Double Your Pleasure mod: revising established Civ3 tactics

[MrWhereItsAt]

Greetings.

This thread is my attempt to start a discussion on the ways that established Civ3/PtW strategies need to change when you try the Double Your Pleasure mod (henceforth DyP) supplied with the PtW disk. This mod adds tonnes of new units, techs, Wonders, lux... you name it. I will hope to add to this thread as ideas come to me in my latest DyP game that I have started. If you are interested and do not have DyP, you can find versions for both Vanilla Civ3 and PtW at civ3.bernskov.com as well as the graphics files that were not included with the raw mod on the PtW disk. I am using the latest version of DyP, v1.04, with all graphics.

Any response is more than welcome. I encourage everyone who can to try out this excellent, enormous and highyl addictive mod. Getting through the Ancient Era is a game in itself!

[MrWhereItsAt]

Extra FPS

One of the most cherished and effective "default" strategies in Civ3/PtW is to ensure that your cities are built in a dumb-bell pattern of two bulges. Each bulkge has at its centre either the Placae or Forbidden Palace(FP). This has ensured you get the most out of your cities.

However, this changes in DyP to the effect that there are 2 extra Small Wonders that do the job of the FP! These are

Summer Palace - available with Divine Right, halfway through the Medieval era

Winter Palace - available with Realpolitik, halfway through the Industrial era

Thus it is theoretically possible to have 4 such centres of productive cities by the late game.

However, the tech constraints play a major part, and means you can't just settle wherever and rely on having 4 centres of low corruption. The FP comes in with Aristocracy, partway through the Ancient era, and in time for you to plan where to put it. However, the other two come in rather late in proceedings, and it is likely (unless you are playing on a larger map with fewer opponents) that all the land will be taken by then anyway, meaning that you can no longer choose where you want to settle and grow productive cities. Moreover, if you DO manage to set up areas to place these extra FPs, they will be unproductive for far too long before you can build the corruption-beaters there.

So, all of this leads me to conclude that these new Small Wonders are intended for warmongering. Around these times, mid Medieval and mid-Industrial it is likely you have the opportunity for a major war. Once you have taken the AI cities, it is very often the case they will be far from your Palace and FP, and completely useless. These two extra FPs are placed where they can be used to make these former Empires productive again, greatly helping if you are then thinking of going on to further wars, or you just wanted their lands because they were productive. This would, in most situations, do away with the need to Palace-bounce in order to get different regions up to scratch with Courthouses and Police stations in order to be as productive as possible.

In this way the extra FPs in DyP are perhaps not the game-beaters they may seem, but come at logical steps in the game in order to reduce the, even now, still widespread dislike of massive corruption issues in formerly productive regions, simply because you run out of Palaces.

[ThePlagueRat]

I tried an earlier version one year ago. It was a DyP-mod and I recall having some real great wars during the medieval age, with the ranged attacks of many units. Got a bit confused about stuff in the modern age, but I mainly dug that mod.

The AI did not seem to think much of this ranged capability, and drove the standard Civ3 tactics at me. I did not have PTW back then. Only drawback I found then was some resource weaknesses and unbalances, and missing civilopedia entries for some govt.
I hope all this has been fixed in latest version of this mod, because I really dig it.

[MotownDennis]

Don't forget about the Supreme Court (Great Wonder) available at the end of the medieval era. It acts as yet another palace, so it is possible to have a total of 5 "palaces".

You are correct; it is much more profitable (than it is in regular civ) to be a warmonger later on in the game and turn your spoils into productive parts of the empire.

The scarcity of resources also encourages one to adopt a warmonger strategy to secure extra luxuries (gotta keep those people happy!)

Dyp rocks!

[MrWhereItsAt]

MotownDennis, does the Supreme Court really act as another Palace? It only says it decreases corruption in the city it is built in in the (admittedly unfinished)Civiliopedia, whereas the others specifically say they are equivalent to another Palace. I haven't got near building the thing yet, so I can't say yet.

[MotownDennis]

Yes, I believe the Supreme Court does act as another palace. I've built it in my current game and I believe the nearby cities have been positively affected. I'll have to check.

