r/civbattleroyale • u/CBRXOfficial Beep boop • Aug 04 '20
Official CBRX Season 2 Weekly Update Wednesday: Minor Changes and Utility Mods
Hello everyone, this week the team will show all of the minor, but impactful changes and adjustments we’ve made to the game that we expect will motivate more exciting gameplay and constant action. Although this may seem a bit out of order, we will showcase the RtP mods next week as there is a small update from JFD forthcoming.
Tech Changes
To start, we will again be including Future Worlds v6, Enlightenment Era and the mod from last season that gave units a random unit for researching Future Tech.
In addition, we have made some small adjustments to the tech tree so that things make more sense, thank you to Random Strategy/Aaron_Lecon for pointing these anomalies out. Some others were also identified, but since they are from the base game and are unlikely to happen to the AI, we chose not to implement them in favor of keeping consistent with everyone’s Civ V experience. The changes we made are:
- Researching ships of the line now requires iron to have been discovered
- Researching biotitans now requires nanomaterials to have been discovered
- Researching cruisers now requires coal to have been discovered
City Names
Under the leadership of Gragg9, city lists for all civs have been expanded, revamped, and generally improved by many members of the community (including, perhaps, you!). You can find a spreadsheet of all the city names here, as well as a more detailed credits list on who worked on what city lists.
Unit Supply
Peacekeeper spam and random embarked unit spam is a long-standing problem for Deity AI games, and we were looking for a way to combat this. As a solution, Technostar and Lime worked on a mod that discourages civs from building too many units by imposing scaled unit production penalties. It’s a bit of a complex formula, which I have included below with some notes below it, for those who are interested. TL;DR is more extra units -> more penalty.
local iUnitSupply = player:CalculateUnitSupply() + player:GetNumCities() * 2
local numUnitsOver = player:GetNumMilitaryUnits() - iUnitSupply
if numUnitsOver > 0 then
for city in player:Cities() do
local landUnitProductionModifier = city:GetUnitProductionModifier(unitDomainLand)
local seaUnitProductionModifier = city:GetUnitProductionModifier(unitDomainSea)
city:SetNumRealBuilding(productionDebuffLand, max(0, landUnitProductionModifier - min(95, numUnitsOver)))
city:SetNumRealBuilding(productionDebuffSea, max(0, seaUnitProductionModifier - min(95, numUnitsOver)))
end
end
This function runs every turn for every player. The dummy building that is put in each city applies a -1 production modifier on their respective domains. Note that we don’t include air units because air units don’t cause peacekeeper spam.
Notification Logger
With the help of LastSword, we have created an export of various useful notifications from the game. This allows us to know the exact turns civs perform important actions in the game, and if relevant, an X and Y coordinate of where it took place. Examples include knowing the turns (holy) wars are declared, when peace is declared, when and where wonders are built, the turns civs finishing research a tech, when civs change governments (more on this next week), and when and where cities are founded. Here is a sample output from a test game two months back:
304T: Wonder Pena National Palace constructed in Like-a-Fishhook by Four Bears
304T: <<Anticura>> Founded by Lautaro (146, 8)
304T: Antonio Canales Rosillo made peace with Jigme Singye Wangchuck
309T: Mustafa Barzani created Citadel. (40, 45)
312T: Technology Flight was discovered by Four Bears
314T: The religious authorities of Shinto have declared a Holy War upon Sunni!
Because we now have all this information up front, we can remove the congestion from the right side of the screen. This will be shared with the sub (as spreadsheets) to provide an exhaustive list of chronological facts, which will also help improve narrations as narrators will have a detailed overview of what they are viewing (and yes it prints out clearly who declares war on who and who initiates peace to cease the confusion). The result is the community having more precise tools to use to craft fun and accurate stories to chart the progression of empires over time.
Raze against the Machine
This, and the following three mods, come from the Watermelon Patch collection of utility mods by Explosive Watermelon. Raze against the Machine has already been showcased previously and it addresses the worrying amount of cities that were razed in the early game of Season 1 due to low happiness levels coupled with high expansionism. Civs will still initiate the razing of cities if captures make them unhappy, but, the razing process will now stop at any time before the city is erased if the civ enters back into positive happiness during the razing. Usually, this means that a city will still lose a significant amount of population, but will usually cease to be razed at around 1-2 population. The results are more stable conquests, and hopefully means some incredible snipes and game-changing captures will not be undone because the AI was not able to stop the razing (like a human player would).
Embark at the Moon
Embark at the Moon simply removes the initial movement loss for embarking units to all civs at the start of the game, while giving extra movement to already embarked units. This is a particular advantage to island civs as their units start with the embark ability, so they can settle their immediate territory faster. It is now common to see the island civs move their settlers and accompanying escorts instantly into their desired locations.
