Rebalancing Civ4: RtR Mod

[Krill]

Question: How do you scale down the cost and stop it from being a no-brainer where to place the corps? I'd rather the HQ generate zero gold in that case, and it'd probably be easier to then balance the gold cost per resource consumed afterwards.

You'd need to stop Corps from costing more the higher pop the city was, that's balanced against the ford corps, and then work out how much gold needs to be the cost per food etc, so we need a gold old fashioned and generally wrong idea that 1 food = 2 gold = 3 commerce idea etc etc...

[novice]

1) Fast Worker: Nerfed to 2 Move, but starts with Mobility. This is a minor nerf that only hurts the FW moving on roads or across flat tiles.

Sounds more like a buff to me, since fw can now chop forested hills faster.

[Gaspar]

If one of the purposes of this mod is to eliminate the need for a ban list when setting up RB games, the Fast Worker change isn't going to take India off that list. They really should be left as is and just made more expensive, so there's a real trade off to all the worker turns you save out in the field, but you continue to get that benefit in the field.

[Cyneheard]

Sounds more like a buff to me, since fw can now chop forested hills faster.

No, it only saves 1 in terrain movement costs. The Forested Hill still costs 2 move.

@Gaspar:
IMO, any time we put a drawback on a UU or UB, there are problems. Maybe 65h, but too much more and the Fast Worker is actually slower in the early turns. Do we really want a UU that makes your critical opening moves worse?

@T-Hawk:
The HQ gold change can be done in the XML. I'll have to check on the spreading cost, and test how the XML can handle some of the other changes. I suspect that whoever settlers their executive first, regardless of who techs, is the one who will get the HQ.

[T-hawk]

You'd need to stop Corps from costing more the higher pop the city was, that's balanced against the ford corps, and then work out how much gold needs to be the cost per food etc, so we need a gold old fashioned and generally wrong idea that 1 food = 2 gold = 3 commerce idea etc etc...

Could you explain why this is a "need"? Corp balance doesn't have to be perfect, just somewhere close to playable. The mechanic of costing more at higher pop is a very deliberate mechanism to rein in the snowball a little bit.

I'm trying to lightly fix the only balance problem that I see with corps. I don't think the fundamental gold-to-X conversion is broken. The only problem is that it's too big a prize to the first player to get there. Other players get marginal payoff without the HQ, if they can even beg the corp founder to get a share at all.

IMO, any time we put a drawback on a UU or UB, there are problems. Maybe 65h, but too much more and the Fast Worker is actually slower in the early turns. Do we really want a UU that makes your critical opening moves worse?

Agreed, a UU should almost never be worse than its base equivalent. If you don't have forests to chop, the unit isn't any better than a regular worker but still costs more. I'm not sure there is any workable way though to make the UU just a little bit faster and not the massive 33-50% faster it ends up being.

Maybe remove all the moves and mobility and just reduce its cost instead? Whenever my company uses Indian labor, we get cheaper, not faster... Or is that too close to simply being Expansive.

The HQ gold change can be done in the XML. I'll have to check on the spreading cost, and test how the XML can handle some of the other changes. I suspect that whoever settlers their executive first, regardless of who techs, is the one who will get the HQ.

No - remember that it's the *great person*, not the executive, that creates the HQ. An exec can spread a corp just fine if the HQ doesn't exist, same as a missionary can spread a religion if the shrine doesn't exist.

[Iainuki]

I've been reading parts of this thread and I think it's interesting what you're doing. I'd like to make some comments, but I haven't read the whole thread so forgive me if I reiterate something that's been said before.

Trait balance: the traits, as many people have noted, are not balanced. I haven't played enough MP to comment on multiplayer balance, but some SP characteristics carry over. My SP chart on traits (borrowing Sirlin's classification) looks like:

Warlords and BtS:

God-tier: Expansive (pre-nerf).
Strong: Creative, Expansive (post-nerf), Financial, Philosophical.
Average: Industrious, Organized, Spiritual.
Weak: Aggressive, Charismatic.
Trash: Protective, Imperialistic.

In vanilla:

God-tier: None.
Strong: Financial, Philosophical.
Average: Creative, Industrious, Organized, Spiritual.
Weak: Aggressive, Expansive.
Trash: None.

As this chart shows, leader trait balance worsened between vanilla and the later BtS patches, as Warlords added two near-useless traits, Protective and Imperialistic, and buffed two already-good traits, Creative and Expansive. The result is that whereas in vanilla, the difference between the best leaders, any of the Financial leaders, and the worst leaders, the Expansive/non-Financial leaders, was noticeable but not overwhelming, in BtS Willem van Oranje, Pacal II, and Suryavarman II are much more powerful than Charlemagne.

In any event, my major comment is that with choices like giving Protective granaries and the discussed culture to Barracks, you've effectively destroyed the theme of the traits. This doesn't surprise me, because some of the traits have weak themes: Protective, for instance, requires another player to attack to get the benefit, which means it will always be weaker than other traits that work no matter what the other players do. If balancing the traits requires breaking theme, I suggest making a clean break and replacing weak traits with new traits that have a theme that's not crippled.

