MOD: korn's Blitz Mod

[Harlan]

Hi,
Korn, you said you wanted help with some graphics, so here they are. Check out this webpage:

http://apolyton.net/haven/webshots4.html

In some cases I came up with several options to choose from.

Some thoughts.

It seems to me that "Classless Society" isn't a good improvement. First off, it doesn't sound remotely like a building - I like my improvements to be solid objects. Second, classless society wasn't ever achieved under Communism, and certainly wasn't achieved on a city by city basis. So I suggest the "Collective" as a better name. I had trouble finding a good picture for it though - some kind of collectivized agriculture was the idea.

I included Prison cos there's such a need for corruption reducing buildings right now. I think the best such building available in ancient times would be the Prison. Courthouses as such didn't come until much later, and the picture reflects it. The Courthouse building in Civ3 looks way out of place until the 1700s or so.

Also, I noticed something wierd. In the game I'm playing now, its about 1000 BC, and I still am not able to build any Universities, but I can build the Newspaper already. This strikes me as very strange. Universities started popping up all over around 1100 AD, and some were much earlier than that. But Newspapers as such didn't come until much later, and certainly weren't tied to the Printing Press. You needed more than just the technology - you needed a huge literate audience, and that didn't come for several hundred more years. At the very least, a city shouldn't be able to build a Printing Press until it builds a University.

By the way, I have no idea where to go from here with these pictures. They're the right size, but beyond that, I'm sure they need to change file type and so on before they'll work in Civ3. I wonder too, how one makes icons for them.

I would prefer the Hollywood sign at night - perhaps someone can help find that one. It didn't show up at first glance. There's probably a better Prison; I was trying to be a medieval looking one, which is much harder than finding a modern one.

[Glostakarov]

Good Stuff

Some general thoughts:

For my own games I made almost all the improvements give less culture per turn after I won two 'accidental' cultural victories, both in the early 1900s. I was actually going for a Conquer victory the first time, and planning to build the spaceship the second time, but topped 100k culture. The problem was in every conquered city I'd kick out a quick temple and colosseum to keep people happy. So, I lowered the culture per turn of library, university, cathedral, and research lab by one each. To make a cultural victory possible if I wanted it I added a building to each age that generalted a point of culture and did little else. You might want to consider adding them. They were:

Town Square (ancient)
Most ancient villages and towns featured a main square where business was conducted, announcements were made, news was exchanged, and people socialized. +1 culture per turn.

Tavern (middle ages)
Replaces Town Square, +2 culture per turn.

Museum (industrial age)
I was surprised there were no museums in the game, they are a symbol of culture, strengthening and defining a society's sense of cohesion by teaching people who their ancestors were, what drove their passions to create art, and what makes that art distinct from that created by other peoples. +2 culture per turn.

Television Station (modern)
Similar in logic to the Hollywood wonder someone suggested, but this could logically be built in every city. Critics may call television a degredation of culture, but it does have a powerful way of spreading messages of what is the cultural norm. I currently have this one giving +2 culture, but I think I'd like it to also make one unhappy person content and apply a -10% tax income penalty (for people wasting money on the shopping networks and advertisements convincing people to buy things they don't need).

A possible small cultural wonder would be a national museum, such as the British Museum or Le Louvre. You'd need to have museums in 5 cities to build one, and it would crank out a large amount of culture per turn.

Another improvement idea I've been kicking around is a Train Depot. These were hideously important in their day, there are historical accounts of whole towns picking up and moving all their homes and buildings so that they would be along the train tracks. This provided them with a vital link to the outside world, increasing access to luxuries and goods, opening a wider market for the goods the town produced, and providing direct revenue from the railroad itself. A stout trade and luxuries bonus would not be out of line, and the revenue would help support all these other new improvements you've been coming up with.

On the mod itself:
I disagree with having colosseums disappear in favour of other buildings. For me, seeing the picture change to a sporting arena as I got toward the modern era clicked into place that this improvement does belong. I'm not a strong follower of any sports, but a lot of people are, and they tend to be /very/ strong fans of one team or another. This generates the culture bonus, and both the obession with the game and the time spent watching and playing it justifies the happiness bonus.

