Due to work and life (two toddlers consume a lot of time), I haven't been very active with GalCivIII for the past several months. I came back about a month ago and have quietly absorbed the changes to the game brought on by Intrigue. The changes are fairly significant and offer some excellent changes to game play. Great work, dev team!
I do have a few comments (more likely to come). First, the major change to tourism and the way the economy looks on the summary is kind of confusing.
The confusing part, to me, is that the GDP, Trade Route Income, and Tourism lines are being modified by Taxes--but they are all listed as weekly income.
I'd suggest either separating Taxes from the other items in Weekly Income and indicate that the income is being modified by the tax rate (i.e., 4,797 + 234 + 29939 = 34,970 x 0.07 = 2,447.9). Or just list the already modified amount (i.e., instead of GDP 4,797, list it as GDP 336 (4797 x 0.07)).
Or maybe someone has a better solution. This isn't a big deal, but it took me a while to understand why my Net Weekly Income was so low considering my GDP and Tourism.
The other issue I saw isn't related to Intrigue--I think it's been in the game a while, and it may be working as designed. The "GiveCreditsArtifact" anomaly awards the higher value of 400 credits or 8% of a players credits. With a large treasury, this is crazy overpowered:
I had trouble figuring out where my excessive income was coming from--but this particular turn, I got 5 or 6 "Ancient Riches" anomalies, which resulted in something like a 300,000 credit income. I'm probably going to mod this anomaly, but I thought I'd mention it if anyone on the dev team is interested in tweaking this.
The other issues I have with the game are persistent ones: some goofy inconsistencies remain in the Mercenaries list, and I think the Ideology list could use some TLC.
TLDR: Intrigue improved this game vastly; some minor issues (confusing economy summary; OP artifact) and opportunities for improvement (Mercs and Ideology).
I generally agree with your comments. I've been hitting the maximum 999,999 credits because the anomalies are giving credits like your example. I'm using a Mercenaries overhaul mod that fixes many of the problems with the mercs (mostly ship roles).
What mod are you using, Publius? Is it publicly available? Does it correct some of the bizarre high costs and low weapons/defenses, especially in the third tier (many of which are weaker than second tier ships at a higher cost)?
I know of Gauntlet's, but my understanding is that his mercenary mod is primarily cosmetic (to be honest, I haven't checked it out in a while, so I may be wrong).
Thanks!
It's from @iRedEarth, and it's hosted on Nexus. The Stardock forum link is here, and he describes what he fixed in the posts there. There's also an external link to the mod on Nexus in the first post.
By the way, I'm still really enjoying your mods!
Thanks for the link, Publius. And thanks for the comment on my anomalies/missions mods.
I'm considering what additional mods make sense given the changes brought on by Intrigue. The low hanging fruit would be additional governments and crises--though I'm not exactly sure how the crisis events work. I've looked at the xml, but it seems a bit complex, at least at first glance. I'm also pondering how the crisis event system might otherwise be used.
Anyhow. Thanks again!
Didn't look at it myself yet, but perhaps the Crisis system can be used to implement short story lines where decisions determine the outcome and reward.
GRM currently standardizes and "sane-itize" Merc roles, hulls, and equipment. Furthermore it reorganized the Merc categories, adds additional mercs and adds a category of cheap "plain" Merc ships available for hire to certain races (traits).
Thanks
I have been playing with the events system, only minor things atm, added events for x colonies, x turns at peace, first time at war ect. You can take a look see at the code in the current version of Horems Community Patch can find it on Discord, Steam Mod forum or Civfanatics. (Its in the intrigue rar)
This seems possible, depending on what you mean. I see no reason there would be any limit to the number of subsequent decisions that would need to be made in the course of the event--and the string of decisions could be as simple or as complex as desired. For example, you could set up the options to have as much or as little overlap in subsequent options. For example if you choose option 1, then during the next part of the event you can choose A, B, or C. If you choose option 2, however, you can choose A but not B or C, instead having D and E as options. And so on.
I'm not sure about how the phases of the event are spaced (by number of turns?)--my guess is that the "ForceWeight" value is used for this, but I could be wrong (I really have no idea of how it works).
The only issue, aesthetically, is that the top of the dialogue box would say "Galaxy in Crisis". I'm assuming this can be changed in the appropriate UI text file (having trouble finding it), but then it would be changed for all crisis events.
GRM currently standardizes and "sane-itize" Merc roles, hulls, and equipment. Furthermore it reorganized the Merc categories, adds additional mercs and adds a category of cheap "plain" Merc ships available for hire to certain races (traits).Thanks
Thanks, Gauntlet. When I have a bit of time to explore your mod, I will--I haven't had a ton of play time and haven't updated it since just after Crusade, I think. I'll update it and check it out--I really do love all the detailed work you have put into the mod, not just in terms of your factions, but in terms of ideology, events, etc. Very nice.
Thanks, Horemvore. I'll check it all out!
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