MOD: Patch suggestion MOD (PtW version)

[kettyo]

I have playtested how government corruption levels affect AI preferences of govts.

I've found that the greatest variety of AI govts could be seen with monarchy set to nuisance and both republic and democracy set to problematic level.

With this setting in the endgame with 14 civs in the game (started with 24 ) some of them was monarchies, some republics, some democracies, and there was 1 communist civ (a huge one).

It was terrible that everybody changed to republic as soon as possible than updated to democracy before this change.

Most notably this change results in much more common AI-AI wars too.

[alexman]

There is something that has always bothered me with naval units, both in the stock rules and in the mod. Battleships are the least cost-effective bombard unit available (except AEGIS). Your latest changes make Frigates more cost-effective bombard units than Ironclads, and AEGIS more cost-effective than battleships, which is even more counter-intuitive. I just thought I would point that out, but I have no problem with it, because I believe that good gameplay is more important to Civ than historical accuracy.

On another issue, have you ever seen the AI load cruise missiles into transports? I haven't. If that's true, perhaps you should remove the ability of cruise missiles to get loaded in anything. You could do that by giving them the tactical missile ability. You could prevent them from being loaded into subs by giving subs the additional ability to transport only foot units, and making tactical nukes also foot units. (Helicopters wouldn't be able to transport nukes because they can't transport tactical missiles).

[kettyo]

Worse that AI don't seem to recognize the usefulness of cruise missiles in crushing garrison units defending cities.
This is the only way to precision-bomb just garrison units.

IMO precision bombing ability of planes should work as the attacker would choose whether to attack buildings or units or pop.

AI sometimes use cruise missiles to attack tile improvements. What a waste !

[player1]

Originally posted by alexman
There is something that has always bothered me with naval units, both in the stock rules and in the mod. Battleships are the least cost-effective bombard unit available (except AEGIS). Your latest changes make Frigates more cost-effective bombard units than Ironclads, and AEGIS more cost-effective than battleships, which is even more counter-intuitive. I just thought I would point that out, but I have no problem with it, because I believe that good gameplay is more important to Civ than historical accuracy.

I don't see real problem with it since it's just barely less cost effective in bombard.
It makes up that in good atatck rating.

In cases when you are the one who makes offensive it's best that you have plenty of Battleships.

Less efectivness then Destoyer makes up in much better defense rating (better protection from Bombers), while weaker cost effecviness then AEGIS makes up in it's better cost effectivness in attack (AEGIS 12 vs BShip 18) and earlier availablity.

As for Frigate vs Ironclad problem remember that Ironclad has good defense rating while Frigate does not.

So even with less cost-effecive bombard rating Ironclad would do better damage to Frigates then Frigates to Ironclads.

In fact, I just calculated that Ironclad would do 55% more damage to Frigate when bomabrding then Frigate could do to Ironclad (and price difference is 50%)

Originally posted by alexman
Have you ever seen the AI load cruise missiles into transports? I haven't. If that's true, perhaps you should remove the ability of cruise missiles to get loaded in anything. You could do that by giving them the tactical missile ability. You could prevent them from being loaded into subs by giving subs the additional ability to transport only foot units, and making tactical nukes also foot units. (Helicopters wouldn't be able to transport nukes because they can't transport tactical missiles).

I think that real problem here is that for players ability to transport Crusie Missiles in some way "sacred cow" so I don't
think that removing it would be good option (even if it hinders AI in some minor way).

It would be just like removing Artillery from game in order to help AI.


P.S.
By the way has anybody seen that AI airlifts cruise missiles?

[alexman]

Originally posted by player1
I think that real problem here is that for players ability to transport Crusie Missiles in some way "sacred cow"

I don't believe it was Firaxis' intention to have CMs be able to be loaded in transports, otherwise they would have added the "load" flag by now. In any case, if you want to be able to transport CMs, you might want to make submarines and AEGIS able to carry them instead of transports. It's more realistic, and it is just as unfair to the AI as allowing transports to carry cruise missiles. (You can fire a CM from a transport in the game, can't you?)

PS. No idea about airlifting CMs.

[alexman]

Originally posted by player1
As for Frigate vs Ironclad problem remember that Ironclad has good defense rating while Frigate does not.

I was thinking more of their bombard ability against ground units and improvements. As it is now, the player is encouraged to build Frigates for bombardment (more cost-effective) and Ironclads for naval combat, but in real life it was the other way around, wasn't it? I'm not sure.

[player1]

But Cannons are lurking from the cost.

Ready to damage low defense Frigates.

And your other naval units to finish them off.

So while they have net bombard raing, they are still vunerable.

[player1]

If there is a proof that AI doesn't know to airlift Cruise Missiles, I may be inclined to remove that change.

But, as far as it goes with transports, I would keep that ability, exempt if Firaxis fixes that in some next patch.

Transporing Cr. Missiles by transports is far more fair to AI then making Cr. Missiles launchable from Cruisers or Destroyers.

[=DrJambo=]

alexman,

I tried to fire a CM from a transport last night and couldn't, so i see no problem with the transport ability of CMs.

Furthermore, like i mentioned in an earlier post, one cannot simply base units' bombardment ability on their cost alone. I'll always be inclined to build an ironclad for bombarding or attacking even though they cost more. Why?

Because they are less likely to be destroyed when attacked. Remember the AI knows where all your ships are whether it can see them or not, so frigates based off the coast of an enemy don't tend to last very long. Furthermore, take for example a city that is producing 50 shields/turn, which is not inconceivable in the industrial age. It'll be able to produce an ironclad OR frigate in 2 turns. What will you pick then?

This example is the prime reason why my ironclads have the disadvantage of poorer movement rates in the ocean. Thus making the frigate still a desirable option in the industrial period.

In fact as the game progresses and the production of a city becomes greater, the more the cost value of units becomes less of a factor. So i wouldn't base any real arguments over the cost effectiveness of part of a unit compared to another. Take the whole unit as the basis for comparison cost-wise. The ironclad is better than the frigate and the battleship better than the destroyer.

Obviously the difference becomes far more noticable in poor production cities, but then, will you really be building battleships, etc in these?? Not likely.

[kettyo]

I've found a quite unimportant bug which also exists in standard rules.

The explore command is enabled for the tactical nuke unit which is totally useless, no one would ever go to explore the map with nuke missile launchers i think.

player1 you might have to fix this small bug in next version.

[player1]

Thanks for bug report.

It will be fixed in new version.

Probably, since for now I have no other plans in this time, when new PtW patch comes out.


P.S.
I think that similar error exsisted in 1.01 for Cruise Missiles.

[player1]

Be sure to send same thing to Bug-list thread in order to make sure that Firaxis will fix it in next patch.

[player1]

Plans for next version:

Removing Explore command from Tactical Nukes (stupid bug).
Changing Militry Academy to need 5 Barracks built.
(since we removed need for victorious army, this could add some flavor)


When will be next update?
I don't know. Since these changes alone not make up for need of new version (too minor), I'll wait for some time unitl new PtW patch gets out or until I find out some other things that need to be changed.

[player1]

Another thing.

What everybody thinks about making Settlers and Workers capable of Airlifting?
(since I have mixed feeling about that)

[Kloreep]

I think I recall a bug where having Sun Tzu's (or pyramids) could make it impossible to get the game to count you as having more than one Barracks (or granary) if you only had one continent. So you should probably test that before putting in the Mil Academy requirement (though I think it is a good idea ).

I don't know about airlifting Workers & Settlers. They are pop units, but it would be nice to be able to airlift em, especially Settlers when you're fighting a war on another continent.