Still, nice mod! I'm looking forward to playing with more than one government being viable in the late game. A side note to an already longwinded post: when building the Forbidden Palace I choose a city of size 7 when I have 4 luxuries available. I want one that generates about 15 shields total, with 1-2 left after waste, and generates food such that it will be easy to keep it at size 7 (9 if I can get a 5th luxury). I rush buy a courthouse, trigger a Golden Age, and keep the city in celebration, which brings it up to a rate which almost finishes the wonder before the Golden Age ends (this is with default cost for the Forbidden Palace). It's a lot of work to coordinate, but works like a charm.

I find it vastly annoying that democracy corruption is based on city distance. If that were the case nothing should ever get done in California, including the production of computer games. :P The democratic model includes enough decentralization of government functions to prevent distant cities from suffering from lack of immediate access to and supervision by thos in charge, and modern communications and travel methods make those points moot anyhow.

But I'll stop ranting and rambling and post now.

[korn469]

ok its late here, but here are some random thoughts before i goto bed

*the general unit is a must (feudalism -> nationalism), leaders are much too rare, prevents armies (and therefore the military academy) from being built
*the newspaper as it is now is overpowered...i will most likely drop it's +50% to research ability, and leave its anti corruption +2 culture stats
*the industrial age need a science building
*museums are a good idea
*possible alternative names for classless society
-Komsomol
-Politburo
-Central Committee
-Party Congress
-Commune
-Collective
*partisans need changing because the AI can't utilize its bombard ability, thinking about dropping all bombard capabilities and treat all squares like roads, and then change it to 3.3.4 with hidden nationality and same price
*mid industrial era and i have no building left to build, this is a problem!
*AI likes fascism and democracy it is hasn't changed to communism not even to fight a war, need to rebalance governments...most likely change support and police (dem 1/2/3 cost 2 or 3 to support) (fas 3/5/7 2 to support 3 police 4 draft) with a possible Gestapo wonder or small wonder (com 4/6/8 1 to support 6 police 4 draft)
*increase hitpoints and rate of fire for v1.05
*fix civilopedia
*change republic stats slightly
*add in a few new buildings

btw check out this site i think you'll like it

http://www.ukraineart.com/

http://www.ukraineart.com/gallery7.htm

[Harlan]

A couple random thoughts from me as well.

1. I never seem to build Walls. Why should I, when they'll just go obsolete? I recommend boosting them to 100% defense bonus.

2. Tied in with #1, size 6 is much too small for a size limit. I also never build Granaries, cos I don't really need them. Since there doesn't seem to be a way to increase the number of food a city needs to grow one, I'd say increase the change from town to city from 6 to 8. City to metropolis should also be bumped up too. Its silly to have so many cities frozen at 12 for a long time.

3. I also like Glostakarov's improvement ideas, if you need more, except the Tavern, which doesn't sound important enough. Also, having the Mill come around in the Middle Ages to boost production would also be a good one to have.

4. I don't have a strong feeling for a replacement to Classless Society, so long as there's a change!

[OneFootInTheGrave]

you guys never sleep

just for the armies, if you increase the HP in bit steeper order, elite units will be much harder to beat, therefore the likeliness of getting that all important first great leader will increase. Just a thought, if you will have problems with the general unit.

If you can build the general wouldn't it make armies obsolete, (actually it wouldn't) but making him obsolete with the rifleman is kind of strange. Maybe you can just take armies out and replace them with the general?

I really like the prison idea, that would fill up the building queue at the beginning, and give us the all important corruption decrease.

For industrial ages, there could be an improvement called corporation, with 40% increase in gold for the city. (like the corporate tax at 40% ). And it could serve as another corruption decrease building if necessary.

On the last note I am for turning classless society into Politburo.

Actually... on Glostarkov's ideas. They are brilliant and this is a concept where you have to make a long term commitment to culture victory (not just an alternative, but actually making it a proper strategy). Having buildings for that purpose only is a good way to go and decreasing the default culutre buildings culture contiributions. The effect would be that you have to spend time and resourcens now on culture improvements only, and on defense I guess, that would make it a good play alternative and quite a distinct one to the domination victory (or war) in your mod. It would make a bigger difference between military oriented empires and the culturally oriented ones.