I think the worst offender is Protective. I don't see any alternative to writing a whole new trait, but I don't have any great suggestions for what that trait should be: the problem with the Warlords traits is that the original traits already used most of the fundamental game mechanics to play with, so the Warlords traits ended up being tacked-on and poorly-designed. There just aren't enough military game mechanics to support more than two military traits, and Aggressive/Charismatic/Imperialistic stretches it quite far. I'm also not quite sure what to do with Imperialistic, especially since my assessment of the trait suggest it's much weaker than the changes you've made to it suggest. Anyway, here are some thoughts on the current version of the traits and the changes in the mod, and tentative starting points for helping some of the problem traits

Financial: I think the nerf made in the mod is the only possible nerf to Financial that doesn't overnerf it. If this nerf is too much in playtesting, I'd suggest giving it cheap banks again.

Creative: I think the vanilla version of Creative was fine, and cheap libraries made it overpowered, so I agree with this change. Vanilla creative was on the weak side, but colosseums were improved in Warlords/BtS anyways---I might add cheap Broadcast Towers (which will almost never be relevant in MP, but might in SP).

Industrious: Stet.

Organized: Stet.

Philosophical: Stet.

Spiritual: Stet.

Expansive: The original trait was on the weak side, the Warlords trait far too powerful until they nerfed it to +25% worker production. I tend to think that increased worker production is too powerful to be on any trait, but may be unavoidable because of the Warlords trait proliferation. I think my first thought, though, is to revert it to its vanilla abilities and add cheap grocers. Are there better things to do here?

Charismatic: I think this change (+2 happiness instead of +1 from monuments) is fine. Charismatic is probably the best-designed war trait with this change, because it provides a noticeable benefit without going to war. Happy is stronger than health, but Expansive's other benefits are much better than Charismatic's. I'd suggest dropping the +1 happy from Broadcast Towers as well.

Imperialistic + Aggressive: I really the only way to fix Aggressive is to recombine traits, so that instead of one all-military trait (Aggressive) there are two traits that offer military benefits but also other benefits. I'm not sure how best to do this, though. The one obvious ability that isn't already taken for an existing trait is reduced unit maintenance: rather than implement this as free units, which Vassalage does, I'd suggest rather it should be like Organized does to civic costs, a flat 50% cost on unit maintenance. Straight tacking this onto Aggressive would make the trait more viable, though that leaves Imperialistic still feeling weak to me. (In SP, unit maintenance is often a limit on expanding as much as city maintenance is; in MP, I assume that the reduced cost on the substantial standing armies everyone has would be advantageous.) Other than this, the only abilities I can think of to add to involve things like the (removed) mechanic for Charismatic: i.e., have Aggressive give +1 happy for possessing a barracks, to provide economic benefits for building military infrastructure. (This could also help Protective, but I think the trait is still unsalvageable.)

Protective: Replace with a better-themed trait. The problem is I'm not sure what other mechanics there are to exploit that aren't taken: the existing traits handle almost every aspect of the game but espionage, which is tacked-on and not well-designed. Most of the buildings that make sense (walls and castle *don't* because stone already halves their cost: this makes Protective's "advantage" even weaker than it would be otherwise) are committed to other traits, which leaves only new mechanics of some sort for Protective. I don't know what to do here: cheap granaries alone won't balance Protective, since I'd rather have almost any other trait than cheap granaries alone. Maybe the correct solution, from an MP perspective, is to just balance the other traits and leave Protective unviable, knowing that no one will pick it.

[T-hawk]

Good post, Iainuki.

Imperialistic + Aggressive: I really the only way to fix Aggressive is to recombine traits

Aggressive got indirectly nerfed by a lot of environmental changes starting in Warlords. Their signature cheap building was nerfed from 4 XP to 3. Great Generals were added: Combat I isn't so special when anybody else can get the same result by spawning and settling one GG. Axes got countered by chariots, meaning Aggressive Axes no longer ruled the world. And trebuchets were added, changing the focus of city combat in that era almost exclusively to siege (especially with some extra GG-enabled City Raider promotions). All these were changes for the better of the game individually, but on the whole really marginalized Aggressive.

Aggressive isn't unsalvageable. If it gave Combat 5 to all units, it would be top tier. There has to be a sweet spot where it's attractive and solid but not overpowered.

Protective: Replace with a better-themed trait.

I have to agree here ideally, though not sure that's within scope for this mod here. The core problem of Protective is being defensive. You can never build your game around being Protective. It could be made effective even along its current lines: what if it gave CG3 and Drill 4 to archery units and made walls give +200% defense and cost 1 hammer. But a purely reactive trait will never be fun to play. (The one fun thing I've ever found to do with a protective civ is Oracle-Feudalism and rush with longbows.) I think Cyneheard actually got it pretty close to right with the granary bonus, giving a Protective civ the capability for vertical growth along with its military turtling.

[Cyneheard]

Thanks, Iainuki.

