MOD: Long Winded Changes Mod: Improvements increasing Balance, Accuracy, and Fun

[pauli]

plutarck, i sent you an email about savegames (seeing if you wanted my 256x256 games)... i just discovered that my profile was setup with an account that died years ago so if you replied, i didn't get it :/

the new one should work fine though.

[Plutarck]

Quick announcement

Sorry for the delay in getting to all my emails and replys to posts, but I'll get to 'em. Really



A few things and a pre-patch download, cause I couldn't take it anymore, but you'll see about that.


First of all, known bugs. I know of the following bugs and either can't fix 'em at this time or it would take too much time to fix the comparitively minor bug.

1) Wrong civilopedia icons. Yup, I know about it, and mention it in an earlier post somewhere. Don't that suck?

A solution to it MAY come with the next patch, but it's just a guess, so I may never have to actually fix it the hard way, but if not it'l be fixed someday.

2) Rioting Crash Bug. This is the only crash bug I've managed to replicate, and have had it happen to me recently.

If you have a significant amount of citys that riot, while going through all the popups the game will crash. This usually happens when switching governments or with republic/democracy when a ton of demonstrations come from a war.

Luckily, there is a fix. For democracy/republic you may just have to switch governments and use this next fix though.

What you do is go into each city that has too many unhappy people (thus causing rioting) and just make some people entertainers. It's one of the annoyances of the governers that they manage happyness 1 turn too late...another reason they suck.

So just turn off the governor for you to add some entertainers. Then, as soon as the problem is near passing (or the same turn if your Religious, since anarchy only lasts a turn if your Religious...I don't pretend to understand that either, but I can't control it) you can just switch the governor back on for managing citizens.

In the next version Anarchy will have a 4 military police limit, so that may help things out at least early on, but it might not cure all ills. So good to keep this in mind, as it's the work-around I use to continue playing.




But now the point of this post. Here's what I've changed that will go into the next version so far (hadn't made any changes until today), with strong emphasis on the last big update on pollution:

02/13/02:

-Ironclad: Now has 18 attack instead of 17, and upgrades to Steel Warship instead of Destroyer. The latter was a relic of an earlier iteration of changes I made where Steel Warship wasn't totally better than an Ironclad, but as it's now superior in pretty much every way this makes much more sense.

-Naval units from Ship of the Line/Galleon on: The Ship of the Line and Galleon now has +1 movement, and all more advanced naval units also get +1 movement. The later units (from Steel Warship or Destroyer as a start) may need a movement boost, but I'm not decided upon the idea and currently see no need for it. Railroads may have unlimited movement, and the time-turn paradigm may be totally invalid, but illogical things are never reasonably sufficient grounds for establishing the logic of a change. Now if bureaucrats and theologians could just figure out the wisdom underlying "If your friend jumps off a bridge, would you do it too?", we'd all be So much better off.

The reason for picking Ship of the Line as the start is due to the relative historical mark of when naval technology really began to improve, including many navigational factors which are completely abstracted out of Civ3 (such as knowledge of currents and prevailing winds on the whole, as well as things such as a water-tight bulkhead, the improved use of rivets, improved sail usage, etc). That and Ironclad was just too slow for my tastes, and I didn't want it the same speed as Ship of the Line, AND it marks the inception of the Railroad (with their rediculous unlimited movement) - and I figure that should count for something on the high seas.

Besides, it works from a gameplay perspective.

-Pollution-producing Buildings: That's it, I've HAD IT! Maybe I've been reading too much of numberwatch.co.uk, junkscience.com, or co2science.org, or maybe I've just become crotchety and over-sensitive over the murder of Reason, Logic, and all that is right with Science, but I can't stand it anymore. No more will I allow this rediculous crap to pass on "game balance" grounds. No no, good sirs, I will not go quietly into the good night and sit idly by while this affront to good sense is seeped into our poor, poor, unsuspecting, innocent youth.

