MOD: korn's Blitz Mod

[OneFootInTheGrave]

I apologise for my ignorance but I think I am using the beta6 file and triteme or galley better to say has 50 movement points... I actually like it and that could be some fast mod but I am not sure if it is as you intended.

and armies at the beginning can only load two troops. Is that correct or am I missing something?

[lockstep]

Originally posted by korn469
here is what happened, there was a3 unit full movement (3) full hitpoint cav army beside three riflemen, the cav army attacked using one movement point, the first unit in the army had to break off but the attack continued, however that one unit breaking off cost the army another movement point, then the second cav unit in the army attacked and killed the first rifleman, then the cav army still had the option of attacking because the army conferred blitz on it

I did some further testing with my savegame.

• Parked the cav army to the north of San Francisco, declared war and attacked the city on the next turn. Killed a rifleman with my first attack, then retreated automatically because the city was defended by a second unit. Had one movement point left, attacked the second unit (a pikeman), killed him. A cavalry turns out to be the third unit in the city. End turn.
• Attacked cavalry with cav army, destroyed it, took San Francisco and razed it. No retreat, therefore two movement points left. Two riflemen appear on the mountain to the northwest, army attacks, kills one of them, retreats automatically, no movement left. End turn.
• Second rifleman disappears to the northwest. My army follows him. End turn.
• Army has just 5 hitpoints left, rifleman (conscript) has 4. (We're in the blitz mod after all. ) Army attacks, loses 2 hitpoints. First cav unit in army has to break off. Army continues attacking, kills rifleman, occupies rifleman's square and still has 2 movement points left.

Conclusion: Breaking off an attack doesn't cost movement points. Only retreat does, and an army will retreat when it has killed a unit and the square is occupied by at least a second unit.

General conclusion: An army of 3 MP-units should almost always be able to attack twice a turn (that is, if the army has blitz) and on special occasions (a chain of weak defending units) three times a turn. Armies may be useful after all.

(Savegame is enclosed. Attack the rifleman to the northwest.)

[korn469]

I apologise for my ignorance but I think I am using the beta6 file and triteme or galley better to say has 50 movement points... I actually like it and that could be some fast mod but I am not sure if it is as you intended.

and armies at the beginning can only load two troops. Is that correct or am I missing something?

if your galley does have 50 movement then that means i forgot to change one of the testing values, i'll post v1.07 in a few days

also armies only loading 2 at the begining is correct

then the following wonders add +1 to army size

military academy
pentagon
battlefield medicine

lockstep

very interesting testing results, so if there were three units all in different squares an army could attack each one in the same turn(if they were weak enough); however if they were all in the same square it could only attack two, interesting

anyways if you are playing with beta6 does the AI build armies? and if it builds armies does it build enough of them?

[lockstep]

Originally posted by korn469
also armies only loading 2 at the begining is correct

then the following wonders add +1 to army size

military academy
pentagon
battlefield medicine

This is a question that someone already asked at Civfanatics ... If you add a modern unit to an army composed of ancient units, or load a mixture of offensive and defensive units onto an army, how is the army's A/D rating calculated? Minimum (as with movement points), average or maximum? Could make a hell of a difference regarding the army's actual usefulness ...

anyways if you are playing with beta6 does the AI build armies? and if it builds armies does it build enough of them?

I didn't play with beta6 until now because real life got in the way (to be precise, another hobby of mine that deals with locksteps ). I'm about to start my first beta6 test game right now, though.

