Volunteers for a research team

[Harlan]

Here we go again...

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

Please find that! Maybe we should make a seperate post about that, to see if anyone else knows.

I've used the 5 unit army in past games.

Really? Wow. By the way, Armies and variants should have blitz capability - its a lot of units to tie up for only one attack.

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

We need to bug Firaxis about this then, cos that's clearly a bug. I wouldn't let it slow down the planning of unit number changes though.

But a mining strategy is a valid strategy. They suffer later because their cities will max out much smaller than others.

I agree mining is a valid strategy. However, it should have its tradeoffs (as you say, smaller max out). Especially early in the game it doesn't have those tradeoffs, in my opinion.

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 don't prefer to work that way - too slow. I prefer to take it one era at a time. Figure out what extra techs are needed to support all the extra stuff we're adding, and then we can work on the fine tuning, connections and so forth.

To that end, I notice you have Hullmaking, Sea Exploration, Vehicles, Seige Weapons. I don't know which ones you plan on deleting, now that you don't have to delete so many.

Seige Weapons I'd call Seige Warfare, Sea Exploration Seafaring. Vehicles - not sure what this is, but I don't like the name. The wheel was actually invented around 3500 BC, so no need to change that. I also prefer Animal Husbandry to Animal Domestication, since AD had been going on for thousands of years earlier. I'm also not happy with Polytheism and Monotheism, since it applies Monotheism is superior (tell that to India). Maybe change that to Organized Religion and Religious Doctrine (not sure of the second name, but the idea is a holy book/ official set of beliefs along the lines of Bible, Koran, etc).

To those, Stirrup is a must have for that era. Perhaps add Bureaucracy to support the new Empire gvmt and some related wonders. Other than that, can't think of much else.

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)

I would be in favor of lowering them even below 80% at the start. But if things are going too slow, make the ancient techs proportionately less expensive than later ages, when one presumably has lots of science buildings. I think the too slow thing should only be a problem in the first age, and we can fix that.

I wonder if an AI cheat is that the AI can't ever lose money, but just stays at zero if its running a deficit.

OK, maybe it is a little complicated

I totally think this is too complicated. Your goals here are admirable, but one should instictively know how many hit points a unit has, without having to look it up. You have 4 "eras" for your units in your chart, why not just add one hit point each new era.

I've also decided I'm against an extra hitpoint for UUs. If you think UUs aren't special enough, improve their numbers or lower their cost a tad. Hitpoint change should signify a quatum leap change in weapon type, and not just be used for slight tweaks in durability.

[ALPHA WOLF 64]

Originally posted by Harlan
Here we go again...

I tried to print out this whole thread but it killed too many trees....LOL

Please find that! Maybe we should make a seperate post about that, to see if anyone else knows.

Really? Wow. By the way, Armies and variants should have blitz capability - its a lot of units to tie up for only one attack.

There's occasionally a few good threads in the General forum. Armies were the topic last week. Armies arent blitz based on the makeup of the army. if the entire army can blitz, so can the army. So as not to give blitz to units that dont have it on their own.

We need to bug Firaxis about this then, cos that's clearly a bug. I wouldn't let it slow down the planning of unit number changes though.

I dont know if its a bug or if I've just never seen it. I rarely get leaders but i know they exist....LOL

I agree mining is a valid strategy. However, it should have its tradeoffs (as you say, smaller max out). Especially early in the game it doesn't have those tradeoffs, in my opinion.

I was just testing the later time mining and the map I got brought out a point. What to do if there are no rivers? I couldnt mine or irrigate. All i could build was a really long road....Highway to he...ooops, wrong road.

I don't prefer to work that way - too slow. I prefer to take it one era at a time. Figure out what extra techs are needed to support all the extra stuff we're adding, and then we can work on the fine tuning, connections and so forth.

Kinda what we are already doing. I think the Ancient and Middle are pretty close as they are, with an addition here and there.

To that end, I notice you have Hullmaking, Sea Exploration, Vehicles, Seige Weapons. I don't know which ones you plan on deleting, now that you don't have to delete so many.

Seige Weapons I'd call Seige Warfare, Sea Exploration Seafaring. Vehicles - not sure what this is, but I don't like the name. The wheel was actually invented around 3500 BC, so no need to change that. I also prefer Animal Husbandry to Animal Domestication, since AD had been going on for thousands of years earlier. I'm also not happy with Polytheism and Monotheism, since it applies Monotheism is superior (tell that to India). Maybe change that to Organized Religion and Religious Doctrine (not sure of the second name, but the idea is a holy book/ official set of beliefs along the lines of Bible, Koran, etc).

