Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[Krill]

Thanks Sullla.

Use your imagination, man! It is trivially true that some set of promotions would be enough.

Of course it is trivially true to understand that by giving X amount of promotions would make AGG overcome the economic boni other traits get, but it is also trivially true to realise that giving Warriors combat 4 from game start is stupidly overpowered.

[Krill]

To me, some significant reduction in war weariness makes most sense, its an economic benefit only felt at war, sure, but shouldn't the idea of the Aggressive trait be that it makes civs play more aggressively? So if you're going to war as you should, its not making the same negative economic impact as if you're not aggressive.

WW only occurs when you lose units in enemy culture, and has also be decreased in the mod anyway, so the effects aren't actually as great as you;d think.

[Krill]

Just to put out an oddball idea, what if you gave AGG units the ability to build roads? It would give an indirect economic bonus by letting workers focus on other improvements, and still loosely fit thematically. Of course, I have no idea how balanced that would be, and I imagine it would be a pain to implement [maybe via a promotion?]. It certainly seems like it would make for interesting possibilities during war-time, though.

Alternatively, you could just kill AGG entirely, or merge it with another trait. Merging with CHA could be interesting.

Anyway, just my two cents.

Another suggestion from the peanut gallery: give AGG civs HR happiness for every 2-3 garrison units (so 4-6 units = 2 happy). This would kind of correspond with CHA's advantage.

You want an AGG civ to be able to keep up in tech long enough to make later-era wars a feasible plan.

How about increasing known tech discount for AGG leaders?

Honestly I think (and I had a few discussions with darrelljs about this awhile ago) that the known tech discount needs to get bumped way up regardless.

All of these seem like decent ideas, I think. Only balance issue I see with the known tech bonus is that it can become kinda of absurd for other civs like PRO/IMP Inca, as it favours more early horizontal expansion.

[scooter]

Of course it is trivially true to understand that by giving X amount of promotions would make AGG overcome the economic boni other traits get, but it is also trivially true to realise that giving Warriors combat 4 from game start is stupidly overpowered.

What about the suggestion made a few pages ago though? It suggested staggering the promotion thing, so in the early stage of the game, it's still only C1. Later stages, add a promotion and/or give it to units who don't normally get it. Aggressive is nice for early rushes and that's all it's good for... If you don't axe-rush with it, it's basically a useless trait once you hit the mid game. Total one trick pony, and it's not even that cool of a trick compared to say Expansive in the early game. Don't give warriors C2/3/4, but maybe give C1 to gunpowder, Ships, and horses too. Shoot, I'd be fine with giving some of them combat 2 just to make aggressive be legitimately fearsome past the age of axes. I mean it should be right? Obviously there's varying ways of doing it, but if aggressive had warfare benefits other than early game rush, then it wouldn't need economic boosts, and this can be done without screwing with Ancient/Classical age warfare.

[SevenSpirits]

Of course it is trivially true to understand that by giving X amount of promotions would make AGG overcome the economic boni other traits get, but it is also trivially true to realise that giving Warriors combat 4 from game start is stupidly overpowered.

...

We were talking about Luddite's suggestion of staggered promotion benefits that are greater in later eras.

[Krill]

What about the suggestion made a few pages ago though? It suggested staggering the promotion thing, so in the early stage of the game, it's still only C1. Later stages, add a promotion and/or give it to units who don't normally get it. Aggressive is nice for early rushes and that's all it's good for... If you don't axe-rush with it, it's basically a useless trait once you hit the mid game. Total one trick pony, and it's not even that cool of a trick compared to say Expansive in the early game. Don't give warriors C2/3/4, but maybe give C1 to gunpowder, Ships, and horses too. Shoot, I'd be fine with giving some of them combat 2 just to make aggressive be legitimately fearsome past the age of axes. I mean it should be right? Obviously there's varying ways of doing it, but if aggressive had warfare benefits other than early game rush, then it wouldn't need economic boosts, and this can be done without screwing with Ancient/Classical age warfare.

...

We were talking about Luddite's suggestion of staggered promotion benefits that are greater in later eras.

As I said in reply to that, then AGG can't keep up with the economic traits and falls behind reaching those techs later.

