Volunteers for a research team

[Harlan]

By the way, AW,
I'm a bit puzzled by your recent trial game. In a despotism, population is a good as shields cos of pop rushes, right? If your population is booming you should have been able to rush Settlers and the 3 pop loss wouldn't phase you much. And the AI would be facing the same problems you did. So what's the hang?

You should also experiment with having Settlers just cos more shields instead of more pop, and see how the AI does with that.

[Harlan]

Aha - it does have chat rooms. Go to the top of this thread page - under the Apolyton logo there's the word "chat" to click on. I'd prefer the Java room (since I don't have the software for the other).

Is Matt still around?

[ALPHA WOLF 64]

Originally posted by Harlan
By the way, AW,
I'm a bit puzzled by your recent trial game. In a despotism, population is a good as shields cos of pop rushes, right? If your population is booming you should have been able to rush Settlers and the 3 pop loss wouldn't phase you much. And the AI would be facing the same problems you did. So what's the hang?

You should also experiment with having Settlers just cos more shields instead of more pop, and see how the AI does with that.

pop rushing.....doohhhhhhh, i never even thought of that since i never pop rush. i even changed communism to paid OT

[Harlan]

By the way,
Here's another interesting thing from the book I'm reading:

"Either the Merrimack or Monitor could have singlehandedly destoyed the compbined French and British fleets from the Napoleonic Wars earlier in the century."

That says to me that Ironclads need to be much better than they are now, and post Ironclads even better than that. As it is, I don't really bother to build them, cos I know better stuff will be coming soon.

[ALPHA WOLF 64]

i tried to get an apolyton chat room, but it crashed me.

The ironclads had the same guns as those ships, but there were no naval cannons that could penetrate their armor.

gotta run for the night

[Canadian_Patriot]

Same here. Bed time for Matty.

Harlan, we'll try again tomorrow, maybe.

Matt

[Harlan]

Okay,
We'll do the chat another time.

Ironclad guns were actually greatly different. Check out this quote: "By the mid 1850's the greatly improved cast iron guns, combiined with improvements in shell projectiles, had greatly increased the power of naval ordance. This was dramatically demonstrated in 1853, when a Russian squadron armed with the new shell-firing guns destroyed a Turkish fleet at Sinope. This demonstrated the devastating potential of improved naval ordnance, and revealed the total vulnerability of wooden ships to these weapons."

It other quotes, it sounds like the new ships cut through the old ones like paper.

[ALPHA WOLF 64]

Well, I at finally completed my units spreadsheet. You can find it at members.aol.com/civ3alphamod/index.html. i few quirks to mention. You'll see that some units can build forts and roads. I know the Roman armies did that alot and the crusaders, but the american cavalry. i used the all roads as terrain alot for naval units so they cant attack over and over, altho it would have been cool to watch a battleship sink a fleet of ironclads. i had mentioned earlier that units represent 500 people. Ships are mostly singular, and planes are squadrons. The killer is that settler is 10000 and leader is 1. DOHHHHHHH

My vote is against redoing the entire terrain values except for a tweak here and there. There's a graphics problem if you use the "display food and shields" option and the game crashes. Apparently, the game cant handle more than 2 food on the base grassland tile. Plus as I looked at the city sizes and AI spawl, even with my settlers=3, there wasnt a noticeable difference. It does seem right to me to have huge cities that can only produce things by pop/rush building. Any primailry grassland city will be extremely hampered if they cant mine grasslands. If you look at my unit costs as the game progresses, you'll see that big production will be necessary. Altho fun, I just cant imagine the upkeep on huge fleets of carriers or 1000 unit militaries that people talk about. BTW, all modern govs should have their unit support costs bumped to 2 to reflect higher costs for ammo, food, communications, etc.

I was reading the mod glitches thread, and Korn says there are problems with gov dependent buildings/wonders. I'm not thrilled that the building will be gone but the effect remains.

In regards to cultural expansion, I changed lvl multiplier to 800 from 1000, and border factor to 8 from 10. According to the editor help, these changes will expand the borders faster even tho it'll still take 25k+ for a city to fully expand. I also bumped up the cultural value of a few buildings, especially the palace since everyone has one. It allows the capitol to expand in 2 turns so it utilizes its full radius faster.

[Harlan]

Hi AW,
Good work. The current table I find hard to read though. Could you reorganize it in the following way:

divide into categories of infantry, cavalry, bombard, sea, air, and other (other being all the wierd things like Settler, Army, Scout, Worker).

within each category, go by order of appearance as much as you can, so one can see the progress from one type to another. Unique units put underneath the unit its based on, and mark those off in a special color to see separate them better.