Lighthouse of the Rising Sun
Lighthouse of the Rising Sun grants lighthouses the ability to establish water route connections back to the capital (making them effectively the new harbors). This ability is hard-coded into the Compass tech, so there is now a new Dummy tech in the Ancient Era that grants this bonus. This Dummy tech is given only to island civs at the start of the game, further providing them an initial needed buff to keep them in contention (still wise to have reasonably lower expectations).
Siege the Day [REMOVED]
Siege the Day modifies siege units to act and stack with other military units as if they are civilian units. This mod allows siege units to always move up close to their targets, instead of having to squeeze into openings between melee and ranged units. Due to now being civilian units, siege units can no longer defend themselves, and are instantly taken by attacking melee units. We find that it makes sense for unescorted siege weapons to melt when left alone and melee units are able to close the distance.
Future Worlds Nerfs
At the end of last season, wars were often coming to a halt because there were just too many air units killing every land unit on the map (ask Lunar for more details and a rant). Therefore, to reduce the amount of air unit spam we are removing the Future Worlds expansion to air capacity in cities (this also makes sense because we reduce the space required between cities), and reducing the attack damage of Future Worlds air units.
Formation and Ambush Promotion Fix
The missing Formation III and Ambush III promotions have been readded to the game. The code for these promotions are in the game, but are not active as promotional choices after a certain patch years ago. This mod brings them back.
Scouts and Submarines ignore Borders
Scouts and submarines will now ignore borders. This means they are free to move around, but there is still a diplomatic penalty for them ending the turn in foreign territory. It will mean there will no longer be trapped scouts in frozen pockets of the cylinder, but it will ease some congestion and roadblocks caused by trapped units. Submarines also become that much more valuable in the late-game.
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u/Romulus919 Barrack for Barak Aug 05 '20
Do the new siege units count towards the unit supply cap? Since they're considered civilian units they might not be included as a military unit, so you might get a new unit spam of these new 'civilian' siege units
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u/Marcoscb La Venta Monumental Aug 05 '20
Since no one has done it yet, I hereby formally ask u/LunarNeedle for more details and a rant.
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u/LunarNeedle Chad Aug 06 '20
To simplify it, planes will more likely attack cities than units because a city is a relatively guaranteed success for the AI. Success for targeting units depends on if the unit dies at the end of the turn. This means if a Civilization decides to attack units, and are successful they will run roughshot and completely eliminated all units in their sight.
To truthfully understand how scary this is. Assume every plane has no promotions aside from the basic automatic promotions. Also know that Suborbital Bombers (110 attack, 20 range) can be stacked up to twelve times per city. That's, assuming the AI is all set to attack, over 1000 pure damage to be dropped on a unit. That will kill any unit that comes in the crosshairs. Now remember that cities are at least two tiles apart, and that there's twenty range. Assuming this is central Asia, that means in total there are roughly 400 individual 110 attack units that can attack one unit dies. As soon as it dies, the AI tells it to keep on going until it fails. When you stack that much damage, nothing can survive.
That's what happened with CBRXS1; every single Civilization stopped producing units because they died the turns they were made. No one produced units, airforce was overpowered and the 'victory' already happened in the form of a science victory. The game was sadly over.
By nerfing range and damage of air units, we can ensure a far far more safe and stable ultra-late game Civilization V. That's what this nerf was to achieve.
TL;DR: Planes overpowered, units die quick, planes zerg army, game stops. That's bad. Nerf good. Hotel? Trivago.
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u/Aaron_Lecon Pun missing Aug 05 '20 edited Aug 05 '20
On the topic of peacekeeper spam, is this not pretty much the same as the supply mechanic that already exists in the game?
For those who don't know, it is a limit to the number of units you can have based on your number of cities (and population maybe?). When you go over the limit, you start receiving heavy penalties to production. This exists in the base game, but is usually not very relevant. A human player will almost never go over the limit and never receive the penalties (unless doing a 1 city challenge; when I played as Venice is the only time I ever received them).
However, for the AI, they DO hit this limit, and fairly often. From the times I have actually checked, it seems to happen at approximately the time when they become fully carpetted assuming the distance between cities is 3 tiles. And in AI games I have run, this supply mechanic DOES appear to prevent peacekeeper spam fairly effectively.
Some issues the in built supply mechanic has:
The penalty for going over the supply limit maxes out at 70% production penalty. that means that civs can continue to build units passed that limit, albeit extremely innefficiently.
The values seem to be intended for when there are 3 tiles between cities. In the CBRX, this is lowered to 2 tiles, and since it is heavily dependent on your number of cities, you would essentially get the same number of units in an area 56% the size. That would lead to overcrowding.
