MOD: korn's Blitz Mod

[korn469]

i have been reading the comments, but i haven't had much time to respond

all i can say is BOO Hiss BOO to the one time only army bonus

also about 60 shield settlers, i think that is too much, 50 shield settlers sound better because with 2 pop settlers the 2 pop stage is at around 50 shields and a settler costs 30, so the left over is about 40%, with my current 40 shield settlers the left over is 50%, while with a 60 shield settler the left over is only 25%, while with a 50 shield settler the left over would be 37.5%

i'll increase corruption some (who would have thought you'd ever hear that? )

i still like the doublelus hitpoints

hehe about tech advance, lockstep you were the one telling me that another science building wasn't worthwhile!
i'm going to drop confederation for now, and add the outrigger, i know all of the changes i'm going to make, but i haven't had the time to make them yet

i have my fingers crossed on tommorrow, i get out of class early

[lockstep]

Originally posted by korn469
hehe about tech advance, lockstep you were the one telling me that another science building wasn't worthwhile!

Yeah ... but wasn't that before you increased the tech rate by 25% for all map sizes?

[Centauri18]

Okay, I'm new here, but... Well, I played Civ3 with the MOD, and, well... when I get to the Industrial Age, the computer tells me that I have learned the secrets of Nationalism, tells me that I can switch to Fascism. But the strange part is that no matter what I did when that window popped up, the game froze up, and left me looking at my desktop. This is extremely frustrating, since it happens no matter what civ I play as, and no matter what I choose to research. I think this MOD still needs a little work.

[TechWins]

i have my fingers crossed on tommorrow, i get out of class early

Tomorrow huh? Well, it's been over a week, and I'm curious as to what changes you have made to beta 7. When do you expect to release beta 7?

[star mouse]

Korn,

Tthis mod looks bloody brilliant, I can't wait to try it out.

I have a few suggestions:

* Pollution:

How about a second building that reduces pollution created by city improvements? (Note: "recycling center" does not remove pollution created by improvements, it only reduces it IIRC.) This building has high maintenance but should reduce pollution to nothing.

Possible problems: Reducing pollution created by improvements may not have any extra effect if applied twice. Needs examination under controlled conditions.

* Great Wonders

Shakespeare's Theater - Free Theater in every city in addition to current effects. Make it cost 200 more.

* Small Wonders

Oil Refinery - 200 to produce, no culture (refineries are UGLY), Refining, Oil in city radius, can explode or meltdown, production bonus slightly lower than Iron Works and pollution is slightly higher

* Culture

New level (if possible to create)

Culture ratio 1:1 = Equivalent to (a better name is definitely needed)
Chance of Successful Propaganda 20%
Initial Resistance Chance 70%
Continued Resistance Chance 60%

[star mouse]

Originally posted by 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.

Perhaps the way of doing this is to have three different army units, depending on the age. No idea how this will work in practice.

Level 1 (upgrades to level 2)
capacity 2 - Horseback Riding

Level 2 (upgrades to level 3)
capacity 3 - Feudalism

Level 3
capacity 5 - Computers

[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.

I know you wrote "great wonder", but I assumed you intended to write "small wonder". If you did mean "great wonder", then I think that you should reconsider my idea for making the Pyramids a small wonder; if you meant "small wonder", then great.

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.

You're probably right in that the free units per city increase won't do much, but a change has to be made to the governments. Possibly making Facism have a cost of 3 per unit might do it, with all of the over changes made as well.

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'.

A few questions regarding that statistic...What was your average corruption when you were a Democracy? What was the size of your empire, in terms of distance between cities and number of cities? If you were a large (or even mid range size) empire, than I agree that an 8% corruption average is far too low for being a Fascism, however, if you had a small civ than 8% is just about right.

Shakespeare's Theater - Free Theater in every city in addition to current effects. Make it cost 200 more.

I don't particulary like having a lot of wonders provide building x in every city; it just makes Civ too linear. A little bit of variation between the wonders is much better, IMO. Yes, I know that the other benefits of the wonder would still be in place.

all i can say is BOO Hiss BOO to the one time only army bonus

Well, Star Mouse gave me an idea as to how you can make the army bonus work. At the beginning of the game you would start off with only being able to have a level 2 army (by level 2 I mean the loading capacity). To have a level 3 army you would have to build small wonder x, to have a level 4 army you would have to build small wonder y, to have a level 5 army you would have to build small wonder z... In order to build small wonder y you would have to build small wonder x first and to build small wonder z you would have to build small wonder y first. This also might make it more appealing to the AI to build these wonders, because this way they would be gaining access to these new units. Well, that idea can be forgotten about because units can't have a building requirement, only a tech requirement. Dammit that really pisses me off! I guess Star Mouse's idea should work, so it's not completely bad.

One more thing, make tanks and mech infantry wheeled units...possibly this will better the combined arms aspect of the game.

[lockstep]

Originally posted by TechWins
A few questions regarding that statistic...What was your average corruption when you were a Democracy? What was the size of your empire, in terms of distance between cities and number of cities? If you were a large (or even mid range size) empire, than I agree that an 8% corruption average is far too low for being a Fascism, however, if you had a small civ than 8% is just about right.

My empire consisted of 22 cities and occupied about 20% of the map's land mass. Placement of palace and Forbidden plalace was nearly optimal - average city distance to either of them was about 6-8 tiles. Corruption as a democracy was nearly the same as in Fascism. In fact, the difference between 'minimal' and 'nuisance' corruption has been negligible so far in my test games.