With that organization, I could better comment and analyze, and we'll all be better off in the long run.

A few questions/ comments right off the bat though, just looking at the names, not the numbers:

1. What is Immigrant, Legion, Regiment and Divison, exactly?

2. The two yellow units - don't include 'em if the flags for them don't exist. When/if we get new flags, we can add new stuff.

3. You don't have a movement column, you don't have a hitpoint column. Vital to understand the worth of units.

4. I would give 0 bombard to all archer units. The Real Deal mod, which I've tried out, uses this, and its really neat. It gives archer units a free shot if anything in their stack is attacked, and thus helps promote the concept of having a well balanced army. Check out the Real Deal thread/ readme for more on that.

5. What's this about Longbowman being the English UU? If you want that, then what about the Man O' War? I wouldn't be against that change, and Man O' War graphic could be used as a good general Ship of the Line unit.

(I also wouldn't be averse to getting rid of the historically inaccurate (and very lamely named!) Chinese Rider unit, and, lacking a better graphic, giving them the Crossbow unit earlier than any other civ, which certainly would be worth a lot (or make theirs stronger, as the Age of Kings game does). The Chinese were using Crossbowmen as big parts of their armies back in 300 BC! Then the Rider graphic could be used for the Cataphract unit. We also have a Junk unit graphic we could use as UU, though Crossbow was really their "thing")

6. I'll have to look closer later esp when you add the two columns, but at first glance you're leaving out some must have units:

Horse Archer (available with Stirrup, faster than any other unit in the time, but weak on defense, also having 0 bombard).

Cataphract (intermediate step between Horseman and Knight, the numbers of which are the very different 4A 1D and 8A 6D in your scheme of things. In fact, Horseman is weaker than Chariot - that's not right. Also comes with Stirrup)

Field Artillery and Culverin - basically another level between Cannon and Howitzer/Artillery, Culverin being the slower and stronger one. Too much change in this category to have so few units.

Jet Bomber (why only Jet Fighter - Jet technology worked for both)

7. Please explain Grenadier. I don't agree with what you have at the moment (coexistent with Rifleman, when they were replaced by Rifleman). If you want a Musketman Rifleman intermediate, then Fusilier is a better name. The way I understand it, Grenadiers were essentially elite Fusiliers, not really different in weaponry or anything else, just the elite instead of veteran or regular, in Civ3 terms.

If you do have Fusilier, then all the disparate types should upgrade into that, not Rifleman, cos its with Fusilier that the variety of Musketman, Pikeman, Crossbow, Longbow, etc ended. Pikemen/Halberdiers were still being used up until that point (1700s) as a more defensive thing, while Musketmen were more offensive. Maybe that's what you were thinking with Rifleman and Grenadier, but there really wasn't the offensive / defensive infantry split at that time like there was pre-Fusilier.

8. I don't like the name Battle Tank. All tanks are battle tanks, no? Armor or Heavy Tank could be options.

9. As names, I prefer Rocket Artillery, don't like Centurion, like Attack Carrier for greater clarity. What about Carrier and Nuclear Carrier though?

10. What's with Ranger? If its a special unit, why do so many units upgrade to it?

11. I like your idea of increasing cost so there aren't huge swarms of units at the end of the game. Are you especially increasing artillery costs to make 2 old artillery into 1 new one, thus reducing the huge artillery stack tedium problem?

12. As I said before, I'm reading the book "The Evolution of Weapons and Warfare" right now. I think the one most important thing I found out was the following:

"The introduction of the rifle musket and its conoidal bullet in the decade between 1850 and 1860 was the have the greatest immediate and measurable revolutionary impact on war of any new weapon or technological development of war before or since. When and if tactical nuclear weapons appear on the battlefield, presumably they will have an even greater effect. But certainly not even the high explosive shells, airplanes or tanks of the 20th century were to have effects of contemporary scale and significance comparable to the rifled musket in the early days."

I hope you take that into consideration, cos being historically accurate is a good thing to strive for. As I said before, I think it would be cool to have 3 hitpoint levels: pregunpowder units, gunpowder units, and a third level that would obviously start with Rifleman. The hitpoint scheme you mentioned I found confusing.

Changing terrain values: I'd like to playtest that myself to see how that works. I'm not too worried about the graphical glitch since I never play with that setting!

