Civilization V

[DaleKent]

What other things should be modded? Perhaps city states always requiring 250-500-1000 as the payments? Isn’t there also some hard numbers like 10-20 unhappy citizens bring penalties, etc? All those things should scale to various factors at the start of a game I think.

City-state bribes are fair IMO since the bigger the map, the more of them there are. The unhappiness point is at -10. That’s when you go from unhappy (slow growth) to angry (bad economy and combat). Same as CS’s, I don’t think unhappiness barrier should scale with game factors. Difficulty determines starting happiness, and map size dictates how many luxuries are on the map.

[jpinard]

The next mod I want to do (after I add hardwood as a strategic) is quantitative luxuries. So basically, luxuries would work like strategics, with the amount harvested of the luxury adding to your happiness, instead of a straight 5.

This would help growing empires as you take on new lands and more luxuries, your happiness grows in relation to the number of harvested luxuries.

Sounds great. I would have liked to see more strategic resources too. BTW Dale, there’s a pm in your box if you have time. Cheers.

[rei]

Wish they had kept the menu song from Civ 4 though.

[Hans_Lauring]

Wish they had kept the menu song from Civ 4 though.

You’re several pages late, but yes that’s a great song.
It’s fallen way down in the YouTube comments but Christopher Tin even posted “I approve of this message”.

… of course technically Baba Yetu already has lyrics.

[Chris_Nahr]

[ul]
[li]Deal expiration fixes.
[/li][li]Fix for Puppet State production exploit.
[/li][/ul]

Anyone know what these two fixes are about?

[Therlun]

Anyone know what these two fixes are about?

If an AI declared war on you while you had an active research agreement with the same AI it would sometimes give you a tech instead of cancelling the treaty altogether. (Expiration)

You could determine what puppets build via the economy menu.

[foogla]

“You will suffer! You will ALL suffer! (Join the army! Release your pent up aggression.)”

David Warner, is that you?

[Chris_Nahr]

If an AI declared war on you while you had an active research agreement with the same AI it would sometimes give you a tech instead of cancelling the treaty altogether. (Expiration)

You could determine what puppets build via the economy menu.

Thanks. Too bad I didn’t know about the puppet exploit before it got fixed…

In other news, I love the random ranking list that’s entitled “The Mostest Literate People”.

[Maniac]

map size dictates how many luxuries are on the map.

Not true. Looking at the XML, the number of luxury and strategic resources is determined as a percentage of how many players there are in the game. Personally I think this is a good choice (and as an aside, Planetfall is the only Civ4 mod which also does this!!), because otherwise it would become too easy to gather all resources the larger the map there is and the few players there are, which would remove the resource trade aspect from diplomacy.

Given the new global happiness system however, they should have let the amount of happiness scale with map size. For instance if large map size has double as many plots as standard size (no idea what the real difference is), a luxury resource should also provide double as much happiness.

[Hans_Lauring]

But aren’t the happiness modifiers global? So if you want a huge sprawling empire, you need to build more +happiness buildings in your cities.

[DaleKent]

Not true. Looking at the XML, the number of luxury and strategic resources is determined as a percentage of how many players there are in the game. Personally I think this is a good choice (and as an aside, Planetfall is the only Civ4 mod which also does this!!), because otherwise it would become too easy to gather all resources the larger the map there is and the few players there are, which would remove the resource trade aspect from diplomacy.

Given the new global happiness system however, they should have let the amount of happiness scale with map size. For instance if large map size has double as many plots as standard size (no idea what the real difference is), a luxury resource should also provide double as much happiness.

Resources aren’t controlled by the xml anymore. In fact, there’s very little in Civ5Resources.xml that actually is applied. It’s all hardcoded in AssignStartingPlots.lua. I suggest you look through that and view what I screamed about for a month to no avail. :(

[DaleKent]

Sounds great. I would have liked to see more strategic resources too. BTW Dale, there’s a pm in your box if you have time. Cheers.

Yeah I replied (if you didn’t see it). :)

[Tony_M]

A couple of pages back (this thread moves fast) some posters were asserting that game design and AI are unrelated. I disagree.

If you introduce a more complex/puzzley combat system, especially a delicately balanced one where the winner gains huge advantages, then you need good AI. If you can’t teach the AI how to drive the combat system, then you need to simplify combat and make it more attrition based.

This is especially true in long games like Civ that are unsuited to multiplayer. With a short game like Starcraft, its easier to say “If the AIs too dumb, go online”. But only a small hardcode group is willing to play really long games multiplayer.

EDIT: I also think “where” the AI is dumb matters. If the AI is inefficient at optimising its economy, thats more hidden and easier to fix with artificial bonuses. But if the combat AI is broken its more “in your face” and so it does more damage to your suspension of disbelief.

Tony

[Teiman]

A couple of pages back (this thread moves fast) some posters were asserting that game design and AI are unrelated. I disagree.

How come people can argue that?

If you makes a game totally unrelated of the “AI”, you can end with a pretty boardgame that is not playable, since the AI can’t move the pieces.

If you have rules on your game that are not interesting for the humans, or not playable by a computer oponent, these rules are useless. Has need to be both, or maybe you can have that pretty computer boardgame that the AI can’t use, but then the expert players will get bored playing singleplayer.

Seems the core of designing this type of games, is to design rules that combine these two qualities.

You could, I suppose, start with a game that is interesting for players, but hard for machines. But then you have put yourself in the position of solving a strong AI problem.

Or you could make a game that is boring for humans, but easy for machines. But machines don’t buy games!.

How can people argue that!

[DeepT]

Is the spot you start in a new game a good spot to build your first city or should you spend a few turns to scout first?

[pilonv1]

My kingdom for the ability to cancel Open Border deals

[strategy]

Haha, so to get peace you must war every Civ off your island?

It’s the Tacitus design.

To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.

[KevinC]

My kingdom for the ability to cancel Open Border deals

I typically don’t sign them, so I haven’t tried to cancel one. You really can’t?

[Tony_M]

My kingdom for the ability to cancel Open Border deals

Just declare War. They might get angry and destroy your Kingdom, but as you just stated, thats a price you’re willing to pay. :)

[Dan_Theman]

I typically don’t sign them, so I haven’t tried to cancel one. You really can’t?

I’d be a little shocked if you couldn’t. There’s probably just some arcane method to do so and/or it’s very extreme (such as declaring war).

EDIT - Tony beat me to that last point.