MOD: korn's Blitz Mod

[TechWins]

Also, right now I'm trying a game with Lockstep's ideas, Korn's ideas, and my ideas for gov all mixed together. Just thought I would inform you guys of that.

[korn469]

hmmm, before i post any gameplay thoughts

i would like to make a list of thanks for the blitz mod, without you this wouldn't have been possible

as of 2/10/02

Apolyton:

lockstep
TechWins
Heardie
Sevorak
Grampos
E_T
OneFootInTheGrave
Glostakarov
ajbera
Harlan
sfbaytf
Ancientfool
star mouse
Paradigm
monkspider
Plutarck
hbavatar
Desert Dog
RTodd
francoImpaler
Timeline
Gromit
RPMisCOOL
jkjones
Toasty
Umgssda
Plumbean
Aiya
latenight
badassb
Honour_Shogun
Don Homer
Bobi
Cypselus
Slartibartfast
Centauri18

Civfanatics:

Desert Fox
jim1013
KALIROB2k2
lordroy
kittenOFchaos
Caligula
Endureth
Master of Ceremonies
Caos Dragon

if i forgot anyone's name i appologize, but your contribution was appreciated
thanks everyone!

[star mouse]

Originally posted by TechWins
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think military police helps keep happiness. For example, if a city was at size 4 and 3 citizens were happy and one unhappy then if the gov had a MP of 1, then once I put one unit in that city the city would have 3 happy citizends and 1 content citizen. Meaning that for amount of MP you can instill in a city you can have that many citizens become content.

If a government has an MP setting of one, only one unhappy citizen can become content by stationing troops in the city. Additional troops in excess of the MP setting have no effect on happiness. Check out your happiness on the city screen next time you have an MP government and lots of defensive troops in the city. Look for the content faces next to the troops - you will find that the excess troops don't have the content faces.

[TechWins]

If a government has an MP setting of one, only one unhappy citizen can become content by stationing troops in the city. Additional troops in excess of the MP setting have no effect on happiness. Check out your happiness on the city screen next time you have an MP government and lots of defensive troops in the city. Look for the content faces next to the troops - you will find that the excess troops don't have the content faces.

Yes, this is exactly what I was trying to explain but in different context.

I think an interesting innovation would be to have at least 1 MP for every government. What this would do is make undefended cities unhappier, thus making it more necessary to keep at least 1 defender in the city at all times.

By this I think it would make it easier to keep cities happy, yet, your thoughts are that it would make it more necessary to keep at least one defender in the city at all times. I didn't understand your reasoning on this, so I figured you thought MP was implemented differently than what it truly is. Since I assumed that I put my understanding of what MP is.

[korn469]

yes that is how military police appear to work for me, and i agree that with more military police it is easier to keep your population happy

______________________________

how is this for governments?

anarchy
0 police
2/3/4 1 support
tile penalty
high war weariness
50 rate cap
1 worker rate
0 assimilation
catastrophic corruption
conscript spies
immune to build embassy

despotism
3 police
3/3/3 1 support
3 draft
tile penalty
no war weariness
80 rate cap
1 worker rate
forced labor
0 assimilation
rampant corruption
regular spies

monarchy
2 police
2/4/6 2 support
3 draft
low war weariness
90 rate cap
2 worker rate
paid labor
1 assimilation
problematic corruption
regular spies

republic
1 police
1/2/3 2 support
2 draft
high war weariness
90 rate cap
trade bonus
2 worker rate
paid labor
2 assimilation
nuisance corruption
regular spies

fascism
4 police
3/5/7 3 support
4 draft
no war weariness
no rate cap
trade bonus
2 worker rate
forced labor
0 assimilation
problematic corruption
regular spies
immune to tech steal

communism
3 police
4/5/6 2 support
4 draft
no war weariness
no rate cap
3 worker rate
forced labor
3 assimilation
communal corruption
elite spies
immune to investigate city

democracy
0 police
0/2/4 3 support
1 draft
high war weariness
no rate cap
trade bonus
8 worker rate
paid labor
4 assimilation
minimal corruption
regular spies
immune to propaganda

what i really hate is that there are no fine tools for editing governments, like under fascism each military unit made 2 pop happy, or under communism each pollution building created one extra pollution, or under democracy and republic courthouses would make one citizen happy, along with the subpar implementation of government specific buildings, and the fact that you can't set a building to not buildable by a certain government its enough to make you crazy

[lockstep]

Re: hmmm, before i post any gameplay thoughts

Originally posted by korn469
i would like to make a list of thanks for the blitz mod, without you this wouldn't have been possible

as of 2/10/02

Apolyton:

lockstep

You're welcome. I'll try to comment on government stats later today.