[korn469]

lockstep

If you add a modern unit to an army composed of ancient units, or load a mixture of offensive and defensive units onto an army, how is the army's A/D rating calculated? Minimum (as with movement points), average or maximum? Could make a hell of a difference regarding the army's actual usefulness

ok lets say we have a three unit army

it have two modern armor and a cavalry unit in it
the units in the army attack one at a time, so the first attack will be carried out by the strongest modern armor unit, so if we had a vet and a regular modern armor the vet will attack first, and it will attack just like a normal modern armor unit except when it gets down to one hit point, then at that time it will break off and the next most powerful unit will fight at its normal strength, and so on, so if you put a modern armor unit in a cav army, it would fight with modern armor strength but it would move at the slower speed of cavalry

to be precise, another hobby of mine that deals with locksteps

just curious what would that be?
a marching band? a paramilitary organization? a jogging club???
hehe i have no clue

[lockstep]

It's dancing. Actually 'locksteps' are part of a dance called Quickstep.

Regarding A/D stats of armies ... your assumption seems plausible, but is there a way to test it?

[TechWins]

Ok, I intended to write this last night, but my friends came by so I left. The problem is that when I left I was almost finished writing the post, but instead of posting it, I turned off my computer. So I'll rewrite the post again, but I'm not sure if it'll be quite as long as the original.

When I play with the Pyramids and Oblelisk the way you have them implemented it always seems to create an unfair advantage to whoever creates the Pyramids. Once I changed the Oblelisk to not have the requirement of the Pyramids to be built in order to build the Oblelisk and gave the Oblelisk a lower cost, however, I kept the rest pretty much the same. Basically this allowed for everybody to build the Oblelisk, but if you built the Pyramids you would automatically get one. I do see a problem with this, though, there will be two "culture only" buildings to build early in the game, but I have thought of a slightly better way, IMHO, to implement the Oblelisk and Pyramids. . .

Make the Obelisk have the requirement of the Pyramids to be built in order to build the Oblelisk and make the cost of the Oblelisk 1 or 2. Yes, this is pretty much the same situation as before but there is a catch. Make the Pyramids a small wonder that is fairly cheap for the time; that way everybody could build the Pyramids and Oblelisk. If you don't feel that the capabilities of building the Oblelisk is enough of an incentive to build the Pyramids, then also make Pyramdis reduce corruption on top of that.

Now the other day I had some time to play Civ3, while I was watching the horrid playoff games on Sunday, and I did a test to see the productions of the AI. I was playing with Beta 6, the year was 400AD, and I was only testing the cities of the Japanese and English, just to let you know.

Japan - prefers to build: off land units
naval units
happiness

England - prefers to build: naval units
wealth
trade
culture

English cities

name*size*resources*built improvs.*producing*garrisoned units

London*2*2 wine*palace*settler*3 units
York*5*2 wine*none*settler*1 units
Nottingham*4*2 wine*spearman*1 unit
Hastings*1*zero*galley*1 unit
Canterbury*4*zero*zero*forum*1 unit
Coventry*2*zero*zero*settler*1 unit
Warwick*2*zero*zero*worker*2 units
Newcastle*1*zero*zero*warrior*0 units
Oxford*1*zero*zero*worker*1 unit

Japanese cities

[same categorizing as before]

Kyoto*4*1 horse, 4 wine*palace*archer*2 units
Osaku*6*1 horse, 4 wine*temple*settler*2 units
Tokyo*3*1 horse, 4 wine*temple*settler*4 units
Edo*4*zero*temple*archer*2 units
Sutsuma*7*1 horse*temple*oracle*1 unit
Kagoshima*6*1 horse*temple*horsemen*3 units
Nara*2*zero*temple*spearman*2 units
Nagoya*6*1 horse, 4 wine*temple*Forbidden Palace*2 units
Izumo*4*zero*zero*temple*2 units
Nagasaki*2*1 horse, 4 wine*temple*spearman*1 unit
Yokoshuma*3*zero*temple*spearman*1 unit
Shimonoseki*4*1 horse, 4 wine*temple*spearman*1 unit
Matsuyama*2*zero*zero*galley*2 units
Sapporo*1*zero*zero*temple*1 unit
Hakodate*2*zero*zero*temple*2 units
Ise*2*zero*zero*temple*1 units
Toyama*2*zero*zero*spearman*1 unit
Fukushima*1*zero*zero*worker*1 unit

I should note that a few cities for both civs had galleys as a garrisoned unit.