I'm trying to take the suggestions on wonders and improvements and update my file so I can get that to you to help in your making of a tech tree (when you work on the tech tree next, you may want to do a big rethink, this time without the limitation that you can't add extra ones, cos having to keep the number the same or not completely changes things, needless to say).

[ALPHA WOLF 64]

Originally posted by Harlan
Hi AW,
Good work. The current table I find hard to read though. Could you reorganize it in the following way:

divide into categories of infantry, cavalry, bombard, sea, air, and other (other being all the wierd things like Settler, Army, Scout, Worker).

within each category, go by order of appearance as much as you can, so one can see the progress from one type to another. Unique units put underneath the unit its based on, and mark those off in a special color to see separate them better.

With that organization, I could better comment and analyze, and we'll all be better off in the long run.

ok, it took awhile to get all the numbers in and I just wanted to get it online for you guys before I load it into an access database so i can run various reports on it. Probably some time this weekend. I was hoping having the era flag would be close for now

1. What is Immigrant, Legion, Regiment and Divison, exactly?

immigrant is my attempt to split worker into a worker and a city joiner. Immigrants are what captured settlers turn into, or when you want to xfer population between cities.

Legion/regiment/division/army are my army units. Legions are era one armies and only hold 2 units. Add one unit per era.

2. The two yellow units - don't include 'em if the flags for them don't exist. When/if we get new flags, we can add new stuff.

I know, just wanted to show my wish list

3. You don't have a movement column, you don't have a hitpoint column. Vital to understand the worth of units.

I forgot to unhide those columns, should be ok now, if not, D/l the spreadsheet and manually unhide them.

4. I would give 0 bombard to all archer units. The Real Deal mod, which I've tried out, uses this, and its really neat. It gives archer units a free shot if anything in their stack is attacked, and thus helps promote the concept of having a well balanced army. Check out the Real Deal thread/ readme for more on that.

I caught that once. Thats a cool idea. I'll have to do that

5. What's this about Longbowman being the English UU? If you want that, then what about the Man O' War? I wouldn't be against that change, and Man O' War graphic could be used as a good general Ship of the Line unit.

I'd prefer man-o-war as a generic unit. Sea and air UUs are not useful enough. Might make the americans a minuteman UU (cheap musketman)

(I also wouldn't be averse to getting rid of the historically inaccurate (and very lamely named!) Chinese Rider unit, and, lacking a better graphic, giving them the Crossbow unit earlier than any other civ, which certainly would be worth a lot (or make theirs stronger, as the Age of Kings game does). The Chinese were using Crossbowmen as big parts of their armies back in 300 BC! Then the Rider graphic could be used for the Cataphract unit. We also have a Junk unit graphic we could use as UU, though Crossbow was really their "thing")

I'll have to take your word on that one

6. I'll have to look closer later esp when you add the two columns, but at first glance you're leaving out some must have units:

Horse Archer (available with Stirrup, faster than any other unit in the time, but weak on defense, also having 0 bombard).

Cataphract (intermediate step between Horseman and Knight, the numbers of which are the very different 4A 1D and 8A 6D in your scheme of things. In fact, Horseman is weaker than Chariot - that's not right. Also comes with Stirrup)

Field Artillery and Culverin - basically another level between Cannon and Howitzer/Artillery, Culverin being the slower and stronger one. Too much change in this category to have so few units.

Jet Bomber (why only Jet Fighter - Jet technology worked for both)

i like these ideas. I cant believe i left off jet bomber. i musta deleted by accident cuz it was there at one point.

7. Please explain Grenadier. I don't agree with what you have at the moment (coexistent with Rifleman, when they were replaced by Rifleman). If you want a Musketman Rifleman intermediate, then Fusilier is a better name. The way I understand it, Grenadiers were essentially elite Fusiliers, not really different in weaponry or anything else, just the elite instead of veteran or regular, in Civ3 terms.

If you do have Fusilier, then all the disparate types should upgrade into that, not Rifleman, cos its with Fusilier that the variety of Musketman, Pikeman, Crossbow, Longbow, etc ended. Pikemen/Halberdiers were still being used up until that point (1700s) as a more defensive thing, while Musketmen were more offensive. Maybe that's what you were thinking with Rifleman and Grenadier, but there really wasn't the offensive / defensive infantry split at that time like there was pre-Fusilier.

This one i'm quilty of adding without researching. Somewhere i remember someone claimed they were an offensive rifleman and that stuck in my head. Ok, help me with the numbers for that then

8. I don't like the name Battle Tank. All tanks are battle tanks, no? Armor or Heavy Tank could be options.

At one time or another each of those names I used. Just that battle tanks was the last one....LOL I think heavy tank is best.

