MOD: korn's Blitz Mod

[lockstep]

Originally posted by korn469
Changes to World Sizes
*Tiny
Optimal Cities 14
Tech Rate 75
Number of Civs 6
*Small
Optimal cities 16
Tech Rate 115
Number of Civs 8
*Standard
Optimal cities 20
Tech Rate 150
Number of Civs 10
*Large
Optimal cities 26
Tech Rate 225
Number of Civs 14
*Huge
Optimal cities 35
Tech Rate 300

Two comments:[list=a][*]Call me a purist or attribute it to the current limitations of the foreign advisor screen, but I strongly suggest to leave the numbers of civs as they are in the original Civ3 (4/6/8/12/16).[*]If you really want to raise the nos. of civs, optimal cities nos. and tech rates need to be recalculated accordingly.[/list=a]

[lockstep]

Originally posted by TechWins
the lack of usefulness the musketeer has (only a +1 offense when musketmen are primarily used for defense).

As fast units won't retreat all the time in v1.17f if they are down to 1 HP, you could use your musketmen/musketeers to wage counterattacks on enemy knights.

[korn469]

make longbowmen cost 20 and not have any resource requirements

this would make them cost less than a swordsman (which requires iron) and they would cost less than a pikeman...while knights are a great unit, they do require both iron and horses, which means that you won't always have them, but they are the total package unit, and possibly too good with the current stats in the game

so in order to counteract that here is what i propose
*change longbowman stats to 5.1.1
*change pikeman stats to 2.3.1

with these changes a couple of issues get resolved
1) pikemen are no longer useless to the greeks
2) no 4.2.1 longbowmen making swordsmen completely redundent
3) greater range of tactics is now called for

make musketmen/musketeers cost 3. make musketmen have an offense of 2

again same argument, making defensive units completely usless in a counter attack limits strategies in the game

chariots and war chariots should be have a cost of 10

interesting idea, the only balance problem i can see with this is that the egyptians might be hella hard to stop if they get horses, but i think it could work, does anyone have any other thoughts either for or against this? as it is the chariot is on the weak end of the spectrum and the war chariot is in about the middle, this would take chariots up to medium, and make war chariots strong, though since mobile units are weaker now change has a stronger argument

make tanks, panzers, mech infantry, and modern armor be wheeled as I said before

still on the table, i just wanted to make sure the beta7 got off to a good start, this could possibily cripple the AI so i wanted to add it in a little bit later

Just thought of another idea, to slow down the amount of time it takes to get to cavalry gunpowder (musketmen) should have the tech requirement of education and to balance out that effect chivalry (knights) should have the requirement of invention (longbowmen). Also, education should have a prereq of printing press. The ideas keep flowing as I speak.

hehe well i'm playing the game and things are pretty slow to begin with, this is basically due to slower expansion, and possibly due to slower workers, i haven't looked to see if despotism in normal civ3 has a worker rate of 1 or 2...however even though things are slower in terms of overall development i don't think that gameplay is that much slower, mainly because every choice you make seems like it is more important now

with that being said, it takes 7 middle age techs to get to cavalry as is, with your changes it would take either 10 techs (with only changing education) to get to cavalry, this seems like a little much
but

proposed change
*make education a prereq for Chemistry (so as musketmen don't come later)

i'd like to here some arguments about the pro's and con's of this, also this might be the first call to look at reassessing the tech tree

As longbowmen are the upgrade of archers, they should cost more than 20 shields. I'd rather give them a defense value of 2 ... that would also make for a smooth transition to the new grenadier unit (archer 2/1/1, longbowman 4/2/1, grenadier 8/4/1)

see above

Pikemen should have a cost of 20

see above

Call me a purist or attribute it to the current limitations of the foreign advisor screen, but I strongly suggest to leave the numbers of civs as they are in the original Civ3 (4/6/8/12/16).

If you really want to raise the nos. of civs, optimal cities nos. and tech rates need to be recalculated accordingly

i kind of just threw it in for people to have fun with, and since you can select the number of civs you want in a game it shouldn't upset the balance though, but if this isn't useful i'll change it back

as far as rebalancing the optimal number of cities and the tech rate, it would make optimal cities go down slighty and tech rate go up

___________________________

I think for the pryamids it should be a small wonder that is cheap and produces a lot of culture but won't do anything else, which in turn makes you drop the whole obelisk building entirely.