[korn469]

Current State of the Blitz Mod

ok we have done many many changes and here is how i feel about the development

Status: all of the changes for 1.06beta7 are almost finalized, and once they are (government and build strategy being the only items really in discussion) then i will uninstall civ3, reinstall a fresh copy of it and then start from a brand new bic and build it, hopfully a new units_32.pcx will be ready as well, it usually takes me an entire afternoon to build a new version of the blitz mod from scratch, and there are almost always oversights and little glitches like the 50 movement galley, these are the things that i fix in the A, B, C, etc versions of a release

after beta7 comes out, there maybe a few more areas that need modification, so a beta8, beta9, and even possibly a beta10 will appear, once all of the changes are final, then i will update the civilipedia and release a finalized v1.06

Goal: The goal of my Blitz mod is to take civ3 beyond its current state, hopefully making it better in the future. To achieve that here are my guiding principles to make it more of a intellectual challenge, to make it more open to different ways of playing, to improve the AI's performance, to make the game somewhat more true to life, to expand upon consequences of a player's actions forcing them to make hard choices, and in general to give the player an experiance that is similar to civ3 yet larger in scope. While some mods will give the player many more toys to play around with, that is not the purpose of this mod. While it would be possible to add in 50 different types of wooden ships, that alone wouldn't improve gameplay, so my mod won't attempt to do that. If there is a gameplay role that is unfilled then i will certainly add in the appropriate thing to fill that void. While some of my actions seem quite radical, i consider this a fairly conservative mod.

State of Development: I am fairly confident that ground units and air units have all of the roles filled and are balanced. I'm still kinda worried about naval units, though I think things are close. I might add in a special forces unit and a cruise missile unit both with hidden nationality in addition to partisans to help simulate the current crop of low intensity conflicts, but that is still up in the air. Additionally i might add in a spy plane, and call it either the U2 or the SR-71 (or possibly even just the simple spy plane) and give it stealth, radar and only allow it to do recon missions. Building wise i think this mod has filled in all of the gaps, but because of the limitations of the civ3 editor it has gone almost as far as it can go. Tech rate appears off, so i'm going to tweak it slightly. General settings i'm pretty happy with. Culture settings i'm unsure about. Governments and build orders are completely up in the air. I'm leaving the tech tree alone for now.

Future: While I have been fairly slow with updates, I do plan on continously updating the mod. I certainly have my fingers crossed about future patches, especially when it comes to improving the editor, so hopefully a completed v1.06 will be the last f1.16 mod for civ3 and v1.07 can take advantage of an extended civ3 game. Civ3 is selling fairly well so this means that an expansion is likely, along with future patches, so hopefully civ3 will become easier and easier to modify and that future patches will make the editor much more powerful. I will only completely stop work on the Blitz mod when either we can go no further because of editor limitations, or because nobody shows any interest in it. So as long as neither of those things happen there will be new updates to the Blitz mod, and hopefully in the future I can make them more regular and somewhat quicker.

Any thoughts on this is appreciated, and as always, if you think you have a better way of doing something in the mod chime in, i might not change it immeadiately because i usually focus on one section of the rules at a time, but eventually we'll probably make a change that addresses the problem.

[TechWins]

democracy. . .

What about making Democracy have a support of 2. I've been thinking about it and it seems that the big advantage Democracy has over all other governments is it's trade producing speciality. However, Democracy no longer has that big of an advantage over Fascism and Republic. Democracy with a support of 2 would be the trade gov, Fascism would be the good war and good money gov, and Communism would be the all-around gov, somewhat.

Also, have you noticed how potent Barbarians really can be? I really like that, though, because it adds just another decision for the player to take into consideration. By the way, I have never been a big fan of restless barbarians (simply too many barbarians), so I'm not biased on this, but all this does is add more power to the barbarians and not numbers.

Yes Korn, I have agreed along with the approach you take with this mod. To tell you the truth, when all of the first few mods were being made there were a few to choose from and none of them really distinguished themselves from one another all that much. The reason why I chose your mod to follow is because simply the credibility the mod creator has. Since that the time there are also additional reasons why I follow this mod, though. Keep up the good work and I can't wait to see v1.06beta7 out.

