10-08-2004 21:12									#1
	Multiplayer Mod Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

I was trying to make a mod to make mp more interesting and just more balanced to begin with. Anyway i made a list of things to change that might be good.

Disagree? Agree? Any other ideas?

quote: ==== MISC ==== -- diffDB.txt (difficulty) - x2 slower science - POLLUTION_START_PRODUCTION_LEVEL 600 (was 300) - POLLUTION_START_POPULATION_LEVEL 34 (was 16) - Players start with Religeon, Toolmaking, Agriculture only. -- const.txt (misc) - All researchable advance paths available for selection, not just random 4. - CITY_HEAL_RATE 0.2 (was 100% full health in one turn) - MAX_DISBAND_SIZE 1 (was 3) (disband city size) - fortifying a unit gives +100% defence (was +50%) (to better fit ctp2 combat) (see also terrain changes) -- risks.txt (barbs) - Vilages only - 10% chance of gold (150-300) and 10% chance of (upto 2) barbs from huts. No barbs spawn at random. - Boring Hordes - 20% chance of gold (200-400) and 20% chance of (upto 4) barbs from huts. No barbs spawn at random. - Decent Hordes - 30% chance of gold (250-500) and 30% chance of (upto 6) barbs from huts. No barbs spawn at random. - Raging Hordes - 40% chance of gold (350-700) and 40% chance of (upto 8) barbs from huts. No barbs spawn at random. -- pop.txt (Specialists) - Scientists now give +15 science (was +30) - Merchants now give +40 gold (was +20) -- gl_str.txt (names) - Extended terrain names with fullstops to prevent hovering cursor on un/explored tiles to see city and unit names. -- gui layouts - No Ranking Graphs. ============ Tech changes ============ Feudalism - now requires Iron Working aswell. Theology - now costs 1500 sci (used to cost 2718) (because Theology is not needed for Classical Education). - now requires Feudalism instead of Bureaucracy (to come at same time as Republic). Modern Metallurgy - now requires Naval Tactics instead of Age of Reason (so 'Ship of the Line' come before Ironclads). Fascism - now requires Nationalism and Industrial Revolution (was Theology and Gunpowder). Moves Fascism later. Nationalism - now requires Theology instead of Fascism (or else it would require itself...). Adv. Infantry Tactics - now requires Aerodynamics instead of Vertical Flight Aircraft. Gives earlier Paratrooper and seems more logical they come with bombers/fighters etc. Naval Tactics - now requires Ocean Faring instead of Hull Making. ================== Government changes ================== - All governments now have no city cap. The aim is to encourage greater variety in gameplay and strategy. May need some other changes to avoid exploiting switching governments and numerous other tweaks. Republic - ProductionCoef 1.0 (was 1.15) Theocracy - ProductionCoef 1.25 (was 1.0) - SupportCoef 1.25 (was 1.5) ================ Tile Imp Changes ================ -- to weaken plains - Farms on Plains give +5 food (was +10) - Farms on Desert give +3 food (was +10) - Adv Farms on Plains give +15 food (was +20) - Adv Farms on Desert give +10 food (was +20) - Hydro Farms on Plains give +25 food (was +30) - Hydro Farms on Desert give +20 food (was +30) -- to encourage keeping forest/jungle and build commerce imps earlier. - Trad Posts on forest/jungle gives +15 commerce (was +10) - Outlet Malls on forest/jungle gives +25 commerce (was +20) - Nature Preserve on forest/jungle gives +35 commerce (was +30) -- to better fit with tech tree advancement similar tile imp, ie compared to fisheries. - Ports now give +20 commerce and cost 500pw. LISTENING_POSTS (watch tower or something) now no radar vision and requires geometry advance (was electricity). They were too late in tech tree to be of any use with units all over the map and with many units (tanks, spies) with same 3 vision whats the point. ================ Building changes ================ -- to make these buildings more important. - city walls +50 defence (was 15) - ballista towers +50 attack vs land units (was 20) ============== Wonder changes ============== ... ============ Unit changes ============ ===== ADDED Air Transport - ctp1 paradrop sprite - aerodynamics advance - transports 5 small land units. =========== These changes are intended to encourage more diverse stacking, and greater planning of movement. General unit changes - - ALL non-ranged land units have 0 ranged ability. - ALL ranged land units have 0 attack ability. - ALL military foot units now have movement 1. - ALL military mounted units have movement 2. - ALL military wheeled units have movement 3. - ALL else military land units have movement 4. =========== Machine Gunners, Marines, Hover Infantry etc are useless after Tanks/Fusion Tanks, I thought it too unrealistic to give a Marine 3 armour, so these changes counter "the tank effect" and encourage a more diverse military. - ONLY a stack consisting of a "human" unit can capture a city. - ONLY "human" units exert martial law (keep cities happy with military force). Human units. ------------ Warrior Samurai Archer Hoplite Mounted Archer Pikemen Knights Infantrymen Cavalry Fascist Machine Gunner Paratrooper Marine Hover Infantry ============ Archer - can now bombard Battleship - requires Industrial Revolution (was Adv Naval Tactics) (came before destroyers and pt boats) Cavalry - now obsolete at Tank Warfare Destroyer - requires Adv Naval Tactics (was Mass Production) (used to escort large vessels and counter fast PT Boats) Mobile SAM - now cannot attack air, only bombard/activedefence. Mounted archer - can now bombard Paratrooper - now requires Aerodynamics (was adv. infantry tactics) PT Boat - no longer sees or attacks underwater units. (fast and cheap, they were used to sink expensive large vessels using torpedos in "hit and run" tactics (bombarding first and moving away in CtP2 terms)) =============== Terrain Changes =============== - All terrain defence values multiplied by 2. e.g. Mountains now +200% defence, Hills now +100%, Forest now +50%. The aim is to make terrain more strategic. Because of the CtP2 combat system that always uses defence AND attack in every battle, the defence value is halved in importance in the outcome of a battle, so to have any reasonable effect, terrain defence needed to be higher.