[Generalissimo]

Cool mod but need some polishing
but the fact that i cant irrigate until the end ancient era really pisses me off

[SithUK]

How does the AI handle all the changes? Is it more or less effective than when in the standard game?

Thanks,

Sith

[peterfharris]

Originally posted by SithUK
How does the AI handle all the changes? Is it more or less effective than when in the standard game?

Thanks,

Sith

The AI seems to do just fine.

Actually, I think DyP is easier then vanilla Civ3 if your are a builder but maybe that is just me (but there is so much that can be built). The barbarian are a lot tougher.

[MrWhereItsAt]

And that is another point I wanted to bring up early on in this thread. Irrigation is not available until the end of the Ancient Era, some 30 odd techs away from the start, with Crop Rotation. Mining is available at the start of the Medieval, with Engineering. Roads are available with the Wheel.

This amounts to a radical rethink of the early game. No longer can you have your start worker building roads/mines/irrigation to boost your city's growth. If you get Wheel first (which I always do), then you can build roads and only roads. How do cities in plains survive without irrigation? Well the food from a grassland is now 3, and 2 from plains. However, population requires 3 food each, but now I'm getting sidetracked a little...

With roads as your only improvement beyond fortresses or outposts for some time, there is little need for workers, as several of them can pretty effectively road between all your cities, connect resources, other civs and road every tile you would like to get the +1 trade from rather quickly. Instead of building workers, you now concentrate on building the early-game equivalent of settlers, the Clan or the Shaman, en masse. At higher diffiulties this is necessary to keep your population happy, but it has the side benefit that REX is basically a given as long as you have the land. This means that, unless this is a truly huge world, by the time irrigation or mining comes around you will have settled every piece of land open to you.

So what effects does this have on your game strategy?
The delayed advent of irrigation and mining places the emphasis on REX for certain from early on, for a long period. As terrain improvement beyond roading is so late, there is nothing else to do with your population! Furthermore, since there is no way you can improve deserts or plain' food production, you found cities in these locations at your peril. You may be able to surround an area of potentially Saltpeter-rich desert with your cities for later development, but you cannot lay claim to it with your own cities actually founded there. The bonus resources are all the more important to your early cities as well, as the normal terrain types can't even be brought up to speed for an entire age. This in turn affects your choices of early techs, as not all bonus resources are visible from the start. For example, the all-important Cows (now Cattle in DyP) are only visible with Domestication, a tech that comes after several others.

[MotownDennis]

Actually, you can't even start cities on desert terrain (or jungle or tundra for that matter). To that end, I've found that dedicating the time to clearing jungle later in the game is quite beneficial. It seems as though many of the best resources can be found in the jungle (dyes, rice, tropical fruit, rubber, silks, and i'm sure i'm forgetting others). Starting by a massive spread of jungle is not necessarily a bad thing if you can make it through the early game. Later on, it really pays off.

This twist strikes me as being more realistic because, as we all know, the rain forest in rich in resources (it's just a real hassle to get access to them).

[Hurricane]

I have to strongly disagree with the opinion that the AI keeps up. My experience when I tried the DyP mod was that the AI was totally clueless what to do. This is especially true in the early game. Without irrigation and roads city placement is crucial. However, the AI will settle in their usual pattern. Disabling settling in jungles also more or less grants the human player a free settling area, since the AI isn't smart enough to send in the workers to cut the jungle down. The AI will also in general be slower inthe beginning, since it will start settlers immediately, which is a total waste when the slow growth rate of the cities mean they'll take a long time to reach required size to pop out a settler.

A good idea, but no match against the AI. Too bad.

[ThePlagueRat]

I experienced mostly the same as Hurricane, and humans might use longbowmen and such to bombard, while the AI makes sacrifice of such units.

[TheArsenal]

Originally posted by ThePlagueRat
I experienced mostly the same as Hurricane, and humans might use longbowmen and such to bombard, while the AI makes sacrifice of such units.

This is timely and informative, because I started playing this mod for the first time a couple of days ago. During a short war I had with the Iroquois (I am the Ottomans) the AI brought a Pioneer protected by a longbowman into my territory. I can only assume to settle the small unsettled tundra at the northern most part of my land mass. The only path through was decidedly suicidal, and as is being noted, the AI ended up sacrificing both of these units on a hopeless mission.