I think your concerns about Imperialistic aren't as problematic in MP play. It's on lower difficulty levels (at most Monarch, instead of realistically at least Monarch), so fast settling is a little easier to recover from economically, and it's usually harder to take land after the land-grab phase. Also, MP play values a fast start somewhat more than SP play. If the game's got tech trading, if you have a decent amount of land, a route to trade to parity, and control over your own diplomacy, then you're in good shape.

Also, the whole point of the barracks change was to give Aggressive some type of economic boost that isn't dependent on it powering up lots of units.

As long as we have 11 traits, then there's only so much that we can do for Protective to take it off of its current focus. Essentially, here are the things available for traits that don't already exist:
1) Having a pseudo-"Financial" to work on either hammers or food.
2) %age bonuses to a commerce output (gold, beakers, culture, or Espionage). Espionage is out because the trait needs to work in No Espionage games.
3) Coming up with different promotions to give to different units. Good luck with that; Mounted units benefit the most from Charismatic already, so synergy between "Horselord" and Charismatic could be troublesome.
4) Finding new buildings to double. The only early- and mid-game buildings that aren't doubled are Monuments (but Creative occupies the meta-game slot of 'cheap early culture'), Markets, Monasteries, Observatories, and Aqueducts.

This is a random side note:
Do AP resolutions have any place in an MP game? If someone could convince me that they do? IMO, the ability to sabotage wars, in particular, and forcing people to take happiness and hammer penalties is overpowered in some situations, and I don't see how it adds to the game except giving players a "Screw You" ability because.

The wonder itself is fine; it's a hammers now-for-hammers later investment, but available globally (assuming that the rest of the world has access to that religion). I'll admit that I didn't consider the benefits of resolutions as being worth much when I built the AP in PBEM10.

PBEM10 Spoiler:

I GE'd the AP in that game, with the deal being that Twinkletoes would give me the shrine gold for my Hindu cities, and he would get the AP bonus hammers. It worked well for both of us, until the Shrine got burnt. Now, I'm just giving him the hammers, but he's not long for this world, I'm afraid. Mackoti has steamrolled him fairly effectively.

[SevenSpirits]

As long as we have 11 traits, then there's only so much that we can do for Protective to take it off of its current focus. Essentially, here are the things available for traits that don't already exist:
1) Having a pseudo-"Financial" to work on either hammers or food.
2) %age bonuses to a commerce output (gold, beakers, culture, or Espionage). Espionage is out because the trait needs to work in No Espionage games.
3) Coming up with different promotions to give to different units. Good luck with that; Mounted units benefit the most from Charismatic already, so synergy between "Horselord" and Charismatic could be troublesome.
4) Finding new buildings to double. The only early- and mid-game buildings that aren't doubled are Monuments (but Creative occupies the meta-game slot of 'cheap early culture'), Markets, Monasteries, Observatories, and Aqueducts.

It's true that if you only want to make XML changes there aren't a lot of options. But that really shouldn't be a concern for this mod. Here are some examples of other things traits could give, off the top of my head:

improved worker work rate
+1h per city
increased occurrence of We Love The X Day
+2f in cities with state religion
higher spread chance for state religion
no maintenance for military units
+2 sight range from culturally owned tiles
new cities start with food box half full

[Cyneheard]

It's true that if you only want to make XML changes there aren't a lot of options. But that really shouldn't be a concern for this mod. Here are some examples of other things traits could give, off the top of my head:

improved worker work rate
+1h per city
increased occurrence of We Love The X Day
+2f in cities with state religion
higher spread chance for state religion
no maintenance for military units
+2 sight range from culturally owned tiles
new cities start with food box half full

Interesting list. Some work reasonably well, some don't. Most of them cover the same meta-game space as an existing trait.

Improved work rate: Too dependent on the game speed; any bonus gives you fast-worker chopping bonuses on Quick, but it takes a lot to have any difference on Normal. So, not an option.
WLTKD: goes into effect awfully late. Relies on randomness.

+2f in cities with state religion: I'll have to ponder that one, but how do you stop this from coming to play on T15 with Fin/This Trait and Spain On A Lake? We've just given some players a free food resource. That's really dangerous for game balance. Pair with Exp or Imp for a really fast start. If someone doesn't try to break the game by getting it that early, is the trait truly useful? We've also had fewer games where people go for a first-tech religion, so I think these players would be strongly tempted to go straight for a religion on T0 and be fairly safe to get it, regardless of their other trait.
Higher spread chance: Relies on randomness; only makes sense with above.

No maintenance for military units: It feels a lot like giving players another Organized trait, tbh. Yes, it's a different cost-cutting.

Sight range: Interesting. It's just a cherry on top of an existing trait, though, not a trait in and of itself.

New cities start with half-full food box: Also intriguing. The capital getting the bonus is a good 3-4t boost, about as large as Expansive. Final Frontier has a start-at-size 2 Civ trait, and compensates for it with -1 health and -1 happy; while New Earth isn't that great a civ, it's not bad (the AI definitely mismanages it, but some of that was bugs in the game. Thanks, Shafer. I guess not having your AIs use their pop points on T0 wasn't a big enough bug for you to catch. Great sign for your game design future).