	10-08-2004 22:44									#2
	Suffering from ads?

Three things I would like to see changed/added (other than the no city caps) are some of the terrain values:

Beach changed to +10 food +10 commerce +5 production (from +10 production)

Jungle changed to +5 food +10 production +10 commerce (from +5 commerce)

Forest changed to +5 food +15 production +5 commerce ( from +10 food +10 commerce +5 production)

Also, what happened to that early marine unit we talked about?

	10-08-2004 23:05									#3
	Put an end to popups!

Yeah, reducing production on beaches might be one. I suggested this a while back in the sourcecode forum, about adding production with the Port tile imp aswell.

I like the other two.

Yeah, there was also an "early tank" and a "war elephant" they got scrapped for the minute. I thought with the changes to giving "human" units more power, we wouldnt need another unit in that era. Although it would be more realistic, i thought it might bog down and confuse the gameplay?

	11-08-2004 04:27									#4
	Got spare money?

I can see wonders being Okay if they are weakened quite a bit. Some wonders would become like expensive city improvements, while most would give free buildings in every city. Stonehendge for example could be made to give 4 free farmers in the city it was built in. Chitiza Itza(whatever) gives a free courthouse. Aristotle Lentruem free acadamies etc.

this still might be too powerful, it would certainly save production for civ who builds them (allowing them to build 50 more settlers but it wouldn't be as bad as before.

Last edited by EPW on 11-08-2004 at 04:34

	11-08-2004 05:38									#5
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

Aristotle Lentruem? I like it.

Well depends, we play with wonders always turned off dont we most times. Theyre perhaps gonna be hugely unbalancing (or hopelessly weak) whatever we do..... They give the civ with the most productive cities an advantage, which they already have by having highest productive cities.

The only wonder bonuses i consider not too weak and not too overpowering are single city bonuses. Like Galileo's Telescope 5 free scientists in the city that builds it. Free labourers or production could be too unbalancing. And also movement bonuses to early ships, its not too powerful but still worth the effort of grabbing the wonder.