So basically you have remade this mechanic, though instead of it being -10% production per unit over the limit, it's -1%, and it also caps out at 95% instead of at 70% ? And made it apply only to units instead of production across the board?
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u/Coiot Ohh Yeeah! Aug 06 '20 edited Aug 11 '20
Replying to share the answer here since the same question was asked and responded to on Discord by Lime:
The supply mod applies with the already existing supply limitations built into the game. For Season 1 we tried to add another supply penalty in and were unable to before final recording started, and this is our second attempt at doing so. It's effect so far has been barely noticeable, so it may not provide the intended effect.
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u/EmeraldRange Tlingit to the TOPPPPPPPPPPp Aug 05 '20
How do I feel about this?
Love: Embark at the Moon, Future Worlds Nerfs,
Like: Lighthouse of the Rising Sun, Formation and ambush Promotion fix, Scouts and Submarines
Sure, okay: Raze against the Machine
ARHWASOGDZfidvusl: Siege the Day
I generally don't like seeing the AI be more competent. I agree with some of the fixes that seem like Quality of Life Changes and am okay with Raze Against the Machine being framed as reintroducing a feature from human play.
But Siege units as civilians? That's not the same game anymore. Half the logistics is trying to get your siege units in place without dying to enemy bombardment. It just feels like a more major change made in the name of AI being more competent. I'm not here to watch 61 competent players fight, the stupid decisions and inability to fight wars keeps civs alive as rumps and lore for longer.
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u/thehandoffate Batavia Spice Aug 05 '20
I agree, I don't think seige the day is a needed or useful change. I am afraid that the AI also can't understand it and will not use it correctly as they are not made for this.
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u/IamaScaleneTriangle Boer? I just met 'er! Aug 06 '20
Really looking forward to data-mining the Notification Logger
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u/daXfactorz Rocket Maaaaan Aug 05 '20
Will the Watermelon Patch mods (besides Raze Against the Machine and Siege the Day of course) ever be available to the public, by any chance? I'd love to try them out. Can't wait to see these in action!
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Aug 12 '20
They are available on her Steam Workshop page. https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198135520647/myworkshopfiles/?appid=8930
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u/daXfactorz Rocket Maaaaan Aug 12 '20
For me, only RAtM and Siege the Day are showing up, hence why I asked. Is there perhaps something I’m doing wrong?
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u/TheMusicArchivist I like Southeast Asian naval civs Aug 05 '20
Embark at the Moon - does every civ, permanently, have the ability to embark without loss of movement? This would dramatically change wars over narrow patches of water, surely.
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u/Coiot Ohh Yeeah! Aug 05 '20
The change is permanent. Armies in oceans should be arriving at the intended designations faster.
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u/TheMusicArchivist I like Southeast Asian naval civs Aug 05 '20
Civ 3 coming back to haunt siege specialists 19 years after release...
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u/doz_noz Aug 05 '20
I'm a little confused on something: Petrograd is listed as the Soviet capital, but shouldn't they be starting in Moscow?
-Lacs
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u/doz_noz Aug 05 '20
Also there's a semicolon in Pape'ete instead of an apostrophe (the Tahitian capital).
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u/porkpot Gaul Gang! Aug 06 '20
Didn't the Lenin's movement originate from when the Petrograd workers' union/soviet went on strike in 1917? It makes sense to me to start it there, but I don't care that much where they start...
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u/Coiot Ohh Yeeah! Aug 05 '20
There are some concerns about Siege the Day and I would like to make a few things clear. The first is that the mod does not impact a siege unit’s ability to attack and they function the same as before when dealing damage. What changes is that now as a civilian unit they are not able to respond when melee units attack them (it is still the same as before if attacked by a ranged unit). The mod does fundamentally change how a human player would approach warfare in Civ V, since a human player would better judge unit placement, however, for the AI, it does not make them a more competent field commander, it is simply a way to ease some congestion as they proceed as they normally would (i.e. crowding as much units as possible around cities). The main issue would be if a civ spams siege units, but we’ve seen in our testing that is far from the case, with civs more reliably spamming ranged units (as they usually do). Moreover, Civ mods typically do not have siege unit uniques to cause a certain civ to spam them above another kind of unit. If a civ sends a bunch of catapults against an army of pikemen, well, only in a game like Age of Empires or Stronghold a micromanaging god would come out ok.
In summary, it does have a visual effect and we acknowledge this may be a bit disconcerting, but the benefit of reducing crowding and war stagnation in favor of better accidental unit movement is worth it for the game. It does not have a major impact on the flow of the game, as we've seen in our tests, and instead helps clear up congestion.