Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[GreyWolf]

Best way to buff agressive and still maintain the flavor is buffing promotions, like in FfH.

It's also worth noting that FFH Aggressive buffs almost all unit types, while Civ4 BTS Aggressive doesn't; most notably, mounted units don't benefit from it.

[Ichabod]

Best way to buff agressive and still maintain the flavor is buffing promotions, like in FfH.

It's also worth noting that FFH Aggressive buffs almost all unit types, while Civ4 BTS Aggressive doesn't; most notably, mounted units don't benefit from it.

That's actually a very good idea. Make Agressive give combat 1 to Mounted units. Wouldn't that be enough to buff it, while still maintaining the flavour?

[novice]

Best way to buff agressive and still maintain the flavor is buffing promotions, like in FfH.

It's also worth noting that FFH Aggressive buffs almost all unit types, while Civ4 BTS Aggressive doesn't; most notably, mounted units don't benefit from it.

That's actually a very good idea. Make Agressive give combat 1 to Mounted units. Wouldn't that be enough to buff it, while still maintaining the flavour?

That lets you build a half-price barracks and spit out shock horse archers. Not ideal.

[dazedroyalty]

I'm alternately amazed and crazed by this thread! I love that Civ 4 is still so active and there is so much effort put into the game. On the other hand, half the posts in this thread feel like splitting hairs.

[Ichabod]

Best way to buff agressive and still maintain the flavor is buffing promotions, like in FfH.

It's also worth noting that FFH Aggressive buffs almost all unit types, while Civ4 BTS Aggressive doesn't; most notably, mounted units don't benefit from it.

That's actually a very good idea. Make Agressive give combat 1 to Mounted units. Wouldn't that be enough to buff it, while still maintaining the flavour?

That lets you build a half-price barracks and spit out shock horse archers. Not ideal.

Let's make the trait shine after a long time of underpoweredness.

Besides, you can do almost the same with a half-price barracks and half-price stables scenario. Would people do it? Not sure. In theory, it's wonderful. In practice... Of course, it'd be king of duels, but in other games, I'm not sure this attack would prevail over peaceful expansion.

Either way, I see your point. So, why not give free flanking 1 to mounted units? That's not so harsh, since it doesn't open up shock.

[BRickAstley]

I'm alternately amazed and crazed by this thread! I love that Civ 4 is still so active and there is so much effort put into the game. On the other hand, half the posts in this thread feel like splitting hairs.

This is also the second time in the last week that the having AGG give XP to mounted units has come up.

[SevenSpirits]

All these culture boosts you are adding to traits make for a lot of antisynergistic pairings. BTS had one such pairing (CRE/CHM) and it didn't even exist. Here we have all possible pairs of CRE, AGG (barracks), ORG (libraries), and EXP (monuments). That's getting out of hand. The only saving grace of all these distasteful pairings is that your AGG and EXP traits are bad and no one would want to pick them anyway. So I guess two wrongs make a right?

Bigger picture, I am just not impressed with the balance changes. The difference from high end to low end trait is a bit smaller ... but let me make this comparison instead: I would say that BTS where you pretend that PRO and AGG don't exist, has about the same trait power variance as what you have here. Both are still at the point where the best trait is more than twice as good as the worst trait. That's atrocious. And this despite making a TON of changes, all of which add to the burden of using the mod.

[Krill]

You could give AGG +10% military unit production. And EXP could get the cheap lighthouses, it fits with the "fast starting cities" flavour of EXP.

Wouldn't +10% military unit production end up hindering the player more than helping in the early game (due to rounding overflow)?

Best way to buff agressive and still maintain the flavor is buffing promotions, like in FfH. I know RBMod won't mess with that, since it wouldn't be a simple change and would affect a the balance a lot.

I agree that a %age modifier to troop production wouldn't be easy to pull off without screwing over players and increasing MM. I'm a bit iffy with swapping over lighthouses, because I'm not entirely sure it's a good idea that the traits value swings so much due to map type.

All these culture boosts you are adding to traits make for a lot of antisynergistic pairings. BTS had one such pairing (CRE/CHM) and it didn't even exist. Here we have all possible pairs of CRE, AGG (barracks), ORG (libraries), and EXP (monuments). That's getting out of hand. The only saving grace of all these distasteful pairings is that your AGG and EXP traits are bad and no one would want to pick them anyway. So I guess two wrongs make a right?

Surprisingly enough, I don't like EXP getting a boost on monuments, for that very reason. However, CRE/CHM no longer has such antisynergy which is I agree with others idea that CRE/AGG should be swapped over to it, and I don't think that making that swap is inherently bad. As CRE/ORG isn't altered after the changes I don't see that that is bad either, and that leaves AGG/ORG which instead of having nothing to pop borders suddenly has two different options. And having that choice is bad why?

Also, how is AGG being "bad" anyones fault? It's arguably better that AGG is kept weaker than average than doing something stupid and it becoming a gamebreaking trait. It was a worse trait after two expansion packs and numerous patches, because of what it was designed to do, and I'm not going to just throw stuff at it that destroys the flavour of what was intended for that trait.

Bigger picture, I am just not impressed with the balance changes. The difference from high end to low end trait is a bit smaller ... but let me make this comparison instead: I would say that BTS where you pretend that PRO and AGG don't exist, has about the same trait power variance as what you have here. Both are still at the point where the best trait is more than twice as good as the worst trait. That's atrocious. And this despite making a TON of changes, all of which add to the burden of using the mod.

That's hyperbole, and it's also cherry picking to ignore AGG and PRO from base BtS yet include AGG in these altered traits. You also value the traits from your own playstyle, which ignores how others would handle the traits. Whilst I value what you have to say on this subject, I also value other peoples contradictory views: for the past 7.5 years people have argued over what is the best trait and I don't think that is going to change any time soon.

[SevenSpirits]

As CRE/ORG isn't altered after the changes I don't see that that is bad either, and that leaves AGG/ORG which instead of having nothing to pop borders suddenly has two different options. And having that choice is bad why?

CRE/ORG may be the same as before (modulo the lost courthouse discount), but ORG/anything else has been changed for the better. It doesn't matter how good the trait combo is in relation to a BTS trait combo with the same name. It matters how good it is in relation to other trait combos you could choose instead.

Also, how is AGG being "bad" anyones fault? It's arguably better that AGG is kept weaker than average than doing something stupid and it becoming a gamebreaking trait. It was a worse trait after two expansion packs and numerous patches, because of what it was designed to do, and I'm not going to just throw stuff at it that destroys the flavour of what was intended for that trait.

The goal of having the AGG trait with its military boosts is at odds with having a balanced set of traits. If I were trying to make a balanced set of traits, I would replace AGG with something else, or remove it.

That's hyperbole, and it's also cherry picking to ignore AGG and PRO from base BtS yet include AGG in these altered traits.

Traits are imbalanced; that's a problem. One "solution" to the problem is to just never pick the worst traits. Another "solution" is to play with a certain complicated mod that changes a lot of things. My claim is that these two solutions provide comparable levels of increased balance (not much in either case).

IMO, the cost of all the mod changes (many of which I don't like) is greater than the cost of being down two traits. That's why I consider this to be a pertinent comparison to make.

[Ceiliazul]

The cost of too many mod changes is a reduced player base.

For the visual people: