MOD: The BALANCER

[ElitePersian]

WesW,
are you gonna be making mods for civ3? or are you still into ctp2?
your mods for ctp2 were excellent and it would be great if you made mods for civ3 since you are so experienced and dedicated.

[monkspider]

Yeah, I'm not even sure how to add icons to the build queue. I would love to do so for some of the new wonders and such that we created.

[Elucidus]

I am working on that Monkspider. I am afraid, though, that it is like the city view screen. But I haven't done that much with it yet. I'll let you know what I find out.

[mavmcleod]

Visual range

Some suggestions:

I would like to have some ability to extend the visual range, either by buildings like Radar Stations in cities or as a terrain improvement like the fortress (I wonder how the Brits would have stopped us without the radar stations in WWII).

I can't understand why a gallon has the same range of view (in fact perhaps 50 km) as a modern battleship (realy about 300 km).

Perhaps we could get some kind of radar unit (visual range about 5 squares) and a radar plane like the E3-Sentry or the Hawkeye (visual range about 8 and 6 squares).

A small wonder like "Spy Satellite Command Center" should reveal all the map incl. units expt. subs.

Thanks for reading...

Maverick

[Cyanide]

Mr. 469,

Well, as you probably know by now, you and I aren't the only ones having this problem. I was a fool when I initially posted the problem, and didn't describe the situation too well. The specifics of my game are; I'm playing the Americans, the Industrial age has just begun, and none of the units that use population, i.e. workers and the colonist, appear in either the build queue or on ships. That's not to say they aren't there - just there small, representative icons disappear.

Question: has the probability for resources, specifically strategic resources, been fooled with in this mod? 'Cause it sure seems like I've got access to alot of them (except oil and uranium, of course).

[Elucidus]

No sir,

We have not messed with the resource distribution, what so ever.

[mavmcleod]

Airlift capability and pillaging

Some further suggestions:

IMHO every military land unit should be airliftable.

Why shouldn't a leader, a settler, a scout, a worker or a colonist be able to board a plane?

I even gave airlift capability to all of the artillery units, to cruise missiles, tactical nukes and armys.
After all, it's not that hard to load some Tomahawks into a C-17, is it?

OTOS, should tanks, mech. infantery and radar artillery realy be airliftable? Even a C-17 can load only 2 Abrahams a time. That's why all the hard stuff had to be delivered to Audi Sarabia by ship.

I also gave the pillage ability to all land units except settlers, 'cause it's not that hard to burn a field of crops or to blow-up a road/bridge.

Most of the changes I did from a logical p-o-v and have to test them, but I do not see why this should un-"balance" the mod.

Thanks for reading...

Maverick

[Elucidus]

We need to find out how the computer handles those changes first. If you can determine that, that would be great.

[Yaga]

Balancing the Space Race

Ahoy, all,

'Nother game, 'nother concern: Is the Space Race too easy, and more importantly, does it make the endgame go too quickly?

Playing as those funky Iroquois, I managed to survive on Regent level until the late 1800's despite having only 8 cities on a standard sized map, with the Americans and Aztecs breathing down my neck from the get-go.

Diplomatically and culturally I was a contender, and both the Aztecs and the Yanks lost a city to me from culture. Also, I took the opportunity of a world-war against the Aztecs to grab another of their cities with the Leonardo's Wonder when the Persians and Babylonians were mopping them up.

Then, amazingly, almost 40-50 turns passed with no war. The Brits pulled to the fore, and I kept nice with them and bought off some of thier techs.

Then the space race began. Then it ended. 17 turns in total, from my building the Apollo Program to launching my colonization ship. The other Civs were all a turn or two behind, so it was definitely a race. Even placed a dozen tac nukes in nuc subs off the coast of England, along with a small invasion force, just incase I needed to, uh, 'inspect' the Brit's space ship. But it was 1888 and the only thing anyone had researched was directly towards the space race.

I'm not overly concerned about the 19th century space ships. It was a fairly even race, though two or three of the six remaining Civs were obviously the finalists.

SoI'm wondering if the distribution of Space Ship components is presently unbalanced? Should some of them be in Robotics? (SS Cockpit was the first that came to mind, since the mission is largely computer controlled) Any in miniturization? Genetics not being required to put people into stasis for a few dozen years? Hrm...

Presently, I'm concerned in that the various pieces are largely clumped into Synthetic Fibers and Space Flight. Wondering if others have any thoughts, and if you, too, feel there's room for some balancing...

Yaga

[Yaga]

Pillaging!

Good points, Maverick. My thoughts on the subject...

I think I disagree with allowing too many units have the ability to pillage terrain. Destroying via pillaging is harder than it sounds, especially in the modern age. Most non-military units aren't going to have access to the tools, knowledge and explosives necessary to throughly blow them up.

In pre-industrial societies, you could send un-armed people into a hostile environment to destory the roads and irrigation of the people who live and work that land, just don't expect angry mobs with pitch forks and woodaxes to let them get away with it

Personally, I'd like to see pillageing being restricted to anything with an offensive cabaility of 1 or higher. (not including bombardment) AI usasage aside, it seems more 'realistic' to me. Still, I'll defer to Monk and Elu; just putting in my 2 pfennig.

Totally agree with the airlifting, and that there needs to be a balance. At the same time, Modern Armor is pretty much the be-all-end-all of Modern Era ground offense; any restriction in airlifting is going to have to be balanced, in my mind, with either increased water transport capabilities (either storage or movement) and with the AI's ability to understand that they cannot airlift the units.

Okay, I've been way too chatty this morning already, and I've still another post to go.

Take care,
Yaga

[Yaga]

Reichstag

...Shoot, can't remember if I'd asked this, so I'll be brief:

Does building the Reichstag have any of the requirements of having a leader appear, and/or having an army be victorious in combat? I havn't had the opportunity to try it out myself, but I'm curious if these requirements are coded into the wonder. As it gives a Military College in every city, I was wondering...

Collary stupid question: Do the effects of a gov't specific wonder properly expire when the gov't changes, then re-appear when the gov't changes back?

Thanks,
Yaga

[GenTomGun]

Yaga

I agree w/you and the quickness of the space race.....right now in my current game we are in the late 1800 almost 1900 and 3 ai civs and myself are def racing to build it. I too believe some tweaking of the spaceship componets are needed.
Your 2nd point about eh reichstag...i have built the reichstag and hopefully before one of the ai civs launches the spaceship i can take my one army i have now..and win a victory to see if it work properly...hopefully i can do that tonite and report back................matter of fact i will just upload my save game file and the rest of you guys whoever wants to can try it and see if they can test the abilities of the reichstag...................

[Yaga]

Minor...

Just realized that Expansionist Civs start out with a Settler, and not a Colonist. Any thoughts on keeping this, or changing it?

[Cian McGuire]

No, it's a colonist...

Also, something I noticed today- workers don't seem to subtract a point of pop from expansionist civs (at least for the Russians), perhaps this tie has something to do with why the pics of them don't show up...

[Elucidus]

Yaga, Maverick,

A lot of good points, however, before we implement anything we want to ensure that it does not give the player an unfair advantage (read: AI can/will not use the change). I thought it would be cool and more realistic myself, but then thought, well if the AI can't use it, what's the point.

NOTE: I haven't tested it myself.

Also Yaga,

The Reichstag's only requirement is that you have a Fascist government. The effects of government specific wonders do not expire when you change governments. Although I would love to implement that.

I haven't seen the space-race in any of my games yet...I think moving some SpaceShip components around on the tech tree would help, but that will be for a later version maybe 1.6 as we have a lot of updating and testing to do on 1.5 as it is. Sorry.


Cian,

I've never seen that. Are you the Russians? Also what level are you playing on?