Well, I thought it would be a good idea to make Pyramids a small wonder because many civilizations built the Pyramids, but in gameplay terms it might not be the smartest thing to do

I'm not sure about changing the Pyramids to a small wonder, but else I agree. Please get rid of Obelisks, korn, IMO they are just ... cheesy.

could someone please explain to me what is wrong with the pyramid/obelisk combo?

as it is right now, the gameplay effect of the pyramids is to grant +1 culture to every city on the continant

first what is wrong with that? secondly why is it better than a less useful large culture bonus to the pyramids (either as a great wonder or a small wonder)

i don't mind changing the name to whatever, but i just don't see what is so wrong with the pyramids granting +1 culture to your cities on the continant? is you can shoot that down from a gameplay perspective i'll be more than happy to get rid of it

as far as public schools go, i would like to find a better name for them, and even if possible somehow distinguish better between them and the other science buildings, however the tools in the editor are rather crude so that makes it hard to do, but from all of the comments it sounds like there is a need for an industrial era science building though

_______________________________

some gameplay comments...

*if barbarians sack your capital they now destroy your capital, is it like that in normal civ3?

*expansion is far slower, yet it is even more important now

*barbarians can put up an actual fight now, and having a barbarian encampment close to your civ is actually halfway dangerous

*because of the increased tech rate and the changes to how AIs trade technology (ie, they are tech whores now) the blitz mod has a europe effect, the more civs around you the better, because isolation means stagnation, i like this though

*its about 800ad and i'm halfway through the middle age tech tree, i entered the middle ages oddly enough around 500ad, which was right around the time of the fall of the roman empire and the begining of the dark ages, hehe i thought that was cool

*because of the patch anarchy now appears to have a variable rate

*the blitz mod appears solid so far!!

here's the start for the game i'm playing, maybe we could use it as a comparison game

[lockstep]

Originally posted by korn469
here is what i propose
*change longbowman stats to 5.1.1
*change pikeman stats to 2.3.1

with these changes a couple of issues get resolved
1) pikemen are no longer useless to the greeks
2) no 4.2.1 longbowmen making swordsmen completely redundent
3) greater range of tactics is now called for

I agree with the changes you suggest for the pikeman, due to issues no. 1 and 3. As for longbowmen making swordsmen obsolete: Why not? Longbowmen don't require iron, but are availabe in a later age than swordsmen. OTOH, archers make warriors obsolete, yet are available nearly at the same time. IIRC, no one has called this an 'issue' so far.

as it is the chariot is on the weak end of the spectrum and the war chariot is in about the middle, this would take chariots up to medium, and make war chariots strong, though since mobile units are weaker now change has a stronger argument

I second TechWins' idea to lower the chariot's/war chariot's cost to 10 shields. The changes v1.17f made to retreat are a very strong argument.

hehe well i'm playing the game and things are pretty slow to begin with, this is basically due to slower expansion, and possibly due to slower workers, i haven't looked to see if despotism in normal civ3 has a worker rate of 1 or 2...

It has 2. Actually, I liked your idea very much to change it to 1 for despotism ... don't tell me this was only by accident.

proposed change
*make education a prereq for Chemistry (so as musketmen don't come later)

i'd like to here some arguments about the pro's and con's of this, also this might be the first call to look at reassessing the tech tree

Generally it's to early IMO to tinker with the tech tree - areas like governments and general settings aren't as balanced yet as combat in your mod, and we're still at the beginning regarding terrain, espionage and building requirements. As for making education a prereq for chemistry ... this would make the middle age tech tree too intertwined IMO. I'd rather leave it possible to get metallurgy (cannon) and military tradition (cavalry) without having to do research in the monotheism tech branch.

i kind of just threw it in for people to have fun with, and since you can select the number of civs you want in a game it shouldn't upset the balance though, but if this isn't useful i'll change it back

Rebalancing combat and creating a variety of buildings that increase strategic choice are essentials of the blitz mod. Changing the no. of civs on the different maps is just a matter of taste. So, stay with the default settings in that regard and leave changes to the individual player. (BTW, it's the same with colours of civs - please don't change them.)

as far as rebalancing the optimal number of cities and the tech rate, it would make optimal cities go down slighty and tech rate go up

Okay, I'll try to come up with a new suggestion regarding optimal number of cities.