Now what does all this info (or you may think, pointless numbers) have to do with anything? Well, I think there is a slight trend of each civ following it's preferred items to build. Both civs are following the trait of preferring naval units, and England is building a culture buidling. Not to mention that Japan follows their preferation of happiness with almost all of their cities either building a temple or already had built a temple. Again, what am I getting at? Both civs are fairly weak, as you can tell, by the standards of a human, because of what each civ is building. Instead of developing their cities more, they decide to slightly follow their preferences and mainly build settlers, units, or workers. So even if they are following their preferences just a bit, I think some tweaking can be done to the way the AI operates a city. IMO, most, if not all, AI cities are very undeveloped throughout the game, so to prevent this I think all civs should prefer to build the following: growth, production, happiness, science, and culture and absolutely no civ should prefer to build settlers. Thist will most likely cause the AI to stop building so many useless cities and more infastructure within their cities. What do you think of this idea? It might need some further testing, but I think it has a chance of being succesful.

Since I took off the road bonus for forest, jungle, mountains, and tundra it seems a lot harder to get gold, yet, not completely difficult. To compensate for the lack of a road bonus in mountains I gave it a 3 shield mining bonus instead of the original 2. I know I've said this many times, but I honestly think that you should consider adding this to your mod, else, I'll have to make these changes on every new version.

The new settler system is a great improvement, however, some civs seem to suffer a lot from this at first but eventually catch up. Although, this may just seem this way because being an Expansionist/Industrious (America) civ makes it a lot easier to overcome the settler system, but I think that this is good because the Expansionist trait could use a boost. There's nothing like gaining a free settler from a goodie hut now.

I'm glad you decided to tone down the stats of the units closer to their original stats, because it seemed as if there wasn't much "randomness" between the units anymore. Before the battle between two units you can usually figure out who is going to win.

This is just an idea that I didn't give much thought to, but what about giving Privateers a bombardment power of 1? This might be kinda cool being able to bombardment another ship/city without actually having to attack. It would give you a better chance of doing damage with a Privateer.

Govs. seem to still be somewhat unbalanced! Too many civs prefer Confederation over Despotims and the Republic over Monarchy. I'd give you some suggestions on how to do this, but I'm getting seriously tired of typing and discussing Civ3.

BtW, why are you going to release v1.07 before you even release the finished version of v1.06, so far all we've seen of v1.06 are beta versions.

Now do you see why I was so pissed that I lost this post?

[korn469]

TechWins

very insightful post! i'm sorry you lost the longer version of it last night

i don't have time to respond to it in the length it deserves but here is the short list

*your idea sounds great for the pyramids, so how does this sound to you, a 200 shield great wonder that gives like +3 or +4 culture per turn and then enables building +1 culture obelisks for 10 shields in all cities?

*your ideas on AI sounds really good, and your right, a bad build order will get an AI killed...so maybe we could divide the AIs into three groups, low agression builders (based on civ specific traits), medium agression hybrids (same criteria), and then high or max agression war mongers and optimize a build order for all three groups, but i'm glad you came across that insight, i think it will allow upgrading the AI

*as you have noticed i haven't mention governments or terrain much...the reason for this is they will need proper balancing and i'm trying to nail down each area before i move on, i think we're getting close with units, buildings, wonders, and other general settings

*i meant beta7, not 1.07

[TechWins]

*your idea sounds great for the pyramids, so how does this sound to you, a 200 shield great wonder that gives like +3 or +4 culture per turn and then enables building +1 culture obelisks for 10 shields in all cities?

Yeah, that sounds good to me; I didn't even think of the culture value of Pyramids when considering, so the option for decreasing corruption isn't really needed with Pyramids having a fairly high culture value on top of the Obelisk building possibilities.