This was also one of the rare games (compared to PtW) that I was able to get the Great Library first, despite being behind behind in techs. The next few turns flooded my screen with gained advances. That part was very cool. But I have to assume the AI does not value this Wonder as much as I do and pursues a different line of techs.

[peterfharris]

EDIT Comments deleted as I made a serious error regarding settlers under the Chiefdom form of government as pointed out by MrWhereitsat in a subsequent post END OF EDIT

I am also convinced that the Industrial trait is much less useful in DyP. You can not use it to jump start your civilisation at the beginning as mining, irrigation, and probably roads are not immediately available. FWIW The AI Babylonians seem to do rather better with DyP.

I agree with TheArsenal that The Great Library seems much easier to get in DyP. It seems easier to get the requisite tech first AND it seems easier to build the GL first because it can only be built in a city which already has a library (that means the AI must select from cities in which it already happens to have built a library, the AI seems less likely to build a library if it happens to be in a war).

ThePlagueRat observation that the AI sacrifices longbowmen instead of bombarding ties in with my experience of DyP.

BTW I think DyP is an excellent mod. It seems desirable to go up a level in difficulty though. I definitely prefer DyP. (Oh, and you effectively get 3 Hidden Palace wonders so don't place them very well if you don't want too big an advantage).

[TheArsenal]

Clarification: I did not mean for my comments to indicate this is not a fun mod, if they did. I am enjoying this mod a great deal as well, so far. I will weigh in after I've completed a full game, but so far, because of the additional units and far expanded tech tree, it looks very re-playable. And frankly its nice to feel my way around again instead of bee-lining straight for the techs, units and strategy I am most comfortable with.

[peterfharris]

I find the technology decisions harder in DyP. Should I beeline for Great Library or should I beeline for farming or should I go straight for knights (all 3 are long stretchs). Whatever I decide there are always "must have" techs that are not on the beeline so I have to divert my research efforts. Deciding what to build next in a particular city is also harder there being more options.

[MotownDennis]

I agree with Peter about the tech decisions being harder. You are not always going to beeline for the same techs every game. If you don't have access to iron (which is not far-fetched at all) you obviously aren't going to be looking to build swordsmen. If you don't have luxuries right away, you might want to beeline for weaving to see if some "hidden" luxuries pop up. Each game is truly a unique experience. You'll want to perform your research to maximize whatever situation you're in.

On the other hand, I would disagree that the industrious trait is less valuable in dyp. It is precisely because of the fact that mining and irrigation can't be done right away that makes it more valuable. Once these options do become available, your serfs can get the terrain improvements done quickly. With a non-industrious civ, your terrain is probably going to be mostly unimproved until late in the medieval era. Of course, the other civ traits have been improved so maybe industrious is less powerful in dyp relative to the other civ traits.

[MrWhereItsAt]

peterfharris - unless your cities are founded near poor terrain (jungles, deserts etc) than you should have no problems REXing. You would need the first researched form of governemnt, Despotism (yes you need to research it in DyP!), to grow cities beyond 2 pop in almost all situations. But, cities tend to grow to 2 in almost all situations. If you start in grassland, you city square gets 3 food, and you can work another 2. This is a surplus of two, and grows your city to 2 rather nicely. Your cities tend not to grow more than that unless you have a bonus around. But where is the problem? [B]Remember that Clans and Shaman take 1 pop, not two./B] This means you can REX as much as you want, quicker than in vanilla Civ3, as you only need 2 pop to build a settler unit. This is also a reason I delay getting Dynasticism. Dynasticism gives you Despotism, which increases your harvested food, but also means you have to build normal, pop 2 Settlers instead of the earlier pop 1 units.

This brings up an interesting twist. Perhaps it would be best to avoid Dynasticism for as long as possible, until all the decent land is full, so you can basically T-REX to a degree unheard of in vanilla Civ3 without many food bonus squares. I tend to do this anyway until Dynasticism is the only tech available (it is one of the essential techs for the Ancient age, and a prereq for many techs after it), or I have filled an area I would roughly attribute to the productive region around one Palace/FP. From this point on diminishing returns of productivity sets in with extra cities, and there is less impact to REX until I can get the FP somewhere.

