Game balance reasons for each and every change:
Quote:Changelog, v1.35:
1) Tile Changes:
Watermills: +1 base hammers, no longer receives +1h at Rep Parts
Workshops: +1 base hammers, no longer receives +1h at Chemistry
Mines: +1h at Rep Parts
Whaling Boats: Enabled at Sailing, not Optics. Otherwise unchanged.
This is to make tile improvements other than cottages, farms and mines viable in the early game, when they become available. Basically moves some of hte later boni to earlier in the game, but the tile yields are comparable to other options.
Quote:2) Civic Changes:
Vassalage now provides free support for military units as well (meaning Pacifism is cheaper), and is Medium Upkeep
Slavery: 30h for the 1st pop, 20h for the 2nd pop and subsequent pops. So, 30/50/70/90. On Quick speed, that's 20/33/46/60.
Serfdom: +75% Worker Speed, +1h for Watermills and Windmills
Free Market: No longer provides -25% Corporate Costs. Now provides +25% Trade Route Yield.
Environmentalism: No longer provides +25% Corporate Costs, or +2 commerce to windmills. Provides +1 gold per specialist, +1c to farms and pastures, +2c to forest preserves, and Low upkeep. Swapped with Free Speech. Now at Liberalism
Free Speech: Now High Upkeep, swapped with Environmentalism. Now at Scientific Method
Vassalage is cheaper, and makes pacifism cheaper. Pacifism is a civic that is not viable for anyone other than SPI leaders due to the extra cost of units which is now offset when in vassalage.
Slavery is nerfed, as required. now 1 pop whips are hammer favourable, 2 pop whips need a granary to be economical and otherwise are now niche. Still possible to use, but mines are now more important to work and this is therefore also a nerf to cottages.
Serfdom: a civic that very rarely got used, almost purely by SPI leaders. Now has a bigger boost to workers and provides another option to SP powered tile improvements. Simply put it's now worth considering and not ignored.
See this link for more reasoning:
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showpost....stcount=49
Free Market: The boost makes inland cities give extra commerce from trade routes, so on a land heavy map it's not just +2 commerce/city, to bring it more inline with Merc.
Free Speech: Moved columns so you have to decide if you want to uberpowered cottages, or uberpowered workshops+watermills, instead of being able to run both together. This was partly needed because with Corps removed from the game, SP needed a nerf, which would have meant redesigning the entire column, so instead another good civic was moved over and a bad civic that never got used got moved over to a more mediocre column and buffed slightly to provide a choice versus a weakened Nationhood.
Environmentalism: needed to be made relevent, as it never gets used. It comes late, provides a bonus no one needs and has a malus in an area that no longer exists. OK, maybe this was a bit of redesign, but it wouldn't be any different to deleting the civic. Now it provides a bonus similar to Rep, has synergy with Merc to boost what in most games doesn't get used and on the whole helps improves a facet of the game that isn't cottages, trying to provide another competitor to the cottage cheese strategy.
Quote:3) The Draft
Rifles now cost 2 pop to draft. A city must now end a draft at size 7 instead of size 5 (So size 9 to draft a rifle, size 8 to draft a musket).
Being able to 1pop draft rifles, tuning 15 food into 110 hammers is significantly more efficient than any other conversion in the game.
Quote:4) War Weariness
Decays 10%/turn during Peacetime. *Change from 0.3/0.4: Wartime WW is now unchanged*
Again, removing an unfun feature from the game.
Quote:5) Espionage
Switch Civic and Switch Religion now require Future Tech
Spies now spawn with "Secretive", and cannot see tiles except the one they're standing on.
The No Espionage game option now works properly:
GSpy points are converted into Great Merchant points
Espionage no longer gets converted into culture
Cultural expansion now happens at normal values
Spies cannot be built
Graphs are always visible on contact
Makes espionage viable without having unkillable sentry nets, and fixes a broken game setting.
Quote:6) Wonder Changes
The Great Wall provides GSpy points, as in the base game. This had been different in previous versions.
Red Cross: 200h
West Point: 550h, +5XP. Now requires a lvl 5 unit (17XP/13XP for Cha)
Great Lighthouse: +1 trade route
GLH: obvious
Red Cross: how often did this get built previously? Exactly.
West Point: Easier to get the required unit without burning a GG on a unit and provides enough culture to get another promotion in most situations wihtout making easily abusable promotions (Commando) accessible without work.
Quote:7) Unit Changes:
War Elephants are now 7 str, +50% vs. Mounted units, and +25% vs. Knights
See PB1 for why WE needed a nerf.
