we have, the easier it is for threads to get lost

Have you lost a linked thread before?

Anyway, your list is fine by me, although I really would prefer one thread per change.

[Tassadar500]

I will wait to see what method we will use. Any one want to make any cases for either side?

[Theseus]

I want a friggin' thread on Berserks and Marines working together in Armies!!!

j/k

I like the idea of having a limited number of threads organized conceptually. I think Arrian's list is an excellent start, but would recommend fleshing out "AI Tweaks" into a number of different concepts (that is one of the primary purposes of the Mod after all!).

Hmmm... Happiness, Research, Infrastructure, Military Building and Strategy/Tactics (I know, I know... but build preferences, at least, can have an impact), Aggression, etc.

I also remain convinced, oh, a year and a half later, that environmental conditions have as big an impact on AI civ success as anything... and it seems that that will only be magnified with C3C. So, an interesting adjunct to the AU Mod discussion might be a thread dedicated to the evolution of KAIs. And I *still* want Soren or somebody from Firaxis / Breakaway to tell us the best settings!!

Great thread, and hello Nathan!

[lockstep]

Originally posted by nbarclay
How about something like:

• AU mod: Regular Land Units
• AU mod: Sea, Air, and Bombardment Units and Issues
• AU mod: Unique Units
• AU mod: Special Operations (Amphibious, Paratroops, Airlift, etc.)
• AU mod: City Improvements
• AU mod: Governments
• AU mod: Wonders, Great and Small
• AU mod: Tech Tree and Costs
• AU mod: AI Tweaks

Note that this list is organized primarily around trying to make it easy to identify which issues belong where rather than around trying to make sure the amount of discussion in each thread is fairly equal.

I'd add a category 'AU mod: Miscellaneous' at any rate. E.g. tweaking resource appearance ratios (which was done in AU v1.17) does not fit in any of the categories you proposed.

[player1]

I'll soon finish up conquests version of PS MOD, so maybe you could get some extra idea or two by looking at thread in Creations forum.

Just be wary, the MOD looks more conservative them before (I don't want to change too much until I play enough C3C games).

[alexman]

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that having one thread for each group of related changes is the way to go.

You will get short threads, where you can easily find the discussion you are looking for. Each group of related changes in the readme will link to one thread. In fact, each new idea can have its own thread. Why do we have to restrict the number of threads? If the idea doesn't make it into the mod, or if an existing change gets removed, they will get linked from a special section of the main thread, for future reference. When the topic comes up again, we can move the discussion to the proper thread, instead of going back and forth in one thread, with arguments spread over several pages, mixed with different topics. The discussion for existing features will never be mixed with old discussions of changes that are no longer part of the mod.

Another advantage of having many short threads is that we don't have to try and guess beforehand which topics will get the most discussion. Will the miscellaneous thread become as big as the old mod discussion thread? Who knows? Also, what if we make a change that falls into several categories (e.g. we tweak a Wonder in order to balance a government)?

Will all these threads clutter the Strat forum? At times, yes. But at the same time they will draw attention to the mod and the AU in general, which is a good thing. However, most of the time, I doubt that there will be more than a couple active topics at a time.

In the end, the mod documentation will be more like a web page, with easy links to related topics, instead of a few big threads, which you have to read from beginning to end to thread out irrelevant discussions in order to get to what you want. It takes a bit more work to maintain such a system, but I can volunteer to do that part. I think it will be a great solution for the long term.

[ZargonX]

alexman, I think it was the massive number of threads involved with that method that was off-putting to some people. However, if someone is willing to manage a central database, as it were, of the links, then it is a more optimal solution. So, if you want to volunteer, I won't stop you

[lockstep]

Originally posted by alexman
The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that having one thread for each group of related changes is the way to go.

At least keep those discussions in the same thread that deal with two or three changes that are somewhat intertwined. E.g. re-balancing Republics unit support has some effect on Democracy, although we need to make Democracy more attractive anyway.

Also, what if we make a change that falls into several categories (e.g. we tweak a Wonder in order to balance a government)?

IMO this is the best reason against an 'all-encompassing' thread system. E.g. the tweaks to the space race done in AU v1.17 (+50% cost for SS parts, additional tech requirements) wouldn't have fit in a single category, but clearly should be discussed together.

It takes a bit more work to maintain such a system, but I can volunteer to do that part. I think it will be a great solution for the long term.

[Tassadar500]

This should probably go in the other thread but.... we only have 6 panelists and it was decided we need to have an odd number. I don't want to take anyone out of their job so here's what I'll do. I will be the 7th panelist. Think of me as a mini-panelist because I will only vote and discuss. Not test as you may already know I have a mac

[alexman]

What about the "voice of the people" public poll? I thought that had a good chance of being be the last panelist...

[Tassadar500]

alexman I don't think that was a valid poll. It was my mistake because Dominae was talking about someone else. It was also agreed upon in the thread to have a 7th panelist.

[Stuie]

I thought the idea was if it came to a tie vote, a poll would be used (VotP) to break the tie.

[Tassadar500]

Stuie I already stated I misunderstood what Dominae was saying. If you look back in the thread alot of people agreed that it would be better to have a 7th panelist.