Legalized mass-murder I can let slip by on account of my testosterone and my skepticism as it regards the actual effect on reality. Rewritting of history I let slip by due to a mix of sloth and assuming, hopefully correctly, that none are too aggregious or are already so prevelant that it just Doesn't Matter. Hell, I'll even put Hitler and Stalin (murders the both) as Leaders on the grounds of historical accuracy and that it's an affront to reality not to include them.

But Global Warming? Are you out of your f*****g mind? (Censored for respect of opinions of so-called profanity, because it's not Subjective and doesn't hurt me to avoid pointless offense.)

I've hadz allz I can standz, and I can't standz no more. Enough!

Henceforth there shall be no Global Warming, so far as I can help it!

But with the great self-restraint of Gameplay Over Accuracy, I have seen fit to decrease pollution (largely by popular demand) rather than illiminate it completely (in reality pollution obviously exists, but doesn't do what the game has it do), so that no building produces more than 1 (25%?) pollution, and all pollution reducers decrease it 1 more than they did before (if that actually has any freakin' effect whatsoever).

Thus I now have modified the script.txt file, included in the next version of the LWC Mod, to change the 2 of the 3 main mentions of Global Warming to "Excessive pollution". The third instance...well, I made a bit of a funny and a nice hard jab on the topic. You can either search the file yourself or pollute so much that the water level rises (if that's possible at all). Maybe it's just me, but I think it's down-right hilarious.

Yeah, it's probably just me. But by-god, it's true!

Oh yeah, and I changed the civilopedia entry on pollution to reflect the changes, which are almost entirely cosmetic.

I'll have to change the individual building entrys later.

-Offshore Platform: Produces 2 unhappyness instead of 0. I'd make Airport produce at least 1 happyness, but I figured it was at least create 1 happyness, so they'd just cancel each other out.

-City Dump: Now produces 1 unhappyness instead of 1. Less trahs strewn in the city has to make SOMEONE happy.

-ISSUE: Do City Dump or Sewer System ACTUALLY alter pollution levels whatsoever? If not I'll just delete them, but I'm begining to wonder if they have any effect at all...

-Anarchy: Now has a 4 military police limit. Helps alleviate the crash bug with mass rioting, and just makes sense to me. After all, there is no form of law or constitution, so why wouldn't the military be capable of keeping people from voicing discontent? Call it Marshal Law.

That should say it all.

In short, all Pollution is now reduced, and I hath ExcerCISED the DEEEMons! ...of Global Warming.

It's handled to reflect my occassionally couth and level-headed nature, as well as giving a good thorough jab to such crap without being fanatical. Then again, I've never heard of a fanatic that truly appreciated the level of their own fanatacism, so I leave this judgement to the reader.

If you have a problem with it I suggest a good thorough critical-evaluation of numberwatch.co.uk, junkscience.com, and (most scientifically without being at all overly-complicated) co2science.org. While you're at it, buy "Sorry, Wrong Number!" by John Brignell, linked on the aforementioned Number Watch (written by the sites author).


If you still cannot cleary see the aggresious abuse of that grand, vestal, and mighty entity that is Reason, and truly of Real Science as a whole, then Get Thee To A Nunnery!; for thou surely are in need of a good habit.

(acyuck, ahyuck)


I'll probably make a simple mod of just this for those who wish to have it, but for now it'll just be a feature of the LWC Mod.

Prepatch I'm releasing this, which is purely non-gameplay altering, which should simply by unzipped into you're game's /Text directory. Script.txt is the main file which gives the changing of Global Warming to something that actually makes sense, but the change to the civilopedia does that too.

Pediaicons.txt was included because it fixes an oversight that caused the Minuteman's civilopedia entry to not be correctly used.


All will be available in the next version, of course, so this is just a quick aesthetic fix because I just couldn't stand it anymore.


One small step for reality.

[Oz314]

Dude,

Great job on this. I've been playing version 5 for about a week now, and I'm at about the end-mid stage of one game (just started cranking out Tanks).