[francoImpaler]

Tried several versions of the mod including the last one. It crashed on me every time late in the game (1950+).

Also longbow, swordsman, cavalry etc. would never upgrade to rifleman. That was one of the mods I liked best.

I will keep watching the thread and if I can figure out what the problem is I'll try it again.

[TechWins]

Tried several versions of the mod including the last one. It crashed on me every time late in the game (1950+).

Why don't you go ahead and post the error?

Also longbow, swordsman, cavalry etc. would never upgrade to rifleman. That was one of the mods I liked best.

I'm glad none of those units upgrade to riflemen, because in certain ways cavalry is better than riflemen and longbowmen and swordsmen are too 'ancient' to upgrade to riflemen.

the newspaper as it is now is overpowered...i will most likely drop it's +50% to research ability, and leave its anti corruption +2 culture stats

The problem with this is that the Printing Press sprung education into a major increase. Now, IMO, the Newspaper doesn't really reprsenet the outburst in education. Instead I propose that the improvement that falls under Printing Press should be called "Printed Works" (as in pieces of information that are printed). It would have the research ability and produce 1-2 culture per turn. This is not to say that the Newspaper shouldn't be a improvement at all, though, it's just that it should not come under Printing Press.

I really like Glostakarov's idea of having specific culture improvements and lowering the culture output of already culturally producing improvements that also have another function. This will add a lot more diversity to the game.

Adding more city names to this mod would be a very nice addition. You should think about using Sevorak's 'More City Names' mod as a guide to getting more city names (of course if Sevorak would comply with that).

I, also, like your idea for the General. Except that I think the General should become available at Warrior Code and never become obsolete. Actually to elaborate on that idea you should have the Gladiator (optional name for General) become availabe at Warrior Code and become obsolete at Nationalsim, then have the General become availabe at Nationalsim and never become obsolete. The Gladiator could create an army, cost 80 (remember production levels are low at this time), cost 1 pop (balances things out), no ZOC, and has stats of 0/0/1. The General could create an army, cost 160 (productions levels are higher), cost 0 pop (again balances things out), has ZOC, and has stats of 1/1/3. Now the General may not seem like much of an improvement over the Gladiator, but in fact it is; the General will not ever be captured (can be killed, though) and the Gladiator can be captured (not killed, though) and also the General doesn't cost any pop. Of course this idea is just right off the top of my head and will need a lot of playtesting first.

I hope you continue to come up with gov-specific improvements ideas.

[Glostakarov]

More buildings!

I've also run into the problem of running out of buildings, even in some corruption-heavy cities, so I'll suggest another.

Steel Mill (prereq Steel)
Increases production 50%. This will probably require you to increase the shield costs of industrial and modern buildings, but it makes sense and makes the Advance useful for more than getting to other advances. Tack on a citizen made unhappy too, these were sweatshops, like the factories of the time.

I like the idea of the Mill for a medieval improvement, though it will also probably require the shield costs to be increased. Personally I think the shield costs are all a bit low in the unmodified version. In my third game when I realized my cavalry wouldn't upgrade, I turned every city that was done with all its buildings over to tank production, and churned out an army of 100 units in 6 turns. That's obscene, and I didn't even have power plants yet (I wasn't building coal plants because I had Hoover Dam in production). I was still getting advances every 4 turns and 250 gold per turn at the same time I built the army. Admittedly I also had 80+ cities, but almost half were paralyzed from corruption.

Can research costs be increased for the industrial and modern advances? I haven't looked at it yet but that would balance the research increase for printing press.

Oh, also, on ships. The last sail-driven ships were actually pretty fast, much faster than the early steam driven vessels. A fully-rigged ship-of-the-line could do 25-30 knots, which is as good as modern aircraft carriers. The early ironclads, by contrast, were dead slow. The first steam engines on ships were no match for the weight of armour plating. These vessels had sails to get them to the fight, and ran on steam from there, and they still moved like a dead goat.

Ok, last thing for this post. I'd consider building airports if they had some use other than producing veteran air units and being a link in the trade chain. So far I have almost no use for air units and have run into very few situations where I can't connect my cities by other means. And anyhow, shouldn't it be an Air Base or Airforce Base to produce veteran air units? An airport is not a military installation in most places.

Cheers.