*your ideas on AI sounds really good, and your right, a bad build order will get an AI killed...so maybe we could divide the AIs into three groups, low agression builders (based on civ specific traits), medium agression hybrids (same criteria), and then high or max agression war mongers and optimize a build order for all three groups, but i'm glad you came across that insight, i think it will allow upgrading the AI

I was thinking of something along those lines with the prefered methods of building, but I didn't mention it, because I simply just wanted to get my point across that the AI builds poorly and does follow their preferences, somewhat. It will probably be best to not act on this topic until v1.06 is finished, though, which is hopefully soon.

*as you have noticed i haven't mention governments or terrain much...the reason for this is they will need proper balancing and i'm trying to nail down each area before i move on, i think we're getting close with units, buildings, wonders, and other general settings

Yeah, I'm glad at the direction you took in creating this mod. Trying to do too much at once, which appears to most other mods, will simply just lead to a lot of problems with the mod, and you won't have a clear view of how to fix them because of the many different changes already inplace. Taking it slowly means that you are getting each essential part of the (more) balanced. However, I'm still going to post ideas even if they aren't to be used for a while.

-Despotism-
3 military police (currently 2)
-Confederation-
Free Units Per: 1/2/3 (currently 2/2/2)
-Monarchy-
3 Draft Limit (currently 2)
4 Military Police (currently 3)
Free Units Per: 3/5/8 (currently 2/4/8)
-Communism-
5 Draft Limit (currently 4)
Free Units Per: 4/6/10 (currently 4/6/8)

With the changes made between Despotism and Confederation I'm not sure if it will make Despotism all that more appealing, so a possible suggestion is to change forced labor for Despotism to paid labor. The reason why I didn't include it in the list of gov suggestion is because it doesn't quite mesh in right with all of the attributes of the other govs, however, gameplay does come before realism. Also, just to let you know, the propaganda modifier vs. anarchy, for Confedration, is 0, and I'm not sure if you did this intentionally or not. Along with these changes a few changes to the tech tree could help out the government model, but I'll post those later.

[lockstep]

I managed to finish a test game with beta 6. Setting was regent, standard map, 8 civs. Ended as no. 3 with a score of about 1000 points (histographic, no bonus), civs no. 1 and 2 had about 1100 resp. 1050 points. Some general observations regarding your mod:

• Tech advance is rather slow. I entered the modern age in the year 2049.
• In the late game, all AI civs ran a Fascist government. I also switched to Fascism when war weariness finally became an issue. With 22 cities (all at the same continent), a Forbidden palace, some courthouses and not a single newspaper or police station, average corruption was about 8%, i.e. not really a 'nuisance'.
• It's rather strange that AI civs are 'unimpressed' with my culture if I have accumulated nearly 200% of their culture points.
• 3 pop point settlers delayed the end of the land-grab phase till the early middle ages, however colonists still appeared too late to be of any use.
• Wheeled settlers weren't much of an issue. (No AI civ bottled in this time.)
• A hitpoint scale of 4/6/9/12 becomes tedious in the end. Especially battles of armies tend to last forever.
• As for your next question ... yes, the AI uses armies after all. I encountered at least two Russian armies, one of them loaded with one rifleman (12/15) and two cossacks (12/8). BTW, the A/D rating of this army was displayed as 12/10.
• Some land units costing pop points didn't make a difference.
• The AI loves to use partisans and will use them to attack your cities and units while technically being at peace with you. While this doesn't pose a threat if you have tanks, it's rather annoying.
• The barbarian swordsman/knight combo is great. If you use warriors to explore, you'll definitely lose them after the third goody hut. The expansionist CSA may become worty after all.
• Weren't the unit stats supposed to be divided by 2 again?

As I have said already, your mod is quite good overall and definitely improves gameplay. I'm not really sure about some of the the changes you made to the general settings, but don't want to dwell on that until you have compiled a complete readme. And yes, governments and terrain really need to be tweaked.