To those, Stirrup is a must have for that era. Perhaps add Bureaucracy to support the new Empire gvmt and some related wonders. Other than that, can't think of much else.

I was trying not to use names too close to the ctp ones. I wanted a seperate path for sea civs. Hullmaking + map making = exploration. I've always hated that chariots came before horse riding. So I made a "vehicles" tech that needs both. Same thing for siege weapons. You can tell we play the same games because I originally thought of most of those names too. I worry less about the specific names than the tree as a whole. I've never liked the whole trend that religion plays in these games. Its as if only religious buildings cause culture therefore you are forced to play a heavily religious game without the negative parts. I definitely think stirrup was more important to knights than the feudal system. The game tends to link technology with the social mechinism it arrive with w/o taking into account the specific tech advances needed. my 2 biggest pet peeves were chivalry=knights and nationalism=riflemen. this means i can never have knights w/o a feudal system and i dont think we should be forced to play history exactly as life.

I would be in favor of lowering them even below 80% at the start. But if things are going too slow, make the ancient techs proportionately less expensive than later ages, when one presumably has lots of science buildings. I think the too slow thing should only be a problem in the first age, and we can fix that.

Thats true.

I wonder if an AI cheat is that the AI can't ever lose money, but just stays at zero if its running a deficit.

i think at one time that was very true. not sure if its still true or not. my guess that its still true. The AI outtech me and support larger armies even with fewer cities and population. ( i play on monarch still)

I totally think this is too complicated. Your goals here are admirable, but one should instictively know how many hit points a unit has, without having to look it up. You have 4 "eras" for your units in your chart, why not just add one hit point each new era.

I was just playing that no range bombard ability for units. I like this better than the extra HP. You are right about the UU, i've basically given them a double bonus. I dont like the era bonus tho as the units should be balanced against each other regardless of era. Sea units may be the exception.

In regards to explorers, there's a "bug" with the hidden nationality that all the civs immediately attack those units. We could make them invisible. Imagine your roads getting pillaged without knowing by whom....LOL I have seen explorers before on islands maps where alot of land is still undiscovered. i think they need to be much earlier tho to be useful, but that hurts the expansionist civ trait tho. But since you can only get ancient techs from huts, it could probably be moved to early/middle middle ages.

I added the tactical missile (v-2 type). I called it that so that it would be distinguished from small type rockets fired from vehicles.

I need to d/l the new graphics for timber and copper so i can get them into my test games.

[Harlan]

There's occasionally a few good threads in the General forum. Armies were the topic last week. Armies arent blitz based on the makeup of the army. if the entire army can blitz, so can the army. So as not to give blitz to units that dont have it on their own

Well, lets have more stuff blitz then, esp. as times get modern.

I dont know if its a bug or if I've just never seen it. I rarely get leaders but i know they exist....LOL

I suspect its the latter - I've never heard this complaint before.

I was just testing the later time mining and the map I got brought out a point. What to do if there are no rivers? I couldnt mine or irrigate. All i could build was a really long road....Highway to he...ooops, wrong road.

We haven't got to the Medieval tech tree yet (or at least I haven't mentally) but a must have there is Crop Rotation. One thing to attach to this would be the ability to irrigate from the coast. That comes absurdly late in the game otherwise, esp given the lack of rivers for startup spots sometimes. I would also put the ability to clear jungle here at least, if not later (the world's jungles have only started to get cut down the last couple of centuries as tropical diseases have dimished). Mill would also go with it.

I was trying not to use names too close to the ctp ones.

I'm not worried too much about a name being a CTP name or not. Why? Sometimes a name is just the right thing to call something!

It would be pretty wierd if we came up with a tech that wasn't named in Civ2, CTP1, CTP2 or Civ3 yet.

I wanted a seperate path for sea civs. Hullmaking + map making = exploration.

That's fine, but sea exploration is too generic to mean anythinig to me (since exploration of the sea started long before - Australia colonized by 40,000 BC). We need a better name.

I've always hated that chariots came before horse riding.

I remember there was a HUGE debate about this months back. The fact is, Chariots DO come before horse riding. That's why they rode chariots, cos they couldn't just ride the horses. This may be surprising, but mostly has to do with the fact that horses then were very different from horses today. They were too small to ride, and it took centuries of breeding to get them to ridable size (there was yet another leap in horse size later that allowed Knights with all that heavy gear). BTW, I've been in places in Indonesia where the horses today as still laughably small and completely unrideable.

So something like Horse Breeding is perhaps better than Horse Riding.

We tend to think certain things remain the same, when in fact they don't. A lot of food would appear microscopic to us in ancient times for instance. A head of corn was smaller than an inch long in ancient Egyptian times, a cherry tomato would have been a huge tomato, etc...