[Harlan]

Some thoughts.

I am very down on the General idea. Reason why is because leaders can rush wonders, as well as be for Armies. So if a General costs 150 to make, and a wonder costs 300, I'd just make the General. Not to mention, this allows a clever player to stockpile wonders, allowing one to finish a wonder the first turn its available. So even if the General cost the same as the wonder, the General would still be a better deal, for the stockpiling factor.

I'd file this into the "stuff broken that Firaxis has to fix" box. The rush and army functions should be separate choices in the editor. In the meantime, make the wonder that lowers the odds of getting a leader come cheap and early, so everyone can get it.

I'd also worry about having too many buildings. Many nice suggestions here, but they can't all be implemented - don't go overboard. I've also run into the no useful buildings left to build problem (though part of that is cos some buildings, like Wall and Granary as I mentioned before, are not worth the cost of building). Speaking of building costs, has anyone done a cost/benefit analysis to determine how productive a city should be before you should build a particular building? For instance, given the initial cost plus per turn cost, some buildings shouldn't be built in highly corrupt cities, but just how corrupt is too much?

That said, I've mentioned elsewhere that the veteran producing status of Airports and Ports should be separated from the economic benefits. This forces the player to think military or economic, instead of having the cake and eating it too. Glad to see Glostakarov also has this idea at least as far as Airports go.

I also second the thought that modern things need to get more expensive, as well as more useful. This should make up for an increase in productivity. Civs that have all the advances (as most civs do - no one ever falls too far behind in Civ3) but lack the infrastructure will start to feel the heat in the Industrial Age and beyond.

Korn,
Do you need any more improvement graphics, and which ones will you be using for the ones in the game already? How does one make icons for these things?

[korn469]

lots of good points where to start first?

francoImpaler

when the game crahed what exactly happened? was it a hang up without the game closing down or was it an illegal operation or was it something else?

did rename the infantry.ini to partisan.ini in the partisan unit folder you created right?
did u download v1.04b with the fascist name update?

if you all of that, then a short description of what caused the crashed along with a savegame would be great!

additionally as long as you have your units in a city with a barracks the units DO upgrade,
all infantry units eventually goto riflemen, and all horse units eventually goto tanks, i know for a fact that warriors will upgrade to riflemen for a cost of 100 gold (that might be too low but i can't change the upgrade cost modifier)

Harlan

I'd file this into the "stuff broken that Firaxis has to fix" box. The rush and army functions should be separate choices in the editor.

they are, right now in the editor, under units is a category called Special Actions, right below Airdrop is two boxes one is Build Army, the other is Finish Improvement, so all generals could do is build armies, leaders have both boxes marked, but i certainly wasn't planning on allowing generals to finish improvements

also harlan i have no idea of how to make a .pcx file yet, graphics certainly are important, but gameplay is my first consideration, and i haven't even came close to making all of the gameplay changes i want to, so unless i can find a graphics helper, they will come later

TechWins and OneFootInTheGrave

more about the general

i want armies to be very important in my mod unlike in normal civ3, that is why i have reduced the cost, and given them blitz, i still like the idea of only being able to build armies in the city with the military academy, but from my testing it appears hardcoded to only appear after you have gotten a win with an army (and have discovered military tradition) so if you follow a fairly peaceful route you might not get a great leader in game, and thereby never be able to build the military academy...i want to give the play a method of getting around this, but not destroy the imporance of a military academy by allowing armies (through generals) to be built in every city

also the pentagon is hardcoded not to appear until you have three or four armies in the field (i don't remember which it is right off the top of my head) so i don't want to have hundreds of armies running around in the ancient era, but i don't want to make it basically impossible for anything but total warmonger to ever get a chance of building the military academy, so that is my thoughts behind it

Glostakarov

instead of the name town square, how about the Forum or something to that effect?

