Slowing down the game and tech

[Antrine]

If not different settings, then certainly fewer AI's say 2 or 3 at most, or even only one.

Personally, I have become addicted to a rich economy! For Forts and such are expensive.

Anyway, happy gaming

Antrine

[solops]

Hi Antrine! If you have updated your files (as apparently you have) how about some new links ? :-)

The old ones don't appear to be updates.

[Antrine]

Hi solops, and any and all interested herein

Here are the lasted moded files, many changes and tweakes. As of 14 Jun 03

http://apolyton.net/upload/files/Antrine/buildingrules.zip

http://apolyton.net/upload/files/Antrine/rules.zip

http://apolyton.net/upload/files/Antrine/techrules.zip

http://apolyton.net/upload/files/Antrine/unitrules.zip

I suggest backing up and archiving your originals, of course.

HIGHLIGHTS:

Significally increased costs/time to techs, Age and Wonders ( so watch your starting settings, do not pick slow and expensive ) In building scenerios these settings are fixed, but in normal game generation they get multiplied again so watch this and pick average settings.

However, not to all techs are so modified expensive or slowed; namely commerce and civ advances with a few others randomly.

Units are the same scheme as default excepting Major Ship of the Line, which are stronger and more expensive.

Pop limit is 1000, starts high and climbs fast
Commerce limit can climb to 1200, however I have only gotten to 800 so far and the most for pop 550 in actual game play. That was in 51 minutes on the clock and still not yet to AGE Three but almost there. I had a great booming economy.

Fort, tower and watchtower are modified to accomendate increased garrisoning and power thereto. However, can be knocked down just the same, so watch it. Oh, a special consideration to forts, you can build them right up next to each other and as well to any other building such as towers. Nice for building traps and plugging holes making a near wall of sorts.

Also note, scouts come from watchtowers and can fight however still no match with professional units.

An additional consideration: play against fewer opponents at first and not in the fog of war or else your likely to be massacred!!

Also, with this mod one must carefully consider the feasibility of ones computer resources.

Happy Gaming,
Antrine

[The Rusty Gamer]

Antrine,

How did you update the AI to keep it up to standard with techs more expensive?

[Antrine]

Rusty Gamer,

So far the only adjustment I have made thereto is when building ones own scenerio, to make certain the AI's all start with at least 3500 in resources across the board.

However, in normal game generation, they with the human player often receive even more than this at start.

What I am saying is that I have only found lack of 'money' (all the resources) at start to be the only possible problem.

I am now whirling along 60 plus minutes deep into the midst of Age III against two AI players on a 140 size map (that is what how I started it) tropical all land map. And though because I have pushed my economy forward hard to seven cities and have now reached 950 commerce levels and sport 740 pop with a current pop limit at 775 what I can say about the AI's stamina is just amazing!

Boy, this game has legs... No matter my advantage through preference of build, defend and expand borders the two AI's just keep adjusting. Their armies are huge, they coordinate, wait for certain advances to attack a fresh; build Wonders and despite my empire lead of 90,000 rating and them together adding to about the same I seriously question my winning this any time soon or how well I will endure the next full scale invasion as they are not that far behind militarily.

I have never messed with AI programing or preferences, I so far have found it amazingly intuitive and adaptive to all my modding.

I hope this helps,

Sincerely,
Antrine

[The Rusty Gamer]

Ok, it's just that with my own mod (10x tech cost etc) the AI is lame even on higher levels of difficulty.

[Antrine]

I did not raise all techs, I felt myself as well the AI should get certain things quicker so as to facilitate fast growth and large armies. So I think this is perhaps critical to pass to Age II successfully, there leave at least two or three of the techs cheap. I believe in the first series of four techs only one has a increased cost and that was science because I did not want too soon auto-transport across water. Thereby leaving the water as a real barrier for a time.

Sincerely,
Antrine

[Kindred Legion]

.

[Fyron]

In the future, do you think you could just post all the modded files in a single zip file? Doing so makes it much easier to get the mod.

[solops]

Now that the tinkerers have been at this for a while, a question:

What are the key files and lines for:
1. Slowing down R&D?
2. Slowing down the pace at which the game advances?
3. Maps size?

[solops]

Bump. I'd really like some help with this. I want to play with the games/tech slowed. So many of the mods have grown past that into other areas such as unit stats, wonders, etc., and I am not ready to move that far yet.

[Adagio]

/me excuses for not having read the whole thread

For those who haven't seen it yet, there's also a little explenation in this thread

[solops]

I have attempted to edit and consolidate the posts here related directly to editing RoN for the purpose of slowing both the march of time and the progress of research. There is nothing new here, just a recapitulation of posts by Antrine, Rebel, V’ger, ADG and others. I have no desire to change unit or facility values, just to make the game longer….measurable in days or weeks rather than hours.