[godinex]

I keep waiting

[lockstep]

Korn, here are my suggestions regarding government stats (with your last but one post as starting point):

• Police: Change Rep back to 0, change Desp back to 2, change Comm back to 4. Reasoning: No advantage of Rep compared to Demo, Comm/Fasc have double rate of Mon/Desp.
• Support: Change Anarchy to 3/3/3 1 (same as Desp), change Demo to 1/2/3 2 (same as Rep), change Mon/Comm to 2/4/6 1, change Fasc to 2/4/6 2. Reasoning: Support rates of 3 are too unbalancing IMO, same for 8 free units per metropolis (although this is part of the original Civ3 v1.16f), Demo needs to be strengthened compared to Rep.
• Draft: Change Rep back to 1, change Desp/Mon/Comm back to 2, change Fasc to 2. Reasoning: The draft/unhappiness model of Civ3 1.16f is exploitable IMO - there's no need to encourage this.
• Tile penalty/trade bonus: Everything's fine IMO.
• War weariness: Change Anarchy to 'none'. Reasoning: I don't want to suffer from war weariness as Rep/Demo (or Mon), suddenly fall into anarchy and - as war weariness still is present - never get out of anarchy again.
• Rate cap: Either drop rate caps at all or change them to 60% for Desp and 80% for Mon/Rep. Reasoning: IMO, there's no point in a small difference. (BTW, any rate cap for Anarchy doesn't make a difference, so you may as well drop it.)
• Worker rate: Cange Comm to 4, change Demo to 4. Reasoning: Worker rates of 8 are too unbalancing IMO, Demo/Comm/Fasc have double rate of Rep/Mon/Desp.
• Hurrying type: Everything's fine IMO.
• Assimilation: Change Mon back to 2%, change Comm back to 4%. Reasoning: Only three values for assimilation, like 'none', 'slow' and 'quick'. Simple and elegant IMO.
• Corruption: Change Rep to 'problematic', change Fasc to 'rampant'. Reasoning: Demo needs to be strengthened compared to Rep, Fasc needs to weakened compared to all other government, difference between 'minimal' and 'rampant' corruption is quite small in Civ3 v1.16f.
• Spies: Everything's fine IMO. (If espionage costs are further reduced, maybe change Comm back to 'veteran'.)
• Immunity: Do whatever weakens Fasc.

You didn't mention maintenance, but IMO Anarchy shouldn't require any. (It's hard enough to pay for units without receiving any income from cities.)

[korn469]

well the readme for the new patch is out, and the editor upgrades consist of

Editor: Added Undo/Redo functionality.

maybe the just haven't listed the changes they made, i really hope so!

____________________________

lockstep here is how you proposed to make the governments

anarchy
0 police
3/3/3 1 support
0 draft
tile penalty
no war weariness
1 worker rate
0 assimilation
catastrophic corruption
conscript spies
immune to build embassy

despotism
2 police
3/3/3 1 support
2 draft
tile penalty
no war weariness
60 rate cap
1 worker rate
forced labor
0 assimilation
rampant corruption
regular spies

monarchy
2 police
2/4/6 2 support
2 draft
low war weariness
80 rate cap
2 worker rate
paid labor
2 assimilation
problematic corruption
regular spies

republic
0 police
1/2/3 2 support
1 draft
high war weariness
80 rate cap
trade bonus
2 worker rate
paid labor
2 assimilation
problematic corruption
regular spies

fascism
4 police
3/5/7 3 support
2 draft
no war weariness
no rate cap
trade bonus
2 worker rate
forced labor
0 assimilation
rapant corruption
regular spies
immune to tech steal

communism
4 police
4/5/6 2 support
2 draft
no war weariness
no rate cap
4 worker rate
forced labor
4 assimilation
communal corruption
elite spies
immune to investigate city

democracy
0 police
1/2/3 2 support
1 draft
high war weariness
no rate cap
trade bonus
4 worker rate
paid labor
4 assimilation
minimal corruption
regular spies
immune to propaganda

Worker rate: Cange Comm to 4, change Demo to 4. Reasoning: Worker rates of 8 are too unbalancing IMO, Demo/Comm/Fasc have double rate of Rep/Mon/Desp

i was going from memory, the worker rate was supposed to be 3 i thought about changing them then decided not too and that is where the 8 number came from, so in light of that do u still wanna bump democracy and communism up one?

You didn't mention maintenance, but IMO Anarchy shouldn't require any. (It's hard enough to pay for units without receiving any income from cities.)

for now i plan on sticking with anarchy requiring maintenance

____________________________

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.

____________________________


ok i went back edited your save a little, first i sold all market places, banks, and stock exchanges (to get rid of any commerce bonus), then i sold all courthouses (to get rid of any corruption bonus), then i set all production to airports (because setting it to wealth artifically raised the tax amount), then i set the tax rate to 100% (because if not then tax increasing buildings increase commerce at one rate and science increasing buildings increase commerce at another rate), then instead of going through each city i just compared the different governments at 100% tax rate in two areas: income from cities and corruption, here are my findings

despotism: +345/-80 23.2%
monarchy: +367/-67 18.3%
communism: +357/-113 31.7%
republic: +595/-105 17.6%
democracy: +595/-88 14.8%
fascism: +595/-105 17.6%

now i know that going from city to city, and adding corruption plus taxes together then dividing the sum of all of the corruptions by the total of sum of corruptions plus sum of taxes would have been a better more accurate way of doing this but this is good enough for government work

also two other things to note, corruption also takes away shields, and there are three corruption reducing buildings in my mod, the courthouse, the newspaper, and the police station