I wanted to throw out a few minor troubles I've had, if only because yuor version is already better than what shipped - I'd love to see it continue to evolve.

1. Cavalry cannot seem to pillage. I haven't tried with other units, I suppose I should before submitting a bug report here. Cavalry ARE allowed to pillage in the normal game, yes?

2. Many-to-all of the worker automation commands do not work for me. I'm talking about things like "Auto, Clear pollution only", and "Auto, Build RR only". As it stands now, when pollution springs up, I have to manually track down a worker or three, tell them to stop what they are doig, send them to the pollution manually, then click to have them clean. Yuck! This slows my turns down from the midgame on.

3. The game now crashes infrequently (as opposed to Never before). I don't suppose there is anything to be done about that, and it's probably not your fault. Result is I make more manual saves now, and I've only "lost" maybe a half hour of gaming time.

4. At current settings, resources are used up MUCH too fast. This screwed me badly TWICE in a short time during one game. I had just started producing Pikemen and such, when *BAM* no more Iron in my whole empire. This forced me into a nasty war of aggression that I had to engage in or be left behind. Humorously enough, I then lost my only Rubber before I even put in the command to build my first unit that needed it! It was like "Technological Advance... you can see Rubber now... *BAM* this Rubber is used up", and I thought "Ugh, a used rubber", but that's a whole 'nother thing.

Anyway, on the whole this is an EXCELLENT mod. Great work, please keep it up!

djm

[Say what?!]

Great Job

Aye I agree, either make resources pop more frequnetly across the map or increase the time it takes to use them up. I don't understand ow my iron gets used up when I'm not producing any iron-req units you know? So wouldn't my scientists say hmm iron, stick a little flag in the ground so we'll remember and then leave it be until I actually need it? I mean if they are going to use it up so quickly and I didn't produce a single unti requiring said resource then where did it go? I didn't export it so there has got to be a huge pile of iron ore laying about somewhere in my territory right? I can't seem to locate a dfepository so I'm thinking it just evaporated into thin air...

oh and BTW I didn't mention it before but AWESOME MOD man. Overall it makes the game a lot better.

And I agree about pollution, way before I ever knew what pollution was I went ahead and built hospitals without the coal resources to build railroads. Well that made it so when pollution hit it took like 6 turns to get a worker to the polluted area. Methinks coal needs to be much more popular b/c if you get into pollution without it you are gonna suffer.

I still think that a civ can develop and refine a resource (bonus, strategetic, or luxury) over time for better production but I don't even know if the game can handle that or if it's possible to edit that in a MOD. Well that's it. Thnks for this great piece of work man. I would be so bored with civ3 without your MOD.

[Plutarck]

Working on ERP6

I'm now working on ERP6, which will be guaranteed to have full compatability with 1.17. However I've heard it already works just fine with the patch.

So just reinstall the mod after you've installed the patch, and it should be totally playable and with all the known additions of the patch.

I'll be taking a look at the patch later to determine if there are any unmentioned changes to the .bic file, but there may not be.


ERP6 will most likely be available around Monday, but it could be released earlier if I don't have to do much to update it for the patch.

[pauli]

well, somebody already made a list of all the unmentioned changes, but i expect you'll want to verify anyway...

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=42330

[pure]

the mod is great so far but every time i get the great libary the game crashes is there something i can do to stop that from happening

[The Harappan]

Congrats on a great mod. Totally changed the game into something worth playing. Keep up the good work.

Couple of points.
I know global warming is still a theory, even with a growing body of evidence, but the sites you quoted are not good examples of the argument. Two of the sites are paid for by heavy industry. I suggest http://www.ucsusa.org/environment/gw.skeptorgs.html and http://www.electric-words.com/junk/milloy/milloy.html to see some history on their work. So please don't reduce the pollution in ver.6 , but let people use the patch if they wish. I do feel that pollution in the game does help to slow up the player in the later game, and can even bring a civ to its knees.