I've never liked the whole trend that religion plays in these games. Its as if only religious buildings cause culture therefore you are forced to play a heavily religious game without the negative parts. I definitely think stirrup was more important to knights than the feudal system. The game tends to link technology with the social mechinism it arrive with w/o taking into account the specific tech advances needed. my 2 biggest pet peeves were chivalry=knights and nationalism=riflemen. this means i can never have knights w/o a feudal system and i dont think we should be forced to play history exactly as life.

I agree Chivalry is a silly name. However, Knights need more than Stirrup, cos the stirrup came a lot earlier than the Knight did. There was a big social, feudal mechanism connected to Knights (having to do with their upkeep cost), though if Knights could have existed without that I won't speculate on today. The fact that it happened pretty much independently in Europe, Arab world, China and Japan indicates to me there probably is a strong connection.

You might get some of that downside to religion with the Theocracy gvmt (little science due to intolerance).

i think at one time that was very true. not sure if its still true or not. my guess that its still true. The AI outtech me and support larger armies even with fewer cities and population. ( i play on monarch still)

I'll bet its still true, and that's a huge reason to me to have lower max limits (cos I bet they don't cheat by breaking those limits).

I was just playing that no range bombard ability for units. I like this better than the extra HP. You are right about the UU, i've basically given them a double bonus. I dont like the era bonus tho as the units should be balanced against each other regardless of era. Sea units may be the exception.

Glad you agree on the UU and bombard. The era bonus helps prevent the phalanx beating the tank problem. There may not be a need for a Gunpowder hit point bonus level, cos gunpowder weapons to be honest weren't really a quantum leap but a slow change, and pre- and post gunpowder weapons fought together for centuries.

The book I'm reading has a chart on weapon lethality through the ages. Its pretty steady till around 1900, when it just takes off practically exponentially. In fact the chart mimics the rise of world population pretty closely, funnily enough.

So I think a minimum of two hit point upgrades, the first starting with Rifleman, the second corresponding to your fourth level, is neded.

Regarding Explorers, what if they're invisible, hidden nationality, and unable to do things like attack, defend or pillage. Would that work? I think they should move faster, too.

[ALPHA WOLF 64]

I'll keep this one short...yeah right...LOL

I think I have blitz on almost everything modern except paratroopers.

I like crop rotation. Too bad the maps dont generate forests on the edges of jungles. It would be nice to be able to push back jungles but not clear the middle. But with wheeled settlers, clearing jungle is a necessity. I hate games where you start surrounded by jungle.

How about renaming sea exploration to colonization? Since the early real civs planted colonies everywhere.

I even knew that about horses but didnt apply it to the game. Chariots go back under wheel. Vehicles is no longer a tech.

I'm inclined to believe that knights would have existed anyways, but we can make feudalism a sole pre-req to stirrup. No good weapon idea goes unused for long. I also want to add a castle building tech (castle improvement is a new wall type) that comes off feudalism.

Try the increase max tech turns. So far it hasnt unbalanced the game. mostly I'm in the 20s per tech. Dont forget the tech devaluation as more civs discover a tech. rarely do i fal behind by more than 3 or 4 techs. And since I play as America, if i had a god scouting run, I get tons of techs that way.

We can probably go with a HP starting with rifles (increased accuracy) and another for tank-type(increased protection).

I tried to make subs hidden nat and invisible. if a unit is hidden nat, that takes precedent over all other flags and the AIs swarm all over it. Ironclads would change direction to chase my "hidden" subs.

[Harlan]

Again! I can out reply you - bwah ha ha!

But with wheeled settlers, clearing jungle is a necessity. I hate games where you start surrounded by jungle.

I'd rather have clearing jungle start later, and if you start the game surrounded by jungle, then hey, life sucks. Try again.

How about renaming sea exploration to colonization? Since the early real civs planted colonies everywhere.

Colonization isn't sea specific. Let's keep thinking. Maybe what would help me - what does one get with the tech?

I'm inclined to believe that knights would have existed anyways, but we can make feudalism a sole pre-req to stirrup. No good weapon idea goes unused for long. I also want to add a castle building tech (castle improvement is a new wall type) that comes off feudalism.

Stirrup I think you keep getting the wrong idea. Stirrup came early - in some places as soon as 1000 BC (though in other places as late as 400 AD). It goes perfectly as prereq for Cataphract and Horse Archer, whereas Knight is in an entirely different era where stirrup is old news. So we need a different prereq for Knight.

I'm down on the Castle idea. The only quantum leap change in Walls would have come with the bastion defenses of Vauban in response to cannons. It would be great to have Walls become obsolete at that point a la Civ2 and Barracks, but alas. Beware the feature creep, too! If Castle was a strong fortification tile improvement though, that might work. Even that may not be necessary.

