Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[plako]

I always thought the vanilla tech bonus from meeting other civs is 3%. So was that bumped up to 30%, and then up to 250% or something?

If in the beginning there are 10 teams you get 30/10%=3% for everyone knowing the tech. If the known civ bonus is 250% you get 25%.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Ah, so the max bonus is 30%, and that gets divided by the number of teams there are. So in a game with say 4 players, you get a 7% bonus for everyone you've met that has a tech you're currently researching.

So in a standard 6 player pbem game with a 250% bonus, you can get a 41% boost just by meeting someone. Uh, that sounds a bit large, it's more than a pre-req bonus. I think it could use some toning down

[WarriorKnight]

So in a standard 6 player pbem game with a 250% bonus, you can get a 41% boost just by meeting someone. Uh, that sounds a bit large, it's more than a pre-req bonus. I think it could use some toning down

Actually, since I'm not sure how you can meet yourself, wouldn't it be around 50%?

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Whoops

But yeah, I've always found a tech diffusion mechanism a nice idea, cuts out the vagaries of TT and the positive feedback loops in NTT. So I think the concept of boosting the bonus is fine.

[Shoot the Moon]

250% is too much especially in small games and potentially causes strange gold collecting and tech rushes.

For me the main point for higher percentage is in the NTT games where there are runaway civs where some kind of catch-up mechansim could be good. 100% sounds quite good to me in most cases. When there are 10 or more players it could be 150% and with 18 maybe even 250% or close to it.

To be fair though, most of the time the runaway civ has also played better and probably deserves to win. This is an expansion game, and if someone has expanded better than the others they shouldn't be overly penalized for that. Also, there are other ways to slow down a runaway civ already, I don't think we need to mess with the whole host of problems that arise from doing this like people purposefully sandbagging techs. It also places too much of an advantage on the luck of meeting people quickly.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Maybe we should think of bumping up maintenance to Monarch or Emperor levels, to slow down the snowball and shift the decision balance between vertical and horizontal growth. Right now it's pretty much horizontal for as much military you can afford. Or would that inhibit everyone equally as much?

[Krill]

The trait changes look good, although I think Imp's +67% production boost was a little too much, and should be toned down to +60%?

I'll check, I think that was already implemented? If not v1.41 will be up shortly...

I assume you're expecting Tech Trading to be the default now?

For NTT, I think the cost increases are a little steep, and the 250% known-civ bonus becomes a little too large.

Actually I was thinking of just keeping 2 versions of the mod running, this thing is almost finished. In fact, it's only going to need 2 copies of a single file to keep things working.

As to the numbers, the whole point is you can trade techs. If you are really far in front you can do a deep beeline and trade back later. If you are second or third the options are to trade a parallel line and trade, or to take the slightly easier (won't be a lot easier) line following the 1st player. If you are last and have nothing to trade, you can just tech everything really cheaply, but you aren't going to be propping anyone up.

I agree it's a big number, but if you are last in the tech race, even with a decent number of cities and GNP, this will let you catch up in tech but not in land, crop yield or number of cities. It's still an expansion race.

Bumping OBs back to Alphabet is also a very significant GLH nerf, possibly enough that I think it could be restored to 2 TR. Not sure.

Not really that big a nerf - you would get +2 cpt just from internal routes, and then have to wait until you teched about 450 beakers to get the international routes. OTOH, it's going to last a fair bit longer now so it's still a decent build after a certain point in the game.

Also, you wanted to swap Sailing and Masonry in the GLH's file to make the screen look better.

I've done that but didn't quite know how to write it down. As there is zero change in functionality, I didn't...

I don't expect I'm ever going to re-tackle this project directly, Krill, you should have project lead at this point.

np, thanks for the help getting it this far

TGLH needed a crazy big nerf.

It's had one. +1 TR is decent but not worth rushing over. Even on an archi map, it's only +3 commerce/city.

[Krill]

Quechua lose combat 1? So they're just a renamed warrior now?

Oh, they also have +100% vs archery units. Never noticed that.

Yeah, they are good units for breaking chokes from archers, but with C1 you basically start the game with AGG, so if you warrior choke someone who isn't AGG, they are pretty screwed.

Yeah, that is my main complaint. I just feel like it will basically make tech irrelevant, as everyone will have the same techs, and the game will be all about production.

I would think 30 --> 75 might be more the ticket, than 30 --> 250.

Let's look at the numbers and the situation. You are last out of 6 players. You don't have anyone to trade with. You most likely have a worse empire that has other problems such as low MFG/CY. What are your options with a known tech bonus of 75? You get a bonus of 60 on techs that everyone else knows, so for you to match the original techers speed, you need to be teching at a rate of 60ish%. But the tech leader can trade techs, so if the tech leader is trading, say, 1 tech for 1 tech, you in fact need to tech at 120% of the tech leaders rate to keep up.

Your other options are to sell gold for tech, and ask for gifts. Lets ignore the latter, that's just an extreme view of the former. You're trading gold for techs, but what constitutes a fair price? 1g=1b, after boni? That means that if Rifling is 6k beakers originally, it costs you 3600 gold. Let's say, for comparison purposes, you're trading at 2b=1g, that's 1800g given to a techer that he can then use to get ahead in the tech race. That's going to lead to big imbalances in the tech race.

If, however, the known tech bonus was 200, in a 6 player game the last player would need to tech at 33% of the tech leaders pace. He could catch up, without relying on trades, or selling gold for tech (although, if he were to sell gold for tech, he wouldn't be paying much gold at all, a few 100 gold for Rifling say). That means the tech race between the leaders won't get influenced much by the slower players, and those in the middle of the pack aren't getting the full bonus. I think the numbers are fine, it's no longer expand first, tech later, it's expand first and then balance tech (cottages) with production (workshops). And think about what you tech, what others want to tech, and what possible trades there are. TBH, No Tech Brokering might actually be even better than full TT.

That said, the culture victory needs it's values at least quadrupled...

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Let's look at the numbers and the situation. You are last out of 6 players. You don't have anyone to trade with. You most likely have a worse empire that has other problems such as low MFG/CY. What are your options with a known tech bonus of 75?

You get to lose! Which is what should happen. The design should be to make 2nd and 3rd place have a better shot at catching the leader. The design shouldn't be to make the last place team competitive. If you play badly, the result should be a loss.

[Ilios]

I have to agree with GES (and others), 250% is just too much. If you're that far behind, then well, you deserve to be that far behind.