I don't know if this is possible, but maybe excess pollution could be linked to unhappiness in the city (who wants to live besides a factory ?), and only very heavy pollution contaminates squares.

As for city dumps and sewers, they don't reduce pollution, they simply move it away from the cities, so a little gain in happiness seems reasonable, but I feel that there should be no effect on pollution.

I have had no problems running erp5 apart from the occasional crash and stuff that's already on the thread. Again outstanding work.

[pure]

whoops

i got it working ii had to install the patch. the mod is great cant wait to see whats next thanks

[CountZero]

In reguards to global warming, the game does in fact go WAAYYYY to far. If you look at history, the industrial era was probably the most poluted time in history. There was a total disreguard for the enviroment and little to no effort to clean up. If we did not have global warming then, I doubt we will have it any time soon.

Also, with the game played as default, someone could EASILY have global warming before the they even get to the modern era. That is just not historicaly acturate. I sometimes have to have 70 percent of my workforce dedicated to removing pollution when in fact during that time period NO ONE cleaned up pollution and they did not have global warming.

[KoenigMkII]

Re: Working on ERP6

Originally posted by Plutarck
I'm now working on ERP6, which will be guaranteed to have full compatability with 1.17. However I've heard it already works just fine with the patch.

So just reinstall the mod after you've installed the patch, and it should be totally playable and with all the known additions of the patch.

I'll be taking a look at the patch later to determine if there are any unmentioned changes to the .bic file, but there may not be.


ERP6 will most likely be available around Monday, but it could be released earlier if I don't have to do much to update it for the patch.

I have noticed one issue with LWC+ 1.17f

After unistalling Civ III, then reinstalling, then applying 1.17f, then finally the LWC mod I get the following problem.

If I trade for a tech, and as part of the trade I get imediately the tech I was previously researching (say I had 20 turns to go approx)

Then the game moves my current research topic to something different.

The problem is, you cant change the research topic from the science advisors screen, or anywhere else - its locked solid.

I thought it might be helpful to post this so you can check the next version of the LWC mod is immune :-)

[Plutarck]

The Harappan:

First of all, thanks for the compliments and encouragement on the mod.

But now, as to global warming. The technique the sites/you use is typically reffered to as "Poisoning the Wells", which is a variation of the "Ad Hominem" argument.

That's all well and good, but there's just one little problem. They are both Logical Fallacies.

In this case, all the "refuting" comes by attacking the person rather than the argument. But this leaves the argument itself entirely unscathed (in truth, but not perhaps in the perceptions of people who are not aware of the fallaciousness of the argument).


The other problem is that the razor used must cut in all directions to avoid hypocrisy. If I may sum it up with a modified quote, "No one outside of a baby carriage, university, or a judges chambers believes in an unbiased opinion."

In short, scientists have to eat too, and good science isn't any less expensive than junk science...to conduct, at least. In short, all wells must be poisoned if you use this technique, which would leave all "evidence" of Anything in the trash bin- including global warming. Which would leave us exactly where we started in the first place.


All the "payed for by XYZ" leaves us with is being unable to blindly trust the conclusions being made. We must be Skeptical, then, and evaluate the data for ourselves and see if the conclusions can be accepted or rejected.

I am well aware of this, and I have not taken anyone "at their word" in my evaluations.

What I found is that the "evidence" for global warming is not growing. But it's not reducing either, because it's already as close to 0 as it can be.

Take any piece of "evidence" for global warming and identify any and all logical fallacys you can find.

Then re-examine the argument, and see if the conclusions can still be reached by what is left.

If so, we return to the data and look for numbers. Numbers have their own list of fallacys, and the ways to lie with numbers are as many as there are ways to lie with words.

