Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[Cull]

My pitiful 2 cents:

@Bruindane: If chops are kept to BW, MP games(which I believe this mod is mostly created around)will still be rush BW of super early chops, then just grab masonry. It just delays tech by 7 turns or so in Normal, which is irrelevant in MP since its still probably the most optional tech path. Only other reasonable path is to rush top part of tech tree, getting fast libraries, or rushing down IW or MC, both of which are still supoptimal to a tech path of like Agri, AH, Mining, BW, Masonry.

However, moving chops to MC has its benefits(making Oracle-MC more viable in team games w/ an ind wonder spam builder) to MC as a tech, but it makes BW pitifully weak if you move slavery as suggested to Masonry. BW would then only give access to copper, and ability to make axes. Hunting would probably be a better tech than BW if you implemented the changes you suggested, making it so that people would only do chariots-tech top part of tree, or try to rush bot half of tree, and only get full benefits until the very expensive tech(early game) MC is gotten.

[SevenSpirits]

However, moving chops to MC has its benefits

As it happens, by first thread on civfanatics was about BW having too many good things in it. In that thread, a strong (IMO) argument was made that you don't want to remove the ability for people to remove forests early, as well as some other interesting points.

[Bruindane]

As it happens, by first thread on civfanatics was about [url="http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=237992"]

Good ideas all around. There is an interesting idea by Khan Quest that disconnects chopping from Bronze Working

"Maybe the chopping rate could improve with technology:
Stone - 12 chops/forest
Bronze - 6 chops/forest
Iron - 3 chops/forest"

[Krill]

If you mess with slavery and forest chops you are going to affect the entire balance of the game, throw horizontal/vertical growth, cottages, civics, literally everything out of sync.

I wonder what would happen if barracks gave a free commando promotion to every unit built? Probably not worth it for this mod, but for an individual game that could be interesting...

[Cyneheard]

India Fast Worker:

What if it was a 2-move/Mobility, instead of 3-moves? It can still move onto a Forest or Hill and then take an action, as before (leaving the biggest tactical benefit intact), but it isn't faster on roads or bare flatland.

And chops are being left as they are. That changes too many things about the game, especially when Fin cottages and slavery are already weaker.

[Lord Parkin]

I wonder what would happen if barracks gave a free commando promotion to every unit built? Probably not worth it for this mod, but for an individual game that could be interesting...

You can sort of see the effect of this in FFH2, where there's a civ trait which gives most units the Commando promotion right off the bat. I think it's actually not too overpowered since you plan for it when facing those civs as opposed to it occurring right out of the blue. Then again, in that mod there are a lot of other powerful things that balance it out, so in regular BTS allowing a Commando promotion for units might be more unbalancing.

India Fast Worker:

What if it was a 2-move/Mobility, instead of 3-moves? It can still move onto a Forest or Hill and then take an action, as before (leaving the biggest tactical benefit intact), but it isn't faster on roads or bare flatland.

Isn't it the "move onto forest/hill and immediately perform action" that's the problem in the first place? This doesn't really fix the main problem. (And for the record I don't think it's that bad anyway.)

[Cyneheard]

The Commando changes would have to be a separate mod, that changes everything.


The Barracks Commando makes defending a LOT harder: defending currently has two large advantages:
1) Mobility. I move 2-3x as fast as you do. Only mounted units can realistically threaten 2 cities at once, and if I only need to worry about mounteds, then #2 comes into play (and 2 pikes for 120h can handle 4 knights for 360h fairly easily, behind castle walls):
2) City defenses, whether culture, walls, or castles. Sufficient numbers of Siege can solve that problem, by either bombing down the defenses or suiciding away on the defending stack.

It becomes a very different game: one where it's possible to war without having crushing technological or numeral advantages. Looking at my PBEM10 land, where I've literally roaded every single land tile (yes, technically, that's a spoiler, but it's not one I'm particularly worried about protecting), I think there's something to be said for forcing a player to have to choose one's road network. I think that letting Siege take commando would be too powerful: defending would become harder than attacking, which isn't what we want.

In order for it to work, roads must also be pillageable within one's own lands. From what I can tell, that doesn't seem to be an easy XML fix, but it's probably in the DLL somewhere; since pillaging works outside of one's lands, there's got to be some sort of DLL function that handles that.

And under this, the FW needs nerfed: 2move/mobility can only road 1 new square, not 2, although since hills or forest wouldn't matter, it is helpful (and, yes, this doesn't return the FW to normal UU status). The other thing that could be done to the FW is to make it slightly more expensive (65 or 70 hammers).

[luddite]

Bumping this to ask if people are still working on it.

Does anyone else agree with me that mounted units are a little overpowered for multiplayer warfare? I was thinking that increasing the cost of chariots and horse archers by about 20%, and decreasing the strength of knights, cuirassiers, and cavalry by 1 would do a lot to make non-mounted units more useful. Removing their first-strike invulnerability would help too.

[Krill]

The issue isn't so much that fast units are powerful, it is that you can't attack with slow movers without getting catted. And fast units have been weakened by the limiting (and possible removal in future) of flanking.

FWIW, I'm now in a position to try out a few MP games with the RB mod, just need others to be around for a few games.

[luddite]

Wait, does this mod do something to limit flanking? If it did I missed that.

I feel like they'd still be really powerful even without siege units though, just because they can force the defender to split their garrison and defend two or three cities at once.