	11-08-2004 12:45									#6
	Got spare money?

This is my responce to your responce from the other the thread...
I didn't proof read so please forgive me for any errors of inconsistencies......

quote: As i understood it, building mines on mountains early and working them at 2 pop to get a fast settler was a common strategy?

I should try that....

quote: I didnt mean a variety in choice of the types of buildings (although we should look into fixing that too), i meant because when you build 15 cities all at once, they all have the same build queue timing = little maintenance = boring.

Thats better than building the same boring city improvements in 100 cities rather than 15. Sure it wouldn't happen all at once, but it would be happening throughout most of the game to some degree.

quote: Yeah this is one thing that came to my mind aswell. I just shrugged it off and called it more realistic than stopping for an invisible cap

But its not like you can't build cities after you reach the cap, you just get a happyness penalty. You can build far over the cap, but will suffer from prodduction, food science and gold because of adjustments in sliders and use of entertainers. I also don't think its realistic to beable to expand indefinitly, most nations would collapse,espacially before modern transportaion and communication was developed. Thats what the city limits are trying to simulate, rather than being an artificial cap. Also, having no city limits would promote haaving many smaller cities rather than develope any larger ones....

quote: Yeah OK there is some strategy to dealing with PW with a city cap, but its an awful lot easier and less choices have to be made when 20 of your cities are at one stage in development, and the other 15 are at another stage, really only a few choices need to be made, tile imp the younger ones, or keep building in cities.

Well this is true, but its not so much the choices of tile improvements to be used, that would be obvious with or without a city cap, its the planning that occurs before the massive tile imps. are done.

quote: As opposed to a no-cap system, where most cities would be at different stages of tile improvement and building development, which throws up more decisions

What decisions? maybe terraform, build farms...

I could see this promoting something other than the all or nothing public works which may or may not be good....

quote: Try a game with all governments set to a city cap of 1000. Ive been planning to playtest some other changes but dont have time yet.

Feel free to post the mod

	11-08-2004 15:28									#7
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

quote: Thats better than building the same boring city improvements in 100 cities rather than 15. Sure it wouldn't happen all at once, but it would be happening throughout most of the game to some degree.

Thats why i consider it more interesting, things are changing all the time, rather than half of your cities at one point and the other half at another. Besides, i think 100 is a bit steep. I see war happening much more frequently with the no cap system, but also because of the changes made to units and defence modifiers it will be a lot harder to conquer and keep/disband cities. So youre always juggling continued expansion and combat (as well as pw and builds), its more interesting IMO.

quote: But its not like you can't build cities after you reach the cap, you just get a happyness penalty. You can build far over the cap, but will suffer from prodduction, food science and gold because of adjustments in sliders and use of entertainers. I also don't think its realistic to beable to expand indefinitly, most nations would collapse,espacially before modern transportaion and communication was developed. Thats what the city limits are trying to simulate, rather than being an artificial cap.

Okay saying it was "realistic" i was kidding slightly. It all depends on map size what is the most appropriate city caps. But does anyone in MP really go more than 2 or 3 cities over the cap? (when not conquering) The penalties are so severe its not worth going more than 5 over a cap, especially as we play without wonders we dont get those easy ride wonders like Ramayana in SP. I think going over the cap as a plus point is a not a good one, its very inflexible once you go over the limit. A limit is always more realistic than no limit, because no civ in history has expanded forever and never stopped, but if youre going to have caps, they need to be very large, and dependant on map size to realistic IMO. I just like the idea of civs expanding till theyre right next to each other, rather than stopping for a cap.

quote: Also, having no city limits would promote haaving many smaller cities rather than develope any larger ones....

I would disagree to a point. This is one area where i feel its gonna be at least a little different from CtP1/civ game ICS (infinite city sprawl/sleaze). Because CtP2 cities collect resources on a % of each tile working on rings out from the city, and you cant choose what tiles a city works, its much more important not to overlap when a ring of a city is being worked. I can see all sorts of ways of approaching expansion, like filling the gaps with small cities then building settlers out of them and disbanding them to create room for the expanding cities around.

quote: What decisions? maybe terraform, build farms... I could see this promoting something other than the all or nothing public works which may or may not be good....