Oh, also, on ships. The last sail-driven ships were actually pretty fast, much faster than the early steam driven vessels. A fully-rigged ship-of-the-line could do 25-30 knots, which is as good as modern aircraft carriers. The early ironclads, by contrast, were dead slow. The first steam engines on ships were no match for the weight of armour plating.

well here is my view on units, i think that all units are a fairly large group of units (larger than a company smaller than a division) that represent a span of units, so for example an infantry unit to me covers from about the late 1890's up to the mid 1960's, with a little overlap with both the rifleman and mechanized infantry, and that units are an overall average of all units in their category both from the begining to the end, and that all actions are on the operational level spanning a long period of sustained operations...so although humans as a species might not move any faster today, foot soldiers will operate much more efficiently just because of modern combat boots and MREs (meal ready to eat aka modern rations) much less communications advances, GPS systems, night vision etc...so a comparison of the best sailing warships to the earliest ironclads isn't exactly what i was thinking of when assigning stats

ok but general ideas i've picked up from all of the replies

*more seperation between military and trade buildings
*lessen culture of all buildings
*balance that by adding in culture only buildings
*give each era a broaden range of buildings
*more government specific buildings and wonders

because of all of the building discussion i think i am going to look at them a little more in depth and then move from their

[Don Homer]

Wow, looks great, I only have one gripe with it: you should reduce the ship movement. Especially for those of us using Satya's world map with its smaller oceans, this will allow a pacific crossing in one or two turns.

[Glostakarov]

Re: lots of good points where to start first?

Originally posted by korn469
Glostakarov

instead of the name town square, how about the Forum or something to that effect?

Works for me.

Originally posted by korn469
well here is my view on units, i think that all units are a fairly large group of units (larger than a company smaller than a division) that represent a span of units, so for example an infantry unit to me covers from about the late 1890's up to the mid 1960's, with a little overlap with both the rifleman and mechanized infantry, and that units are an overall average of all units in their category both from the begining to the end, and that all actions are on the operational level spanning a long period of sustained operations...so although humans as a species might not move any faster today, foot soldiers will operate much more efficiently just because of modern combat boots and MREs (meal ready to eat aka modern rations) much less communications advances, GPS systems, night vision etc...so a comparison of the best sailing warships to the earliest ironclads isn't exactly what i was thinking of when assigning stats

ok but general ideas i've picked up from all of the replies

*more seperation between military and trade buildings
*lessen culture of all buildings
*balance that by adding in culture only buildings
*give each era a broaden range of buildings
*more government specific buildings and wonders

because of all of the building discussion i think i am going to look at them a little more in depth and then move from their

Fair enough, and good summary. Something that occurred to me while trying to make distant cities productive, it would probably be appropriate for temples to reduce corruption in the ancient and medieval ages (at least). Of course, the church wasn't always free of waste/corruption itself, but I'd say overall it had a positive affect, especially when a much higher percentage of the population had strong religous beliefs. I can't imagine the building could be made to just lose that one ability at a certain tech though, and a third religious building might be going overboard, so just ignore me.

[Glostakarov]

Hey, I'm a Chieftain!

After almost two years of lurking with a rare post every so often.

[korn469]

Something that occurred to me while trying to make distant cities productive, it would probably be appropriate for temples to reduce corruption in the ancient and medieval ages (at least). Of course, the church wasn't always free of waste/corruption itself, but I'd say overall it had a positive affect, especially when a much higher percentage of the population had strong religous beliefs. I can't imagine the building could be made to just lose that one ability at a certain tech though, and a third religious building might be going overboard, so just ignore me.

Glostakarov

no you are right about the limited nature of the editor, and it would be quite impossible to implement what you are suggesting by changing the building stats alone, however i think i have something that might be close to what you are thinking

how about another early form of government...an alternative to Despotism probably or something competitive with monarchy and republic, call it feudalism (i am thinking of the decentralized state of europe after the fall of the roman empire) or confederation

i am thinking of about the same stats as despotism except use communal and take away the tile penalty but it can't rush build
does that sound about like the same thing?

[korn469]

well v1.05 should be out in the next few days (friday if i get to devote some time to it)

i made a post in the strategy section about building found here

but looking at the buildings here are some more specific thoughts i've had

*will add the forum to the ancient age
*middle ages needs more buildings, most likely besides the news paper is the mill, possibly others
*most likely add a trade (stock market?), a research (anyone have any ideas for a name?), and a culture building (museum) to the industrial era
*possible culture building for the modern era

buildings stats (especially cost/upkeep) will most likely need tweaking but that might wait for v1.06

well i will try to work on v1.05 and not post here again till i have it done