I. GLOBAL EDITING OF TECH TIME AND COST
In the rules.xml file residing in the Data folder are three places to effect research research time and cost:

1. 'Research Premium 1/1. So far as I can tell, that means ‘cost/time'. (Suggested : change to 3/5 (?))

2. ACCEL_RESEARCH value="1/1 speed

you want that to be 1/ x where x is the multiplier you want for your research speed. Let's say you want all techs 10 times the jobtime specified for each one, so you set x=10.

3. TECH_COST_FACTOR value="10 resources"/>

you want this one to be 10 times x where x is the multiplier you would like to apply for all research costs. Let's say you want those costs twice what is ORIGINALLY specified for each research, so you write TECH_COST_FACTOR value="20 resources" instead of the original value.

If you want ALL techs costs and ALL techs speeds increased by the same factor, then use the above items to make adjustments. Only if you want to adjust speed and costs to different factors for each tech/age, use the method that messes with individual techs in techrules.xml (see below).

II. EDITING INDIVIDUAL TECHS:

Open the file \RON\data\techrules.xml in notepad. Go to the techs you want to change, it should look a little like this:
code:

< TECH >
< NAME > Classical Age < / NAME >
< AGE > 0 < / AGE >
< COST > 25f < / COST >
< PREQ0 > none < / PREQ0 >
< PREQ1 > none < / PREQ1 >
< PREQ2 > none < / PREQ2 >
< JOB_TIME > 400 < / JOB_TIME >
< TRIBE_MASK > 111111111111111111111111 < / TRIBE_MASK >
< SHOW0 > disable < / SHOW0 >
< SHOW1 > disable < / SHOW1 >
< WHERE > Library < / WHERE >
< GRID_X >1< / GRID_X >
< GRID_Y >1 < / GRID_Y >
< TEX_ID >TEX_LIBRARY_3 < / TEX_ID >
< TEX_COL >0 < / TEX_COL >
< TEX_ROW >0 < / TEX_ROW >
< TEX_CLIP >0 < / TEX_CLIP >
< / TECH >


Btw, there's no spaces between < / > in the file, I have to make them here, since otherwise this post won’t be shown right...

Change these lines:
code:


< COST > 25f < / COST >
< JOB_TIME > 400 < / JOB_TIME >



To whatever you like... If you want it to be 10x as much, just change it to:
code:


< COST > 250f < / COST >
< JOB_TIME > 4000 < / JOB_TIME >



Keep in mind, the cost/job time is also based on what you choose when starting a game (If you have chosen 'Normal' or 'Slow and Expensive' or whatever they are called)

Just edit this by all the age tech.

III. SLOWING GAME SPEED

This seems to require changing both the requirements to reach age levels as well as changing commerce and pop caps to be commensurate with slowed game. In the rules.xml file (edited & corrected ; NOT found in techrules):

Change pop & Commerce limits to (suggestions only, folks):

Pop Limits to 300, 350, 375, 400, 525, 650, 775, 800
in each Age respectively ascending.

Commerce Cap; 150, 250, 350, 400, 460, 520, 600, 700
This is important for game play in a slowed mode, for you will hit Commerce limits too quickly and you not be able to Age advance fast enough to otherwise raise them.

(Please back-up files before following any advice above)

Up the costs there for the Ages say to 100f (food) 100k (knowledge), except for age III. Try 125 each for Age III.

Change the timer for each Age change:
Age I to II : 12
Age II to III: 20
Age III to IV: 15
All others : 12

Lastly,
Ramp_final_value=”[50%]
Change this to 75%. This effects cost escalations.

IV. MAKING BIGGER MAPS

Increased the Big Huge map size from 100 to 140.
Increase resources x10 to adjust for bigger map.

Also pushed up the 'Goody boxes' from 25 to 100.
Now you can build industry and units extensively while yet remaining in Age I and II.


Back up your original files before modding!! Personally, I have just messed with the stuff in sections III and IV. I beg you knowledgeable modders to comment, correct and illuminate.

solops
Edited for corrections 7/17/03

[solops]

Now that I have messed around with the files a bit I can and will write up a revision of the obove summary, adding detail and some additional info on lines that have to be modded for things to work right.

I do have one question: Where do is the setting for the commerce cap? The limits set for each age work fine until you hit 999. This seems to be a limit that is either hard-coded or has a setting somewhere besides the line for individual Age limits.

[The Rusty Gamer]

999 is hardcoded unfortunately.