Tides of War, a balance mod

[pindicator]

Maybe oromos should get immune to first strike as well? Would that make them better?

[Kuro]

Maybe oromos should get immune to first strike as well? Would that make them better?

I know they already have that, but I mean, would you use Oromos over Janissary?

[Bobchillingworth]

Have the Stele give +1 untyped Person Point per turn.

[SevenSpirits]

Ethiopia: The problem with Ethiopia is, right now, it feels like a strictly worse version of the Ottoman Empire. Janissary are generally going to be a lot better than Oromo Warriors, save on defense: I'll take +25% vs. Archery, Melee AND Mounted compared to the 2-3 First Strikes. However, the Ottomans also have the awesome Hammam unique building, while Ethiopia has the near worthless Stele building (Even in cultural victories it isn't amazing and culture is hard to do in MP). In addition, the Ottomans have Agriculture + The Wheel, which is most likely preferred to Hunting + Mining in a lot of situations. While Ethiopia doesn't need a huge buff, it would be good if they had a good unique building that made them a reasonable option compared to the Ottomans.

Japan: Japan has a UU and techs that, while they would not be top tier, would at least make them pickable, but the Shale Plant is one of the worst UBs in the game, both in terms of power and design. Replacing it with something that doesn't suck would make Japan viable...or at least buff it some so it isn't just +10% Production tacked onto a Coal Plant, which is incredibly weak at that point in time. Maybe double speed for Productive leaders or an additional building boost? Not as important as the Ethiopia one IMO, but Japan has a lot of room for a useful and flavorful UB that would essentially let another civ be viable and I dislike the Shale Plant a lot.

You may be right that Ottomans are better than Ethiopa on average. However, I don't think they are anywhere near strictly better and I don't think Ethiopia would never get picked. Due to starting tech changes, agriculture is less important (you can just research it, it's cheap) and hunting is more important (immediate +1 movement to your scout). Mining was already a good starting tech, IMO comparable to wheel, and with these changes in mind, I think Ethiopia's techs are better than Ottoman techs for a significant proportion of starting positions. Meanwhile, Stele is not useless - it does speed up the first border pop by 1t on quick and 2t on normal, and the second pop even more. And Oromos aren't bad either - there are certainly a lot of situations where they are superior to Janissaries.

Japan, meanwhile, has unique starting techs, one of which was buffed, and its UU and UB do have some effect on the game. I am not saying these two civs are the best... but I think they are pretty darn close, and I wouldn't single them out over some other ones, and I think there are starts for which they are good choices. I did add buffs to a few civs, but only to those civs that had nothing going for them until the late game and were literally never going to be picked over the other civs with the same techs. I don't want to make such incredibly small tweaks as these would have to be.

One thing I did strongly consider when making the mod was improving the drill line of promotions. It's kind of sad to me that everyone always chooses combat over drill, reducing the variety. So I would say there is a remote possibility that I'd improve these two civs at some point, but it would be as an incidental change.

[Kuro]

A Drill change might be a better thing, since it does seem like Drill is never chosen as a promotion, only used as a cool thing that units already have. Thanks for the explanations on them!

[GermanJoey]

Have you tried Ctrl-I or Alt-I to toggle the interface?

Didn't work, unfortunately.

Kuro, what did you do to get the mod to work?

Jojo, if you've the Bug mod installed not as a seperate mod, then your problem could be in the configuration settings file. Go to the mod folder, open that file up in notepad and change

Code:

; Custom XML and Python from user folder are not loaded
NoCustomAssets = 0

to

Code:

; Custom XML and Python from user folder are not loaded
NoCustomAssets = 1

Once that is done, you should get your interface back up and running.

Good news! I just recently bought a new laptop - I installed the mod fresh after a steam install, and it worked. I then installed BUG, after backing up my Custom Assets, and the missing UI problem reappeared - confirming that this is what the problem was. I then tried your fix, and that fixed the mod again.

Gonna try out my Tokugawa game now!

[NobleHelium]

We don't play multiplayer games with BUG.

[GermanJoey]

Well, good thing I made a backup then!

[WilliamLP]

Meanwhile, Stele is not useless - it does speed up the first border pop by 1t on quick and 2t on normal, and the second pop even more.

Interesting, I didn't know that. Is culture the only thing in the game that accumulates fractions without rounding down?

I respect that this isn't a mod to spice up the game but just to remove broken things but the Stele still kind of sucks for anything but a culture victory play. I'd at least make it +2 culture and +25% to be a good building, and I highly doubt anyone would call it game breaking.

[Lord Parkin]

Had a quick test game with my partner last night, and confirmed most things seem to be working as advertised.

Still undecided on which is better in the long term out of Agr and Pro, and whether they're better than the base traits or not, which is probably a good indication. Pro's 50% bonus on both Workers and Work Boats early on seems a little excessive though (especially playing opposite my partner as India - see below).

Unsure on the new Cha, it's always been such a map(maker) dependent trait and this change makes it more so.

India's 75 hammer workers really hurt with an ordinary start (19 turns!) - I'm not sure if you've overcompensated there, maybe they'd be better balanced with a typical lush RB start.

The Colossus got a huge buff for smaller maps, probably roughly balanced on larger ones though.

The Wharf feels too cheap for its benefit; looking in the notes you say it costs 100 hammers, but it costs 80. I might even consider 120, it's pretty good.

No circumnavigation, which is good - no more benefit from lucky scout treks in one direction. (As an alternative, I'd also be happy with granting each player the +1 movement in water bonus as soon as they personally meet the criteria.)

Misread the espionage section and was expecting none whatsoever, so was confused when I saw Great Spies and Spies in the game. However, I see you just removed the active missions and kept all the passive stuff. This is probably fine, though perhaps just removing the civic/religion missions would be enough. (By the way, I have a pet peeve with the demographics screen revealing scores of information before you've met anyone - I know many people call reading it an art but personally I'd be quite happy with it gone completely. I realise I might be in the minority here.)

Tech cost scaling is interesting, the game feels like it drags a bit in the late medieval/renaissance then picks up again in the industrial era once the snowball is in full force. Might allow more time for Knights and Musketmen to have their day.

Medium Distance Maintenance seems to do what the label says.

I'm a little confused by "Feature growth/disappearance rates, and bonus discovery (mine pop) rates, do not scale with game speed" - does this mean you have a 1 in 10,000 chance of each mine popping a resource each turn on marathon? If so, how is this different from before?