MOD: korn's Blitz Mod

[korn469]

a quick note before i post a real responce...there was a bug in beta7.1 ports gave veteran ground units instead of veteran sea units,

only about five people downloaded it, but you can either change that in the editor or download beta7.2

[Mizaq]

what do you guys think about increasing/decreasing the research rate (whichever makes it take more to research a tech in the same amount of time) as well as decreasing the max turns to discover? Say make it max 20 turns for a new discovery, but make it really hard to get down to the minimum of 3 or 4 turns per tech. That way you can actually get more worth from having more cities instead of just having them for histogram points.

[korn469]

i'm feeling like a real glutton for punishment
so i'm going to start a game on a small map, deity, raging hordes all random civs and see how i do

wish me luck

[lockstep]

Just FYI korn - the mod section of civ3.com has been opened. I think you have something to offer ...

[korn469]

lockstep

hehe i already sent them a copy

anyways i was playing and a got a sound crash

CIVILIZATION3 caused an invalid page fault in
module SOUND.DLL at 016f:0229862f.
Registers:
EAX=00000144 CS=016f EIP=0229862f EFLGS=00010202
EBX=0000017d SS=0177 ESP=0285fe70 EBP=0000f800
ECX=00000001 DS=0177 ESI=0880f000 FS=138f
EDX=026b5050 ES=0177 EDI=0d8a5c94 GS=192e
Bytes at CS:EIP:
f3 a4 8b 4a 20 5f 03 c8 5e 89 4a 20 5b c2 10 00
Stack dump:
00000800 00000000 0d8a4828 26f01065 026b5050 0d8a5b18 0000017d ffffffff 00000800 00000000 0d8a4828 26f05c7c 00000000 0d8a4828 00000001 00000001

but since i haven't messed with the sound files i don't think i caused it

hehe i'm the americans on diety/raging

[korn469]

ok i was playing around, and while barbarians certainly were strong they weren't insurmountable, however in my first game it was me(america) and the aztecs all alone on a continant to ourselves, the continant was roughly just a straight line the me at the bottom and the aztecs at the top

the map size was either small or standard i don't remember completely, but i think it was small

my start location was a dream, by moving one space over i had 4 wheat tiles in my city radius, and there incense close by

however to my left where the incense was happened to be all desert and above me was all jungle

there was also only two huts but they were both good, i got ceremonial burial and a settler, and the place i happened tofound the city with my settler was amazing it held both horses and iron, though i didn't know this at the time

anyways after fighting with some barbarians in the jungles which wasn't too bad because of scout, the Aztecs filled up the top part of the continant and i filled up the jungle part at a slower rate, without the industrious bonus and all of the extra food, even accomplishing this would have been impossible, our continant was isolated while the other civs had contact with each other

i rushed straight for monarchy however the aztecs were quite uncooperative trading partners and both of our research was going especially slow

around 1200 AD me and the aztecs were both in monarchy had filled the continant, both of us had bronze working and i had just traded for iron working from them, we had tech parity, and both of us had alphabet and writing, and i was working on map making...however because i didn't have construction my cities were stuck at size 6, and i had just discovered that i had iron in addition to horses in that upper city

i had time to build two or three swordsmen and i had about three of four horsemen and some various archers and spearmen when the aztes declared war on me
i had 8 cities and the aztecs had more than that though i'm not exactly sure how many the aztecs had, this meant i had 16 free unit support, and each additional unit cost 2 gold in support
so as the war started the aztec had a huge numbers advantage, and then since i didn't prepare properly for the war, the aztecs pillage the road to my iron and my horses and then not too long after that took the city leaving a small area of jungle seperating us

as the war dragged on i had to basically put everything into taxes to support the size of my ever growing archer/spearman force, and while i was able to keep to horsemen alive along with a swordsman and get them all to elite, it just wasn't enough

i had a size 4 border city that i had hurried barracks and walls, and it had my swordsman, two spearmen and two archers in it, the only thing was this city was slightly offset so it didn't force the aztecs to go through it while they hammered it, they also bypassed itand killed all but one defender (including one of my elite horsemen i was using as a reserve) in my second tier city

suddenly there were a large force of archers, swordsmen, andjag warriors getting ready to seize a six 6 city that had four dyes in its city radius, and after that it was an open path to the heart of my empire, support cost were already wearing my civ down and we just got news that the germans had finished copernicus's observatory at the beginning of the war, and when i finally sued for peace, with a very small treasury the aztecs demand my walled border city, and i gave it up

i got worse news, the french had just completed magellens expedition, like a turn before i discovered map making

the aztecs had a healthy treasury around 400 gold, while i maybe had 30 gold in mine, the aztecs had also heavily garrisoned my two captured cities and when i checked diplomacy, after i discovered map making, much to my horror, the aztecs only had 1 gold, but they then had communications with all of the other civs and every single tech i was able to research