New hit point scheme:



Lack of ability to make Explorers really neat:



What if they're just invisible - will the AI civs make a stink if you walk over their land with one? If so, then what good is that flag?

[ALPHA WOLF 64]

Originally posted by Harlan
I'd rather have clearing jungle start later, and if you start the game surrounded by jungle, then hey, life sucks. Try again.

I was thinking it came with engineering but i see now that i was wrong.

Colonization isn't sea specific. Let's keep thinking. Maybe what would help me - what does one get with the tech?

Sea trading and Lighthouse, so maybe something along those lines. When I think colonization, I think distant shores.

I'm down on the Castle idea. The only quantum leap change in Walls would have come with the bastion defenses of Vauban in response to cannons. It would be great to have Walls become obsolete at that point a la Civ2 and Barracks, but alas. Beware the feature creep, too! If Castle was a strong fortification tile improvement though, that might work. Even that may not be necessary.

Castles were such an important part of feudalism. It just seems like its missing.

What if they're just invisible - will the AI civs make a stink if you walk over their land with one? If so, then what good is that flag?

Whenever i changed it back to just invisible(under 1.17), they got upset when i sat a sub off their coast

[ALPHA WOLF 64]

just something i read in another post. Wonders that have a building requirement, free buildings from other wonders will not meet that criteria. this could have reprecussions for some of our ideas.

[Colonel Kraken]

Originally posted by Canadian_Patriot
I'm waiting for you two guys to come to agreement before I step into this. If we're all posting ideas, corrections, and critiques, that's just going to be complicated. Once you two gents have come to a middle ground, I'll give it a look-see.

Matt

Well, Matt, it seems Harlan and Alpha Wolf pretty much ran away with this thread. (no offense)

I was originally going to help you with ideas on your mod from your original question:

I'm considering putting together a team to try and give each era of the game a closer look, more specifically, the units of the era . . . What I'm hoping is that I'll get a learned volunteer for each era. Ancient history has never really interested me, but I'm sure some out there study it with a passion equal to my own for the 20th Century and now the early 21st . . . If all goes well, we might be able to suggest some units that could be added to the various eras, helping to flesh out the game and making it a richer, more enjoyable experience.

I'm still willing to give my suggestions if you want. I am currently working on my own personal mod. What I've found is that I don't really like to work on group mods because inevitably each person has his/her own ideas of what makes a good game, especially me That is not to say that I don't wish to share my own personal ideas with you on what I have/am doing in my mod.

Let me know.

Perhaps I'll open another thread that addresses your original question(s).

--Colonel

[Canadian_Patriot]

Perhaps that would be best.

Matt

[Harlan]

Colonel,
It seems that AW and I have gone underground (using email), so you may not need to start a new thread.

AW has made a very detailed Excel spreadsheet of all the unit stats for the proposed mod. Even if you don't want to be part of this project, we'd be very happy to get feedback on that, esp. which units to include and not include.

[Colonel Kraken]

Sounds good, Patriot.

Thanks, Harlan, I've been watching you in action since the days of the first CtP; I have great respect for your work. Perhaps I will add my 2 cents to your project.

[Colonel Kraken]

Patriot, move on over to this thread for a look at some of my thoughts on naval units.

[Harlan]

CK,
If you're ready, we have an Excel spreadsheet on unit numbers we'd like you to check out. Modern navy is one contentious point right now. To have a post WW2 battleship or not, are AEGIS Cruiser and Destroyer essentially the same thing, etc?? That's really out of my knowledge area, so another opinion on that would be good.

[Colonel Kraken]

Thanks, Harlan, will do. Just let me know where to get this spreadsheet, and I'll see what I can do.

I'm certainly no expect on the subject. Shhh . . . don't tell anyone. But, modern naval warfare was a huge interest of mine in the early 90s when I delved deep into the topic as I had an extreme interest in the game Harpoon. Hear of it? It's so realistic and detailed, the U.S. Navy uses it to train its officers!!!

[ALPHA WOLF 64]

Originally posted by Colonel Kraken
Thanks, Harlan, will do. Just let me know where to get this spreadsheet, and I'll see what I can do.

I'm certainly no expect on the subject. Shhh . . . don't tell anyone. But, modern naval warfare was a huge interest of mine in the early 90s when I delved deep into the topic as I had an extreme interest in the game Harpoon. Hear of it? It's so realistic and detailed, the U.S. Navy uses it to train its officers!!!

CK, just let me know your email and I'll send you a copy. i thought I still had it from our ctp2 days, but i didnt