• In Civ3 v1.07f, it was 8/12/16/24/32. Smooth transition from tiny to huge maps, but the ratio of 1:4 was unbalanced regarding to no. of civs.
• In v1.16f and v1.17f, it was (is) 12/14/16/24/32. Ratio of 1:2.7 is better balanced, but this setting is very distorted for standard maps.
• In blitz 1.06 beta6 it was 16/20/24/32/40 (due to my suggestion). Well balanced ratio of 1:2.5, corruption is notedly reduced. OTOH, it became different for a less-than-averaged sized civ to build the Forbidden Palace (which requires 50% of the optimal number of cities).
• In blitz 1.06 beta7 it is 14/16/20/26/35. Well balanced ratio of 1:2.5, corruption is somewhat higher, but the setting is again distorted for standard maps.
• I propose a setting of 12/16/20/28/36 (+4 compared to Civ3 v1.07f). The tiny/huge ratio of 1:3 is acceptable regarding to no. of civs, corruption is like in beta7 and there is no distortion for standard maps.

(My proposal would translate into tech rates of 72/96/120/168/216 with a standard map rate equal to v1.17f, or 90/120/150/210/270 with a standard map rate of +25%.)

could someone please explain to me what is wrong with the pyramid/obelisk combo?

as it is right now, the gameplay effect of the pyramids is to grant +1 culture to every city on the continant

first what is wrong with that? secondly why is it better than a less useful large culture bonus to the pyramids (either as a great wonder or a small wonder)

i don't mind changing the name to whatever, but i just don't see what is so wrong with the pyramids granting +1 culture to your cities on the continant? is you can shoot that down from a gameplay perspective i'll be more than happy to get rid of it

Aesthetic argument: Obelisks don't show up in the cultural advisor screen, yet the additional amount of culture per city does. This is irritating at least and may be regarded as a bug by casual mod players. Also, the culture points of Obelisks don't double after 1000 years contrary to what one would expect. None of these problems arise with a 'culture-only' great wonder.

Gameplay argument: If you conquer the city that has built a 'culture-only' great wonder, you hurt your rival's culture (which won't grow that fast anymore), but don't bump up your own production of culture points. (IMO, this is an important design principle of Civ3). If you conquer the city that has built the Pyramids in the blitz mod, you hurt your rival's culture AND improve your own culture.

here's the start for the game i'm playing, maybe we could use it as a comparison game

Already downloading.

[korn469]

I agree with the changes you suggest for the pikeman, due to issues no. 1 and 3. As for longbowmen making swordsmen obsolete: Why not? Longbowmen don't require iron, but are availabe in a later age than swordsmen. OTOH, archers make warriors obsolete, yet are available nearly at the same time. IIRC, no one has called this an 'issue' so far.

hehe, longbowmen do require iron in the blitz mod
the thing is right now with the upgrade paths, swordsmen upgrade to grenadiers and not longbowmen, so if you had iron you would be able to build both swordsmen and longbowmen at the sametime, yet if longbowmen were 4.2.1 cost 30 and require iron, and swordsmen are 3.2.1 cost 30 and require iron i don't see any reason to build them

however if pikemen were 2.3.1 and longbowmen were 5.1.1 then there would be a good reason to build a swordsmen/longbowmen combo, i really want to encourage combined arms in the blitz mod so this seems to work

though i am wondering about changing longbowmen back to 40 shields and requiring no special resources, simply because all offensive units except for the archer in the first half of the game require either iron or horses, so basically if you don't have iron you're hosed right now

I second TechWins' idea to lower the chariot's/war chariot's cost to 10 shields. The changes v1.17f made to retreat are a very strong argument.

the retreat argument is a good one, so i think i am going to do this, though should i change the Jaguar Warrior any because of the retreat changes?

It has 2. Actually, I liked your idea very much to change it to 1 for despotism ... don't tell me this was only by accident.

it wasn't by accident, i just thought of ways to differentiate and balance the governments and a low production rate seemed to work, i just didn't realize that firaxis has the rate set to 2, and it makes quite a difference

Generally it's to early IMO to tinker with the tech tree - areas like governments and general settings aren't as balanced yet as combat in your mod, and we're still at the beginning regarding terrain, espionage and building requirements. As for making education a prereq for chemistry ... this would make the middle age tech tree too intertwined IMO. I'd rather leave it possible to get metallurgy (cannon) and military tradition (cavalry) without having to do research in the monotheism tech branch.

agreed about its too early to tinker, hehe though we might want to start looking at ways to change things

Rebalancing combat and creating a variety of buildings that increase strategic choice are essentials of the blitz mod. Changing the no. of civs on the different maps is just a matter of taste. So, stay with the default settings in that regard and leave changes to the individual player.

ok, i'll change it back to the default then

(BTW, it's the same with colours of civs - please don't change them.)