Promoting what?

For example if all of your cities are at different stages of development then one city is going to require PW while another needs to keep building a Shrine. If youre in the middle of a warzone its harder to choose when one or two cities are not ready, whereas you have 15 (out of 35) that arent ready, its obvious you need to improve the 15.

You could say, well lets put PW on 100% for this many turns and save the PW for when we need them in each new city, but thats very inefficient style of play, using production for PW that doesnt pay you back straight away.

quote: Feel free to post the mod

Well its not finished, the units may be incomplete or not done at all, but all the other changes are there. It also requires modswapper and ctp2 patched to 1.1.

	14-08-2004 02:32									#8
	Put an end to popups!

I like having a city cap for the different gov't types. Perhaps more could be done to expand that cap outside the gov't types. Maybe the discovery of Radio (pick a tech) could raise the city cap by 5, and/or a Feat of Wonder - Broadcast Networks, the first civ to get TV's in 10 cities might raise the city cap by 10, or some such. My thought is that it's about communications, the more quickly you can communicate the more effectivly you can govern thereby increasing the number of cities you can govern w/o penalty.

	14-08-2004 02:35									#9
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

If I understood you correctly you plan to make all "human" units have a movement of 1? Don't you think that later "human" units should have more than one movement?

	14-08-2004 02:52									#10
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

quote: I like having a city cap for the different gov't types. Perhaps more could be done to expand that cap outside the gov't types. Maybe the discovery of Radio (pick a tech) could raise the city cap by 5, and/or a Feat of Wonder - Broadcast Networks, the first civ to get TV's in 10 cities might raise the city cap by 10, or some such. My thought is that it's about communications, the more quickly you can communicate the more effectivly you can govern thereby increasing the number of cities you can govern w/o penalty.

Well there are lots of more realistic ideas but sometimes they dont work very well in balance of gameplay terms (not saying this is one), especially in MP. Gaining a higher city cap is one of the most important things in CtP2, so its difficult to balance and "help" a civ thats behind in tech or production to catch up, once the better civ has more cities.

quote: If I understood you correctly you plan to make all "human" units have a movement of 1? Don't you think that later "human" units should have more than one movement?

Give all "foot units" 1 movement, "human units" get different movement depending on their type. Foot, Mounted or Hover (there are no wheeled human units). For example Hover Infantry get 4 and Knights 2, but theyre both human units.

	17-08-2004 19:47									#11
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Unfortunately removing the city cap opens up the worst "strategy" from Civ2/3. I was reading a thread in the Source Code forum where they were discussing different victory conditions other than Bloodlust. Alternate government types could be designed with bonuses (boni?) toward certain things but with lower city caps. I know some of these things (e.g. the actual victory condition change) will require changes to the executable. However a completely separate branch of the tech tree could be developed for a series of science gov't types, and a series of religous gov't types, etc. Science would get bonuses to Science, Religous to happiness, and so on, but with lower city caps. The initial gov't type in each tree should have a steep research cost to prevent casual changing of trees.

Well I don't have the whole idea worked out yet and I'm running waaay short on sleep so I'm rambling. I'll shutup now and see about posting in a day or two when I might make more sense.

	18-08-2004 19:55									#12
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

quote: Unfortunately removing the city cap opens up the worst "strategy" from Civ2/3.

Well thats a matter of opinion. Allowing infinite amount of cities opens up many more various kinds of strategies while in the heavy expansion phases of the game chosen by the player, but with a cap everyone is playing within the same city cap, and this doesnt allow a lot of room for good players to show just how much better thought out their strategy is, since theyre all inside the city cap eventually.

Infinite city sleazing in Civ2/3 is worsened by the fact you have to move around just as many settlers/workers to work every new city, at least this isnt present in a CtP2 ICS.