9. As names, I prefer Rocket Artillery, don't like Centurion, like Attack Carrier for greater clarity. What about Carrier and Nuclear Carrier though?

Actually i think they are called Nuclear Attack Carriers
I thought Centurians were the elite of the legions???

10. What's with Ranger? If its a special unit, why do so many units upgrade to it?

Ranger is the modern foot soldier. In my world (its a wacky place to be) all future troops are highly trained in everything. Since mech inf is wheeled and cant get some places, I wanted a modern foot version.

11. I like your idea of increasing cost so there aren't huge swarms of units at the end of the game. Are you especially increasing artillery costs to make 2 old artillery into 1 new one, thus reducing the huge artillery stack tedium problem?

I didnt look at it that way, altho i should have. I was attempting to compare like era units.

12. As I said before, I'm reading the book "The Evolution of Weapons and Warfare" right now. I think the one most important thing I found out was the following:

"The introduction of the rifle musket and its conoidal bullet in the decade between 1850 and 1860 was the have the greatest immediate and measurable revolutionary impact on war of any new weapon or technological development of war before or since. When and if tactical nuclear weapons appear on the battlefield, presumably they will have an even greater effect. But certainly not even the high explosive shells, airplanes or tanks of the 20th century were to have effects of contemporary scale and significance comparable to the rifled musket in the early days."

I hope you take that into consideration, cos being historically accurate is a good thing to strive for. As I said before, I think it would be cool to have 3 hitpoint levels: pregunpowder units, gunpowder units, and a third level that would obviously start with Rifleman. The hitpoint scheme you mentioned I found confusing.

Basically, its the same idea as yours for HP but I added another HP level for UU, plus a level for heavy armor.

Changing terrain values: I'd like to playtest that myself to see how that works. I'm not too worried about the graphical glitch since I never play with that setting!

Thats cool. Like i said, i didnt notice much of a difference but that was just one quick game. I'll probably actually run the numbers thru sometime on some old games. It may be a matter of playing styles too. I hate pop rushing, its just not my style, altho i do rush alot later.

I'm trying to take the suggestions on wonders and improvements and update my file so I can get that to you to help in your making of a tech tree (when you work on the tech tree next, you may want to do a big rethink, this time without the limitation that you can't add extra ones, cos having to keep the number the same or not completely changes things, needless to say).

yep, being able to add techs would greatly simplify things. Since I was trying to leave the same number of techs per era, i was doing alot of tradeoffs. Now I can just have them all. BTW, a great way to slow down the tech rush is to raise the minimum number of turns to 64. This may deter the "buy it form the AI" strategy. Why 64? you'll see lots of powers of 2s...2,4,8,16,32, etc, in my randomly picked values.

[Harlan]

Good stuff, all. We seem to be in a lot of agreement. I've kinda left some criticisms to Matt, like adding the Cruiser .

Immigrant: I doubt this is something the AI is gonna use correctly. If so, I don't like the idea of giving units that are basically for the human player only. Otherwise, good idea.

Legion, regiment, etc: I could be wrong, but I think the Army having 3 increasible to 4 is pretty much a hardwired thing. You might be able to have something lower, but I doubt something higher. Something to playtest if you haven't already.

I forgot to unhide those columns, should be ok now, if not, D/l the spreadsheet and manually unhide them

Ah. Much nicer now. Now that I can see the movement, I'm in favor of having things go even faster in the modern era. I haven't played Civ3 all that much, but I noticed the AI builds huge numbers of Riflemen in that era, and sends a big horde of them off. But since they're so slow, the human can react to whereever they're going in time, so the AI never wins. I would boost that and Fusiliers to 2 move, and then adjust other numbers around that time accordingly (Artillery now 2, Howitzer 3, Cavalry, Tank 3). That would be more historically accurate too (modern inventions like canned food, changes in signalling and depot systems allowing troops more mobility even if they don't have railroads and roads to use. Napoleon was really the first to take advantage of this increased mobility even for infantry).

I'd prefer man-o-war as a generic unit. Sea and air UUs are not useful enough. Might make the americans a minuteman UU (cheap musketman)

What if these have higher stats than other UUs, proportionately? If you do change the English UU, make sure to call the generic Man-O-War the Ship of the Line (a Frigate replacement) and not Man-O-War. I'd be in favor of the change not so much because I don't find non-ground UUs useful in theory, but because the Longbowman was really an English only thing historically, and is a bit of an odd man out in the game, esp. without having anything really appropriate to upgrade too.