WHAT?! how can you not like grey germans, and blue americans?!

hehe, actually it was alot of work to find the right combinations of colors that wouldn't crash the game and i just wish you had of told me this earlier!
(as you have probably already noticed i didn't change them this time around)

I propose a setting of 12/16/20/28/36 (+4 compared to Civ3 v1.07f). The tiny/huge ratio of 1:3 is acceptable regarding to no. of civs, corruption is like in beta7 and there is no distortion for standard maps.
(My proposal would translate into tech rates of 72/96/120/168/216 with a standard map rate equal to v1.17f, or 90/120/150/210/270 with a standard map rate of +25%.)

sounds good, this and the unit changes mentioned above will be in beta7.1, along with a correct units_32.pcx and at least one text file, that being the versions.txt for civ3, right now my version of civ3 is the Blitz Mod v1.06beta7

(not just goto the text files folder and open up the versions.txt and make the change, it's cool i love it!)

i'm also going to start working on the other text files, and if any volunteers want to help out, the help would be appreciated!

Aesthetic argument: Obelisks don't show up in the cultural advisor screen, yet the additional amount of culture per city does. This is irritating at least and may be regarded as a bug by casual mod players. Also, the culture points of Obelisks don't double after 1000 years contrary to what one would expect. None of these problems arise with a 'culture-only' great wonder

good, because obelisks really aren't buildings (since you can't actually build them) they are simply a way for the pyramids to grant +1 culture to all cities on the continant, so the real thing is that it is not displaying the correct amount of culture for the pyramids

Gameplay argument: If you conquer the city that has built a 'culture-only' great wonder, you hurt your rival's culture (which won't grow that fast anymore), but don't bump up your own production of culture points. (IMO, this is an important design principle of Civ3). If you conquer the city that has built the Pyramids in the blitz mod, you hurt your rival's culture AND improve your own culture.

ok i might be wrong here, but lets say i changed the pyramids to 8 culture per turn, and someone builds it in 2000bc, then in 1000ad another civ conquers it

it would have been producing 11 culture total because of the age bonus, and when the other player captured it, then wouldn't it start producing 8 culture for the other player?

Already downloading.

cool, we'll have to post some comparisons, so unlike me try saving it every so often ok?

EDIT:

ok i'm not sure if i mentioned this in this thread (forgive me if i have) but when grampos examined the new bic 3.0 format he found a new value that he didn't know what it did, well anyways, in the chat i asked Soren why there was such a long gap in offensive units between the longbowman and the marine and he said that they had added a new vaule to the bic that would allow the AI to use defensive units in place of offensive units and vice versa to take care of that problem, so once the new patch comes out i think we might be in for some treats!

[lockstep]

Originally posted by korn469
though i am wondering about changing longbowmen back to 40 shields and requiring no special resources, simply because all offensive units except for the archer in the first half of the game require either iron or horses, so basically if you don't have iron you're hosed right now

I second that. Change longbowmen back to their default values.

the retreat argument is a good one, so i think i am going to do this, though should i change the Jaguar Warrior any because of the retreat changes?

IMO, no. Jaguar warriors were deemed nearly 'broken' by Vel pre-patch, so they probably still are a decent unit post-patch.

ok i might be wrong here, but lets say i changed the pyramids to 8 culture per turn, and someone builds it in 2000bc, then in 1000ad another civ conquers it

it would have been producing 11 culture total because of the age bonus, and when the other player captured it, then wouldn't it start producing 8 culture for the other player?

As far as I know, wonders that were built by another civ won't yield any culture points to you if you capture them.

cool, we'll have to post some comparisons, so unlike me try saving it every so often ok?

As this will be my first comparison game, I just wanted to state that I don't consider myself to be a an excellent civ player. I played Civ2 on king most of the time; a week before I got Civ3, I managed to win my first - and last - Civ2 game on emperor. So far, I have finished 16 games with the regular version of Civ3 and 4 games with the blitz mod, currently I'm playing on regent.