they had made contact, and i still hadn't even seen another civ, but even if i did i wouldn't had the money to catch up in techs with them, for all i know they may had of entered the modern era by then...i'm not sure exactly how many techs the aztecs had bought but they were in the middle ages, and still furious at me

so i went ahead and retired before aztec middle age units over ran me, also the cost of stealing tech was still outrageously high

and the aztecs even had a better culture than i did

anyways some random thoughts

tech trading is out of hand! while i think the tech rates are too high because one civ along can't research the tech, tech trading means that isolated civs will die, and civs that aren't making money to trade will die, and the human which gets the worse end of the bargin will have a hard time

i'm not sure on the mod side what to do about it, I had a fairly well played game, but the AI still beat me and tech whoring figures into that equation, the only thing is, if i lower the tech rate (which i am going to do but not by too much) the AI simply trades fater

in my other game, (which i am going to resume) i basically got tired and put all of my cities under govenor control and automated all of my units and then traded techs, and around 600ad i was the tech laggard again, but i still had many of the industrial age techs though the price for industrialization and replacable parts was too much because the AI simply wouldn't trade with me, so by 1000ad the AI would have probably research every tech in the game, and this is on a standard sized map with 8 civs total, one of them being eliminated

i would like to see a roughly historical tech rate, but with the way the AI tech whores, if the tech rate is set high enough to cause this then any isolated civs won't get out of the ancient era before the game ends, and if it is set low enough so isolation wouldn't completely kill you the AI will have researched space flight by 1ad

i'm still trying to figure this one out

[solo]

korn,

I installed your mod with no problems and have decided to try it using my Five City Challenge approach. There are just too many limiting things for a decent OCC game, but the mod seems just right for use of FCC in its place.

One question I had was whether saves from non-mod games can be loaded into the game. I tried this with a few, and always got the error message:

Data0 operation System Error: CNSL

Then I started a new game with your mod, saved it a few times and reloaded it a few times, all with success.

Anyways, being new to using mods, I wasn't sure whether old saves were compatible, so now I ask.

Without playing much yet, I know I will already like the increased number of city improvements and the added pre-requisites for some of the wonders. I expect to begin a real test of the mod with an FCC game in about a week or so.

solo

[lockstep]

Originally posted by korn469
in beta8 i'll implement the fix i described above, and it will appear seemless to the player, they build the pyramids, then they can build obelisks, and if an enemy captures the pyramids they would have to build their own obelisks

korn, it looks like your workaround for obelisks actually won't work in v1.17f. Details in http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=43584.

[korn469]

solo

I installed your mod with no problems and have decided to try it using my Five City Challenge approach. There are just too many limiting things for a decent OCC game, but the mod seems just right for use of FCC in its place.

while it wasn't an objective of the mod, i think that only the most skilled player with a little luck could ever get an OCC victory in the blitz mod, but i can't wait to here about your testing with the five city challenge

One question I had was whether saves from non-mod games can be loaded into the game. I tried this with a few, and always got the error message:

anytime you add (or take away) a building to the civ3mod.bic it becomes incompatiable you can change the buildings around as much as you want, but if you add or take away one it won't work with a save game

Without playing much yet, I know I will already like the increased number of city improvements and the added pre-requisites for some of the wonders. I expect to begin a real test of the mod with an FCC game in about a week or so

can't wait for an indepth run down of your game
hehe we need toe truck in here too

lockstep

korn, it looks like your workaround for obelisks actually won't work in v1.17f. Details in http://apolyton.net/forums/showthre...&threadid=43584.

i saw that thread, how utterly disappointing, but before you guys break out the torches and pitchforks and come attack me chanting "down with the obelisk" lets just wait for the patch? ok

_____________________________

so far i have noticed that in the modern era the AI loves to stay at war and it loves to run fascism, so we need to counter this

so...here is what i've come up with
in beta7 there was a creation oversite where i had forgot to mark standard trade bonus, and requires upkeep for fascism

so this gave me an idea, since communism looks so unappealing to the AI right now i have thought of the following idea

make two changes to communism, don't require upkeep in communism, and then give them the standard tile penalty

this might make communism more competitive with fascism on the one had, and make it more like real life communism on the other, that basically the communist economic system is not even close to the productivity of a market system

any thoughts on that?

[TechWins]

Well, before I go finish my current Civ3 game I'll post a few thoughts.

before you guys break out the torches and pitchforks and come attack me chanting "down with the obelisk" lets just wait for the patch? ok

Ok, that's fine.

make two changes to communism, don't require upkeep in communism, and then give them the standard tile penalty

Ths sounds like an interesting idea.

ok i was playing around, and while barbarians certainly were strong they weren't insurmountable

That's how I felt about them before I started to my play my current game. The barbarians were such a huge deterrent that it set me back about 1000 years in terms of science. Well, I at least think that you should not include the Privateer as the barbarian's naval unit. What you should do is make a fire galley unit between the galley and caravel. The reason why I say the fire galley is because somebody has already made graphics for the unit, and this would be a nice, little addition. Then give the barbarians the fire galley as it's naval unit. Privateers are just far too powerful, and outriggers and galleys simply just don't have a chance of defending (or killing) itself against a privateer.