I'm sure you can find a growing number of American tank graphics and other modern graphics if you want to change them. I'd prefer that over the Minuteman cos that time isn't the US's golden age.

This one i'm quilty of adding without researching. Somewhere i remember someone claimed they were an offensive rifleman and that stuck in my head. Ok, help me with the numbers for that then

Probably equal offensive and defensive numbers, or slight defensive advantage. Big jump from them to Rifleman. The big change here from Musketman is Fusiliers have ring bayonets, which allow them to be offensive and defensive, whereas Musketmen needed to be mixed with Pikemen to have them defendable.

I thought Centurians were the elite of the legions???

Well yeah, that's the point. We don't want the names of the elites, we want the names of the rank and file, since only the Romans can build Legions.

Thats cool. Like i said, i didnt notice much of a difference but that was just one quick game. I'll probably actually run the numbers thru sometime on some old games. It may be a matter of playing styles too. I hate pop rushing, its just not my style, altho i do rush alot later

I do think the new numbering system will work better, though it may need tweaking. My main complaint is that at the beginning one should be irrigating like a madman, instead of mining like a madman. I played one game where I didn't have any rivers, so I ended up doing nothing but mining the whole game. Still, all my cities grew to extremely large sizes, comparable with the AI ones. That's just messed up. People are used to mining everything and spoiled in having all cities having good shield production, whereas in Civ2 you actually had to irrigate just as much or more and some big cities had very few shields in that game.

We should compensate shield poor terrain with shield giving bonus resources, and food poor terrain with food rich bonus resources to help out a bit.

If you're not into pop rushing, seek out city spots with good shield potential. But some pop rushing in a Despotism is only smart, new terrain values or old.

yep, being able to add techs would greatly simplify things. Since I was trying to leave the same number of techs per era, i was doing alot of tradeoffs. Now I can just have them all. BTW, a great way to slow down the tech rush is to raise the minimum number of turns to 64. This may deter the "buy it form the AI" strategy. Why 64? you'll see lots of powers of 2s...2,4,8,16,32, etc, in my randomly picked values.

"Now I can just have them all" indeed, but also use some discretion! You should still be thinking is this really necessary for any new ones.

I can give some feedback if you can present your tech ideas in some way, esp the new techs.

Also, you may want to start over with Mizaq's root mod as your base. That gives blank spots for lots of new units, wonders, resources, etc... and will make it easier to add all that stuff further down the line. It hasn't been updated in a while, but is still compatible with the latest patch.

Also, speaking of slowing the AI down, I'm guessing the AI is setting its research rate really high, at times 90% and the like. I often see them with virtually no money. I'd like to see those limits lower generally, forcing them to have more money and less science. It seems that after a while, new techs are coming along as fast as they can (1 advance every 3 or 4 turns or whatever its set to) even though the AI's economy shouldn't be supporting that. I play on Emperor, by the way.

[ALPHA WOLF 64]

Originally posted by Harlan
Immigrant: I doubt this is something the AI is gonna use correctly. If so, I don't like the idea of giving units that are basically for the human player only. Otherwise, good idea.

According to Firaxis last night, my editor bug in regards to the terraforming only worker isnt a bug to them. So I removed Immigrant last night

Legion, regiment, etc: I could be wrong, but I think the Army having 3 increasible to 4 is pretty much a hardwired thing. You might be able to have something lower, but I doubt something higher. Something to playtest if you haven't already.

I havent gotten to that point in the game yet, but the army size is manipulatable with only one so I'm hoping the this 4 era army will work too.

Ah. Much nicer now. Now that I can see the movement, I'm in favor of having things go even faster in the modern era. I haven't played Civ3 all that much, but I noticed the AI builds huge numbers of Riflemen in that era, and sends a big horde of them off. But since they're so slow, the human can react to whereever they're going in time, so the AI never wins. I would boost that and Fusiliers to 2 move, and then adjust other numbers around that time accordingly (Artillery now 2, Howitzer 3, Cavalry, Tank 3). That would be more historically accurate too (modern inventions like canned food, changes in signalling and depot systems allowing troops more mobility even if they don't have railroads and roads to use. Napoleon was really the first to take advantage of this increased mobility even for infantry).

I'd like to do that too, but I've never seen a 3m retreat from a 2m so I'm afraid raising foot speeds will totally neutralize the retreat abilities. Needs to be played more to see.