I also think the fact CtP2 cities work tiles on a % of each tile in a "ring" around a city, will force a different (slower maybe but certainly more thoughtful) kind of ICS, since you want cities to collect 100% from all tiles and allow very little overlap.

This will run and im sure everyone has an opinion on the horrible civ2/3 ICS situation, but i think we're looking at a slightly different situation with CtP2.

quote: I was reading a thread in the Source Code forum where they were discussing different victory conditions other than Bloodlust. Alternate government types could be designed with bonuses (boni?) toward certain things but with lower city caps. I know some of these things (e.g. the actual victory condition change) will require changes to the executable. However a completely separate branch of the tech tree could be developed for a series of science gov't types, and a series of religous gov't types, etc. Science would get bonuses to Science, Religous to happiness, and so on, but with lower city caps. The initial gov't type in each tree should have a steep research cost to prevent casual changing of trees.

Yeah i read a similar idea in the mod section a long time ago about longer seperate branches but that was all SP minded. The changes here are all based on MP games, balancing out and making things more interesting. I think seperate branches would be soon sussed out in MP, which is the best branch etc, its impossible to balance something we havent seen yet, but i think all it will do in MP is the same as is now, everyone following the same path eventually (which would ultimately spawn another MP mod trying to fix that). It sounds interesting for SP though.

	22-08-2004 04:15									#13
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

I think that theology should be after republic since theology didn't come until the time of christianity. The Republic came way before theology to my knowledge.

	22-08-2004 17:43									#14
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

quote: Originally posted by bernhj I think that theology should be after republic since theology didn't come until the time of christianity. The Republic came way before theology to my knowledge.

I doubt that's what the focus of this mod is about. But even if it is, it depends on your definition of both concepts.

Christian theology wasn't established until late Roman times, somewhere in the 3rd or 4th century CE, but it only really kicked off in the Byzantine Empire (500 CE and beyond). However, it's most commonly accepted that theology was not invented by the Christians, but rather by the Greeks, specifically Plato (4th century BCE). What better source to quote on this than the Great Library from the game itself?

quote: Theology was the study of God, man, the world, salvation and eschatology (or the study of "end" times). It was a discipline almost exclusively limited to Christianity. It's origins lie with the Greek philosopher Plato (c.428-c.348 BC), who was the first to put for theology as a field of study. Although Plato's concept of theology dealt with Greek, not Christian, myths, the fundamental nature of the study came from him, namely: theology is the attempt of believers of a faith to represent their statements of belief consistently, to logically analyze them out of the fundamentals of their faith and to properly contextualize such statements within nature, history, reason and logic.

Republic is a term that's difficult to define, as it's meaning was distorted a lot. The earliest famous example of a republic is the Roman Republic, established in 509 BC, though depending on your definition it may be possible to point to even earlier examples of republics (e.g. Greek and/or Phoenician city states). However, the GL in CtP2 uses Plato again (specifically his work "Republic") as starting point for the republic, making it contemporary with the invention of Theology.
The term Republic is sometimes also defined as a modern republic, which was invented during the French revolution of 1789 CE. However, some people also argue that many of the ideals of the French Republic were based on the Dutch Declaration of Independence of 1581, which served as sort of a prototype for both the French revolution and other declarations of independence (most famously the American one) and should therefore be seen as invention of the modern republic.


So you can pretty much place theology anywhere between 400 BCE and 600 AD on the timeline while the republic can be placed anywhere between 1000 BC and 1800 AD.

	22-08-2004 23:23									#15
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

Locutus is right, historical accuracy is not the focus of this mod, although realism can be fun we sometimes need to sacrifice a little realism for more fun gained from balanced gameplay. Having said that, if something is way off historically, then we approach the balanced gameplay in a different way to fix the history.

I mean we could leave Theocracy later in the tech tree but still give it good alternatives to Republic, but switching governments slows you down a lot, and i would think everyone would take Republic all the way into Fascism, regardless of Theocracy gov advantages over Republic.