Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[Krill]

T-hawk, I think your river idea is the best one that I've seen so far, better than the +3 on land, +2 on water. And it can work with FIN as it was originally coded: +1 commerce on tiles that generate commerce. Though I think it'd probably be safest to give it cheap banks as well.

So just to put it out there:

FIN: +1 commerce on all tiles that generate 2 or more commerce, does not work with rivers. +100% production of Banks.

[T-hawk]

My concern is the mental wrenching that occurs between standard BTS and the mod. Financial changes from automatically cottaging river tiles to wanting its cottages on non-river tiles, as Cyneheard brain-dumped. Big shift in thinking and instincts. Might help if we could establish the concept as "Financial can make every tile a river".

Also, this doesn't do much to nerf Financial on island-type maps, where it's already strong and there are few rivers. Maybe that's okay though.

Cheaper banks are insidiously not particularly strong, because of that self-defeating effect. A good Financial civ is already running a high science slider and doesn't need the banks... and once it does build the banks, it pushes the science slider even higher and doesn't get so much out of the banks it just built. But that might be at about the right power level.

I'll see about the coding sometime soon; is anybody planning to start a new mod game in the next few days?

[Krill]

My concern is the mental wrenching that occurs between standard BTS and the mod. Financial changes from automatically cottaging river tiles to wanting its cottages on non-river tiles, as Cyneheard brain-dumped. Big shift in thinking and instincts. Might help if we could establish the concept as "Financial can make every tile a river".

Also, this doesn't do much to nerf Financial on island-type maps, where it's already strong and there are few rivers. Maybe that's okay though.

I'll see about the coding sometime soon; is anybody planning to start a new mod game in the next few days?

I don't think anyone is going to start a game in the next few days, definitely not been any threads on the matter.

EDIT: Cyneheard said he might look at the Internet change, which involves moving XML between two or three XML files (the Buildings and Projects XML files to be specific). That shouldn't have an effect on any FIN change though.

[Lord Parkin]

Cheaper banks are insidiously not particularly strong, because of that self-defeating effect. A good Financial civ is already running a high science slider and doesn't need the banks... and once it does build the banks, it pushes the science slider even higher and doesn't get so much out of the banks it just built.

Cheap Banks are extremely nice for an earlier Wall Street (especially if you have a shrine).

[Krill]

Not really though, as you have enough time to build the prerequisite number of banks whilst you tech to Corp. PHI, unis and OU or CRE, Theatres and the GT OTOH, yeah, they make a difference

[luddite]

I don't think you're ever going to get around the fact that any map will make certain traits stronger than others. But as long as they're reasonably well balanced a good mapmaker should be able to make things relatively equal.

[Cyneheard]

I don't think you're ever going to get around the fact that any map will make certain traits stronger than others.

Agreed. But if a trait's strength is map-dependent, then we've gone away from the one-right-answer of "Pick Pacal or Willem first in a regular snake pick." Also, as much as I like the extra randomness of PB7's setup, some people got significantly better civ/leader combos than others; we didn't get Pacal or Willem in that set, fortunately, but there's still a lot of variation. A little less variation in power level wouldn't be a bad thing.

[Krill]

Question: What do people think about turning nukes into guided missiles that can cause collateral damage using the same system as ordinary siege weapons (and losing the nuke effect)?. In other words, disposable units that you can use as a source of collateral in an era of the game where the only other collateral options all require oil.

[Lord Parkin]

Question: What do people think about turning nukes into guided missiles that can cause collateral damage using the same system as ordinary siege weapons (and losing the nuke effect)?. In other words, disposable units that you can use as a source of collateral in an era of the game where the only other collateral options all require oil.

I think nukes inflicting non-lethal collateral damage is a good idea. The main issue with nukes is that with just a couple of them you can make a stack of any size - 50, 200, 1000 units - literally disappear. If instead you could damage all the units but not actually kill any, that would appear at a glance to be more balanced.

I think there needs to be a price hike as well though, so that they're more of a last resort / insurance measure. I think from a game balance perspective it has to be significantly less cost efficient to inflict collateral damage on an average sized stack with nukes than with Bombers (which already have to contend with other air units).

One other thought... should there also be a cap on the number of units that can get collateral damage from a given nuke, or just a set amount dealt to every unit in the targeted tile/area?

[luddite]

It would also be nice to mod nukes so that they can be used in your own territory. One problem with them now is that they're yet-another offensive weapon in the phase where the game heavily favors offense. Defensive nukes might be a good counter to marines+transports, if they had enough range.