Double Your Pleasure mod: revising established Civ3 tactics

[TheArsenal]

Clarification: I did not mean for my comments to indicate this is not a fun mod, if they did. I am enjoying this mod a great deal as well, so far. I will weigh in after I've completed a full game, but so far, because of the additional units and far expanded tech tree, it looks very re-playable. And frankly its nice to feel my way around again instead of bee-lining straight for the techs, units and strategy I am most comfortable with.

[Egbert]

I find the technology decisions harder in DyP. Should I beeline for Great Library or should I beeline for farming or should I go straight for knights (all 3 are long stretchs). Whatever I decide there are always "must have" techs that are not on the beeline so I have to divert my research efforts. Deciding what to build next in a particular city is also harder there being more options.

[MotownDennis]

I agree with Peter about the tech decisions being harder. You are not always going to beeline for the same techs every game. If you don't have access to iron (which is not far-fetched at all) you obviously aren't going to be looking to build swordsmen. If you don't have luxuries right away, you might want to beeline for weaving to see if some "hidden" luxuries pop up. Each game is truly a unique experience. You'll want to perform your research to maximize whatever situation you're in.

On the other hand, I would disagree that the industrious trait is less valuable in dyp. It is precisely because of the fact that mining and irrigation can't be done right away that makes it more valuable. Once these options do become available, your serfs can get the terrain improvements done quickly. With a non-industrious civ, your terrain is probably going to be mostly unimproved until late in the medieval era. Of course, the other civ traits have been improved so maybe industrious is less powerful in dyp relative to the other civ traits.

[MrWhereItsAt]

peterfharris - unless your cities are founded near poor terrain (jungles, deserts etc) than you should have no problems REXing. You would need the first researched form of governemnt, Despotism (yes you need to research it in DyP!), to grow cities beyond 2 pop in almost all situations. But, cities tend to grow to 2 in almost all situations. If you start in grassland, you city square gets 3 food, and you can work another 2. This is a surplus of two, and grows your city to 2 rather nicely. Your cities tend not to grow more than that unless you have a bonus around. But where is the problem? [B]Remember that Clans and Shaman take 1 pop, not two./B] This means you can REX as much as you want, quicker than in vanilla Civ3, as you only need 2 pop to build a settler unit. This is also a reason I delay getting Dynasticism. Dynasticism gives you Despotism, which increases your harvested food, but also means you have to build normal, pop 2 Settlers instead of the earlier pop 1 units.

This brings up an interesting twist. Perhaps it would be best to avoid Dynasticism for as long as possible, until all the decent land is full, so you can basically T-REX to a degree unheard of in vanilla Civ3 without many food bonus squares. I tend to do this anyway until Dynasticism is the only tech available (it is one of the essential techs for the Ancient age, and a prereq for many techs after it), or I have filled an area I would roughly attribute to the productive region around one Palace/FP. From this point on diminishing returns of productivity sets in with extra cities, and there is less impact to REX until I can get the FP somewhere.

[ThePlagueRat]

Wasn't there an obelisk to expand culturally too?

In DyP was the only time I had the situation of three coordinated AI stack-of-dooms attacking me with about 20 riflemen each stack, plus some 10 cavalry or tanks defended within each.

To defeat those with my inferor numbers, I had to make use of superior tech, good bombardment units, terrain bonuses, plus the threat-AI-city-so-they-go-all-the-way-back-tactic.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Yep sure is. That obelisk is magnificent. A cheap, early building that gives you 1 culture per turn and costs 0 to maintain. Also, the Pyramids give you one in every city, allowing your culture to build straight away in all cities. VERY useful. This makes the Pyramids a vastly more important wonder to get, and they keep their value as long as you are building or capturing cities.

[TheArsenal]

Question: The number of turns in DyP have obviously been increased. Does any one have/know the years to turn ratio?

[Egbert]

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt
peterfharris - ....Remember that Clans and Shaman take 1 pop, not two.....

Ooh, I never even looked, never tried to build a settler with a size two city.

Thanks for pointing that out, my next will be rather different.

[Fishman]

My Experience with DYP:

1. Agree with only roads to build early, Industrial is a diminished trait in the early game. With one pop settlers, not a lot of workers get built.

2. The early build of a temple to increase happiness and culture in traditional CIVIII. Now temple is for happiness and obelisk is for culture. More difficult early choice of buildings.

3. If I recall, the first warriers built in cities without a barracks were conscript level. Well they had less hit points and were certainly chopped up pretty easy by the barbs. The capital acts as a barracks for creating unit. So my capital ended up pumping out more military units then planned until a barracks building program was created.

4. Initial city placement is more of a crap shoot. With all of the bonus's not revealed until the necessary techs are researched, those first two cities might be totally lacking in bonus resources.

5. Slow growth. With the 3 food per person requirement, my cities topped out real early. The one population unit settlers were nice.

6. Smaller cities. With getting culture slower and the slow growth of cities, I started packing the cities in more tightly. This would probably hurt me later in the game, but it's all about getting a good start.

7. City Specializing. With so many build options, I think almost all of your cities have to end up specializing in some manner. I had to create a spreadsheet that summerized the improvements by time (food, production, culture) to help me figure out what to build.

8. With more cities around, it's definitely easier to dedicate one or two to wonder production. The AI was definitely doing this.

[MotownDennis]

I disagree with Whereitsat; Dynasticism is definitely high up on the research priority list. Once you switch to despotism, your growth problems are solved. No need to pack your cities together like sardines. What makes the early game difficult is that chiefdom is such a crappy government.