____________________________

also to get a clear picture of corruption there are two other variables we must look at, difficulty level and world size

World Sizes

Tiny: Optimal cities 16
Small: Optimal cities 20
Standard: Optimal cities 24
Large: Optimal cities 32
Huge: Optimal cities 40

Difficult Level

Chieftan: Percentage of optimal cities 100%
Warlord: Percentage of optimal cities 100%
Regent: Percentage of optimal cities 100%
Monarch: Percentage of optimal cities 90%
Emperor: Percentage of optimal cities 80%
Deity: Percentage of optimal cities 70%

so for your game, the optimal number of cities was 24 and the percentage of optimal cities was 100%, so since you had less than 24 cities no extra corruption came from having too many cities

[korn469]

anyways, after thinking about what's been said about governmenrts here's what i'm thinking

anarchy
0 police
2/2/2 1 support
0 draft
tile penalty
high war weariness
1 worker rate
0 assimilation
catastrophic corruption
conscript spies
immune to build embassy

despotism
3 police
3/3/3 1 support
2 draft
tile penalty
no war weariness
70 rate cap
1 worker rate
forced labor
0 assimilation
rampant corruption
regular spies

monarchy
2 police
2/3/4 2 support
2 draft
low war weariness
80 rate cap
2 worker rate
paid labor
1 assimilation
problematic corruption
regular spies

republic
0 police
2/2/2 2 support
1 draft
high war weariness
80 rate cap
trade bonus
2 worker rate
paid labor
2 assimilation
nuisance corruption
regular spies

fascism
4 police
4/5/6 3 support
3 draft
no war weariness
no rate cap
trade bonus
2 worker rate
forced labor
0 assimilation
problematic corruption
regular spies
immune to tech steal

communism
3 police
3/4/5 2 support
3 draft
no war weariness
no rate cap
3 worker rate
forced labor
3 assimilation
communal corruption
elite spies
immune to investigate city

democracy
0 police
1/2/3 2 support
1 draft
high war weariness
no rate cap
trade bonus
3 worker rate
paid labor
4 assimilation
minimal corruption
regular spies
immune to propaganda

[TechWins]

I'd say that those number you have right there, Korn, are pretty good. The only thing is that I too suggest you don't make Anarchy pay for maintenance. If you do it is nearly impossibly to go through Anarchy. Once I had to save up past 1200 gold just to go through Anarchy in the Middle Ages. When Anarchy was finally over I had around 0 gold. Lets just say that it wasn't worth switching govs because of Anarchy.

[korn469]

TechWins

hmmm, well i want anarchy to be painful to really make government switching a strategic decision....hmmm

i think i might have the solution

anarchy
0 police
1/1/1 2 support
0 draft
tile penalty
high war weariness
1 worker rate
0 assimilation
catastrophic corruption
conscript spies
immune to build embassy
no building upkeep

so if that looks good to everyone on governments for now i'll move on to the final four areas of question for beta7

tech rate:
as it is now i have made the rate 25% on all map sizes, i have also increased the industrial and modern era techs by 10% and i have made the maximum time between techs 50 turns

so what i'm thinking is leaving the maximum time between techs at 50, leaving industrial and modern techs costing 10% more and lowering the tech rate to +10% of the civ3 tech rate on all map size...if this is still too long, i think lowering the maximum time between techs to 45 should fix it

culture settings:

still thinking about this

AI build preferences:

still thinking about this

World sizes:

aka tech rate changes, and a little bit of tweaking the optimal cities

other than that i think most areas of beta7 are ready to go unless someone has a specific thing they want me to change...if you do here is your chance any changes you want made ask now and we'll discuss it

EDIT:

any thoughts on making tanks, modern armor, and possibly mech infantry non air liftable? i was thinking about doing this to encourage having a strong navy but what do u think?

[lockstep]

Originally posted by korn469
anarchy
0 police
1/1/1 2 support
0 draft
tile penalty
high war weariness
1 worker rate
0 assimilation
catastrophic corruption
conscript spies
immune to build embassy
no building upkeep

This is a much better setting IMO.

so what i'm thinking is leaving the maximum time between techs at 50, leaving industrial and modern techs costing 10% more and lowering the tech rate to +10% of the civ3 tech rate on all map size...if this is still too long, i think lowering the maximum time between techs to 45 should fix it

IMO you should start with tech rates of 80/100/120/160/200 (adjusted for map size and no. of civs) instead of the original rates of 60/90/120/180/240 and then apply further changes.