I´m still trying to come up with a meaningful calculation for corruption. I guess that corruption figures in the city screen are 'raw' ones while the figures for science and taxes include multipliers from science and tax buildings - if this is correct, by compiling these figures corruption is underrated. I'll try to give some stats from another test game (an 'island' empire with 14 cities) tomorrow.

[star mouse]

I have a suggestion - we can make the world sizes better. See my thread here (http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=41687) for more information on how to adjust world sizes.

My settings for world sizes based on the analysis in that thread:

Tiny:
60 x 60, 4 civs, cities = 18, research = 90, min dist = 15.

Small:
80 x 80, 6 civs, cities = 20, research = 100, min dist = 16.

Standard:
100 x 100, 8 civs, cities = 24, research = 120, min dist = 18.

Large:
140 x 140, 12 civs, cities = 32, research = 160, min dist = 20.

Huge:
180 x 180, 16 civs, cities = 40, research = 200, min dist = 24.

This leads to well-spaced civs with fewer corruption-plagued cities. Research settings are much the same as usual but are tweaked so they are more consistent across sizes.

[lockstep]

Just FYI, korn: By assigning small defense values to catapults/cannons etc. (so that they cannot be captured), these units can also act as military police. I don't know if you intended this, but don't like it and suggest to undo the changes.

[sfbaytf]

Excellent mod!! Downloaded it yesterday and played it all day. Your blitz mod changes the game completely - I think for the better. It does take some getting used to though. Seeing the Galleys move more than 3 - 4 squares was quite shocking, but more realistic.

I do have 1 request for you or someone else. Is it possible to modify the game so you can group large numbers of units in a square and move them all at once without forming them into an Army? I find that having to move each unit individually when you don't have a leader or Army can be tedious.

Keep up the great work!

[lockstep]

Originally posted by sfbaytf
Seeing the Galleys move more than 3 - 4 squares was quite shocking, but more realistic.

Ahem ... Korn increased the movement rate of naval units, but AFAIK, there was a bug with the galley's movement (50). I guess the optimum rate is somewhere between 3 and 50.

[lockstep]

BTW, two other things: a) Welcome to Apolyton, sfbaytf b) This mod is always in need of test reports, so feel free to give some details of your gaming session - changes you liked, changes you find somewhat problematic etc. I'm sure that Korn will take your ideas into account (that is, as soon as he gets back to his mod).

[lockstep]

At last, I managed to finish some stats regarding corruption.

Played a test game with the default setting (regent, standard map, 8 civs). Cultural victory, about 1000 points. Some hard facts regarding my empire: Pop 220, about 13% of the map's land mass (had a small continent for myself), 14 cities (all level 3), average city distance to palace/FP 4.5 tiles (i.e. close to nil), 3 science and 3 tax buildings in every city (i.e multipliers of 2.5 for science and taxes without additional wonder effects), courthouse in every city. This resulted in the following income/corruption figures for the different governments (Confederation not included):

Government ------------- Desp -- Mon -- Comm -- Rep / Fasc -- Dem
A: Total Income ---------- 948 -- 1045 --- 1002 --- 1604 --- 1614
B: Income From Cities ----- 898 --- 995 ---- 952 --- 1554 --- 1564
C: 'Raw' Commerce* ---- 345 --- 368 ---- 368 ---- 605 ---- 605
Corruption ---------------- 54 ----- 47 ----- 68 ----- 71 ----- 66
Corruption / A ------------- 5.7% -- 4.5% -- 6.8% -- 4.4% -- 4.1%
Corruption / B ------------- 6.0% -- 4.7% -- 7.1% -- 4.6% -- 4.2%
Corruption / C --------- 15.7% - 12.8% - 18.5% - 11.7% - 10.9%

* commerce from city tiles/worked tiles, no science/tax multipliers included

Some comments/conclusions:

• IMO corruption / C ('raw' commerce) is the correct corruption rate. Don't believe your domestic advisor, just do some counting in every city screen. (BTW, SMAC's city screen showed science and tax figures both before and after applying multipliers due to buildings/wonders.)
• The 'correct' rate was about 2.5 times higher in my test game; as my cities had science/tax multipliers of 2.5, this is as it should be.
• With the correct figures in mind, courthouses etc. generally become far more worthwile.
• As already mentioned, the difference between 'minimal' and 'nuisance' corruption is negligible. To balance the Fascist government, it should be changed to 'problematic' corruption.

For all those who want to verify my results or do some further testing: Savegame is enclosed. (Babylonian Anarchy, 2054 AD, end turn and switch to whatever government you like.)

Edit: I failed to interpret my own figures. The real problem of 'nuisance' corruption is the rather small difference between 'minimal' and 'problematic' that makes an intermediate corruption level rather pointless at the moment.

[sfbaytf]

Yeah you're right about the Galleys having a movement bug. I figured that since the early part of the game has a longer time frame a movement of 50 wuz correct, but that assumption was incorrect.

I've also noticed another interesting abnormality?? I was playing a game as the Americans vs the Japanese and Germans. I was able to research then build Partisans, yet could not get my regular units past musketmen because I couldn't get access to rubber. I was surrounded by the Japanese who was equipped with Riflemen and Cavs with a smattering of Archers, Horsemen and Longbowmen. I pretty much build hordes of Partisans and kept on liberating (kidnapping workers) and launching hit and run attacks against the Japanese units. I must have wiped out dozens of units with no declaration of war or protest against me. I even granted the Japanese a right of passage for their on-off war vs the Germans. When their units would pass through my territory I would attack their units then retreat back into my cities.

I like the idea of the Partisans, but feel they may be too powerful? You seem to be able to use them against your opponents without any adverse affects.

Also does it seem like it takes a very long time to research advances and move to the modern age?