The changes that should be made to naval units because of the fire galley (and other reasons):

*outrigger should have 1 movement
*galley should have 3 movement
*fire galley should have 3 att/2 def/3 mov and 0 loading capacity. come with engineering, have 3 shield cost, and upgrades to frigate.
*caravel should have 2 attack not 0. i'm not sure if this is a bug or not, but the caravel doesn't seem all that much more powerful than a galley, considering that a galley has an attack of 2.
*to make the man o' war more of a useful UU give it a loading capacity of 1.

Concerning the AI tech trading problem, I think giving techs more prereqs will help lessen the amount of trading. On top of that, though, I think there should be less "era advancing required" techs. This would do a few things, at least I think, keep the tech tree still somewhat realistic, lessen AI tech trading, and make the tech tree more flexible. Civs will be able to advance to the next age more freely, but will still have to stay balanced because of the increased amount of prereqs. For this to be true, though, most of the new prereqs will have to come fairly early in the era.

For example, take the current Ancient Tech Tree:

BroWork-----IroWork-----Constr(req: Mat)

Mas-----Math(req: Alp)-----Curr

Alph-----

-----------Writ(req: Alp)-----

---------------------------------Phi-----

------------------------------------------Rep(req: Phi & CodLaw)

---------------------------------CodeLaw-----

---------------------------------Lit

---------------------------------MapMak(req:Pot)

Pott-----

Whe-----

---------------Hors(rea: Whe & WarCod)

WarCod-----

CerBur-----Myst-----Poly-----Mon(req: WarCod)


bold = optional advance

This format allows makes people go through most of the tech tree before going to the Middle Ages, yet there aren't many prereqs for techs. The consequences of this are more realism in the tech tree, more available tech trading deals, and more restriction on the player in what to research. My proposed format should fix the two problems of the tech tree, while keeping the realism.

BroWork-----IroWork-----

Mas-----Constr(req: IroWor & Mat)


----------Math(req: Alp)-----Curr

Alph-----

----------Writ-----CodeLaw-----Rep(req: Phi)

--------------------Lit-----Phi-----

--------------------MapMak(req: Pott)

Pott-----

Whe-----

---------------Hors(rea: Whe & WarCod)

WarCod-----

CerBur-----Myst-----Poly-----Mon(req: WarCod)


bold = required advance


Notice the difference in what bold equals between the two tech trees. Well, I think this type of format for the tech tree fits very well and is much better. It makes it so Civs have to know less techs to advance to the next era (7 optional techs to be exact, wheras before it was 3), while still keeping it realistic. What do you think of this?

[korn469]

That's how I felt about them before I started to my play my current game. The barbarians were such a huge deterrent that it set me back about 1000 years in terms of science. Well, I at least think that you should not include the Privateer as the barbarian's naval unit. What you should do is make a fire galley unit between the galley and caravel. The reason why I say the fire galley is because somebody has already made graphics for the unit, and this would be a nice, little addition. Then give the barbarians the fire galley as it's naval unit. Privateers are just far too powerful, and outriggers and galleys simply just don't have a chance of defending (or killing) itself against a privateer.

Techwins i have actually experienced a veteran galley survive a privateer, and a regular outrigger survive a damaged privateer

however i do realize that they are really strong, and when i choose privateers my actual inspiration was the pirates of the barbary coast (they are the shores of tripoli in the U.S. Marine Corps song)

but the firegalley sounds like a great addition, can you point me to where it is at?

*outrigger should have 1 movement

if it had a movement of one it would be too slow because naval units usually have to go around thing, and on anything besides an archipelligo map they can't move beyond their home waters, though i will decrease their stats to 0.1.2 10|1

*galley should have 3 movement

the galley should have 3 movement if it does not then it is a bug and i'll fix it

*fire galley should have 3 att/2 def/3 mov and 0 loading capacity. come with engineering, have 3 shield cost, and upgrades to frigate.

i'm thinking of doing it like this, set the galley to a transport only unit (0.2.3 30|2) , and then set the fire galley to naval power (3.3.3 30)

*caravel should have 2 attack not 0. i'm not sure if this is a bug or not, but the caravel doesn't seem all that much more powerful than a galley, considering that a galley has an attack of 2

if you notice, aircraft carriers have an attack of 0 as well
the big advantage of a caravel is that it doesn't sink in seas, that and it's higher movement allow worldwide exploration, which is very important