Quote:8 ) UU and UB changes:
Rebalancing:
Terraces now give +1 culture
Cataphracts are 11 strength
Ballista Elephants are 8 str, +50% vs. Mounted units, +25% vs. Knights, and still target Mounteds outside of a city (this buff was to make them better than regular WE against their nemesis, Knights)
Vultures now get +30% vs. Melee.
The Fast Worker is now 2 moves, but starts with Mobility (-1 Terrain Movement Costs). India now starts with Mysticism/Wheel, instead of Mysticism/Mining (slower start).
Terraces: Provided a huge boost for a very small amount of hammers: basically you did get most of the benefit of CRE. Now it is still the same flavour but you have to wait a little longer for the border pop.
Cataphracts are unstoppable, they had odds on thecounter unit, but not anymore.
BE are now a proper unique unit.
Vulture now get odds on axes instead of being worse aginst the original unit.
India now has the worst pair of starting techs and has to focus on gettiong food techs before going for chopping.
Quote:Remaking:
American Mall: Now replaces the Grocer. Provides +1 happy for Deer, Sugar, Hit Singles, Hit Movies, and Hit Musicals
American Minuteman: Replaces the Rifleman, starts with Gureilla I and Woodsman I
Japanese Pagoda: Replaces the Observatory. +10% hammers.
German Assembly Plant: Normal factory, but enabled at Steam Power
German Kanone: Replaces the Cannon, costs 80h instead of 120h
Russian Research Institute: Replaces the university, +1 free scientist
OK, this could be viewed as redseign, but of civs that were never chosen because they were never game changing. iot was eefectively like playing without UU or UB.
Quote:9) Trait changes:
Financial: Require 3 commerce on land to receive the bonus commerce. Water tiles still only require 2 commerce to receive the bonus, though. Remember: A Golden Age cannot trigger Financial's bonus yield (as in the base game).
Expansive: No longer gets double-speed granaries, but gets double-speed grocers. +35% Worker Production.
Creative: Restored to vanilla BtS version: It still provides double-speed libraries.
Charismatic: +2 happiness, but no longer gets +1 happy from Monuments
Protective: Double-speed granaries
Imperialistic: Double-speed Custom Houses (At least this gives Imp something on water maps. For flavor, Custom Houses are very mercantile, which is what 17th century Imperialism was). +67% Settler Production.
Rebalance of traits to bring them back into line.
Fin is still as powerful as before in the later gamne, but the cottages are weaker as they grow, delaying the boost the trait gives: you either have to focus on it earlier thus damaging growth, or wait.
Expansive is simply useful instead of God tier. Workers are easier to get, the health still comes in useful.
Creative: Nothing (it gets nerfed later)
Charismatics: Now you don;'t have to rely on a wonder to get a trait that is actually significantly better than before.
Protective: You finally have a reason to pick the trait, and has a universally useful building.
IMP: As explained
Quote:10) Corporations
Completely removed from the game.
when you can turn 2 food into 8 commerce into 16 gold into 16 food something just went wrong with the game.
Quote:11) Miscellaneous:
Coastal Blockade now has a range of 1 square around the blockader, instead of 3 squares
Barracks: increased cost to 60 hammers, +1 culture
AP Resolutions: Declare War (on a non-member), Force Peace (between two members), and Assign City are no longer eligible resolution actions.
Fail-gold: You never get fail-gold if you also completed the wonder somewhere else (so no National Wonder fail-gold, or doubling up on a wonder to guarantee yourself a paycheck. The game still informs you that you received "0 gold" from your hammers).
Blockade: Annoying, originally nigh impossible to keep your seafood hooked even if you have a better never. Now removes a bad feature of the game that was unfun.
Barracks: this gives AGG an early game boost, in that they don't have to tech Myst, or build monuments to pop borders.Reference most of this thread for why all triats need to give economic boni for them to be viable.
AP: Fairly obvious, removes options that give one player control over anothers' diplomacy.
Fail gold: When you set up one city to fail a wonder you are circumventing the wealth generation balance by abusing multipliers, this means you only get gold when someone else beats you to a wonder. Stil l abusable, but less so thamn beforehand.
Change log 1.40. This is on top of previous changes:
Quote:Traits
CRE - Loses cheap Libs.
PRO - Loses cheap Castles, D1 on archery and GP units.
EXP - Gains +35% production bonus to work boats.
ORG - Cheap Libs. Yes it brings it up to 4 cheap buildings but that's about all it does, considering -50% civic maintenece doesn't add up to much.