The book "Sorry, Wrong Number!" lists about all the ones I'm aware of (though I would add The Lie of Averages- while mentioned in the book, it was just a small mention). Included is unacceptable risk ratios or confidence levels, "chartmanship", linear extrapolation (based on fallacys regarding the threshold, active region, and saturation), concentration fallacy (kind of a reverse linear extrapolation), dosage fallacy (it's the dose that make the poison), independence fallacy (eg- no matter what you do, the mortality rate will always be 1. you'd be surprised how many people ignore this), Gamblers' fallacy, and (for lack of a better term) Mathematical distance (where labels are confused with actual numbers, such as regarding the lottery someone says "Oh, I was only 3 numbers off"...which is really just as far off as picking 50 and the ball being 12, because they're just labels, not numbers used for measurement).

Once we have done this, we re-evaluate the argument again and see if the conclusion is still acceptable based upon the evidence.

If it still is we then look for "errors of fact"- in other words, places where they were just plain wrong. Stating that CO2 is the most significant greenhouse gas, for instance, is simply wrong.

This is usually based upon our own personal knowledge of facts. For instance one person of a thermodynamic background pointed out that the calculation of what degree the earth would be without an atmosphere/greenhouse effect was flawed- ie, it was just wrong. The earth would be warmer than they said, for reasons I don't pretend to entirely understand.

But from my background I can know as a point of fact that "evidence" based upon computer models of systems which are either ill-understood or "relatively" random cannot be relied upon, and are not to be considered evidence at all. They must be rejected, because "Garbage in, Garbage out". The earth's climate most likely qualifys as "chaotic", which obviously meets the standard of being sufficiently random/unpredictable, and there are so many things we do not understand about How Things Work as regards weather and climate that we cannot model them with any reasonable degree of accuracy.


Now we re-evaluate the argument, and see once again if the conclusions are still supported by the data. If insufficient data is presented so that it cannot be properly evaluated, then it must be thrown out.

I know of absolutely no evidence for global warming that can stand such a rigorous application of reason. And if even a state of clenched fist cannot be reached (borrowing from the Stoic Zeno's "conviction", part of the stoic theory of knowledge), then we must reject the conclusions.


Note: All instances here of "global warming" are in reference to "human global warming". It is largely accepted as fact that the world is getting warmer, for the simple reason that the earth only recently was in an Ice Age! The "Little Ice Age", to be exact.

However, the "widey accepted" begins to disappear around 1940, when the growing trend seems to have halted. What has come after is a different matter entirely, and some areas of the earth appear to have cooled (the average temp is probably about the same as it was in 1940, if that means anything).


And that is what I have done. Global Warming, as a matter of reasonable belief, must be rejected, for it has not met it's rightful burdon of proof. If it really exists, then I am quite sure that sufficient evidence that can stand the rigours of Reason will be forthcoming. Without it, global warming resides on the lowest levels of 'theory'- never to be confused as being on the same level as the theory of evolution, which has stood to reason vastly more effectively.

And on aside, the sites you listed are replete with fallacys of more than just the ad hominem kind. But the "concerned scientists" site disturbed me the most for their article on cars, for what seems to me to be willful and intentional intellectual dishonesty. They intentionally made it sound that the bureaucratically enforced increasing of fuel economy would have no negative effect on consumers- yet they seemed to intentionally fail to mention the key thing that is lost, which is accelleration speed/raw power. Not to mention the increasing reach and growth of government (it's baad, baaad).

That is, the "radical" improvements in fuel economy (apparently in their hate of SUVs they fail to recognize many sports cars have worse gas mileage...whoops!). Not to mention the intectually dishonest display of the Model T comparison, but they willfully ignored the key driving factor behind everything- consumer demand. This leaves me to believe that they are more regulation-happy fans of big bureacratic government than they are scientists. In my book, a scientist that isn't fully honest in his work is nothing but worthless.

But let's move along to more important gameplay related matters...



Thus I have illiminated "global warming" from the game, but the effecst of pollution I have not removed! Now damage will be considered "excessive pollution".

The problem with pollution is that it was simply excessive. Of all the (fixable) complaints I've heard from people about the game, pollution is at least in the top 3. And in this mod, it's in position 1 or 2.