What if these have higher stats than other UUs, proportionately? If you do change the English UU, make sure to call the generic Man-O-War the Ship of the Line (a Frigate replacement) and not Man-O-War. I'd be in favor of the change not so much because I don't find non-ground UUs useful in theory, but because the Longbowman was really an English only thing historically, and is a bit of an odd man out in the game, esp. without having anything really appropriate to upgrade too.

I'm sure you can find a growing number of American tank graphics and other modern graphics if you want to change them. I'd prefer that over the Minuteman cos that time isn't the US's golden age.

I'm totally in favor of the England change and made that last night. As far as the Americans go, I'm not sure our tanks were ever the top of the line until the Abrams came out. Minutemen may not have been our golden age (1950s), but without them, there's no USA.

Probably equal offensive and defensive numbers, or slight defensive advantage. Big jump from them to Rifleman. The big change here from Musketman is Fusiliers have ring bayonets, which allow them to be offensive and defensive, whereas Musketmen needed to be mixed with Pikemen to have them defendable.

Can you list the right progression and values?

Well yeah, that's the point. We don't want the names of the elites, we want the names of the rank and file, since only the Romans can build Legions.

Thats partial my point. Anyone could have copied the concept of the legion and since I've added an army of legion, I wanted to seperate the Roman UU from the Legion army unit. When i think of legions, I think of centurians. Same reason the f-15 was used instead of the f-4 or f-16, the F-15 is the elite of the elite.

I do think the new numbering system will work better, though it may need tweaking. My main complaint is that at the beginning one should be irrigating like a madman, instead of mining like a madman. I played one game where I didn't have any rivers, so I ended up doing nothing but mining the whole game. Still, all my cities grew to extremely large sizes, comparable with the AI ones. That's just messed up. People are used to mining everything and spoiled in having all cities having good shield production, whereas in Civ2 you actually had to irrigate just as much or more and some big cities had very few shields in that game.

My number one issue is the graphics crash. Lots of people play with that option on and it took me awhile to figure it out. What if we have a mining tech so that mines cant be built right away? And grasslands with shields should be mined. I pass some quarries every day on my way to work in the middle of the burbs. My perfect solution would be to have city shields as 2, and allow minng only on those grasslands with a shield. Those not being changeable by us, I vote for mines dont being available until construction. Did you ever hear about the mountain that the romans leveled by filling it with water? Somehow, they collapsed a mountain to gets its gold out.

We should compensate shield poor terrain with shield giving bonus resources, and food poor terrain with food rich bonus resources to help out a bit.

Definitely would like to see marble and clay as grassland resources.

If you're not into pop rushing, seek out city spots with good shield potential. But some pop rushing in a Despotism is only smart, new terrain values or old.

I prefer the gold production out of the lage cities. pop rushing a settler will take a pop 7 down to 2 or 3. Thats alot of gold to give up. And since I try to match my research to the AIs, i like the extra gold.

"Now I can just have them all" indeed, but also use some discretion! You should still be thinking is this really necessary for any new ones.

In general, I dont like techs that dont give some immediate unit/building/wonder. I dont know if you noticed but I removed all gov techs and put the govs under the tech that best spawned it IMO.

I can give some feedback if you can present your tech ideas in some way, esp the new techs.

Unfortunately, since the tech lines appear to be hard coded, I cant just make the changes in the game. I first have to change all the locations of the techs, copy each era into paintshop and then remove/add lines. I'm not graphically oriented so I'm using paintbrush and its very slow going.

Also, you may want to start over with Mizaq's root mod as your base. That gives blank spots for lots of new units, wonders, resources, etc... and will make it easier to add all that stuff further down the line. It hasn't been updated in a while, but is still compatible with the latest patch.

I prefer to add 1 or 2 units at a time via the copy tool. I'm a control freak....LOL Actually I tried Mizaq's once and had all kinds of game abends so I was doing something wrong.

Also, speaking of slowing the AI down, I'm guessing the AI is setting its research rate really high, at times 90% and the like. I often see them with virtually no money. I'd like to see those limits lower generally, forcing them to have more money and less science. It seems that after a while, new techs are coming along as fast as they can (1 advance every 3 or 4 turns or whatever its set to) even though the AI's economy shouldn't be supporting that. I play on Emperor, by the way.

The AIs usually have treasuries equavalent to me and I run at 80-100%. I dont usually get far ahead until i start selling maps and techs. The increased turns to 64 has done wonders tho for slowing it down. I'm only in the ancient era but a few times every choice remaining was 20+ turns. I dont remember if i tweaked any tech values or not in that era. i wouldnt object to a max of 80% for all govs. In reality, its impossible to spend 100% on research anyways.