CRE: originally a power trait that didn;t have a nerf, it needed to lose something like FIN and EXP had to bring it back into the pack, and remove it from it's new god tier position.
PRO: It had feature bloat and thus some less important boni were removed.
EXP: considered by a fair few to be weak, so given a boost that favoured it's original point,of improving city tiles. Now EXP no longer relies on land food to be useful, it useful regardless ofwhat food res you have.
ORG: Has an early boost, it is viable to spend a few more hammers and pop borders with 45h lib instead of 30h monument. Was the worst trait after the previuos rebalances, so given an early game economic bonus of a sort.
Quote:Techs:
Writing - Enables Map trades. No longer enables Open Borders.
Alphabet - Enables Open Borders. No longer enables Tech trading.
Paper - Enables Tech trading. No longer enables Map trading.
Education - tech cost increased by 25%.
Printing Press - tech cost increased by 50%.
Nationalism - tech cost increased by 50%.
Gunpowder - tech cost increased by 50%.
All techs after this - increased by 100% of base cost.
Only changed in TT version of the mod.
Quote:Hunting - enables pastures, cost increased by 50% from 40 to 60. No longer enables camps.
Animal Husbandry - enables camps, and scouts. No longer enables pastures.
Archery - tech cost decreased 2/3, from 60 to 40
Previously, Agriculture was the best starting tech: It meant that you had a 1/3 chance of not needing to research a food tech while building a worker, but you could research AH before your worker finished to hook up a food resource requiring a pasture, while those not starting with Agri or Hunting would not be able to do this and heence lose out economically.
Hunting was considered the worst starting tech as you were forced to build a warrior to stop a starting warrior kill, thus delaying your first worker and economic development. Most games are played without huts due to the dislaike of people benefitting from luck, thus making Hunting an even worse starting tech as the scout was useless at that stage of the game.
Now, Hunting starts do not provide a scout so the original problem with HUnting is gone, and provides pastures which means any civ will not have to worry about starting with Agriculture to be able to pasture a food resource, so the former problem doesn't exist anymore. You will always be able to hook up your food resource after going worker first, unless some total bastard only gives you deer. (Mwahahaha etc etc).
Quote:Misc:
Known civ tech bonus - increased to 250 from 30
Only in TT mod
Quote:Civs:
Celts - Dun now gives G2, not G1.
Portugal - Feitoria now costs 120h, from 180h.
Rome - Preat S7. Forum increased to +35% GPP generation
Inca - Quechua lose Combat 1.
Persia - Apothacary gives +2 health. Immortal is now a S5 spear
Carthage - Cothon decreased to 80 hammers. Numidian cav increased to S6, C1, loses melee bonus and F1 (and innate retreat chance).
France - Salon +1 free spec, -1 artist
Vikings - Berserker gains C1 for free
Celts had a UB that provided a bonus that was not really useful originally, and a UB that was barely better than the original unit, and had 2 bad starting techs. Now provides a unique bonus that makes the celts a more dangerous opponent later on, but this bonus is only there and really accessible in a era where the defending unit is really difficult to attack into and is almost uneconomical to do so.
Portugal: That's a pretty harsh original building to replace, and a UU that enables attacking in the era of LB is best suited to high level MP play, it doesn't fint into a long game. Now it's 2/3 the price for a good ability, but you have to wait a while to use it, and you still need a harbour.
Rome: Preat is weakened so that axes can get odds on it, and the Forum bonus increased so the each GP gives 4 instead of 3 gpp. It moves a civ that was all about the unit to being about a unit that you can use to batter weaker units and still wreak havoc against an uncordinated player, and a UB that gives you a fai fair boost on getting those GP out a little bit quicker while supporting that horizontal expansion.
Inca - See PBEM16 about why it's not good to have a UU that will effectively put a non-AGG player out aof a game (and paired with the Terrace!).
Persia: Basically stole the original idea of the Phalanx for a UU, as the original UU is no better than the original unit against humans who don't defend with archers.
Carthage: the original UU was worse than the oringial for HAvHA fights. which are fairly common until knights are around, as they are the only fast movers that can take cities reliably. The UB was just minor on most maps, and on maps where it is really good, the UB is really bad, so the overall balance of the CIV is level (well, more than most) even though maps can change.
France: The Salon is just junk and is worse than the original in certain situations.
Vikings: In the end no change was made.
When I've finished, I'll write a full explanation of all changes. Tomorrow, because right now I need a beer.