Prophets&Clerics&Bears Oh My!

[mapfi]

one more thing I forgot:

It seems that soothsay and advertise is the same action. Completly different to what is said and actually reasonably explained in the manual
I haven't see advertising generate cash but only unhappiness in the attacked city (by -5 like soothsaying)

[Pedrunn]

Both decrease happiness. I didnt even know about this money income from advertise.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by mapfi
It seems that soothsay and advertise is the same action. Completly different to what is said and actually reasonably explained in the manual I haven't see advertising generate cash but only unhappiness in the attacked city (by -5 like soothsaying)

In fact there are two different slic events for the advertise order and ther soothsay order, the effect might be the same (actual I don't know), but I would say that soothsaying isn't as powerfull as advertising in nowadays.

Originally posted by mapfi
well, I couldn't resist to play around with the stuff:
In the const.txt you'll also find the line

FRANCHISE_EFFECT 0.1    # How much production a franchise steals

Well in my GM1_const.txt you'll find this:

FRANCHISE_EFFECT 		0.4    # How much production a franchise steals

So you will see an effect in GoodMod.

-Martin

[mapfi]

The effect of unhappiness is defined in the units.txt file and is -5 for only one turn for both.
As for the different slic events, isn't that just for different sound?
Advertising never generated any cash when i tried it.

Soothsaying really isn't really effective today, you're right. Shouldn't advertising be named propaganda, though? Unhappiness isn't exactly linked to advertising... Unless we're talking of commercials on tv inbetween you're favorite series

@Pedrunn: It says it in the German Great Library, what does the English one say?

@Oerdin: you find those shield cost values in the units.txt
slaver..................480
cleric..................540
teleevangeslist....1200
corporate branch.1500

[mapfi]

@Hermann:
The game let's you do multiple soothsay-attacks (or advertise) on a city but the effect rests at only -5 happiness for the next turn, so there's no use doing that.

[J Bytheway]

The idea behind the advertising is that it advertises products which don't exist, and people get unhappy when they can't find them - it's a bit weak IMHO.

[Dinner]

JB: I agree it is alittle weak.

Mapfi: Thanks for the figures.

If a slaver costs 480 shields to cheat plus a certain amount of gold per turn to up keep then I could see a profit on investment after you have taken three slaves or so.

I believe Clerics (540 shields), Televangelists (1200 shields), and corporate Branches (1500 shields) all only give you .1 of the cities production so unless the city is truly a megaproducer you will never get your intial investment back. As an added problem both the AI and humans reform converted cities almost immediately so you are out the conversion costs, the unit build costs, & the unit up keep costs with nothing to show for it in the positive direction.

[Dinner]

Do you folks think we should change the Aoplyton packs value of .1 so that it will be .5 like the printed manual says it is? Just a thought.

[Pedrunn]

We should raise it for sure. But i think .5 is too high. maybe 0.4 or 0.3 is the best

[child of Thor]

How about reducing the cost to perform each action?
Does the AI use the 'offensive' special unit abilities? I've seen them slave and undo some of my special attacks, but as far as i can remember i don't think i've ever been 'Franchised' or 'Soothsayed' by an AI? I know they slave and spy(maybe incite revolt too?). Maybe the AI just knows the cost's are too high
I suppose the problem would be in getting the cost/effect balance right, Gold isn't a problem later in the game so you don't want to give the human player too much of an advantage in this respect, but the production bonus could be good to tweak for franchise(if the AI actually uses it too), and selling indulgences should maybe be cheaper to perform(as it is a very minor attack)?
Some people hated the special attacks in CTP1+2 - i've always liked them, they add a little spice to just using military attacks.
But i agree with you all here, they do need some balancing out if possible.

[mapfi]

Selling indulgences is a free action, and i think there's no chance of beein caught. Heck, it even raises happiness in the target city, so it's a really strange "attack". That's why it should gnerate more cash and this also in relevance to city size.

@Oerdin:
You're confusing two things. Converted cities give you part of their income in gold (the values are further up), franchising gives you part of their shield production, it pays your military upkeeping cost and if there's more left adds it to PW.

For tweeking those settings we could also consider to change the value of this in the units.txt: "ShieldHunger 5" (eg. cleric) That's the upkeeping cost, isn't it?

[mapfi]

I started a new thread over in the mod forum, since this is what we're talking about now:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=58009