[ThePlagueRat]

Wasn't there an obelisk to expand culturally too?

In DyP was the only time I had the situation of three coordinated AI stack-of-dooms attacking me with about 20 riflemen each stack, plus some 10 cavalry or tanks defended within each.

To defeat those with my inferor numbers, I had to make use of superior tech, good bombardment units, terrain bonuses, plus the threat-AI-city-so-they-go-all-the-way-back-tactic.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Yep sure is. That obelisk is magnificent. A cheap, early building that gives you 1 culture per turn and costs 0 to maintain. Also, the Pyramids give you one in every city, allowing your culture to build straight away in all cities. VERY useful. This makes the Pyramids a vastly more important wonder to get, and they keep their value as long as you are building or capturing cities.

[TheArsenal]

Question: The number of turns in DyP have obviously been increased. Does any one have/know the years to turn ratio?

[peterfharris]

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt
peterfharris - ....Remember that Clans and Shaman take 1 pop, not two.....

Ooh, I never even looked, never tried to build a settler with a size two city.

Thanks for pointing that out, my next will be rather different.

[Fishman]

My Experience with DYP:

1. Agree with only roads to build early, Industrial is a diminished trait in the early game. With one pop settlers, not a lot of workers get built.

2. The early build of a temple to increase happiness and culture in traditional CIVIII. Now temple is for happiness and obelisk is for culture. More difficult early choice of buildings.

3. If I recall, the first warriers built in cities without a barracks were conscript level. Well they had less hit points and were certainly chopped up pretty easy by the barbs. The capital acts as a barracks for creating unit. So my capital ended up pumping out more military units then planned until a barracks building program was created.

4. Initial city placement is more of a crap shoot. With all of the bonus's not revealed until the necessary techs are researched, those first two cities might be totally lacking in bonus resources.

5. Slow growth. With the 3 food per person requirement, my cities topped out real early. The one population unit settlers were nice.

6. Smaller cities. With getting culture slower and the slow growth of cities, I started packing the cities in more tightly. This would probably hurt me later in the game, but it's all about getting a good start.

7. City Specializing. With so many build options, I think almost all of your cities have to end up specializing in some manner. I had to create a spreadsheet that summerized the improvements by time (food, production, culture) to help me figure out what to build.

8. With more cities around, it's definitely easier to dedicate one or two to wonder production. The AI was definitely doing this.

[MotownDennis]

I disagree with Whereitsat; Dynasticism is definitely high up on the research priority list. Once you switch to despotism, your growth problems are solved. No need to pack your cities together like sardines. What makes the early game difficult is that chiefdom is such a crappy government.

[Kal-el]

hello all,

First let me say that it is always great to see these sorts of discussions on this mod that I have spent way too much time on and it looks like it will continue to consume a great deal of my life for some time into the future.

Some Comments based on the latest version of the mod being tested:

1) Not all the traits are perfectly balanced. Religious is much more powerful in DyP and Commercial and Scientific are much weaker. Our testers tend to feel that Industrious, Expansionist and Militaristic have maintained their usefulness. I tend to agree. Remember a) Workers/Serfs can also cut down trees which add to your production, b) can be added to your population, c) Serfs do not cost any maintenance, and d) you no longer start with a worker unit, instead you get a Warrior. It should be noted that we are currently testing ways to increase the potency of the Commercial and Scientific traits.

2) The Supreme Court no longer acts as a Palace. Instead it is a Small Wonder that acts like a great Wonder in that it gives Courthouses to all your cities.

3) The Temple gives both happiness and culture. This is just to correct a statement above by Fishman. I believe he meant to say that the choice is between the Obelisk (which has been recently renamed to Monument) and the Shrine.

4) Ranged units: The Ranged attack has been removed from all units prior to GunPowder. Missile units from the pre-gunpowder days only get a defensive bombardment, which is something the AI can deal with.

5) Earlier issues with some resources not showing up have been eliminated.

6) Cities can be built in Jungle. The AI just couldn't handle it.

