Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[Lord Parkin]

Increasing the known tech modifier seems like an indirect fix to "snowball leaders" which will cause a bunch of other issues in any games with diplomacy allowed. Is it possible to code a more direct fix - e.g. give direct scaling bonus to tech rate based on current position on scoreboard (10% for second place, 20% for third place, 100% for eleventh place, etc - exact numbers can be adjusted)? Still possible for slight abuse with this system (e.g. whipping a bit more to get extra 10% tech bonus that turn), but much less than if you massively increase the known tech modifier. Also it's a bit problematic in the early game where rankings on the scoreboard are pretty arbitrary - maybe have it kicking in later on? Dunno.

(EDIT: Maybe 5%/10%/15% etc would be more appropriate, not sure.)

[Shoot the Moon]

Why exactly are we trying to "fix" snowball leaders though? The entire point of a game of civ is trying to get a larger snowball (aka a larger and better empire) than anyone else and win because of that. Why are we looking to "fix" that exactly?

[Lord Parkin]

Why exactly are we trying to "fix" snowball leaders though? The entire point of a game of civ is trying to get a larger snowball (aka a larger and better empire) than anyone else and win because of that. Why are we looking to "fix" that exactly?

I'm not suggesting it's a good idea. (I like building snowballs as much as anyone else. )

Was just suggesting that if people are set on this idea of evening the playing field, then there are probably better ways to go about it.

[Ilios]

Maybe we should start ranking players to avoid situations (pbem greens comes to mind) where one player/team is vastly more skilled than his opponents.

[Serdoa]

Isn't the idea of these games to have fun together? I am not sure how much fun it is if I get ranked according to how I played. And who is ranking that? Do I have to send lists with every move I did and why to someone so he can decide if that was good or bad? And where can I complain if I feel that my starting position did make it harder for me then for my opponents? Or do we only play on mirrored maps from now on?

Ok, I exaggerate I know. Just wanted to make clear that I do not think ranking players is fun.

[Ilios]

Maybe we should start ranking players to avoid situations (pbem greens comes to mind) where one player/team is vastly more skilled than his opponents.

Heh, I was joking, maybe I should have made it a bit clearer, sorry.

[Ilios]

Oh, and I like the idea of removing the double hammer bonus when founding on plains hill (all games seem to have this start nowadays), and adding an extra hammer to the palace.

[Krill]

Could the library not go back to Creative where the darn thing belongs? Maybe not half price, maybe +50% to production instead of 100%.

Sounds good.

Not sure how complicated we want to get here, but it'd be possible to charge extra for upgrading a unit with lots of promotions, or maybe for any promotions that the target unit can't normally get.

Better to keep it simple IMO.

I agree I wouldn't have caught him without corps, but I also didn't deserve to as he had more of both land and population. Why should I be allowed to catch him if he has played the stronger game?

According to WKs' assessment, he started next to AH who expanded badly and was an easy pushover who left him alone after the attempted choke. OTOH you had to put up with rego. Did WK play the stronger game if his neighbours made his game easier by not interfering?

I agree with increasing tech costs post paper to account for tech trading. I don't agree with increasing the known tech bonus anywhere near the extent you propose (and question the need at all really). The two are not related.

I agree land doesn't change easily after paper. But at the same time, why should people's relative positions in the game be easy to change? Doesn't that just make how you play in the ancient era worthless if we allow people to catch up easily later?

Just because you can catch up in tech (and remember the numbers showing that it isn't a given, either) doesn't mean you are going to do better and overtake, if you haven't got enough land to compete at the front, you are going to lose an SS race.

Tech blocks change (how many different acronyms did we have in PB3?) and also have to form in the first place, so no diplomacy is not out in TT games.

I think you misunderstand me. I don't think you can play a TT game with diplomacy without it being fundamentally broken. I don't intend to try and fix it.

I see no irony at all. Whoever better utilizes their economy deserves to have a tech advantage (or more accurately a teching advantage). Both of those statements are consistent with that.

There is a difference between a teching advantage and a tech advantage. One is permanent and comes from the amount and quality of land, and the other is transient, depends on strategy. The known tech bonus affects the latter and not the former, which comes from the land you have.

Considering that the most common arrangement in these games has been "you fund me and I research" I don't see how you expect the known tech bonus increase to change this -- it is still suboptimal for an alliance to have more than one person research a tech. All it does is allow the weaker alliance to have an easier time of it, which again I don't think should be done and just leads to so many metagame issues of purposefully sandbagging techs to make the other waste their beakers and gold on not having the known tech bonus. Hell, in PB3 we were already spreading around researched techs as little as possible to avoid known tech bonus, can you imagine what that would be like if we were to increase the bonus eight times what it currently is?

As I said, I don't intend to try and fix CIV for TT with diplomacy because I think it is fundamentally broken. However, yes, I do, and I don't think we would have formed such big alliances. I for one wouldn't have influenced that game how I did.

Oh, and I like the idea of removing the double hammer bonus when founding on plains hill (all games seem to have this start nowadays), and adding an extra hammer to the palace.

Only thing I don't know how to do is remove the plains hill bonus. The rest I can do.

[regoarrarr]

I kind of think we're getting into "scope creep" here. I thought the purpose of this mod was to fix "known" problems, like GLH being crazy powerful, or FIN being super awesome, etc.

This to me seems like we're moving down the road of just incorporating some people's ideas on things to fix

[Krill]

I kind of think we're getting into "scope creep" here. I thought the purpose of this mod was to fix "known" problems, like GLH being crazy powerful, or FIN being super awesome, etc.

This to me seems like we're moving down the road of just incorporating some people's ideas on things to fix

While I see your point, I think this is all we need to get done:

1. Huts (I've done this but will update shortly)
   
   
2. change known tech (basically done bar the arguing, the method scooter and T-hawk have figured out).
   
   
3. civilopedia entries. (ongoing)

The first, I've changed it so you can only pop none religion ancient era techs, plus IW, HBR, Maths, Aesthetics and Monarchy. With no one starting with a scout it's a fairly balanced option for what is essentially an unbalancing game option.

The second T-hawk has a method of turning off the known tech bonus until Paper, so everyone has to pay the same amount of techs to get there.

The third just needs people to find and then we can fix them. And then it's all finished.

The change to a plains hill I like the idea of, but as I don't know how to implement I can see a good side to leaving it undone. It just limits map options for map makers.