*to make the man o' war more of a useful UU give it a loading capacity of 1

hmmm, without any other stat changed? i wonder if the AI could handle that, have you found them to be particularly weak compared to frigates and privateers? (as in not as strong as other CSUs)

i am also going to move the privateer to navigation

On top of that, though, I think there should be less "era advancing required" techs. This would do a few things, at least I think, keep the tech tree still somewhat realistic, lessen AI tech trading, and make the tech tree more flexible

i see how this will lessen AI tech whoring, as soon as one AI gets the tech, then every semi well off AI it has contact with also get the tech, though fewer required techs sounds like a really good idea that i will definantly add, the only thing is though, out of the optional techs, none of them must just be place holders, or we might as well take them out, additionally why require alphabet be a required tech, when it is a prereq for many other required techs, and you can't discover them until you already have alphabet? unless the AI performs poorly when it only has optional techs to choose from

only one way to find out and that is to test it

Civs will be able to advance to the next age more freely, but will still have to stay balanced because of the increased amount of prereqs. For this to be true, though, most of the new prereqs will have to come fairly early in the era

ok you lost me here, i don't understand the logic behind fewer required techs and more prereqs, like if for example you made monarchy the only required tech in the ancient tech tree but also made it require currency and code of laws, what would that achieve? i don't get that, please could you elaborate on this

ok upcoming changes for the beta7.3 that will be out on sunday night or monday

*incorporate sevorak's name change mod
*change communism to the values listed above
*slightly alter monarchy and republic (like switch their corruption values) to make monarchy more competitive
*move privateer to navigation
*look for and try to correct pediaicons and civilopedia errors
*rebalance a few of the CSUs
*switch around the optional and required techs somewhat for testing purposes

does anyone else have any other little requests?

the changes that on further out that will be in beta8

*add in firegalleys
*add in the Victory Arch small wonder (a culture wonder that requires a victorious army and two armies in the field)
*changes to the culture tab

does anyone have any larger requests?

[lockstep]

Originally posted by TechWins
I think there should be less "era advancing required" techs. This would do a few things, at least I think, keep the tech tree still somewhat realistic, lessen AI tech trading, and make the tech tree more flexible.

Originally posted by korn469
i see how this will lessen AI tech whoring, as soon as one AI gets the tech, then every semi well off AI it has contact with also get the tech

Sorry, but I don't see how fewer 'required' techs will lessen the AI's tech whoring. TechWins and/or korn, please explain it to me.

[lockstep]

Some general thoughts about upkeep.

In Civ3 v1.17f there are 25 improvements a city can build (counting the 4 power plants as one). Construction costs of these buildings are a total of 3500 shields, upkeep costs are a total of 41 gold (including the hydro plant as the 'average value' power plant).

Blitz 1.06 beta7.2 adds 9 improvements and changes the construction/upkeep stats of some of the existing improvements. Total construction costs of the 34 buildings available per city are 5020 shields, total upkeep costs are 75 gold.

Regarding the +43% increase in shield costs from v.1.17f to blitz, IMO this is how it should be - the effect of 'running out of things to build' is reduced or eliminated. Contrary to that, the +83% increase in upkeep is problematic, especially when combined with the blitz mod's higher unit support costs of modern governments. It is very hard to increase one's treasury as much as needed, because the added stock exchange will only increase gold supply in a city from +100% to +150%.

I suggest to adopt the following rule: With the exception of defense buildings, upkeep costs of a building are construction costs divided by 100 and rounded up to the next integer. That way, upkeep costs of the university, bank, mass transit system, recycling center and airforce installation would drop from 3 to 2, upkeep costs of the factory, hydro plant (the 'average value' power plant), research lab, stock exchange and museum would drop from 4 to 3 and upkeep costs of the manufacturing plant would drop from 5 to 4. (Note: I suggest to increase the construction costs of the stock exchange to 240 shields.) Basically this is like in Civ3 v1.17f, but with higher upkeep costs for banks, research labs and manufacturing plants. Total upkeep in a city that has built all 34 buildings would be 64 gold, which is +56% compared to v1.17f and more reasonable IMO.

I've included a compressed excel sheed with the suggested changes.

[korn469]

Sorry, but I don't see how fewer 'required' techs will lessen the AI's tech whoring. TechWins and/or korn, please explain it to me.

lockstep

sorry that's a typo, i meant to say i don't see how instead of i see how, because i dodn't think there is anything i can do on the modding end to fix tech whoring as of now

I've included a compressed excel sheed with the suggested changes

interesting post, i'll look over you excel sheet and see how it looks, but it sounds good and will most likely be in beta7.3

[Elucidus]

Korn,

This may sound stupid, but I have been wanting to do this. How did you get the units in the correct order in the BIC (Colonist comes right after the settler, ect...)? Did you have to recreate everything, or is there some kind of tool out there?