[Kal-el]

hello all,

First let me say that it is always great to see these sorts of discussions on this mod that I have spent way too much time on and it looks like it will continue to consume a great deal of my life for some time into the future.

Some Comments based on the latest version of the mod being tested:

1) Not all the traits are perfectly balanced. Religious is much more powerful in DyP and Commercial and Scientific are much weaker. Our testers tend to feel that Industrious, Expansionist and Militaristic have maintained their usefulness. I tend to agree. Remember a) Workers/Serfs can also cut down trees which add to your production, b) can be added to your population, c) Serfs do not cost any maintenance, and d) you no longer start with a worker unit, instead you get a Warrior. It should be noted that we are currently testing ways to increase the potency of the Commercial and Scientific traits.

2) The Supreme Court no longer acts as a Palace. Instead it is a Small Wonder that acts like a great Wonder in that it gives Courthouses to all your cities.

3) The Temple gives both happiness and culture. This is just to correct a statement above by Fishman. I believe he meant to say that the choice is between the Obelisk (which has been recently renamed to Monument) and the Shrine.

4) Ranged units: The Ranged attack has been removed from all units prior to GunPowder. Missile units from the pre-gunpowder days only get a defensive bombardment, which is something the AI can deal with.

5) Earlier issues with some resources not showing up have been eliminated.

6) Cities can be built in Jungle. The AI just couldn't handle it.

7) The testers have not indicated that the AI is having any trouble expanding. Remember the Clan/Shaman is only 1 population point. They were added for the very reason that the AI builds cities anywhere it pleases. It knows where the resources are going to be and builds accordingly. So, if it knows that some wheat and cattle are going to be in a location it will build there even though it won't be able to take advantage of them for 100 turns.

I am trying to figure out a way to diminish the REXing while at the same time allowing the AI to grow at a competive rate. The latest approach has been to make Pioneers (second level settlers available with Dynasticsm) wheeled just as Clan are. We have also made Shaman Wheeled to weaken the Religious trait a bit. Shaman are now just another flavor unit.

8) The turns have not yet been increased, though I am working on an extended version that will use months instead of years as the base unit of time, though turns won't actually be in months til near the end of the game. The extended version will have about 40 new techs that develop each age a bit more, including fleshing out the near future.

We are also working on figuring out what the optimal number of turns would be for the current settings, and once that is determined you can expect to see a change made to the PtW version of the mod.

9) Despotism: I like to think that Dynasticsm is an essential tech that you will be hard pressed to avoid. I am doing all I can to make it so. One recent change has been to make Clan/Shaman more expensive than Pioneers. This has the added advantage of slowing down initial growth.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Originally posted by MotownDennis
I disagree with Whereitsat; Dynasticism is definitely high up on the research priority list. Once you switch to despotism, your growth problems are solved. No need to pack your cities together like sardines. What makes the early game difficult is that chiefdom is such a crappy government.

This is true, but with the pop 1 settlers (Shaman and Clan) you can REX much as I said above. Who needs cities to grow beyond 2 or 3 pop that early in the game? You need land and resources first, unless you're going for a one or five city challenge, or are trying to win via Early Culture Wonders. Dynasticism, although allowing you to continue to grow your cities, will slow your land-grabbing.

Reading Kal-el's comments above, the change of making these Clans/Shamen more expensive than the Pioneers would balance the game further and I think such a change would be a bonus to the mod's balance. That said, it depends on where you want the focus - early T-REX, switching to development at Dynasticism or a more balanced expansion, where the pluses and minuses balance out expansion speed both before and after Dynasticism.

I do think that Ranged is amazingly powerful, seeing as you could get ranged attacks of 8 before normal attac/defense of more than 3. Catapults could easily reduce defenders to the point where anything could beat them, with little need for more than one or two siege units.

Will our thoughts and ideas here help you in refining your excellent work, Kal-el?

[Kal-el]

these comments are definitely useful! No one had mentioned anything about the GL before, so that's a new one. I would love to get more confirmations that the AI is not building it.

IF you guys want to sign up as testers you can get your hands on the latest release and join the discussion on our forums.

Join the regular DyP discussion at our forums even if you don't join the test team. I get notification of any comments posted there and I only check here about once a month, so the DyP forums are a much better way to give comments and make suggestions.

Join the Discussion Here

[isak]

Like Kal-El said, please keep these thoughts coming. They are very, very helpful. And if anyone feels like saving their game around every new age, zipping them up in a nice bundle and then emailing it to me on isak_@_privat.dk (without the underscores), that would also be a big help, as we rarely get the time to play through entire games ourselves these days, so that's the best 'view of the action' we can get

And this quote:

Originally posted by Fishman
7. City Specializing. With so many build options, I think almost all of your cities have to end up specializing in some manner. I had to create a spreadsheet that summerized the improvements by time (food, production, culture) to help me figure out what to build.

really warmed my heart, as that was exactly what I primarily wanted from the DyP mod when I joined Kal-El almost a year ago. That's the way I played Colonization for nearly 10 years, and the 'feel' of a game where your cities aren't just 'production clones' can't be beat IMHO.

If we can continue to pull that off (and balance out the rest ), I'll be a happy man.

[MotownDennis]

This is true, but with the pop 1 settlers (Shaman and Clan) you can REX much as I said above. Who needs cities to grow beyond 2 or 3 pop that early in the game?

I understand what you're saying, but you'd be surprised at how fast you can still expand and still enjoy the other benefits of Despotism.

Anyway, I think that this debate is what Dyp is all about. There are so many more options than in regular PTW. I really appreciate the extra options you get with this mod. If there are two ways to "skin a cat" in PTW, there are 10 ways in Dyp.