What this caused is that if you build a hospital in a city and have some reasonable amount of railroads there, it would almost be stupid to build a factory there, because it'll be polluting squares in no time - at a time you're probably busy trying to build railroads all over the place.

Even if you could build a factory, you most certainly couldn't build a power plant, because it'd be spewing pollution all over the place! An 18-20 sized city with a factory and power plant, even with city dump and sewer system improvements, will be producing Way more pollution than is good.

Leaving you to have to clean it up, which causes the game to slow down and become more tedious because: you need more workers, and thus have many more units, all of which are moving all over the place to try to keep things tidy (ie, prevent your nice city sites from being irreperably ruined). But not only is none of that historically accurate, but it's not Fun either. (Many of my changes are to decrease the total amount of units, thus decreasing tedium, and so far it seems to be working.)

And it basically causes the player to entirely skip the industrial revolution, because it'd largely end up costing more than it payed (because the main use for all that production is building units, which cost money to support, which you can't really afford because of all those freakin' workers you have to keep around...).

Until you can finally build some when hydro dams and nuclear power plants become available. Talk about historically inaccurate!


I will take up the slack here by (this is still in testing, of course, and I'll probably put out a beta version...) increasing the costs of the production improvements and making them add more unhappyness than they do (most likely).

I'll also tinker with some resource requirements for such improvements, maybe just by adding aluminum as a requirement for "Manufacturing Plant"/"Automated Factory". And maybe Iron for the former.


So industrializing should most certainly cost, but it should also pay.

[KoenigMkII]

Well I don't believe it. Someone else who actually understands the scientific method :-)

Their may be some limited global warming now in 2002, but it IMHO has yet to be explained exactly at a scientific level. I agree about the bad use of computer modelling.

Have you ever noticed how absurd economics is? All those charts and computer models - all basically glorifed guess work!

Can't anyone else see its a chaotic system in which the "laws" of economics are actually changing as the 'system' grows larger and more complex by the day? :-)
-----------------------------------

But I digress. About resources in Civ III, I have doubts about them appearing so early. While I agree about the logic of them appearing earlier [its more realistic in comparision to the real world history] it does IMHO tend to ruin the fun of the surprise!

Especially true for iron, which is important early, but its fun not to know exactly where it will show up on turn one.

O.K. strategic resources are not christmas presents :-) , but I think the original Civ III treatment of them is right in this one respect.

What I think needs changing is to STOP them depleting and moving. This is just totally pointless. O.K. you are missing coal, so you go to war to get it, only to have the newly conquered resource vanish after one turn [even though it was entirely untapped - no road connection] due to "depletion."

So to sum up, go back to the resoucres appearing only after the tech that enables the unit/key activity is researched. But stop them depleting- it just defeats the strategy and turns the game into a lottery. IMHO of course!

[Plutarck]

ERP6 Released

*yawn* I'll handle replying and updating the thread/website later. I'm off to beddy-by, but I wanted to go ahead and post ERP6 before I go!


So here you all go, ERP6! Get it while it's fresh!

Download it, install as usual, then install the addons (like the unit animations, which haven't been changed yet as there's nothing To change).


If you're having problems with the game, this is exactly how I personally do it:

Uninstall Civ3 completely. Delete the game folder itself (I deleted the whole Infogrames folder, but deleting just the Civilization III folder is just as good). Rebooting wouldn't hurt, but I usually don't.

Install Civ3. Install 1.16 patch. Install 1.17 patch. Install LWC. Install LWC Unit Animations and Building Graphics. I reboot because of font conflicts (something weird with the installer, I guess).

Then just play as normal

I haven't had a crash yet, but I'll see how everyone else fares.


Btw, I see no reason for LWC not to be totally compatible with the Mac version, so if you're on a Mac there's no reason you can't use LWC just like everyone else


Enjoy, and let me know what you think of all the changes!

[GodKing]

Thank You!!!!!!!

Can't wait to get off work, go home and waste another weekend in front of the computer....

Great job. Keep up the good work.