Giving gunpowder units C2? You can reach Gunpowder seriously quickly, C2 muskets would basically own every unit in the game at that point except knights: compare it to the janissary, that gets 25% against melee, archery and mounted units. You just gave AGG the ability to get to 45% against those units with one promo, the Ottomans still had to get C1. Add in drafting to that? Those units are awesome and cheap, being the last units you can draft for 1 pop.

However, the problem then still remains that they will get annihilated by collateral damage and moped up, the cats underneath the stack still get flanked away. In fact, if you run up against a castle? C1 mace defends at at least 16.8, up to over 20. So what do you do? Add more promotions so that even when catted down to 50% health the attacker only gets 50/50 chances? That is just quite simply the dumbest idea I've seen in a long time, because then the AGG player will just play a more expansive game and defend. He doesn't need to be able to tech because he can play defence with cats and muskets all day long and you'd likely need Inf to take him out.

The current combat system is designed in such a way that it is not possible to attack without superior numbers. Unless you have a large tech edge (and rifles v muskets is still not good enough, you need rifles and cannons v muskets and knights) then you are going to get beaten. And sometimes that isn't enough look at PBEM3, Sandover had Inf to rifles and numbers, higher MFG, and a vassal to take him up to half the land surface, and still wasn't really making headway.

This is possibly because most people here don't understand how to wage war. War either has to be waged opportunistically to take small bites out of your enemies one at a time, or with a group of allies to get the kill quickly. Agg kinda helps in those few unit battles in unclaimed territory over where to settle and holding land (PB1, Inca v UTR, PBEM4, Me v western neighbour) where you aren't using siege to get odds because it isn't economically viable (There is a post in my PB3 thread explaining that as well), but that is about it, and as I've said that is the problem with AGG: you have to use it and it isn't viable to invade by yourself without numbers, and as soon as you get numbers AGG doesn't matter except when you are right on the edge.

[scooter]

Perhaps I have a thick head, but I feel like the disconnect for me is that you started out telling us that giving gunpowder units C2 is broken (they would "own every unit in the game"), and then you followed it up by saying it isn't good enough. Both can't be true, so what am I not understanding?

[Krill]

First part talks about unit-unit battles in a vacuum. The second part talks about it in the context of stack battles, terrain boni, culture and general settings.

i.e. knights can easily get 2 promo, so 12 strength v 10.8, or 11 v 8.64 depending on promotions taken, but against maces and pikes the odds would favour an attacking C2 musket. However when you then consider that the musket is invading, that the defender with have a cat stack and several turns to get units into position, the musket stack is screwed unless it has numbers, or so many promotions that after catting the muskets still have half decent odds on defence even with only 50 hp. To do that the muskets need something like C4 or C5 and maybe some drill promotions.

[luddite]

First part talks about unit-unit battles in a vacuum. The second part talks about it in the context of stack battles, terrain boni, culture and general settings.

i.e. knights can easily get 2 promo, so 12 strength v 10.8, or 11 v 8.64 depending on promotions taken, but against maces and pikes the odds would favour an attacking C2 musket. However when you then consider that the musket is invading, that the defender with have a cat stack and several turns to get units into position, the musket stack is screwed unless it has numbers, or so many promotions that after catting the muskets still have half decent odds on defence even with only 50 hp. To do that the muskets need something like C4 or C5 and maybe some drill promotions.

^This seems more like an argument for nerfing siege, rather than saying that it's impossible to balance extra promotions with an economic trait.

Anyway I think you're oversimplifying this a bit. It's not like AGG, by itself, should be enough to let you crush a neighbor who has equal numbers and tech. It's just supposed to be a bit of a boost in that, like financial gives a bit of a boost in research but not some overwhelming advantage. And since people already manage to conquer their neighbors without any extra AGG promotions, giving them extra promotions will just make that easier. Of course they usually do invasions with 2-movers rather than muskets- have there been any RB games where someone did a successful invasion with muskets? They're more of a defensive unit usually.

Giving AGG cheap stables and a free combat 1 on mounted would really help them a lot on offense.

[Dicorion]

Not that I feel I am the right one to suggest anything, but what about to give promotion Leadership to melee (or maybe more? siege?) units build in city with barracks? Still talking about Aggressive trait of course. This will lead to more promotions for that units, but these will not be completely free. If I am thinking correctly that will also mean more XP overall and so more points for Great General? Not that it will have huge economical impact, but you can use GG for GA´s, or not?
What will it do to balance I am not sure though.