The Quest for Deeper Strategy....

[Franses]

Only now discovered this great thread.

Vel,

I once altered the tech limit of 40 to 100. It gave no problems that I could detect and is more realistic in my opinion.

As many others I do not like the "run over the whole continent for no cost" effect of railroad. We tried to get Firaxis to make this editable but did not succeed. It seems to big a change for them. What I did in a mod was to take away railroad completely (by taking away coal, I could not think of another possibility). Instead I added two types of trucks. Land units able to transport 2 respectively 5 units at a higher speed. I did not yet test it at great length but it seems to work well.

I hate to see the map crowded with roads, mines and irrigation. So I also altered this by altering the terrain types such that roads are only functional as lowering the required movement points. Restricted the benefits of irrigation to desert and plains and the benefits of mining to hills, mountains and some other types. Worked fine for me. Again I did not test this at great length because I am only in CIV3 to play Multiplayer and expect that that means playing the original version. But if we make a widely accepted Apolyton mod that may no longer be a problem. If you are interested I can give you the details of the changes I made.

[Gen.Dragolen]

More Good Ideas

Franses,

Please send me a copy of the changes or post them here.

I like your idea about restricting the terraforming to only certain terrain types. I will have to try that and see what it does to the balance.


D.

[Franses]

Gen. D,

Here are the numbers I used (food, shield, gold):

Desert	0-1-1	Mined 0-2-1	Irrigated 1-1-1
Plains	1-1-1	Mined 1-3-1	Irrigated 3-1-1
Grass	3-1-1
Hills	1-1-1	Mined 1-4-1
Mountains	0-1-1	Mined 0-4-1
Forest	1-2-1
Jungle	1-0-1
Tundra	1-0-1	Mined 1-1-1
Floodplain	3-0-1
Coast	2-0-2
Sea	2-0-1
Ocean	1-0-0

The above assumes that you do not want to add extra benefits in gold from road building. So building a road should be set to have no benefits. It also assumes railroad is absent.

Edit: tried several times to give the above a better look. Only partly succeeded. I have no idea where all this white space comes from. Sorry for that.

[Franses]

Increase ship movement by +1 point per age over what the movement currently is.

Regarding this issue. I suggest do not alter these. One of the Firaxians remarked that they had tried it and it did imbalance the game, he said. Just having played an Archipe..... game I think I know why. It has the same effect as railroad has on movement, making it almost impossible to defend cities on a coastline. You never know where these marines will show up next.

[player1]

It also makes ships quicker then bombers (range 6-8).

And makes dumber naval AI.

[Franses]

Good point, player 1

[MiloMilo]

A PolyMod! I love it!

Vel, a few quick questions/comments:

1st, is the zero-range bombard given to gunpowder units (i.e. everything after musketmen) or only to bow-and-arrow units?

2nd, check out Player1's mod. Generally not unbalancing, generally good stuff, and approved by Firaxians (!). I won't go so far as to suggest it be used, because it was created with different golas from yours. But it has some very good ideas in it. Below are some bits of it that I would add to the current effort:

1) Musketeers desperately need to be fixed. Samurai, Riders, and War Elephants can be built earlier, and get large bonuses over knights. Musketeers should be 4/4/1. Possibly, plain old musketmen could be raised to 3/4/1. For 50 Shields they'd be worth it over pikemen.

2) Player1 also changed the prerequisite techs for certain spaceship components. They were changed to match what is written in the civilopedia (which is of course good) and a side effect is more time to play in the modern age (which is also good).

3) Ships do need to move faster, but watch that they don't exceed the range of airplanes. I'm told it unbalances things. I'd say the fastest ships should have 1 move less than the range of planes.

The rest of your ideas for the PolyMod are great. I quit my job in two days, so if you need any playtesting done...

[MiloMilo]

Also, Theseus has a good point about the AI's problems often stemming from a lack of gold. I've been thinking about this, and I believe it results from the eagerness with which the AI buys techs. I often see a lot of very advanced but very poor civs in my games. I wish the AI could appreciate the usefulness of having a working treasury. Maybe if it was programmed to only spend up to half its current treasury for any particular tech... but I don't know how to do that, and I don't know if there would be any unwanted side-effects.

[Arrian]

Actually, I think the AI's lack of gold stemms largely from the fact that the AI does not manipulate the tech/tax slider the way we do. They just peg their research rate as high as they can without incurring a loss, so far as I can tell. That, combined with their eagerness to buy tech and resources from their fellow AIs, keeps them bankrupt most of the time.

I could be wrong about it, as I don't investigate AI cities every turn, but I really don't think the AI takes proper advantage of the research caps.

-Arrian

[Gen.Dragolen]

Their Marines landed where ?

Player1,

I've played a couple of games with increased naval movement where the galleys were limited to coastal waters and each subsequent age gave them a little more range.

It made for a much more interesting time as several of the nations actually had large numbers of privateers running about and doing damage: watched the Zulu's use them to bombard an English town just before they captured it.

What it does do is place naval units on site in a hurry and you will find that the AI doesn't do much beyond sending raiding parties to harass you. And it will only do this if you do not have much of a standing army. Rather human behaviour, eh ?

I've been rereading the posts and will have a look at some of the other settings I was tinkering with in the editor. If I get enough time tonight, I should be able to post the .bic. It should include the changes Vel mentioned and a few others.

I will add the 1 pop per unit for most of the infantry type units since the manpower would be withdrawn from the economy in real life. A neat change to the Universal Sufferage would be to end the population cost in all military units. It would also be a nice twist if the pop point came back if the unit is disbanded.

And I do like the idea of an Explorer/Settler unit. Nothing like having the restless masses go forth and carve out a new spot in the wilderness. But by the same token, troops should be able to build fortifications like a worker, but that may be pushing it a little.


D.

[Gen.Dragolen]

AI Economics

Arrian,

The other reason is that the AI doesn't have a floren to their name is they will only build marketplaces if it has a gold or luxury tile at the city.

From what I've been able to scry using the diplomacy "Investigate City", the CC's build to maximize their traits: if Religious, they will have temples and cathedrals so they are a culture bomb waiting to go off, if commercial, marketplaces and banks, etc...

I only looked in one game, but it explained alot of what was happening to them in combat: not many veteran troops after a while because they didn't have barracks.


D.

[Velociryx]

In that case, then the solution seems to be to simply make all of the AI's have all the traits?

-=Vel=-

[alexman]

What the AI builds doesn't actually depend on the trait, but rather on the "build often" list, found in the editor.

[Velociryx]

Simple enough then! Especially with the AI's production bonuses....should be a snap for them to build....absolutely everything!

-=Vel=-

[Arrian]

BINGO! At least I hope...

The AI is clearly capable of building improvements... it just doesn't go do it enough. This hamstrings AI economies.

If the AI can be tweaked via the editor into buildng marketplaces, that ALONE will change gameplay. The AI's citizens will be happier, the AI will be richer, and IF my understanding of the trade system is correct, the AI will be open to more straight-up luxury deals, because it will not also be benifitting from the marketplace bonus to luxuries in its cities*.

* - I remember a long discussion with Soren re: AI to AI trading (may have been the AI to AI tech trading thread) and at one point luxury trades were discussed. It's a pet peeve of mine. Sorry, but under no circumstances is 1 luxury from an AI worth 6 of mine plus 3 techs and money. I know that the AI charges more if you're bigger... but if I understood Soren correctly, it charges more if you get more benifit from the luxury... and this takes the marketplace bonus into account! I could be wrong, so don't crucify me if I am, but I'd LOVE to see a quasi-reasonable trade deal offered by the AI to a (large, successful) human empire.

-Arrian