You know, the read-me for this mod will be huge.....LOL

[ALPHA WOLF 64]

BTW, after spending over an hour on it, I still cant get the spreadsheet to load into Access so I'll have to wait til monday to get help at work. Once in access, it'll be much easier to sort and categorize the units. Doing it manually will take alot of time and I want to get some testing issues out of the way.

[Harlan]

According to Firaxis last night, my editor bug in regards to the terraforming only worker isnt a bug to them.

What, you got an answer out of them? How? Ask them how the AI determines which buildings or units to build!

I havent gotten to that point in the game yet, but the army size is manipulatable with only one so I'm hoping the this 4 era army will work too.

I definitely remember seeing something about this not working above 4 (including the +1 from the wonder). Think about it - the graphic on the flag even has 4 dots on it - no way to have 5 dots.

I'd like to do that too, but I've never seen a 3m retreat from a 2m so I'm afraid raising foot speeds will totally neutralize the retreat abilities. Needs to be played more to see.

The rule is the faster unit should always retreat. In theory, a 6 move unit should retreat from a 5 move unit.

I'm totally in favor of the England change and made that last night. As far as the Americans go, I'm not sure our tanks were ever the top of the line until the Abrams came out. Minutemen may not have been our golden age (1950s), but without them, there's no USA.

You're more likely to find an Abrams graphic someone made than a Minuteman graphic. There's a nice new thread at Civfanatics showing all the units, which you can find here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?threadid=22289&pagenumber=3

Can you list the right progression and values?

Yeah, but only if I know the values of the units around it in your system.

Thats partial my point. Anyone could have copied the concept of the legion and since I've added an army of legion, I wanted to seperate the Roman UU from the Legion army unit. When i think of legions, I think of centurians. Same reason the f-15 was used instead of the f-4 or f-16, the F-15 is the elite of the elite.

I'm thinking the Legion may not stay, if the game is hardwired to not allow so many army types. If you remove one, that would be the one, cos of the name confusion.

My number one issue is the graphics crash. Lots of people play with that option on and it took me awhile to figure it out. What if we have a mining tech so that mines cant be built right away? And grasslands with shields should be mined.

Since you seem to have Firaxis's ear , please make sure they know about this bug. If we're in it for the long term, I think its safe to say the mod won't be done until the next patch, and that's something Firaxis really ought to fix in the next patch.

I'm not averse to allow mining on grasslands, but someone who's a heavy miner should suffer by not having their cities grow as much. I don't like the solution of keeping the old system but no mines till later, cos what would happen then is irrigation would still be useless in a Despotism and mining impossible, so the smart player would be a road making maniac. We want the player to need to do all three from the very beginning, and make a balanced mix to prosper.

In general, I dont like techs that dont give some immediate unit/building/wonder. I dont know if you noticed but I removed all gov techs and put the govs under the tech that best spawned it IMO.

Good and good.

Unfortunately, since the tech lines appear to be hard coded, I cant just make the changes in the game. I first have to change all the locations of the techs, copy each era into paintshop and then remove/add lines. I'm not graphically oriented so I'm using paintbrush and its very slow going.

I wasn't assuming it would be in graphical form, though that would be ideal. Just some text on these are the new or renamed techs and here's what they do would allow me to give some feedback until you have something better. Of course, an improved bic would also do this, but you might want to get the feedback before you do the work.

I prefer to add 1 or 2 units at a time via the copy tool. I'm a control freak....LOL Actually I tried Mizaq's once and had all kinds of game abends so I was doing something wrong.

I've tried it out and had no problems at all.

I wouldnt object to a max of 80% for all govs. In reality, its impossible to spend 100% on research anyways.

I think Civ2 is a good guide for this one. If you recall in that one, the first governments have caps of 50 or 60% or so and only the end gvmts get up to 90%. Whereas in Civ3 even Despotism allows 90%!

BTW, after spending over an hour on it, I still cant get the spreadsheet to load into Access so I'll have to wait til monday to get help at work. Once in access, it'll be much easier to sort and categorize the units. Doing it manually will take alot of time and I want to get some testing issues out of the way.

Why don't you just send me the non-Access file (I have Access too). Are you working in Excel, or what program? Export it as a text file if nothing else works, and send me that. Weekends are good times to work on things. (I should have been doing more work at work this week, and less of this stuff!!!!