A few comments on TechWins' suggestions:

• I second the idea that Obelisks are only enabled and not granted for free with Pyramids. If you actually have to built them (however cheap), they should show up in the cultural advisor screen, and their culture points should double after 1000 years.
• Regarding the tweaking of 'free units per city' ... maybe I'm a complete fool when it comes to war-mongering, but my units-per-city ratio hardly exceeds 4 and never 6 even in the late game. With most of my cities over size 12, some of the suggested changes (i.e. communism 10 instead of 8 free units) wouldn't cause any effect for my civ. I suggest to primarily tweak the 'costs per unit' instead.

[lockstep]

Originally posted by korn469
after seeing your testing and arguments what i'm thinking is that either a 40 or 50 shield 3 pop settler should be the way to go, because it would slow down expansion across the board to the 28 turn mark but by increase the shield cost the player would still have to choose between expansion or infrastructure

OK, I finally got accustomed to 3 pop settlers in my latest test game. However, to leave the decision between expansion and infrastructure as tough as it is in the original Civ3, I'd suggest to also increase the shield cost of settlers to 60. That way, the player can only afford to build two warriors (one for defense, one for exploration) before a settler without delaying expansion.

BTW, a captured 3 pop settler splits up in three workers, as you may already have guessed.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

I second the three pop 60 shield settler

and onto some other points: as I said earlier Techwins less gold more shields terrains sounds like a sure winner.

I love big HP's and increased security in technology or numbers that comes with it, and other benefits. Can battles be speeded up somehow apart from lowering HP's? If not I am for keeping HP's high.

8% corruption sound about right to me, since in modern times size is not the limiting factor for managing the empires, adn I feel it should make end game quicker and better.

Partisans attacking in peace- I think this must be annoying as well. Perhaps they should onlty appear as in Civ II when you lose a city as a special unit, but I don't know how could that be done.

And for Pyramids, I's prefer it to be a small wander asa Techwins othr idea, again - can this be done, but if not the second change that was proposed by you Korn is better than the current situation.

as a sidenote in favor of small wander - many ancient civilizations have had pyramids and they were cultural (religious) monuments
so from that perspective this would make sense too.

[lockstep]

Originally posted by OneFootInTheGrave
I second the three pop 60 shield settler

Thanks for the support.

I love big HP's and increased security in technology or numbers that comes with it, and other benefits. Can battles be speeded up somehow apart from lowering HP's? If not I am for keeping HP's high.

AFAIK, battle animations can be turned off, but I like to view battles if they don't last too long. Maybe I'll test a 3/5/7/9 hitpoint scale - this way, combat results would still be 'smoothed out', and veteran and elite units would still be significantly more powerful than regular units.

8% corruption sound about right to me, since in modern times size is not the limiting factor for managing the empires, and I feel it should make end game quicker and better.

IMO, 8% would be right for a democracy (with 'minimal' corruption) that had built at least some police stations. For 'nuisance' corruption and only a few courthouses 8% is too low, and combined with the lack of any war weariness this makes for a quite unbalanced government - which probably is the reason why all AI civs switched to Fascism in my latest test game.

And for Pyramids, I's prefer it to be a small wander asa Techwins othr idea, again - can this be done, but if not the second change that was proposed by you Korn is better than the current situation.

Korn wanted the Pyramids to add 'bonus' culture points to existing cultural buildings (similar to the wonders that double the happiness effect of temples/cathedrals), but currently this is also not possible with the editor.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Oh... I didn't realise this was Fascist gov. Yes I was thinking about Democracy in the end game - 8 % corruption is good, but for Fascism it has to be more. Oh at least we are able to bend the corner and go to the side where there is not enough corruption in the game

[lockstep]

Finished some additional test games with beta 6. I'll provide some stats regarding the different governments later, but have to give one info right now: Even after I had built the Military Academy, Battlefield Medicine and the Pentagon (which are all supposed to increase army size in the blitz mod), I was only able to load three units on a single army (while initial army size is two in this mod). Apparently, the 'increases army size' flag for small wonders is valid only one time in Civ3 v1.16.