Tides of War, a balance mod

[SevenSpirits]

I agree on taking the circumnavigation bonus away, too unfair.

I think a PBEM is in order to test this. I'd play, if everyone else agrees on a Holiday pause.

I'd play Tokugawa!

I'd be happy to either play in a PBEM or help set one up.

How do you feel about war weariness mechanics? SoZ is often banned as an unfun wonder to play against. Also, war weariness gives a lot of "spite power" to players who have already lost the game but want to get back at whoever took them out of the running. Do you see that as a good thing or a bad thing?

I have no problem with war weariness. It provides a small amount of counterbalance to the powerful move of conquering land, and it provides use for things like theatres.

I like the package. It could be even more minimalistic and naturally more puffy, but it certainly is more balanced than original and gives also some new feats to try out so I wouldn't mind playing a game with it. Are you planning to include also bug fixes to this?

Concerning Espionage I would suggest mostly the approach of RBmod:
* Remove civic/religion switch missions
* Double the price of other missions (You could also use some effort to fine tune it more, but this is the simplest way)
* Remove counter-espionage mission
* Remove discounts based on religion (other discounts are ok e.g. the one based on OB is good since you can easily affect on it)

Bug fixes are included. I guess I should post the list. I think it's the same ones I provided to Krill.

I like the RBMod approach to espionage pretty well, except for the fact that spies can't see other tiles.

AP reassigning cities still exists though.

Yeah, I never had a problem with this mechanic, though I know some other people do.

[SevenSpirits]

I'd expect that to fix a lot of "problems" with tech scaling, yeah. Doesn't really do much about AH, preferred starting techs and starting resources though, at least from the perspective of playing random leaders with random starts. Using a map maker and the problems go away, obviously, simply because starting resources can be balanced by hand.

I brought it up there because if you apply it to difficulty level tech prices too, then there's always enough time to research Agri/Hunting + AH before a non-accelerated worker comes out. Yeah, it doesn't quite fix it if we only change the map size factor, and play on e.g. prince. (It sure helps, though.)

[plako]

Cheked the Espy changes in RBmod:
* Switch Civic, Switch Religion, City Revolt, Counter Espionage, and Destroy Production spy missions removed.
* Costs of all active spy missions doubled.
* Discounts to spy missions due to religious effects removed (owning holy city, religion present in city).

I think this would be good set and no need for secretive I agree.

[Krill]

OK, I'll bite with the WW post I was going to make at the weekend.

The problem with WW late in the game is that it isn't a mechanic to stop capturing land, it's a mechanic that punishes players that can't eradicate their opponents completely. SoZ just exacerbates that problem. The effect late on (like Ind era and later) is that because of the sheer number of units WW can become impossible to manage in a single turn to the extent that it cripples the bpt and hpt of an entire empire. PBEM20 is an example of what can happen from WW even if you don't invade (ie if someone declares on you and takes a few cities, because it can cripple even a large empire that otherwise would be quite able to cope with such an attack).

Realistically, SoZ isn't a problem until later on in the game, so provided there are ways to manage WW that problem isn't a reason to remove it entirely, but the only way to entirely manage WW is to use the combination of PS, jails and Rushmore and that limits strategic options.

tl;dr I disagree with your idea of "small".

I brought it up there because if you apply it to difficulty level tech prices too, then there's always enough time to research Agri/Hunting + AH before a non-accelerated worker comes out. Yeah, it doesn't quite fix it if we only change the map size factor, and play on e.g. prince. (It sure helps, though.)

Oh, if applying it to difficulty then sure, np with any of that stuff.

Anything done about the difference in city maintenance costs on toroidal and cylindrical maps as well?

[Commodore]

Flavor is shot all to hell, but eh, if you want a nice balanced Mirrorland game, this is probably a pretty improved mod.

[Commodore]

Also, holy crap is Churchill scary.

[SevenSpirits]

Flavor is shot all to hell

I assume you're talking about leaders? If you think something other than that is off-flavor, I'd like to know, because that is a major reason I did a lot of things differently from RBMod - to keep flavor. Sadly, there's not much that can be done about leaders whose flavor is crazy warmonger in a game where we don't want to support that as a viable strategy, though.

Also, I know that you hate mirrorland, but this mod has nothing to do with mirrorland so I'd appreciate it if you kept your distaste for that separate.

[Bacchus]

Gavagai and I were recently discussing the best way to get swords back into the game, and came to thinking that the problem lies rather with axes, which are both a sword counter and a decent unit to beat archers up with. So everyone builds axes, lots of them, and god forbid you don't have copper (which means editing the metal into any start to preserve balance). And with hordes of axes around, why build swords? Perhaps a way to fix the whole set of problems -- requirement for copper, comparative uselesness of archers and lack of a spot for swords, is to give the lowly archer a decent bonus against axes. Babylon's bowman shows that even a 50% against all Melee is far from game-breaking, or even particularly good. If archers are made decent enough to become viable alternative to axes for people staying on the defensive, thus reducing axe spam, it should open up space for swords. Also, makes thematic sense.

[SevenSpirits]

Gavagai and I were recently discussing the best way to get swords back into the game, and came to thinking that the problem lies rather with axes, which are both a sword counter and a decent unit to beat archers up with. So everyone builds axes, lots of them, and god forbid you don't have copper (which means editing the metal into any start to preserve balance). And with hordes of axes around, why build swords? Perhaps a way to fix the whole set of problems -- requirement for copper, comparative uselesness of archers and lack of a spot for swords, is to give the lowly archer a decent bonus against axes. Babylon's bowman shows that even a 50% against all Melee is far from game-breaking, or even particularly good. If archers are made decent enough to become viable alternative to axes for people staying on the defensive, thus reducing axe spam, it should open up space for swords. Also, makes thematic sense.

My experience, though it's mostly on quick speed and with roomier maps than you might be thinking of, is that chariots are the dominant aggressive unit of the ancient era. They're the only 2-mover, which is always great, but it's really important when your opponent's borders aren't right next to your own. Chariots are countered by spear defenders, which leaves axes as a potential alternate attacking unit, since they beat spears. But axes lose to chariots, so they kind of need to be combined with spears or they are ineffective. If you're attacking someone, you'd probably rather have chariots, and if you have a single defender in a city, you'd rather it be a spear or an archer (which does fine against both kinds of attackers).

When you get to the classical era, the key unit is the horse archer. Horse archers + chariots is a deadly combination against axes with a minority of spears: the horse archers can knock down the spears and then the chariots will just clean up.

Now throw in the swordsman. What's even the point? They're apparently designed for attacking, but you have horse archers for that. OK, so maybe they're for attacking spears? But axes are better for that. Regardless of whether you give archers a bonus against axemen, that's not going to stop people using axes for defense - and then sword attackers are stymied. What swordsmen do is fulfill a similar role to spears, but with less power and more versatiility. They're bad against axes (but not as much), and decent/good against mounted units (but not as much). And they're stronger when the game moves on to catapults and medieval units.

TLDR: I don't see axe spam as a problem, but even if you do and you buffed archers vs axes to reduce it, I don't think that would do anything to make swordsmen good city attackers.

[Krill]

Question: If it is possible to research to AH without having either Hunting or Agri on T0, is Wheel the best starting tech? Mining is good, but rushing to BW as first tech is often not that strong (unless Fishing/Mining and workboat first start which is still applicable here). And Wheel is needed for Pottery which is still a great tech with vanilla slavery, and gives roads which you still want early for that second city. Should it cost 60, or should it be dropped to 50?