[lockstep]

Korn, I get an error message when trying to load your save game. Could you re-check if it works fine for you?

[korn469]

lockstep

when ypu downloaded it from apolyton, you did change it to a zip file first and then unzip it and try it?

game comments coming soon

[lockstep]

Yes, I did all this. But trying to load the savegame results in a 'DataIO error'.

BTW, I noticed that you posted some fixes and balance changes you intend to do for beta7.1 at Civfanatics. Should I correct my bic-file as well?

[korn469]

hmmm

we've had the dataIO problem before (so long ago though i can't remember exactly what caused it)

did you create all of the unit folders?

and the only things i recommend you change for the save game are the following

captured unit from colonist to worker
fascism requires upkeep and provides a trade bonus

let me look for the dataIO problem back in the thread ok?

[korn469]

ok lockstep,

i deleted one of the unit folders and the game loaded just fine (but don't forget without all of the unit folders your game WILL crash when anyone attempts to build that unit)

i loaded the original civ3mod.bic (which doesn't have all of the new buildings in it) and i got the following pop up message box

DataIO error

data0:cnsn or something like that

so you are using the correct bic right? and you haven't added or deleted any buildings from it?

[lockstep]

I re-checked all the unit folders and caught a typo in 'grenadier'.

Second, and more important, I had installed modswapper and forgotten that I switched back to the original bic with v1.17f.

Loaded again and ... O my god! Monarch? And the starting position? Anyway, I'll give it a try.

[korn469]

anyways

about the changes over at civfanatics

i sat up late playtesting, so in order not to forget which bugs i encountered i posted it over there (i would have posted it here but apolyton was down)

while there was a few mistakes in the mod, i only crashed once around 1860 or something, but when i reloaded it everything was ok

As this will be my first comparison game, I just wanted to state that I don't consider myself to be a an excellent civ player. I played Civ2 on king most of the time; a week before I got Civ3, I managed to win my first - and last - Civ2 game on emperor. So far, I have finished 16 games with the regular version of Civ3 and 4 games with the blitz mod, currently I'm playing on regent.

this is not a strategy comparison game, it is more of a rules, bugs, AI comparison

if you could, please please please save the game at 850ad, 1275ad

those are the times i remembered to save it

i also did a detailed report on the AI's cities at 1275, but i'll wait till you get at that point before posting it...i'm not sure what happened to one of the AIs but i think i have an idea

hehe and one last piece of advice, don't forget you can irrigate from inland seas

hehe i did

[lockstep]

Originally posted by korn469
this is not a strategy comparison game, it is more of a rules, bugs, AI comparison

And that's why I had hoped for regent. Anyway, it's about 560AD, and I'm gonna fight an important battle ... wish me luck.

[korn469]

well good luck then

hehe i had to reload a couple of time because i wasn't trying too hard, basically just try to get tech and culture and see how the AI fared without a human beating on them

then the AI would stab me in the back and take all of my undefended cities

just remember the two save dates ok?
one should be coming up pretty soon

anyways i'm going to do somemore play testing on that map, but i have found out a couple things one of them is that drafting a unit that requires population only uses 1 pop instead of 2 so this needs balancing

also its looking like the AI build preferences might need some tweaking as well, and you're right i should have set the game to regent instead of monarch for play balancing, it's not like i had set it to diety or something like that

__________________________

does anyone wanna help me create the civilipedia or pediaicons files?

if not i understand and will work on them this weekend

i think once i have those files that the mod should have all its files properly modded

__________________________

on another note, how many more units does everyone think we'll need before all of the niches in the game are filled?

i could see the following
possibilities

early game attack ship
mid game explore ship
early game invisable land unit
modern worker (either move 2 or treat all terrain as roads and a little more expensive)
possibly a few more land units
possibly a few modern invisable/hidden nationality units (partisan in/hid, guerrilla in, commando hid, special cruise missile that has hidden nationality)
possibly a modern era hidden nationality ship, ie commerce raider

how about the rest of you? any other niches in the game that needs a bit more fleshing out?

i'm not saying i'm going to add any more units at all i'd just like to discuss if there are any areas of the game that could be better with more units, and it can be to either encourage the use of combined arms, to better balance the game gameplay wise, to give more tactical and strategic options to the player, or to firm up the AI