By the way, I hope you remove the +1 hitpoint for bombard units, and reflect that in other values if you think necessary. I noticed Archer has +1, Bowman +2, etc. I think that's very confusing.

[ALPHA WOLF 64]

Originally posted by Harlan
What, you got an answer out of them? How? Ask them how the AI determines which buildings or units to build!

unfortunately my only way to communicate with them is thru the forums. but i hope by asking questions politely, they may be more inclined to answer. BTW, i saw that post at some time where I think they answered that. It might have even been a chat log, i cant remember

I definitely remember seeing something about this not working above 4 (including the +1 from the wonder). Think about it - the graphic on the flag even has 4 dots on it - no way to have 5 dots.

I've used the 5 unit army in past games. i'm just not sure armies are upgradeable. i hope to test that out this weekend.

The rule is the faster unit should always retreat. In theory, a 6 move unit should retreat from a 5 move unit.

i know thats the rule, but i've never seen it actually work that way.

You're more likely to find an Abrams graphic someone made than a Minuteman graphic. There's a nice new thread at Civfanatics showing all the units, which you can find here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showth...9&pagenumber=3

good, we need a one stop shop for graphics

Yeah, but only if I know the values of the units around it in your system.

i sent you my database of current values. I think i'm satisfied with the ancient values. I havent seen any middle age units that seem outta whack but i havent gotten far enough to see how they fare against industrial units.

I'm thinking the Legion may not stay, if the game is hardwired to not allow so many army types. If you remove one, that would be the one, cos of the name confusion.

lets see if multi-era armies works first if not, then can return to the old names

Since you seem to have Firaxis's ear , please make sure they know about this bug. If we're in it for the long term, I think its safe to say the mod won't be done until the next patch, and that's something Firaxis really ought to fix in the next patch.

accckkkk, i hope we are done before that.

I'm not averse to allow mining on grasslands, but someone who's a heavy miner should suffer by not having their cities grow as much. I don't like the solution of keeping the old system but no mines till later, cos what would happen then is irrigation would still be useless in a Despotism and mining impossible, so the smart player would be a road making maniac. We want the player to need to do all three from the very beginning, and make a balanced mix to prosper.

But a mining strategy is a valid strategy. They suffer later because their cities will max out much smaller than others. I actually find that less offense than building huge cities and pop rushing. I dont find that historically accurate or humanitarian. I would be less opposed to pop rusing wonders but that isnt an option. How does killing people create settlers faster?

I wasn't assuming it would be in graphical form, though that would be ideal. Just some text on these are the new or renamed techs and here's what they do would allow me to give some feedback until you have something better. Of course, an improved bic would also do this, but you might want to get the feedback before you do the work.

i think we need to nail down the units/wonders/buildings first. We should try to agree on the very basic advances. i think these are the ones that do not need requirements: bronze working, writing (includes alphabet, because not all writing was alphabetical), hullmaking, cerimonial burial, wheel, ballistics, animal domestication (renamed from horse riding), pottery, and masonry. Using these as stepping stones, we can then work on the next tier of advances.

I think Civ2 is a good guide for this one. If you recall in that one, the first governments have caps of 50 or 60% or so and only the end gvmts get up to 90%. Whereas in Civ3 even Despotism allows 90%!

i have to admit that i was surprised not to see a science limit. But with all the changes being made to science costs, i wouldnt lower any to under 80%. Even at 100% advances are taking 20+ turns each. Eventually, as i build units i have to lower it to support my armies. i suspect that this is the same thing hampering the AI treasuries. The AI build far more units than I do. I bet if we modify the # of free units for each gov, then treasuries will grow more. (plus the 80% cap)

By the way, I hope you remove the +1 hitpoint for bombard units, and reflect that in other values if you think necessary. I noticed Archer has +1, Bowman +2, etc. I think that's very confusing.

you are making it too complicated:
+1 non-gunpower ranged OR +2 gunpowder/rocket
+1 UU
+1 light armor armor (tanks, MI, early iron ships, knights, newest ships)
+2 heavy armor (battleship, MA)
also gave some to subs for their actual difficulty in finding.

OK, maybe it is a little complicated
i wanted the A/D values to reflect actual power and HP to be for survivability. I went thru some scenarios in my head (ironclad vs dreadnaughts, warriors vs archers etc) and looked at what result i'd want and the frequency of those victories. HP seemed to be reliable way to get those results. I tried just using A/D but the results werent satisfactory. After adding the HP, its much more reliable, not that the occasional surprise doesnt happen.