Updating the AU mod for C3C.

[lockstep]

Originally posted by alexman
I also prefer that each group of related changes gets its own thread for discussion (as opposed to one thread for all city improvement changes, for example).

While I like the idea very much, IMO this requires some in-advance drafting of possible sections. Once we have a dozen or so threads up, we can't undo them even if they turn out to be badly interwoven.

[alexman]

That's what this thread is for!

[Nor Me]

It's alright now but what about future suggestions.

There are always people wanting to suggest changes that we are unlikely to implement and now they'll all want their own thread!

[alexman]

I think we can have this thread for suggestions of thread titles. If the suggestion gets the OK from a panelist (or half the panelists, whatever), then we can open a thread. How does that sound?

[Rhothaerill]

I don't know that it would be a problem. People with ideas would post them anyway.

Don't know if this is really a good solution, but it's a possibility...perhaps have one thread specifically for proposing "new ideas", but have it stipulated that only one of the panelists or NM should start a new thread for discussion about the new idea.

[Rhothaerill]

Cross post with alexman. Great minds....

[lockstep]

Possible sections: I'll try to come up with some easy ones.

Space race
Early oversea contacts
AI build preferences
Miscellaneous

[alexman]

Good start!


Here is a list of more possible thread titles:

• AU mod: Attack of post-gunpowder defensive units
• AU mod: Which units to make airliftable?
• AU mod: The Gallic Swordsman
• AU mod: The Javelin Thrower
• AU mod: The Chasqui Scout
• AU mod: Ancient age ship movement
• AU mod: Post-sail ship movement
• AU mod: Balance of airpower
• AU mod: Cure for Cancer
• AU mod: Longevity
• AU mod: The Colosseum
• AU mod: The Coastal Fortress
• AU mod: Balance of Governments
• AU mod: How to help the AI with happiness
• AU mod: How to help the AI with research choices
• AU mod: AI use of dual offensive-defensive units
• AU mod: Amphibious units for all?
• AU mod: Balance of Ground bombardment

[Nor Me]

It's more that people won't feel that they're "listened to" unless they get their own thread if we start handing them out too liberally.

I'd be happy with 1 thread for all UUs. You've missed out the jaguar warrior as it is. Although that'd leave overlap with those that have dual-use AI flags.

[lockstep]

Hmm ... alexman, I don't know how many threads you envision, but this seems to me like an uneven classification. E.g., you could lump together everything about governments vs. deal with Republic and, say, Fascism, separately. Or you could create a 'Rebalancing UU's' thread vs. treat Gallc/Javelin/chasqui separately. (I'd even say I'd rather have separate government threads and a united UU thread than the other way round.)

'Balance of Ground bombardment' is perfect, though.

[alexman]

Sure, one thread for all UU seems much better, although just with the Gallic swordsman we went through a discussion in the main mod thread, a separate thread with a poll, and a whole AU game, IIRC.

Anyway, it was just a first go at it, just to get things started.

[lockstep]

Originally posted by Nor Me
It's more that people won't feel that they're "listened to" unless they get their own thread if we start handing them out too liberally.

I didn't even think of that, but you're quite right, Nor Me.

I'd say we don't have to design an all-embracing system of threads. Let's list the game areas that have been known for imbalances, re-arrange that list to about 15 topics that aren't completely uneven, add a section 'miscellaneous' (and a section 'city and leader names', if the AU mod philosophy allows fiddling with these ), and voila!

[ZargonX]

I think it will be more a matter of "official threads" vs. threads that the public starts on their own. We really can't monitor those, but we can reference them to put their ideas in the proper official thread. It will take a lot of thread monitoring, but we all read this stuff all day anyway, right

[nbarclay]

I seriously doubt that we'll want to tinker with the Conquests version of the Gallic Swordsman. There were three main reasons for rejecting the idea of reducing the Gallic Swordsman's cost to 40 in PtW, all of which have shifted with Conquests.

1) The Celts were Militaristic, and so could leverage an uber-attack UU better than the Iroquois could. The Celts are no longer Militaristic in Conquests.

2) Warriors can be built for upgrade cheaply and with no tech prerequisites, so using a few shields and a lot of cash to build a powerful army is easier with GSs than with MWs. But the higher upgrade costs in Conquests largely negate that advantage; upgrading a warrior to a 40-shield GS in Conquests actually costs 10 gold more than upgrading a warror to a 50-shield GS did in PtW. Thus, the upgrade-versus-build situation does not make 40-shield GSs nearly as powerful compared with MWs in Conquests as they would have been in PtW.

3) Since the AU mod is essentially conservative in nature, with a strong desire to avoid unnecessary changes, reducing the cost of the GS in PtW could have been justified only if, at cost 50, the GS were about the worst UU in the game. The idea of us taking it upon ourselves to make the GS quite possibly the most powerful UU in the game was completely unjustified given the goals of the mod. Now that Conquests has lowered the cost to 40 in the stock game, that same conservatism argues for keeping the cost there.

So my bet is that the GS will be a complete non-issue as far as the Conquests AU Mod is concerned. Even if the Celts end up as the most powerful warmongering civ in the game, which I'm a bit skeptical of with the higher upgrade costs, how many of us are going to complain about it?

It seems to me that the best approach is to have a general thread for all UUs and then, if a particular UU really gets us bogged down, branch it out into a separate thread. But the fact that Conquests allows unit cost increments in units of one rather than just ten probably makes that less likely (unless we go wild micro-tinkering). As I recall, we had a fairly quick and strong consensus that 45 would have been a good cost for the GS in PtW if the editor had just been willing to cooperate. The reason we needed so much discussion and testing was that we had to choose either 40 or 50.

[alexman]

I agree Nathan.

The only reason I suggested to discuss the GS in its own thread (I since admited that it was not a good idea, BTW) was the fact that we might want to make the GS to upgrade directly to Guerilla, but let's save this discussion for the related thread, OK?