7) The testers have not indicated that the AI is having any trouble expanding. Remember the Clan/Shaman is only 1 population point. They were added for the very reason that the AI builds cities anywhere it pleases. It knows where the resources are going to be and builds accordingly. So, if it knows that some wheat and cattle are going to be in a location it will build there even though it won't be able to take advantage of them for 100 turns.

I am trying to figure out a way to diminish the REXing while at the same time allowing the AI to grow at a competive rate. The latest approach has been to make Pioneers (second level settlers available with Dynasticsm) wheeled just as Clan are. We have also made Shaman Wheeled to weaken the Religious trait a bit. Shaman are now just another flavor unit.

8) The turns have not yet been increased, though I am working on an extended version that will use months instead of years as the base unit of time, though turns won't actually be in months til near the end of the game. The extended version will have about 40 new techs that develop each age a bit more, including fleshing out the near future.

We are also working on figuring out what the optimal number of turns would be for the current settings, and once that is determined you can expect to see a change made to the PtW version of the mod.

9) Despotism: I like to think that Dynasticsm is an essential tech that you will be hard pressed to avoid. I am doing all I can to make it so. One recent change has been to make Clan/Shaman more expensive than Pioneers. This has the added advantage of slowing down initial growth.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Originally posted by MotownDennis
I disagree with Whereitsat; Dynasticism is definitely high up on the research priority list. Once you switch to despotism, your growth problems are solved. No need to pack your cities together like sardines. What makes the early game difficult is that chiefdom is such a crappy government.

This is true, but with the pop 1 settlers (Shaman and Clan) you can REX much as I said above. Who needs cities to grow beyond 2 or 3 pop that early in the game? You need land and resources first, unless you're going for a one or five city challenge, or are trying to win via Early Culture Wonders. Dynasticism, although allowing you to continue to grow your cities, will slow your land-grabbing.

Reading Kal-el's comments above, the change of making these Clans/Shamen more expensive than the Pioneers would balance the game further and I think such a change would be a bonus to the mod's balance. That said, it depends on where you want the focus - early T-REX, switching to development at Dynasticism or a more balanced expansion, where the pluses and minuses balance out expansion speed both before and after Dynasticism.

I do think that Ranged is amazingly powerful, seeing as you could get ranged attacks of 8 before normal attac/defense of more than 3. Catapults could easily reduce defenders to the point where anything could beat them, with little need for more than one or two siege units.

Will our thoughts and ideas here help you in refining your excellent work, Kal-el?

[Kal-el]

these comments are definitely useful! No one had mentioned anything about the GL before, so that's a new one. I would love to get more confirmations that the AI is not building it.

IF you guys want to sign up as testers you can get your hands on the latest release and join the discussion on our forums.

Join the regular DyP discussion at our forums even if you don't join the test team. I get notification of any comments posted there and I only check here about once a month, so the DyP forums are a much better way to give comments and make suggestions.

Join the Discussion Here

[isak]

Like Kal-El said, please keep these thoughts coming. They are very, very helpful. And if anyone feels like saving their game around every new age, zipping them up in a nice bundle and then emailing it to me on isak_@_privat.dk (without the underscores), that would also be a big help, as we rarely get the time to play through entire games ourselves these days, so that's the best 'view of the action' we can get

And this quote:

Originally posted by Fishman
7. City Specializing. With so many build options, I think almost all of your cities have to end up specializing in some manner. I had to create a spreadsheet that summerized the improvements by time (food, production, culture) to help me figure out what to build.

really warmed my heart, as that was exactly what I primarily wanted from the DyP mod when I joined Kal-El almost a year ago. That's the way I played Colonization for nearly 10 years, and the 'feel' of a game where your cities aren't just 'production clones' can't be beat IMHO.

If we can continue to pull that off (and balance out the rest ), I'll be a happy man.

[MotownDennis]

This is true, but with the pop 1 settlers (Shaman and Clan) you can REX much as I said above. Who needs cities to grow beyond 2 or 3 pop that early in the game?

I understand what you're saying, but you'd be surprised at how fast you can still expand and still enjoy the other benefits of Despotism.

Anyway, I think that this debate is what Dyp is all about. There are so many more options than in regular PTW. I really appreciate the extra options you get with this mod. If there are two ways to "skin a cat" in PTW, there are 10 ways in Dyp.